Delayed Reaction: Robocop 2

The Pitch: I'm sure the first Robocop's success wasn't a Terminator motivated fluke. Let's make another.

What Took Me So Long: I only found the original mediocre which did not set high expectations for this.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) This could go one of three ways: 1) Terminator 2 - bigger and better than the original. 2) Gremlins 2 - no chance it could recapture the magic of the first, so they make it crazy as shit or 3) Hangover 2 - no one accepts that they can't reproduce the success with the same formula. I knew it wasn't going to be option 1. I hoped it would be option 2. I got option 3. This movie falls squarely in the category of barely good enough to not be remarkable.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: I only barely liked the original. This is not an improvement. Thus, I didn't like this. It's sci-fi camp without the fun.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Love, Wedding, Marriage

The Pitch: Mandy Moore is a marriage counselor who can't get her own marriage to work. Irony!!!

Fact: There are very few posters of this

What Took Me So Long: I tend to prefer Mandy Moore playing against type, such as in Saved! or The Princess Diaries. Nice Mandy has yet to wow me.

Why I Saw It: I still like Mandy Moore. Most of the rest of the cast like Kellan Lutz, James Brolin, and Jane Seymour play to the level of the material and I guess that's all I can ask for. Jessica Szohr, while not transcendent, did stick out as being more effective in her role. There are a number of good cameos such as Alyson Hannigan and Alexis Denisof, which I enjoyed too.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: This is the Dermont Mulroney of romantic comedies. Agreeable enough. Not exceptionally remarkable. Easy to confuse with several other similar movie. And, never my first pick. That's appropriate, considering it is Mulroney's directorial debut.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Movie Reaction: Half Baked

The Pitch: Pot humor: The Movie

What Took Me So Long: I'm not as high on Dave Chappelle as the rest of the world.

Why I Saw It: It's entertaining. There's a few good laughs. A lot of stoner humor. I'm not sure how much of it I missed because of my limited experience with pot. I love finally having context for the Bob Saget cameo, although I can't account for the shock factor when that came out. He's sort of come out as being filthy now. In '98 he was still freshly Danny Tanner.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: This is very much a time and a place movie. You attach it to when you watched it and laughed with friends and make references to them because of that one time you all watched it at so-and-so's and that was the night when so-and-so broke the chair. Or whatever. For me it was watching a 15-year old movie by myself and thought it was ok. The comedy was a little broad and not especially well crafted. The characters are memorable. I liked it but wasn't impressed.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Crocodile Dundee

The Pitch: Hey, I just took a vacation to the outback. What would it be like if one of those aborigines came to America? ...You're right, let's just get a white guy, but he has to be Australian.

What Took Me So Long: I've seen this movie before even if I haven't actually seen this one before.

Why I Saw It: It's a fifth-tier pop-culture classic that I needed to get to eventually. It is definitely one of the stronger and most obvious "fish out of water" movies out there with some solid laughs. Even now, "no, this is a knife." gets me despite being one of the most recognizable lines of the 80s.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: Before this, was the U.S.'s only exposure to Australia before this AC/DC and the video for "Man Down Under"? 25 years later, it's hard to see what caused this movie to be such a phenomenon. It's good humored enough, I suppose. It's a unique (for it's time) romantic comedy. So there's that. This is all to say that it isn't some top-tier timeless movie. It is thoroughly as good as I expected it would be.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

DVR Purge: 12/18-1/5

2.5 weeks. Has it been that long already? I'd say I was enjoying the relative solitude of this break but that would be a lie. I've been tearing through my DVD seasons, hacking away at my massive Netflix queue, and still not managing to find a chance to read a book (I'm such a philistine). I'm so happy to have my shows back and best of all, Community has returned! I'm fully ready to pretend season 4 never happened. Ok? Let's just do that.

Past Purges

Saturday Night Live "Jimmy Fallon/Justin Timberlake"
I respect you too much to lie to you. I'm going off two week old notes that I forgot about right now. "Let's Do It on My Twin Bed" is probably my favorite digital short of 2013. The "It's Cold Outside" sketch was clever and surprisingly sweet. To my surprise, Justin Timeberlake did not steal Fallon's thunder (Final sketch count: J.T. 3, Fallon 6). The episode was much less SNL alum heavy than I remember last year's being. Oh, and did they think I wouldn't notice that they did two weeks of Christmas episodes this year? I approve.

The Big Bang Theory "The Hesitation Ramification"
I was literally chanting "don't undercut this with a joke" when Sheldon was talking to Leonard at the end. Of course, that was pointless. It would require so little for this show to be one of the absolute best (not most popular) comedies on TV and they continually move away from it. It's so frustrating.
-Is anyone else stunned that they didn't do a "I'll have what she's having" joke when Bernadette faked her laughing?
-I was just talking with someone about how they haven't addressed Penny's acting in a while. I'm glad the writers remembered about her.

Community "Repilot"
This kind of reminded me of the show Reboot, when it did the jump forward in time. It feels like everyone was away for longer than the summer, and I get the sense that they weren't still hanging out, which is a little sad. I loved all the callbacks to the pilot. A lot of the awkwardness I'm forgiving since it was all about Dan Harmon "fixing" what season 4 messed up. The biggest case of that was how in one line of dialogue all the Changnesia was undone. Thank god! I'm so happy to be back at Greendale.

Community "Introduction to Teaching"
Danny Pudi is on fire! That's the first thing I must address. I'm not sure that story really had a resolution but that is forgiving because Pudi was, just, wow. Elsewhere, Jonathan Banks is going to be a fun Chevy Chase replacement. Jeff as a teacher is an interesting dynamic shift and gives more reason to have Chang around (there's now sort of a teachers group which could be fun, especially if John Oliver comes back). And, I can't go without mentioning that Annie was awesome in this episode. They've basically abandoned ages for, well, everyone so she can be in Jeff's class and boss him around without much effort.

The Crazy Ones "The Face of a Winner"
I have to say, Hamish Linklater sold the hell out of the speech about his mom being a chocoholic. Had it not immediately followed Abed's Nic Cage breakdown, it might've been the delivery of the night (as is, it isn't even close). It's fitting that Sydney would become obsessed with video games. I kept thinking back to Penny becoming obsessed with WoW on Big Bang. This episode lacked the conclusion Big Bang had though.
-One thing that really impressed me was that the show didn't go into some hyper-effeminate angle with Zach and Andrew working the lotion account. It was all about their competitiveness. A lesser show would've gone in the direction of basically turning them into women. At least, that's where I feared it would go when the episode started.
-Favorite line: "I'm stronger than a man. I'll never need to get married." -7(?) year old Sydney

The Michael J Fox Show "Party"
-Super-Period. I'm scared to know more. Some good riffing by Juliette Goglia.
-Can we please retire the joke about Ikea funiture being difficult to assemble? It's getting old.
-The episode as a whole may not have worked for me, but I found the ending to be very sweet, from Eve and Annie realizing that part of their conversation was real to Mike reminding Annie that he loves her.

Parenthood "Promises"
A really strong return. I loved all the stuff with Hank and Max. I'm glad we are past the whole "It's weird for a grown man to be hanging out with a kid" phase because those two are a lot of fun together. I'm worried about the direction things are going with Joel and Julia. At least both of them are sucking when it comes to handling this rather than making one party clearly to blame. Old man friendships are the best, so I liked all the scenes with Zeek and his new friend. Drew has an unfair number of hot girls in his life. I hate being jealous of a fictional character.

Best MPAA Ratings of 2013

For all the time I spend on IMDB, I come across a lot of MPAA ratings, some of which are quite funny, or oddly descriptive, or distinctly abstract, or using a word I find funny, or anything in between.
Here are my favorite one's from 2013 now that is has finally come and gone.

Note: BoxOfficeMojo lists 676 movies in 2013. I'm not checking all of them. I'm sure I missed some. Feel free to let me know (because I know this is inspiring so many of you to start hunting for them^).

Past Years:
Best of 2012
Best of 2011
Best of 2010
Best of 2009
Best of 2008
Best of 2007
Best of 2006
Best of 2005
Best of 2004
Best of 2003
Best of 2002
Best of 2001

Movie Reaction: Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

Formula: Paranormal Activity * Latinos

Why I Saw It: I've always loved the Paranormal Activity formula.

Cast: As with all of these movies, there aren't many actors I've seen before. I was happy to see Carlos Pratts is a small role after seeing him on The Bridge. In terms of the lead cast though, Andrew Jacobs, Jorge Diaz, and Gabrielle Walsh all do a convincing job as people who don't know what is going on. I almost need to see them in something else to know how much of their work is performance.

Plot: Any [horror] franchise on its fifth installment is going to be formulaic. As more of a spin-off than a sequel though, The Marked Ones has a lot of differences. Of course, the setting is much different and that was a refreshing change. This is the first movie to directly follow what happens to the males in these families promised to this witches' coven. We get more answers than in PA4 which was nice. And, they do a good job tying this into the rest of the series. If any change didn't work for me, it would have to be that it isn't as clever. The previous movies do a lot of work to show why all these crazy things are being caught on camera. The Marked Ones doesn't try as hard: A kid has a camera and uses it a lot. That's it. Part of the fun of these movies is seeing the same shot over and over again, waiting for when something eventually changes and shit hits the fan. The audience is deprived of that in this.

Elephant in the Room: What about the Latino flavor? Truth be told, I was not at all excited when I heard there was going to be a spin-off aimed at Latino audiences. I have nothing against Latinos. I thought it was a lazy way to change the mythology of the movie that would undo what 4 movies have done. I was wrong to worry. They managed to expand the series without changing what was already there. It doesn't feel any different than the rest of the movies and it has the added bonus of me not asking "how fucking rich are these people?" the whole time.

To Sum Things Up:
Fans of the series will continue to be entertained by this. I think the change in setting could attract new fans too. That makes it a very wise choice from a franchise perspective. Anyone complaining that the movies don't give enough answers probably won't be changed. Oh, how have I not answered this question yet? It is scary. The law of diminishing returns means nothing will be as shocking as the first time around. There's still a couple good "holy shit" moments and the tone keeps you on edge for most of the duration.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Spy Kids 3-D

The Pitch: Spy Kids...it's the third movie. What's an easy gimmick? Oh, 3-D.

I feel like this is the most appropriate poster for this

What Took Me So Long: Well, I still haven't seen the first which is supposedly the only one that's worth a damn, but I went ahead and saw the second already, so I ran out of excuses to not see this one when I saw it on.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) Um, I've got nothing.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: This movies looks awful. This is the laziest 3-D I've ever seen and the video game world is shot about as well as Nick Arcade. For a franchise with the proven earning power of Spy Kids I am befuddled by how few fucks anyone gave with the production design. I barely even noticed atrocious acting and even worse story. This is a god-awful movie, even for a kid's movie. I have nothing but bad things to say about it. On a semi-related note. I just saw Machete Kills and experienced that momentary discomfort of seeing a child actor all grown up (in this case Alexa Vega) and being attracted despite still thinking of them as a child in your head...god that was confusing. How about this: it's like the reverse of seeing Drew Barrymore in E.T. and thinking "she's hot" meaning, her as she is now. Whatever. Machete Kills is better than Spy Kids 3 on every level and that's saying something.

Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend

January Preview

Another new year and you know what that means: nothing, as far as movie selection. There's generously only one lock this month and it's a movie that wouldn't've sniffed 'lock' status in December. Mostly, I'm waiting to a bunch of movies I've already covered in previous months to expand. Otherwise, it's going to be a rough couple weeks.

2013

March |  April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

1/3

The Lock: None
Get used to seeing that.

Other Options:

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones - I enjoy the Paranormal Activity series a lot. It'll be nice to see one that isn't about rich white people. I do worry that targeting the Latino audiences with this pseudo-spinoff movie could result in pandering rather than genuine scares. Hopefully those worries prove to be unfounded though.
Odds I'll See It: 56%

Open Grave [Limited] - It sounds sort of like Memento meets Oldboy. I've heard nothing about it anywhere, so...it has the guy from District 9 and...that's about it.
Odds I'll See It: 6%

The Best Offer [Limited] - I guess this is some sort thriller with Geoffrey Rush. I can't say I know much about it but the January limited release is a bad sign.
Odds I'll See It: 5%

Interior. Leather Bar. [Limited] - Frankly, there's no way this expands to where I am so it's not even worth considering. There's some buzz surrounding this one and it screams "art house". James Franco's name being attached to this is probably not enough to get me into a theater if I get a chance.
Odds I'll See It: 3%

Beyond Outrage [Limited] - Hmm, limited release of a foreign movie I've never heard of. Probably not happening.
Odds I'll See It: 1%

1/10

The Lock: None:
Her has to expand enough by this week.

Other Options:

The Legend of Hercules - I don't see any difference between this and the Conan movie from a couple years ago. With Kellan Lutz as the only cast member I even recognize, it will not be hard to pass on this movie.
Odds I'll See It: 13%

One Chance - It's a movie about the story of a Britain's Got Talent winner. If you need me to explain why this is not on my "to see" list, then you really don't get me.
Odds I'll See It: 2%

1/17

 

 The "Lock": Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
The only reason this is a lock is because an entire month without a single movie that I want to see is just depressing. If not for The Wolf of Wall Street, this was going to be a Christmas  release. I'm choosing to believe this means we are getting a blockbuster type movie in the thick of January, not a box-office blunder that is being burned off in the middle of prestige movie season. I am still waiting for a non-Kirk role to like Christopher Pine in.
Odds I'll See It: 70%

Other Options:

Ride Along - Kevin Hart has wore me to the point that I think I like him now. I'm done with Ice Cube's tough guy shtick though. If this didn't look so much like The Black Heat, I'd give it more consideration.
Odds I'll See It: 40%

Devil's Due - This is Rosemary's Baby. They can dress it up all they want. It is Rosemary's Baby and I don't see this one working.
Odds I'll See It: 4%

The Nut Job - A kids movie about squirrels. Pass.
Odds I'll See It: 2%

1/24

The Lock: None.

Other Options:

I, Frankenstein - Oh, good god! I hope something else has expanded so this isn't my only option. It looks awful, and that's coming from someone who desperately wants to love something else that Aaron Eckhart (Thank You for Smoking) and Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck) are in.
Odds I'll See It: 9%

1/31

The Lock: None

Other Options:

That Awkward Moment - I couldn't be any higher on Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) and Miles Teller (The Spectacular Now) than I am right now and I'm not giving up on Zach Efron yet with Neighbors coming this year looking pretty good. The main factor giving me pause right night is that this sounds like a trite romantic comedy about man-children that constantly fuck up. When not in the hands of Apatow productions, I'm seldom pleased with the results.
Odds I'll See It: 43%

Labor Day - It has a star that I like in Kate Winslet, a director who I like in Jason Reitman, and a release date with not a lot of competition. Still, it looks like a well-made Lifetime movie and I don't know if I'll be in the mood for that.
Odds I'll See It: 22%

Delayed Reaction: Out of Africa

The Pitch: Umm, I'm not sure, but I'm sure the words "prestige picture" and "Oscar" were used.

What Took Me So Long: It looked like it belonged in the "long and boring" category of Oscar winners along with such gems as The English Patient and The Last Emperor.

Why I Saw It: It did win best picture. Despite myself, I do like working through that list. The acting is good in this, especially from Meryl "I could've gotten nominated for Stuck on You if I tried" Streep and Robert "I'm gonna remake Life of Pie but without the Tiger" Redford. The story is sufficiently complex to justify the length.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: The story is certainly not sufficiently interesting to justify the length though. It's almost comical in hindsight how movies like this win Oscars. There's an Oscar formula for sure and this seemed to be made from the cookbook.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend