The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

In the third installment of the Twilight Saga, Bella is ready to graduate high school and marry Edward. This is complicated by the pending battle between the Cullen clan and some new born vampires. With the battle approaching Bella's other love interest Jacob professes his love for her with a kiss. Bella punches Jacob in the face and breaks her hand because he is a rock hard werewolf. Everything else is so predictable no more detail needs to be given. Jacob is constantly telling Bella, "I'm gunna fight for you until your heart stops beating." While watching Eclipse I wished my heart would stop beating.

There are a few scenes where the green screen is not properly edited out and this further takes away from the already horrible film. The special effects are right out of 1982 and the sound effects are just awful for when the vampires run. The highlight of the film is when Dakota Fanning orders the killing of a 13 year old vampire to prove she truly is evil. She first uses some jedi mind grab on her, then has one of her henchmen finish the girl off. With the massive amount of money these films will gross they should develop the flash things from Men In Black so that every boyfriend that was dragged to this film can erase it from their memory.

Rule of thumb: Any vampire movie that takes place 90% during the day is doomed from the beginning.


Zero stars

College

There are a few cinematic adventures that come to mind when one thinks of the typical college-frat party movie, chief among them Animal House, Van Wilder, Old School, and the seminal classic: Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj. But in 2008 there was released a movie so epic, so mind-boggling awesome, with so much male/female nudity that the Catholic Church collapsed on itself, that I feel compelled to blog about this great cinematic achievement.

College is the heart warming tale of three high school bros trying to get drunk, high, and laid. The lead is Kevin, played by the Oscar winner Drake Bell, as a high school senior who has recently been dumped by his girlfriend for being too boring. And he is, in fact I had to drink a 6 pack of Smirnoff Ice just to get through the first few minutes of his performance. But in a chance to alleviate his status as a boring douche, he and his two hilariously mismatched friends go to freshman orientation weekend at Fieldmont University. Best friends Carter (The fat kid- Jonah Hill wannabe) and Morris (the skinny dork- McLovin ripoff) jump in a station wagon and head off to college with apparently no game plan and just the notion that they’re going to get laid. Just like Superbad, the fat kid and the skinny kid fill their roles as “fat douche bag who wants pussy but can’t because he’s too fat” and “loser with glasses who surprisingly hooks up with a hot chick”, while Kevin eye-fucks a blonde sorority chick and knows that he’s in. Prowling around campus aimlessly, the three musketeers come across the coolest frat on campus and some brahs who attempt to recruit the “frosh” so that they will clean their frat house.

Once in the frat house we meet the most diverse group of privileged young drunk white men to ever attend college. Frat president Teague (coolest name over) and social chairman Bearcat (Actually a cool name) set the boys on a wild ride of parties, blow jobs, body shots off of Bearcat, and huffing paint thinner. Somewhere along the way there’s a plot, but I was distracted by the full frontal nudity and since I had to keep drinking to make the Teague's performance bearable I don’t remember exactly how it ended. Needless to say I’m sure the three boys made a hilarious plan to get back at the mean frat bros and in the end pick up the hot chicks by proving that they’re sentimental and care about their feelings.

Yes I wasted 67 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back, but College, like all great frat pack movies reminded me of something… that college is a time of debauchery, partying and uninhibited sexual encounters. And I miss college.

Stars: .75/5

Stay tuned for my upcoming reviews of the Oscar winners “The Core” and “The Notebook”.

Knight and Day

Recently I went to see Knight and Day, a new action-comedy starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. Typically I like movies which are over-the-top ridiculous. I think I laughed more during X-Men 3 than I have watching most comedies. As a side note, if you've never seen Kelsey Grammar play Beast, it's well worth watching. But Knight and Day was a little too much even for me. The main problem was that the movie never committed to taking itself seriously or to parodying itself, instead it occupied some murky middle ground of "wink-wink, but actually we think this is a pretty good movie." Well, it's not. I might not be the most qualified person to say this, since I fell asleep in the middle, which I'm told, led me to miss Tom Cruise singled-handedly escaping a torture chamber, and leading Cameron Diaz via parachute to his private island in the Azores. I would of been more mad if those scenes were among the most ridiculous parts of the movie, but I honestly don't think they'd rank in the top ten. Earning that honor might be an unexperienced Cameron Diaz somehow driving a car from the backseat, through a crowded Boston tunnel, down the wrong side of the high way flawlessly. Or maybe it's Tom Cruise magically disappearing from a SWAT-team surrounded room. Not fighting his way out, not hiding and slipping out after the police left, but actually going from the surrounded room to running on the roof with no explanation. Or maybe most ridiculously, Cameron Diaz putting herself in the possession of weapon traffickers because "she wants to try to find Tom Cruise."

Look, I know movies like Knight and Day aren't supposed to be analyzed for plot holes. And if the movie was done well, I probably would have been laughing at these moments, instead of feeling like I had been cheated. But I did feel like I had been cheated, which is the whole point. The movie took itself just seriously enough to not be intentionally funny, but not seriously enough to be unintentionally funny. I call it National Treasure 2 syndrome. So to sum up: don't see this movie in theaters, don't pay money rent it, but do hope to see the airplane scene where Tom Cruise takes out the plane full of goons and then makes out with Cameron Diaz before landing the plane in a cornfield, on cable for free. That's really the only scene not worth negative money.

1.5/5 stars

Our Site

This site will be dedicated to reviews of whatever movies I or my friend Ben have seen recently. I have recently given up cable TV, so my entire movie routine now comes from clicking randomly through Netflix's Watch Instantly. Netflix has recently been recommending movies because past recommendations suggest I enjoy "Movies with "Witty Romantic Banter" or "Strong Female Leads," which has been a great boost to my masculinity.

Ben's favorite movie is "Hot Rod" starring Andy Samberg. He also enjoys other classics like Fran Drescher's breakout performance, "Beautician and the Beast" and John Cusack's marquee turn "2012." If you've seen and enjoyed even one of those three movies, than you'll probably like Ben's reviews.

We hope you enjoy our incredibly biased and completly unsystematic reviews of movies. Please feel free to hate on our reviews (but especially Ben's.)