News: North Conway, NH
Lisa and I will be in North Conway, New Hampshire this weekend. We went last year, and had a great time. It’s only about 2 1/2 to 3 hours from her place and the foliage is fantastic. We topped off our last trip with a very relaxing and pleasant ride with a scenic train ride … we may repeat that this year. Not only is there beautiful scenery to enjoy, but there is also a large outlet mall with plenty of shopping opportunities.
I’ll write a review when I get back next week.
Movie Review: Kill Bill
This movie was exactly as it was described, by various critics. It is a great homage to 70’s era Kung Fu movies, with unbelievable (and unlikely) action scenes. It is a gore fest, splatter-rama of the highest degree. Yet, there is also something so charming about the movie … the great acting job Uma does … and the obvious enjoyment the actors have in portraying such over-the-top characters, that make this movie well worth seeing. This is exactly the kind of movie that becomes a “cult favorite” and unlike most, was designed from the outset to be exactly that.
Movie Review: House of the Dead
OH. MY. GOD. This had to be one of the very worst movies I’ve seen in years. It is just like the video game it is based on … which is not a good thing. Hey, have you ever stood behind someone and watched them enjoying themselves playing a shoot-em-up video game … but couldn’t actually get in there to play yourself? This movie was just like: watching someone else have fun playing a game, we weren’t invited to join. As a movie, it sucked. The plot was week, and the characters weren’t even slightly interesting. Further, the horror content (the primary reason I even wasted my money to see it) was nil. The movie is 92 minutes long, features some gratuitous boob-shots and tons of gun fire and blood splattered gore … and yet I kept checking my watch and I could not wait for this monstrosity to end.
Listen, I know a “big dumb fun” movie when I see one (hey, read my review of “Kill Bill” … or go see “Eight Legged Freaks”) but this was not that. This movie took itself very seriously, then interlaced scenes from the video game during inappropriate moments of the live action. Further, it used one of the worst Hollywood-esque tropes in history … the inappropriately timed romance. There is a scene, where the characters have just spent 15 minutes blasting their way through a virtual army of rotting undead to reach the relative safety of an abandoned house. They have lost several members (they watched their friends and comrades pulled down and torn apart, screaming by zombies). Yet, this is the exact moment, still splattered by blood, they split off into couples and begin kissing and necking. WTF?
ANCILLARY ISSUE: While watching that wretch of a movie (House of the Dead), I heard the distinctive voices of little kids. When the movie was out, I followed a family out of the theater … with their three kids, each under 12. The youngest couldn’t have been much more then 6. Why the hell would someone take kids to see a movie like this? It’s rated “R” and full of gore, horror, and violence; tons of gun play interlaced with cannibalism. How is this even remotely appropriate for kids? I guess, if you can’t find a babysitter … you just take your kids with you. It’s good to see a family enjoy an activity together … just not this one.
