The Last House on the Left Review

The Last House on the Left is a great film if you like the genre. If you’re not a fan of the genre you should not watch this movie.

My rating

Let me start with this. This film is not for everyone, if you get queasy at the sight of blood, if you tremble at the thought of violence, if you are offended by revenge, this movie isn’t for you. However, if you enjoy a good blood bath, or stabbing people with a hot poker, or sticking someone hand into a garbage disposal, or someone’s head in a microwave and setting it on full blast, then you’re going to love this film.

The Last House on the Left is a remake of a 1972 movie with the same name. People who have seen the original say that this movie wasn’t as good as that version. If that is true, then the original must be awesome! I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the original. To be honest, I never even heard of it until this movie came out, but rest assured, it is going in my queue.

I was a little nervous about watching this film. Most of the critics hated it, plus I thought since it was written by Wes Craven that it was going to be one of those horror movies with some creepy creature that you just can’t kill because it’s already dead. Well, I was wrong and that is a good thing. There are monsters in this movie for sure, but it’s the type of monster that can exist in real life. It could be your next-door neighbor. It could be your friend or a member of your family. That is what makes this horror movie an interesting and really scary one.  Nobody really believes in dead creatures that come to life and go on a killing spree, but the thought of a real person, raping and killing people for money or for kicks is all too real for us and that is scary.

The movie is about a gang of thugs that included a real human monster named Krug, along with Francis, Krug’s brother, his son Justin and some chick named Sadie, Krug’s girlfriend. They are an armed gang that goes around from place to place robbing, raping and killing people. They are real monsters! Justin is just a young teen, about the only person in this gang with a conscience. He is not happy with what his family is doing, however, he doesn’t have the guts to do anything about it, even though he really wants to.

Justin meets two young girls one day and takes them back to his hotel room where they were staying. Thinking they were safe because his family wasn’t supposed to come back until much later, he didn’t think the girls were in any danger. However, when his family comes back early things start to get ugly.

The film is intense and there are a lot of really good fights, stabbings, nose breaking, and all kinds of good stuff. It is very gory, but very well done. The acting is not too bad for the type of film either. The monsters in this film were very believable and it made you really hate them. The story is about revenge and it’s also about interesting new ways of killing people. Any movie that uses a microwave to cook someone’s head until it explodes will get my vote all the time. By the way, it also shows you the real reason why you shouldn’t stick your hand in a garbage disposal.

While I consider the violence in this movie as a big plus, I recognize that some will find it to be its biggest weakness. I understand and I respect that opinion. However, if that’s how you feel about that, then you shouldn’t watch this movie. This movie is for the horror fan, the ones that want to see blood on screen and maybe a little torture too. I should point out that I was a little uneasy about the rape scene. While some think the rape scene was toned down(!) I am afraid it wasn’t toned down enough for my taste. It was extremely graphic and very difficult to watch. I get it, she’s being raped and it’s terrible. They are monsters, I get it! They didn’t really need a 3 minute rape scene. That was a bit over the top and it could have been toned down a lot more.

The Last House on the Left is one of the best stories that Wes Craven ha s ever created. Only those people who are not fan of this genre will not like it. Understandably so, as it takes a certain, sick individual to enjoy the type of violence in this film. If you are that individual, enjoy it my friend, if not then please don’t watch this movie, instead go rent Dances with Wolves or something.

The Cake Eaters Review

The Cake Eater is a wonderfully warm story filled with near perfect performances. One of my favorites this year.

My rating

The Cake Eaters is a really nice film that reminded me of a combination of Crash and Junebug. I was surprisingly entertained by it and even more amazed how emotionally involved I became with the characters. Like Junebug, there is no real plot here. The Cake Eaters is a story about two different families in upstate New York that are currently facing some emotional turmoil. The two families are not related, however, their lives come across together in a very unique way in the style of Crash.

Like Crash, there are several stories being told in this film. There is Beagle, the youngest son of Easy, the town’s butcher. And Easy’s older son, Guy who left the town three years ago in order to pursue his dream to become a rock star. Guy has just returned after hearing that his mother was dying of cancer. However, the mother had already died when he got the letters. All attempts to reach him had proved futile because Guy moved around a lot in his chosen profession. This made Beagle very angry at his brother because he never called, visited or contacted them at all during the whole time their mother was sick.

Beagle took care of his dying mother for three years, because Easy couldn’t stand to see his wife suffering and dying slowing. In truth, Easy was seeking conform from another woman. Easy is a good man, perhaps not the best husband. We don’t really know much about Easy, what we do know is that he did love both of the women in his life and he felt a great deal of guilt for being unfaithful to his wife. This might explain why he couldn’t face his wife while she was dying.

The film starts with Easy and Beagle setting up shop at a local flea market. They are trying to sell some of the items that belong to Easy’s wife: clothes, trinkets, whatever, things they didn’t really need. At the flea market we also meet Meg and Georgia. Meg is Easy’s “other woman” and the grandmother of Georgia, a young girl who has Friedreich’s Ataxia, a rare disease for which there is currently no cure.

Beagle is also a good man and because of the three years he spent taking care of his mother he learned a knack of caring for the sick without being judgmental or getting emotional about it. He wasn’t a robot, he just knew how to deal with the stress and knew how to comfort the sick. This is probably what attracted Georgia to him.

Georgia’s character, played beautifully by Kristen Stewarts, was a young, otherwise normal girl. She had come to terms with her condition, but wasn’t going to let it or anyone else stop her from doing the things she wanted to do. She knew that she didn’t have much time a live, she knew that eventually her condition would get the better of her, so she lived her life to the fullest as she could and made the best of it. She was a real strong girl one that you feel proud of not sad for.

The story is just fantastic. It is full of good human drama and is beautifully acted by everyone. There are a few hiccups here and there with the script and the editing, but other than that Mary Stuart Masterson did a superb job directing her first film.

Tokyo! Review

My rating

Tokyo! is a collaboration between three non Japanese directors: Michel Gondry, who directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Léos Carax, a French director; and Bong Joon-ho a Korean director known for The Host. Each director created one short story that had no real connection with each other. The only thing they did have in common was that each story took place in Tokyo, Japan.

This Japanese movie was filmed in 2008 and was shown in very limited release here in the States in 2009. The movie played in 18 theaters at its widest release. Of course, the movie did much better abroad that it did here in the States. That is too bad, because the movie was very interesting, although, I can see why the American audience did not like it.

Since this movie is broken into three separate short stories, I will break my review into three parts and review each one separately:

Interior Design

Ayako Fujitani and Ryo Kase

This is the first story in this film. It is a about a young couple, Hiroko and Akira, who are just starting out their lives. Akira is an amateur filmmaker. They decide to move to Tokyo in order to make it big. The story starts out with both Hiroko and Akira driving into the city. In my opinion this was a great introduction to this film, because it introduces the audience to the city, very well done.

Hiroko has a friend in the city. She was kind enough to let them stay at her place while they looked for place to live. However, Hiroko and Akira had very little money, so they could not afford any apartment in the city. Instead they were forced to stay with Hiroko’s friend, who eventually got tired of them living in her apartment.

The story is very moving and the acting is very well done. The ending is a little out of the ordinary. However it was very surprising and very, very cool. Let’s just say that I have never seen anything like it before.

Merde

Denis Lavant

The second story in the collection changes gears a little. One might even go as far as to compare it to a Twilight Zone episode. This one was about a sewer troll that somehow makes his way to Tokyo and starts to terrorize the people of the city. The troll is really just a regular looking guy, but he was creepy, very creepy. I really like how they did this. There was really nothing to him, nothing really special at all, but somehow they managed to make him grotesque and vile. It wasn’t so much the solid green outfit, or the odd beard, or the messy hair, or the bad teeth and nails, it was his mannerism and his demeanor that made him so different than anyone else.

The troll would come out of the sewers and spend like a minute or two on the outside to get food and terrorize people. The first time you see him, he’s kind of comical, but then it gets more serious and freakier. The troll steals things from people as he walks by them, pushes old people to the ground, makes kids cry.  The second time he came out of the sewers, he was more frightening, and he went on a killing rampage, using old WWII hand-grenades to randomly kill civilians.

Eventually the troll is caught. They realize that he speaks a strange language that no one has heard of before. Back in France, a lawyer learns about the troll on the news and decides to contact Tokyo claiming that even though he has never met the troll, he can communicate with him. He then becomes the creature’s lawyer. After all, the troll was on trial for his life, he was going to need all the help he could get.

The court room drama was very cool. The French lawyer who knew how to communicate with this troll spoke no Japanese, so when something was being communicated to the troll they would speak to the translator, who would then speak to the lawyer, who would then speak to the troll and back again. I found this extremely fascinating. I have never seen this done before, I imagine that people thought that it wouldn’t make for good drama, I disagree, I thought it worked well and it even added to the drama by making it more intense.

The story is definitely an odd ball, but it was very well done and acted. It was nice to see something different, but entertaining as well.

Shaking Tokyo

Teruyuki Kagawa

This was third and last short story.  This was a simple story, but powerful at the same time. It was my very favorite because it hit a little close to home at times. It was about a man who one day decided to stay home and not go out for the night. The next thing he knew he hadn’t left the house in 11 years. I have never done anything like that, but I can understand not wanting to go out sometimes.

As to how he shopped for food and essentials, he explains to the audience that everyone delivers in Tokyo, so there was never any reason to leave the house ever, not even for groceries.

The man hated looking people in the eyes—therefore he never looked at anyone. He hated touching people and hated when people touched him. So he stayed home and lived there by himself with a serious case of OCD. His house was decorated perfectly and symmetrically with pizza boxes and rolls of toilet paper flawlessly aligned. His life consisted of reading, eating, falling asleep on the toilet and mourning the death of his father. He was also miserable, but he was comfortable being miserable. Sometimes it’s just easier staying miserable than to change things. Change can be really scary to some people.

Then one day, by mistake, he looked up and made eye contact with the pizza delivery girl and he felt something he had never felt before. The feeling scared him, but it also moved him, but mostly he was confused by it. He didn’t know what to do or how to act. He had avoided people for so long and now there was a beautiful woman right in front of him who actually dug him and he had no clue what to do.

These are short stories with hardly any plot to them. What made them interesting is that they featured strong performances and distinctive topics. I enjoyed each of them very much, they were very entertaining. If you are looking for something out of the ordinary to watch, I recommend this movie.

Race to Witch Mountain Review

Race to Witch Mountain is a great movie for young kids, it’s too bad that they won’t get the real message.

My rating

Race to Witch Mountain is a “re-imagining” version of the 1975 film Escape to Witch Mountain. Both films are based on Alexander Key’s 1968 novel Escape to Witch Mountain. I have never seen the original movie, nor have I read the novel, so I will not be making any comparisons to these early works.

The film stars Dwayne Johnson (a.k.a. The Rock) as Jack Bruno. Jack is a driver who apparently had a bit of a shady past. He lives a quiet life, or at least tries to live one as a cab driver in Las Vegas, taking people from the casinos to the airport and back. He seems otherwise bored with his job until one day he picks up two little aliens—who have taken the form of young teens. It is at this point where his life goes from dull and routine, to way too much excitement for his taste.

The kids are part of a reconnaissance mission to collect information on an experiment they are doing on our planet. Evidently these aliens’ home planet has become unsuitable for sustaining life. They obviously didn’t do enough research on ours. However, no matter how bad our planet is, it is still a whole lot better than theirs. Thus, they are interested in colonizing it. What about humans? The plan is to move us out against our will and then fill out their change of address forms. This is the solution proposed by their military, however, there is another solution suggested by their scientists that would require doing some work. This solution would fix their atmosphere and allow for life to once again flourish on their home planet. I thought it was very clever how the writers closely tied in our current cultural dilemmas in this story.

It is because of this proposed solution by the scientists that the Earth gets involved. Instead of attacking and colonizing our planet they thought to conduct their atmospheric experiments on our planet, if they are successful they would be able to improve their atmosphere and there would be no need to invade earth. However, their planet’s military would rather just take over our planet than to fix theirs. Their military then takes action to stop their scientists from succeeding in their experiments by sending in siphon assassins (an engineered being designed for the sole purpose of killing, similar to a terminator) to kill the scientist and therefore preventing their findings from reaching their public. As a back-up plan, the two kids that are featured in the film are sent to Earth to retrieve the experiments’ findings and report back to their planet so that they can make it public. Once the data is made public on the alien’s planet the alien people would rather fix their home planet than attack another.

I really like the message of this story. I think it’s a great thing to bring these types of scenarios to the minds of young people, because these are the types of difficult decisions that our future leaders will have to face. I like how the similarities of their home planet mimic ours. I also like how their government thinks just like ours. It’s good for children to see that sometimes government does not make good decisions and that sometimes it is up to the people to take matters in their own hands.

With that said, I should point out the negatives, and there are plenty. I understand that this is a kid’s movie, however, the plot is a bit involved so I would venture to say that the target audience is young adults ages 10-16 since the idea would be lost on children any younger. However, I thought that the film was a bit soft for the young-adult audience. I don’t think that the level of drama that Disney chose to go with would interest kids of that age range very much. I felt that Disney could have gone a little more risqué with this film and not be inappropriate for that age group. Instead the action was more appropriate for kids younger than 10 and I think that might turn off the actual targeted audience. That didn’t sit well with me and I think that it would not work with their viewers either.

In all, this isn’t a bad film, there are a couple of clichés here and there, but they used them in good context and in good taste. It didn’t feel like your canned Disney movie so that is also a big plus. I just wish that Disney had taken a bit more of a risk with the action. I must say that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was fantastic in this role. He was funny and very likable. There is something about him that is very rough and rugged, but also innocent enough to feature in a Disney film. He looks as though he enjoys playing these roles and I enjoy seeing him in them. I think he is a great kid’s hero, kudos to Disney for casting him in this role.

I’m Off To Canada

I will be leaving in a few hours to go to Canada. I know I haven’t posted the reviews for Tokyo! and Race to Witch Mountain. I know that you are all dying to know what I thought of them. :) In short, I loved Tokyo! and I liked Race to Witch Mountain. However, I just haven’t had time to write the reviews since I’ve been curling my buns off and I have also been preparing to go to Canada for the weekend.

The good news is that I did manage to watch all my movies for the week. My planning went pretty well. I have sent all my movies back to Netflix and I should have two movies at my house waiting for me on Sunday when I get back.

Next week is also going to be busy for me. So I am really sorry, but it might be a few more days before I can write my review for Tokyo and Race to Witch Mountain, but I will write them, that you can count on. I am taking a little break on Sunday when I get back. I will be watching a documentary that wasn’t part of my 2009 list. The documentary is about women soldiers in Iraq called Lioness. I’ve been waiting for that documentary to be released for quite some time now. So I am sneaking it in and then I will continue with my 2009 movie watching without missing a beat. Thank you all who have been reading my reviews. I hope that I am inspiring you to watch movies that you wouldn’t normally watch, or at least weed out those you thought you wanted to watch. :)

Some other updates, I plan on watching some of the movies that are in contention for Academy Awards in 2010, while they are still in theaters. I hate going to movie theaters by myself, I always feel weird about that. I know that Liz has no interest in watching some of these, but if you are, I would love the company. Here’s a list of the movies I would like to see during the holiday season: Up in the Air, Invictus, Precious, The Lovely Bones, An Education, Nine, A Serious Man, Avatar, The Road, and It’s Complicated. If you are interested in seeing any of these movies and don’t mind me tagging along, let me know.

See you all soon, and thank you very much for your continuing support. It is very much appreciated.

Miss March Review

Miss March was not funny, entertaining or interesting. Possibly the worst movie of the year in my opinion. And to top it off it’s offensive at times.

My rating sucked!

I was not expecting much from Miss March, yet somehow it managed to disappoint me still. Miss March has to be THE WORST movie I have ever seen. I do not have a zero star rating, however, I after this movie, I wish I did. It was a ridiculous story and I wish I could have the memory surgically removed from my brain. Seriously, if the technology in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were real and available, I would pay good money to erase it from my mind.

I am not easily offended; I love crude humor. I have never been one to shy away from movies like Clerks II, American Pie, The 40 Year Old Virgin, and others like it. All of these movies base their plot on poking fun at sex. However, they do not humiliate or disgrace women by singling them out, they equally distribute the jokes at both men and women.  These movies are hysterical and well worth watching no matter what age group you’re in. If you have an appreciation for adult themed comedy, these movies never fail to entertain.

Miss March does something that none of these movies have ever done, and I am not talking about a new fresh idea. No, instead, I was actually offended by it. I was offended by the way women were portrayed. It was almost as if they were poking fun at women, not of the sex theme and that is just not funny. There is nothing funny about mocking women’s gender. That is beyond childish it is just appalling. This movie was plain garbage.

I am surprised that it made any money at all, but I guess there is always an audience for any rubbish that can be produced. However, I still can’t imagine a decent audience for this movie no matter how hard I try. I keep picturing a room full of social deviants, perverts, and social outcasts that have no idea how to relate to anyone let alone women. The people filling this room have no self respect let alone respect for others.

Who should watch this movie? That’s an interesting question. I don’t think anyone should watch this movie, ever! In fact this movie should have never been green lighted in the first place. However, if you have no respect for women what so ever, if you think that stabbing a woman in the face with a fork while she’s giving you a BJ is funny, if you find the lyrics “Suck my ****, while I’m up your ***” funny, then you might like this movie. If these things make you queasy, like they made me, do not waste your time.

There are a ton of great adult themed comedies out there. Miss March is not one of them. If you’re in the mood for one, check out The Hangover; I Love You, Man; even Fired Up!; or any of the movies I mentioned above. Any of those would be infinitely better than this sack of horseshit.

The Horsemen Review

The Horsemen could have been a really great film in the caliber of Se7en or Silence of the Lambs, in the end the movie was confusing and very badly cast.

My rating

Have you ever seen those commercials on TV, where 10-15 seconds into it you wonder, “What is it they’re selling?” You have no idea what the commercial is about. Then finally they get to the point and you feel a little disappointed. Maybe you thought it was the latest Church of Jesus Christ commercial, but it turns out to be about some stupid life insurance instead. The Horsemen is similar to those commercials, but instead it was a lot longer than 30 seconds and instead of leaving you disappointed, it leaves you wondering WTF just happened?

I wish I could tell you what The Horsemen was about, but I honestly cannot, because I do not know. I do not even think the director knew either. So how could I try to explain something they could not? The funny thing is that the story is not even that complex. They made it complicated on purpose for a cheesy effect. It did not work very well, at least not for me.

The Horsemen is about a series of torture murders that starts out with an old man in the middle of the woods. However, no one really knows if the old man was murdered or not, they never said. Instead, they find a set of freshly pulled teeth. Puzzled by this, detective Aidan Breslin played by Dennis Quaid, is brought in to investigate because of his background in dental forensics. From this point on, they find the other murdered victims, tortured and killed by a skilled assassin with obvious medical training. Eventually Breslin and the audience discover what is happening and finally solve the whole riddle. It really is not that difficult to figure out. The only reason you do not come to realize it sooner is because they deliberately hide the clues from you. However, the minute you see them on the screen you realize what is happening and what is about to happen. It makes you wonder, how smart this Breslin character was in the first place not to put this “puzzle” together sooner.

The movie reminded me of Se7en, just not as well done. Se7en was intense and always kept you in suspense, The Horsemen relied heavily on disturbing images, over the top torture, and hangings by several fishhooks through the skin. The hangings did give me the willies, this is about the only thing that this movie has going for it and it is about the only aspect of the film that was done well.

The Horsemen is not a bad story. My beef with the story is the actual movie. It tries hard to keep the audience in suspense, but it ends up confusing them instead. The reason is because it was so poorly edited, often losing the audience and leaving them wondering where they were in the story. My other big complaint was the acting and the cast. Other than Dennis Quaid and Clifton Collins Jr., the rest of the characters were poorly cast, it was just as poor if not worse than the editing.  For example, there is a young Asian girl that had been adopted at the age of 8, she is now in her mid to late teens and she has a very thick Asian accent. I’m guessing if you are adopted by an American family at that young of an age, you will lose most of your accent, but that didn’t happen here. The details just never fit together well enough to make a cohesive story. It just didn’t fit, and it wasn’t believable enough for me. I was unimpressed.

The Horsemen could have been a great movie and up until they found the first murderer it was intense, interesting and fresh. It only took 38 minutes to find that first killer, after that it was put on neutral and thrown down a steep hill. It became boring, predictable, unnecessarily over the top and unforgivably cheesy.

12 Review

The movie 12 features strong performances, excellent cinematography, a gripping script, and a great and talented cast. What an extraordinary movie!

My rating

The Russian movie 12 is an adaptation of the Twelve Angry Men teleplay and a remake of the American movie of the same title. I wish I could elaborate further on that, however I can’t, because I have not seen the play or the original movie. Given that, making a comparison of this movie to those will be moot. The best I can do, is do a little research and see how it was perceived by both the viewers and the critics on the Rotten Tomatoes website.

The consensus seems to agree that 12 was just as riveting as the original, but with a Russian feel. This makes me want to rent and see the original as soon as I can. If the original is as enthralling as this Russian version, I have no doubts I will love the American version of this movie.

The movie 12 was outstanding. The performances by these twelve men were unbelievable. Each juror was unique and interesting, and their stories were gripping and suspenseful. I thought I was going to like the movie, I did not think I was going to love it as much as I did.

The movie reminded me a lot of Doubt, which is fitting since they are both based on a plays. Both movies feature outstanding performances from the actors, exhilarating dialog, and agitated arguments. Both directors took normally boring scenes and made them stimulating in such a way that it keeps you at the edge of your seat. It takes real talent to do that, especially with a simple concept as twelve men sitting around a table deliberating a verdict.

The story itself is incredible. It must’ve been so brave to put forth the idea of a jury deciding the fate of a defendant. I have never served in a jury before, but I can’t imagine that it is anything enjoyable. This story could have easily been really boring with little or no content. Lucky for us the writers of this story saw it as an opportunity to take a dull subject and write a great play about it. If the movie 12 is anything like the play, the writers accomplished their goal admirably. The film 12 is one of the reasons why I love movies.

The brilliance of this movie is not so much the deliberation of the verdict. It is the creation and the advancement of the characters that made this film an astonishing story. It is amazing how committed and how intimate we get with these men as they all take their turn to put in their 2 cents about the case and about their own lives. The writers made these characters as real as they could be; some were angry, some were sad, some were compassionate others couldn’t give a crap. It was these twelve personal stories that drove the movie and the story, the verdict was just the icing on the very moist and delicious cake.

By far, 12 has been one of the best films I have seen in 2009. If this had been an American produced film, it could very easily have been a nominee for best picture. With elements like strong acting performances, beautiful cinematography, an incredible script, and a well put together cast this movie is well worth watching. I look forward to watching it again and again.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Review

Playing the Street Fighter game was fun and exciting. Watching this movie was the total opposite. This movie was an insult to the fans of the Street Fighter series, period!

My rating

I must warn you, I do have some spoilers in my review, but since you aren’t planning on seeing this movie, and no one should watch this movie ever, then it’s okay if I give away the stupid ending.

I sometimes wonder if there exists a “master template” for crappy movies that a writer can use when movie producers want to cash in on a popular story. However, in this case I am confused as to why they made this film in the first place. It seems to me that the popularity of Street Fighter has been long gone for about 15 years now. So why is this movie out now? I have not been able to make sense of that.

So what is this God-awful movie about? This movie is the story of one of the characters in the Capcom video game, circa 1991, called Street Fighter II. The game was extremely popular during its release and is considered one of the best video games ever. Street Fighter II was a real phenomenon in the early 90’s. It was especially well-liked among youngsters, and I include myself, because it featured special complicated moves that not only did you have to learn, but you had to master them as well in order to be any good. It featured two controllers so that you could face off against a friend or play against the computer. It gave the player a choice of 8 characters to play with, each with their own unique moves and skill sets. Because of its popularity there were many versions of the game released, one more popular than the next which included new characters and even allowed you the chance to play as the bosses (the bosses were those characters that you only played against when you were playing against the computer. Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison were the bosses in the original Street Fighter II game, named in the respective order you got to fight them. M. Bison was the main boss and one of the most difficult to defeat).

Street Fighter inspired other video game makers to release similar fighting games to cash in on its popularity. Games like Mortal Kombat, Virtual Fighter, Fatal Fury, Marvel Vs. Capcom, and dozens of other titles were developed. And I am not even going to mention the knockoffs. To say that Street Fighter was successful is a gross understatement.

However, that was more than 15 years ago. The Street Fighter series has never been as popular as it was back then. So why now and why this abhorrent so called movie? The best I can say about this movie is that it was really bad, really, really bad! It almost gave Friday the 13th a good run for the title of worse-movie-of-the-year. About the only redeeming quality of this movie were some of the fighting scenes were eye-catching, but only some. The cinematography was also somewhat interesting, but the acting was a joke, the script was one of the worse I’ve ever seen, and the story was a slap on the face for the fans of the Street Fighter series. Anyone who has played this game at least once, knows that M. Bison is the main boss in the video games. So why on earth would they kill him off at the end of this movie? The answer is beyond me. Yes, I just gave you the ending. Big whoop! Who could’ve seen that coming? I just saved you an hour and a half! There is no need to thank me!

As much as I loved the video game, I can’t recommend this movie to anyone, especially to fans of the series. While the video games were really fun to play, this movie was not fun to watch at all. True they kept Chun-Li’s story true to the video games, but the story in the video game is pretty lame if you think about it. Let’s face it. We do not play the Street Fighter video games for its story. We play them to destroy of our opponents, to shame them, and to make them beg for mercy. I am not sure these stories should be made into movies since they are two dimensional to say the least. If they chose to do so, they should probably spend some time into developing the characters a little better. If they are trying to revive the franchise they took the wrong approach. They didn’t have to make a great movie, but this wretched film isn’t going to do cut it.

My Thoughts On October

One month down 11 possible months to go. Granted I don’t have a time line for this project, it should take me about a year to complete. I am still having fun with this project. Although there have been times when doubt begins to creep in a bit, though I’ve been successful at telling myself to ignore it.

October was interesting. It was the start of curling for me and it was also the start of this project or at least the blog portion of the project. It was challenging to juggle both schedules, especially since curling demands so much of my time. However, that was part of my goal, to learn how to manage my time better. I think I did pretty well. I was successful at keeping my curling appointments, I was able to watch three movies sometimes four movies every week and I was able to keep from upsetting my wife for not doing the things that needed to be done.

I did slack in a few areas though. Because of late games and because of designing the new blog. I spent a lot of time away from home or on the computer which left me with little sleep. This had an effect on me getting up on time to hit the gym in the mornings. So I didn’t do so well there. I am going to try to do a little better when it comes to the gym next month. It’s going to be difficult because I have my trip to Canada in a few weeks. I have already planned out that month and I know I’m not going to be going to the gym that week. Instead I will be heading to work an hour early to make up the time I am going to miss on that Thursday.

Another goal I have to work on is walking our dog, Jake. I wasn’t as good as I would’ve liked about that. But other than that, I am very happy with October. I only hope November is just as good if not better.