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jian3672
Reviews
The Rocker (2008)
Unimaginative, Cookie-Cutter Movie.
First off, I love Rainn Wilson, and like Emma Stone, Josh Gad, Christina Applegate, and Jane Krakowski, and their performances have nothing to do with the negativity, there's only so much that could be done with such a tepid script.
I believe Rainn Wilson could, indeed, carry a comedic lead in a movie, and it's a shame that his ability to do so will be questioned by anyone seeing this film.
It would appear that this film was made by writing down about 30 overdone plot points on a strip of paper each, randomly plucking about 15 of them, and having a thirteen-year-old creative writing student put them to order.
On shorter notes, the "band's" music sounds like bad candy-commercial jingles, and the songs go on for far too long, the slapstick humour is easy to see coming, the other pedestrian 'comedy' is canned, recycled jokes from equally forgettable movies, using the same lower-mediocre toolkit.
A film student should not get a passing grade for this effort.
I'm not a film snob, but there is zero entertainment value to be gained from watching this film unless you've never, ever, seen another 'comedy' film to compare it to in your life. There is nothing from beginning to end that doesn't remind you that you're watching one long YouTube/Myspace ad.
The whole 'catch' to this movie is to see the film for the actors, please do the actors a favour and don't see this film, or, if you already have, don't hold it against them, blame the writers.
I gave it a 3 out of 10, rounding up to be fair, because I have actually have seen worse films.
The Ruins (2008)
Surprisingly entertaining
Why 8/10? I'll tell you why. I've seen more bad movies in 2007 than I've seen bad movies my entire life leading up to 2007. 2008? Well, I've been more careful.
From the trailers and the print ads, I didn't have much hope for The Ruins, which left me with certain impressions of cookie-cutter CGI, gore, pacing, etc. A friend insisted I see it, and I went along.
Good news. The gore is creative and well-shot to accentuate it, the grisly scenes are, well, cringe-worthy, and I'm not easily affected by on-screen gore. The CGI is largely creative, and off to the corner of the screen, accentuating the scene without distracting, most of the time. The actions of most of the characters are reasonable. The assumption of the kids being 'archaeologists' is thankfully false, they're just vacationing (not really a spoiler.) Overall, it was paced rather well, the effects were welcome and creative, the 'shock' factor was high and repeatedly effective, and the performances were neither thin, nor over-the-top.
Great horror/date flick, if on the gory side.
It looks like horror movies that take their time with their script, casting, and effects departments are making a comeback (hopefully.) I would suggest you see this in the theater.
If not, I would highly suggest a rental.
This is no typical teeny-slasher flick that's overdone, this movie is a rather refined horror feature. :)