Played (okay I guess)

Played has been rated R for pervasive language, violence, some nudity and drug use. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

The movie is, I would say, about a guy that gets out of prison with a vengeance. It was a corrupt cop that got him in there, and now he’s gonna take the cop out.

There were a lot of annoying characters in that movie, and although you’re led to believe by the DVD cover that Val Kilmer is going to be in it, his part is rather short. I’m not a big fan of his anyway, but he did have the funniest scene in the car when he was driving a bleeding passenger to the hospital (or wherever) and his mother called. Turns out it was really Val Kilmer’s mom calling him, and since he stayed in character, director Sean Stanek liked the performance so much, he left it in.

That’s really the funniest part about the movie. The rest is partially interesting, but then all the interesting stuff gets overshadowed by the incessant and pointless swearing of one of the characters (was that supposed to be funny?) and the drug content (seems like drugs are the new nudity). And oh, I didn’t quite understand the ending, but maybe that’s just me.

I have no complaints about the acting except for Vinnie Jones’, but maybe he was supposed to be this obnoxious. I guess I just like my villains a little more subtle.

All in all, although I do not recomment this movie, it was not completely bad.

Modigliani (two hours of boredom)

Have you ever watched a movie and thought halfway through how much time you could save if you played it in fast forward? I wish I had done it with this movie.

Modigliani is a movie about the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani (Andy Garcia), his messed up relationship to Jeanne Hebuterne (Elsa Zylberstein) and his destructive lifestyle of drugs and alcohol. Also, he has a strong rivalry with Pablo Picasso (Omid Djalili) going on, and although he has fathered Jeanne’s baby, they’re not married, ostensibly for her father who – as a Catholic – doesn’t like the fact that Amedeo is Jewish.

One reason why I didn’t like this movie at all is that I didn’t like the main characters. I hadn’t even heard of Modigliani before I watched the movie, so all I say about Modigliani is based on the way he was portrayed in the film, although it’s been suggested in the IMDB.com forum that the way he was portrayed was far from accurate. Regardless, the character Modigliani in this movie wasn’t likeable. He was always somewhere between thinking he’s that cat’s pyjamas and feeling sorry for himself, mostly he’s drunk during both. And despite the fact that he annoys me, Jeanne is sooooooooo in love with him (she says). But I didn’t even feel sorry for her because she’s annoying, too. She leaves her baby behind, just abandons it, doesn’t even fight for it, and then her father is made out to be the bad one. Although, quite evidently, she didn’t make a good mother. Sure, her father is somewhat despicable for disliking Jewish people. I’m not even going to follow this up with a “but”.

I also disliked the pretentiousness of the movie. While it bothered me slightly that everyone had a strange accent, what bothered me even more was the dialogue. “I am empty. Like your glass.” Bla bla bla, whatever. Words of wisdom spread here and there, trying mighty hard to be all artsy. Boring! It didn’t even have a few scenes in it that I liked, not even the cinematography had much to offer. There was blue snow at some point, but it did look rather fake.

So all in all we can conclude, that the movie was not only boring (and did I mention predictable?), it was also two hours long, so that’s a LOT of boredom. Hence, I do not recommend it. And by the way, Rotten Tomatoes agrees with me – it got a rating of 4% there… just like BloodRayne.

BloodRayne II: Deliverance (nope)

When in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Giles once told Buffy that they needed to talk, Buffy replied back to him: “I don’t suppose this is about happy squirrels?” “Vampires,” Giles said, and Buffy said: “That was my next guess.” As for this movie, it isn’t about happy squirrels either, but I wish it had been.

In BloodRayne II, the big evil vampire lord Billy The Kid goes to a town in the Wild West and kind of takes everyone hostage while he’s waiting for the new railroad to come through so he can get more people to kill. Or something like that. And so Rayne, half vampire and half human, passes through to save the day.

BloodRayne II: Deliverance is based on a video game, or maybe it’s only based on the prequel BloodRayne which is based on a video game. Either way, it’s a mystery how it ever got made, considering that most people agree that BloodRayne, which was nominated for six Razzie Awards, was about as entertaining as a root canal treatment. I’m not one of those people, though, and I’ll tell you why: BloodRayne may have had a silly story with silly dialoge, but at least you had Kristanna Loken in it, who makes for a damn nice vampire slayer type heroine. She’s 5′ 11″ (1.80 m) and she kicks ass! *

BloodRayne II on the other hand has Natassia Malthe in it, some model, 5′ 5″ (1.65 m), who looks quite retarded chewing on a match all the time. Of course, she was probably told to do that by Uwe Boll, who already directed part one. Rayne’s weapons look really silly and impractical and she has a very strange leather coat and bullets with holy water in them, I think. I’m simply amazed that Boll is a filmmaker still. Don’t you have to make good movies in order to keep your job in Hollywood? Maybe not. Boll also directed Alone In The Dark and House Of The Dead, by the way, two movies that barely got a 2-rating at IMDB.com. I haven’t seen those movies, but I’ve played the video games briefly, which was really enough.

While I’m one of the few people to actually defend BloodRayne on the sole fact that Underworld sucked so much more (vampires with reflections, daylight bullets…), I can’t think of anything flattering to say about this movie. Except maybe that it’s good to know that you can still be successful in Hollywood, even if you have no talent whatsoever.

*(Those of you who – like me – thought Kristanna was great in The L Word might be amazed by the fact that Guinevere Turner, writer for an actress in The L Word, actually wrote the script for BloodRayne. It doesn’t cease to amaze me.)

Premonition (not so much)

Premonition is a thriller about a woman who learns that her husband dies in a car accident, and then when she gets up the next day, her husband is alive again.

The main characters are Linda Hanson – played by Sandra Bullock – and her husband Jim Hanson – played by Julian McMahon. Nia Long was Annie, Linda Hansons best friend, and she actually was my favorite character in the movie, although hers was a minor part. (Did you know that she was in If These Walls Could Talk 2?)

So, one problem with this movie was that I didn’t care about either one of the main characters. Linda Hanson annoyed was whiny and annoying, and her husband stayed somewhat colorless. Worse, however, was the fact that Linda kept making very stupid decisions throughout.

(Spoilers)

She learns that a doctor is going to take her away from her children on Friday (was it?), yet she decides to go see him when she awakens on the Monday before. Why? You could say, of course, that it’s because you can’t change the course of things and everything that happens will happen, but you’d think when she realizes that it’s the same doctor who will be mean to her on Friday, she’d avoid meeting him the first time around.

Also, I thought it was simply ridiculous when the coffin with her husband just accidentally fell down and his head rolled around. That was really unlikely, and besides, I doubt they just stuff someone’s body parts in a coffin if they were in an accident. You’d think they’d at least try to re-attach the head.

(spoiler end)

All in all, while the movie certainly had you guessing once in a while, it really didn’t seem all that thought out, so I don’t recommend it unless you’re really bored.