Movie Reviews

Archive for 2010

Movies watched for the first time (non-theatrically) since last week:* Land of the Lost – As mentioned previously, I have this habit of recording fair/bad movies to watch during times when I may or may not be sleepy. I feel compelled to see them, and sadly, I’d rather watch them than one of the many "classic" films already sitting on my DVR. Yes, I have a problem.LOTL is just the latest example

"Blasphemy!," you might be saying right now. "It was bad enough that we sat through the idiotic sequel, but a remake?"Well, guess what? It’s happening. No, I’m not breaking any news or anything, but the plain fact of the matter is that it will happen (some might already say that a version of it has) – it might not be next year or even the year after that, but let’s face it: Caddyshack remains

Morning all, so I know everyone has been eagerly anticipating my take on this latest episode which “solved” so many of the questions about the two godlike fellas we’ve seen running things over the last few seasons. My thoughts are it was a pretty terrible episode, and of course that we knew this was coming. I told you guys at the beginning of the season that there was not going to be any acceptable solution to the hundreds of bizarre and senseless mysteries they’ve spun together, and now that it’s time to start wrapping some up they’re doing what I foresaw all along. Hey how did Jacob and Man in Black (or “MiB” as the Lost nerds call him) get their powers? Magic. How did Mib get turned into black smoke? Ummm Magic? How did that wheel that sends people through time and space get made? Magic!! The only thing I learned last night were that Jake and Mib weren’t Gods, but rather humans given Godlike powers for some unknown and uncared about reason. Whatever, they could have told us that in 5 minutes instead of wasting a whole episode on it; now I’ve forgotten everything that was happening with Jack, Kate, and the gang again after 2 weeks away.
Listen, you aren’t going to get any life changing answers from Lost… obviously. Once they started traveling through time and doing even more bizarre stuff it became pretty obvious the solution to all their “mysteries” was going to be magic, but they could at least continue the strong character driven storylines that made people like the show in the first place. The final season was destined to be a disappointment no matter what, they made all these promises about solving all the mysteries in a genius way that would change television forever, but not even the most gullible Lost fan had any delusions of that happening. Yet, they somehow made it even worse by trying too hard with pointless alternate universes, even more confusing mysteries late in the game, and wasted characters. They should have just stuck with their tried and true formula of everyone running around the island doing their usual antics and trying to get off, hell just give me good old Desmondo running around without a shirt on, doing his Desmondo things, and I’m a pig in the mud… Here are some more additional thoughts:
-The Richard Alpert episode was kind of similar to this one, they spent a whole episode on Alp’s backstory, yet somehow the Alpert one was good and this one was boring, I think it was because Alpert was a character we already liked, it still had a couple of Island cut-ins with future Alpo interacting with Hurley, and of course the fact that Nestor Carbonell is a great actor…
-Which leads me to my next point, I get that they had to hire a kid who was an absolutely painfully bad actor to play young Jacob, since the adult Jacob can’t act either. But the adult Mib is an even worse actor than Jacob, and that young Zac Efron was actually a pretty good actor, it really confused me. Also, I’m obligated to mention, the babies that played Mib and Jacob in the I really did believe they were babies, which is more than adult Mib or Jake have ever done for me…
-I was hoping after their mother named the first kid “Jacob”, and the second one popped out she’d say “Call him Mib” or some kind of joke nod to all the retarded names the Lost nerds have come up with for old smokey, instead they just never said what his name was, ohhh it’s so mysterious…
-Here’s how I imagine the conclusion to the episode was written up at their writer table…
Cuse – “and then Jacob finds his brothers body and carries it back to the camp, then quietly buries his and his mother’s bodies and he’s all alone on the Island”
Lindelof – “hmmm, you know as long as we’ve got TWO bodies lying around…”
Cuse – “Great thinking, we’ll toss them in the caves, and cross another mystery off the big board! That should get those Lost nerds off our backs!”
Lost Nerds (upon viewing) – “Of course!!! It was Mib and his mother all along, I should have known!!! Those producers are geniuses!!!!!”

All right this here’s my swan song ladies and gentlemen, the last episode of Lost, my last Lost breakdown, you guys won’t have old kid vegas to kick around anymore. So as for this episode, shockingly… I kind of liked it. The on Island stuff was pretty solid, I got the all-out war I was hoping for, Team Jack killed MiB and saved the world, and a few of them even made it out to live long fruitful lives in the real world.
Off island the big reveal was that their retarded “flash-sideways” timeline was actually a “other dimension” timeline, since apparently they were all in heaven the whole time; I’m a little dubious of this one, a couple too many inconsistencies. I think Cuse and Lindelof called an audible midseason when they realized everyone thought their alternate timeline was retarded (thanks mainly to me and my blogging) and switched it to heaven. But you know what, the heaven interspersals kind of worked in this episode; they didn’t work in any of the season’s other episodes, but for the finale they worked. Even I was a little emotional as Jack saved the Island and simultaneously came to the realization he was dead with his old man. Now let’s get to my final observations on what worked and what didn’t:
-Rose and Bernard, really?? Did we really need them to rescue Desmond just so he could be kidnapped two minutes later, and all so we could get that same retarded speech they gave last season finale about them thinking they were too cool to get involved with the other castaways? Yeah, Jack is busy saving the world while you two are douching it up in a hut, and you’re the ones who are too cool. And what was the deal with them showing up at the Church at the End – none of the castaways even liked them. How did they get an invite? Why not throw Frogurt, Steve, and hell, even Ethan Rom in there? Sure, Rom killed about 5 castaways, but at least he wasn’t old, annoying, a poor actor and didn’t douchily move to the other side of the Island and lecture people about things he didn’t understand.
-Speaking of random fringe characters no one liked showing up, I was kind of a little disappointed they didn’t have a 40-year old Walt show up at the church, even if he was just in the background laughing with Hurley. His bizarre age spurts don’t need to make any sense in heaven, I would have liked to have seen him, just for comedy’s sake. And why does Aaron have to spend eternity as a baby, we assume he led a long life after Jack died… I would have gotten his namesake Aaron Boone to play him.
-I mean going back through the season we can point out a million weird things with the Lost producers heaven, but the three that stand out the most to me are:
1. What is up with being able to have kids in heaven, now that doesn’t make a lick of sense… I’m looking at you David Shepherd. The obvious explanation here is they were going to make it an alternate reality and wimped out because that was such a stupid, stupid idea, or they just threw him in there to throw everyone off the scent of it being heaven, or maybe it was just some random kid who died on the island and Jack and Juliet just pretended he was their kid. They should have had that kid play the young Jacob in the Early island flashback, now that would have been a mindf^&$.
2. How the heck did Keamy slip into heaven yet Michael is still stuck on the Island whispering to random people. I mean Keamy killed Alex in cold blood, he was such an over-the-top bad guy it was ridiculous. I mean couldn’t they have cut to him being trapped in a hut with Rose and Bernard for all of eternity? That would have been an appropriate fate for him.
3. Why is Sayid the only one who doesn’t get to be with the girl he liked? I mean, did the producers just forget about Nadia? He loved her since he was 5, they got married, when she was killed he went psycho and killed a bunch of people for Ben Linus (speaking of, did we ever find out who those people were?), or maybe Sayid was being punished for all the people he killed by having to watch his brother nail the girl he loved, while being stuck with some random chick he banged because he was deserted on an Island. (More likely, the producers were seduced with the prospect of a Maggie Grace cameo, and couldn’t find any other way to work her in. I must admit though, I did enjoy seeing her).
-I get why they had to end where they did, because if they had done any flashforwards during the season it would have ruined the ending for everyone, but I still wouldn’t mind seeing an epilogue episode where we find out what happened with Hurley, Kate, Sawyer, Alpert and of course Dez. We know Kate “waited a long time for Jack”, but I mean she had to have at least banged Sawyer a few times off-island after Jack died. And what about Alpo being reintroduced to society after 500 years on an island? And will young Charlie Hume develop any super-powers passed on from his father, and if so will they form a father/son crime-fighting team? (Sounds like a spin-off to me. They could have Mr. Paik and Ji-Yeon be the supervillains they are constantly trying to thwart.)
-All in all a pretty good series though, obviously some pointless plots and lame mysteries over the seasons, but as a whole I guess most of our questions were answered, though the answer to most of them as we said a few weeks ago was “magic.” Sure we all have a few questions we’d still like answered. (e.g. Why did Jack’s magic tattoos make Asian people hate him?) But I think we got the closure we needed from the finale and can say the 6 seasons of Lost were pretty solid as a total product. So good luck out there and godspeed. I will answer any lingering questions people have about the show or any leftover mysteries in the comments section.

The Soto Curse lives on!
You know how, back in the ye olde days of VHS, how if you watched a tape too much, it would start to degrade and you’d be messing with the tracking trying to fix it? Well, that probably happened a lot to cult movies; those that were watched time and again by a loving few. So it’s fitting, then, that the LAMBcast devoted to talking about cult movies features the audio equivalent of those tracking and degradation issue, as is sounds as though Nick Jobe is joining host Jason Soto from inside of a sewer. That’s on fire. During an earthquake. Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but better that I prepare you for the worst, right?
Nevertheless, the two soldier on, even creating an alternate version of LLS since it was just the two of them (more Soto curseness). Stay tuned for that and some Trailer Talk and much, much more (just listen intently).

As usual, the music, as provided royalty-free by Kevin MacLeod’s Incompetech website, is the bomb. Big thanks to Kevin for providing this service.
Also, we’re still on iTunes, and would still love a review, even if it’s a bad one. Thanks for listening!

Mr. Escobar: “He’s my sister’s kid, no father, not too bright… personally, I think he’s a retard. I only gave him the job as a favor to my sister, you understand.”