The MacGuffin

I knew this movie was a depressing chick flick, but I was still game to see it. Here’s why – I’m a sucker for Jake Gyllenhaal (and his wack job sister Maggie), and my grandmother has Parkinson’s (which is what the movie is about). (Plus it was my lady’s birthday, so I does what I’m told…) It’s a decent film, with a pretty standard love story plot.

Ninja Death – I love old traditional kung fu films. It reminds me of my youth when I watched hours and hours of Kung Fu Theater. And since I was a hormonally-riddled teen when this was airing, I secretly hoped to see a scantily clad lady or thought I might hear a swear word more harsh than “bastard”. Where has this movie been my whole life??? It has BOTH!!! And then an entire non-PC scene with derogatory homosexual comments – yes, inappropriate, but hilarious during the 1970s.

Roller Blade Seven is a really awful post-apocalyptic movie by this terrible director who puts roller skates, roller blades, and skateboards in a bunch of movies that are all stupid. I’m a bit confused about the plot of this movie. It’s kind of like Mad Max in that it takes place in a dessert. Which is doubly funny since it appears relatively easy to sneak up on people, despite the sever lack of any sort of obstacle or tree to hide behind and sneak up on someone. To add to this, there are miles and miles of concrete throughout the desert which makes it much easier to skate around.

Nun of That is a pretty awful shoot ‘em up movie involving a vigilante group of nuns actually working for the Vatican and fighting crime – they’re called the Order of the Black Habit. All of the nuns are named after the seven deadly sins. That’s about as interesting as the film gets.

For those of you not well-versed in traditional kung-fu movies, vampires are white-faced and hop around with their arms out. This movie explains that a monk walking in front of the vampires rings a bell to intentionally make them hop and keep their arms out. This is done so they keep a safe distance from the zombie in front of them and by hopping, they keep out of trouble. I didn’t say it made sense, I just said it got explained.

This movie starts out in the “olden times” (literally, the screen says this) with a topless pilgrim running through the woods with a carnivorous turkey chasing her. Turkey comments on her “attributes” and then kills her. The turkey was cursed/possessed when a Native American was angry that the white man had begun to take over, so he vowed to kill at the white people he found – through the use of a killer turkey.

Before you mock (especially since I just reviewed Machete), I will defend myself by saying my girlfriend and I took her little sister to see Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. And frankly, I rather enjoyed it, so suck it. Now picture this amalgamation, if you will: combine The Secret of Nimh, but with owls instead of rats, and then throw in 300 (the Spartan movie without shirts in it). Legend of the Guardians is the 300 of owl movies.

After the infuriating disappointment of The Expendables, I tried to scale back my anticipation of Machete. I saw the previews for both about the same time and thought these were going to be the two best films of 2010. The Expendables let me down in a serious way, but Machete did NOT. Thank you, Danny Trejo.

When I first saw the trailer for The Expendables, I thought to myself, this film is going to be amazing and it also should have an American flag in every corner of the screen. There are tons of action heroes from the 1990s and 2000’s and they all have guns and are blowing everything in sight into small bits. What’s not to like about this film? Or so I thought.

This Russian movie was recommended to me by a friend who likes his plots simple and direct and moving. This movie has all of these things and, despite not being all that uplifting, has even MORE than just these things. It’s about two brothers who arrive home to find their father has returned from a 12-year abandonment. They go on a fishing trip and things don’t turn out like the boys expected.