Thor

Thor (2011)

Ho boy. I've never read the Thor comics, but I am really big into Norse mythology so I kinda set myself up for disappointment here, but what the hell, I'll try to do an unbiased review of this piece of shit.

Okay, so there's this dude, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) who's dad, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), is the head honcho of all the gods. Thor pisses Odin off by fucking around with the giants and breaking the truce Odin had with their king - or whatever - and thus is banished to Earth where he gets picked up by some kind of lady scientist (Natalie Portman). Meanwhile, Thor's brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) takes over the home kingdom and acts like a dick for an hour.

There's really not very many good things I can say about this movie so I'll just start listing off the stuff I wrote down in my notebook while I was watching it.

My first impression was that the effects were kind of weak. Like, unusually weak for a movie that relies pretty heavily on them. I just rewatched Fellowship of the Ring not too long ago and thought that had better FX than this movie despite being ten years older. Also, all the scenes set in Asgard looked like they were storyboarded within an inch but the art direction was kind of vague and I didn't have a real sense of what I was looking at, which is maddeningly contradictive. How is that possible?

The fight scenes were frenetic and hard to follow and ultimately not that interesting. I didn't give too much of a fuck as to what was going on, but the sloppy direction just pissed me off. Surely to god they've figured out how to shoot a fucking fight scene by now. Holy hell.

The characters weren't particularly interesting - I'm supposed to believe that a) Natalie Portman is the world's hottest wormholeologist and b) she totally loses her shit as soon as a big chested retard takes his shirt off in front of her. And on that note (characters, not retards), I never quite got what the fuck Loki's motivations were. At all. Okay, I get that he's the god of bullshit, but if I followed what was going on, which I think he did, his whole nefarious plot was just to get attention from his father, making him the god of daddy issues. He had a pretty cool hat, I'll grant him that.

represent

All in all I thought the movie was pretty fuckin dull. The writing was meh, and the movie kind of crept along waiting for something cool to happen. It sort of picked up when they hit Midgard and then they did the whole "hey this guy's from another planet/dimension/time/culture, he doesn't know what doors are or whatevs" which was amusing but I've seen it done better. Parts of it sort of reminded me of that movie, Masters of the Universe, with all those retarded people...

Anyway, a killer robot shows up towards the end, granting brief excitement, and then some stuff happens in Asgard for some reason. Ultimately, the whole thing was sort of offensive to my religious beliefs but I said I was going to let that go.

The final blow, as it were, came when I awaited the credits - I assumed the movie had been made by some up and coming director who wasn't quite used to making big ass movies and stuff, which would excuse the sloppy direction here and there. Nope. Kenneth fucking Branagh. Now, I've never actually seen a Kenneth Branagh directed movie I enjoyed but I would think he would at least know how to make a fuckin movie. For fuck sake.

To summarize, this movie was an almost total waste of time, unless you're a big fan of the comics or something in which case maybe you'd like it or something. Otherwise, you should spend an hour and check out the comic Gods Almighty which heavily features Norse mythology, is reeeeeeeally funny and a much better way to spend your evening.

END

Directed by: Kenneth Branagh.  Written by: Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz and Don Payne based on the comics by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby.  Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgard, Kat Dennings.

Troll Hunter

Trolljegeren (2010)

Blair Witch style first person horror/fantasy flick about a group of students who are doing a documentary on dead bears or something, and decide to start following this dude (Otto Jesperen) only to learn that he is, in fact, a Troll Hunter. He hunts fucking trolls. Like, bonafide, under the bridge trolls.

There's not really much else to the movie - the camera crew follows him around while he travels here there and everywhere doing his job. The movie almost plays like a tourism ad for Norway with a few exploding trolls thrown in.. There wasn't a whole lot of character development, with the exception of the titular character. I didn't really feel that any of the film sudents were given a lot of depth - I didn't even really get why they were following him in the first place. He told them to fuck off so off they should have fucked.

That's generally the problem I find with these first person horror flicks which have been cropping up a lot lately. It's really hard to do proper character development and have it feel natural. You can't film all the time, and if you go that approach it seems really forced.

Also the run time is a little too long - most of the movie consists of the Troll Hunter and camera crew driving here and there and back again, which actually works for the majority of the movie but really started to get thin in the last fifteen or twenty minutes.

Other than that I thought this movie was fucking brilliant. The dialogue was clever but not smarmy, and the amount of consideration that was put in to making the trolls completely believable was kind of astounding, from descriptions of different types of trolls, to how trolls are to be killed. There's a troll veterinarian, and a government agency which covers up the fact that there are trolls. The effects were great but it was the troll hunter himself who made the trolls believable. It made sense that there would be trolls. Why the fuck not?

That actor, Otto Jesperen, I have no idea who he  is, some Norwegian guy presumably, but he was really good. The movie could have been unbelievably stupid if somebody not so good had been in the main role but he totally made me believe. Plus the character was probably the most badass of badasses.

Anyway, like I said, the effects were really quite impressive, the movie is well shot and the scenery is fucking gorgeous. It made me want to move to Norway, if it weren't for the damn trolls.

Long story short, I highly recommend this movie if you can get your hands on it, even if you're not into foreign language stuff, you won't regret it. Just the one scene of the Troll Hunter running up to the camera and yelling "TROOOOOOOLLLL!!!" is totally worth it. Check it out.

END

Directed by: André Øvredal.  Written by: André Øvredal and Håvard S. Johansen.  Starring: Otto Jesperen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Mørck, Tomas Alk Larsen, Urmila Berg-Domaas, Hans Morten Hansen.

One Million Years B.C.

One Million Years B.C. (1966)

You know, that movie about cave people that isn't Quest For Fire. I remember watching this as a very small child and thinking it was one of the greatest things ever, so my brother and I gave it a whirl the other day. Please forgive the spelling mistakes which will probably occur, one of my fingers is kinda fucked up for some reason, probably had it in my nose too long or something.

Movie tells the story of a cave dwelling gentleman (John Richardson) and his long series of misfortunes. He's the son of the leader of his tribe, and somehow gets exiled by his dick brother. He wanders long and far and eventually comes across a group of blonde beach dwelling people - totally - and hooks up with one of their women (Raquel Welch). But, because he's kind of a dick, he gets exiled from there and winds up back amongst his own people.

This movie is kind of... how should I put it? Retarded. I wasn't entirely sure what the fuckin point of it was except to show off some okay costumes and bitchin special FX. Other than that it was just some vaguely Biblical horseshit with less morality and more glaring historical inaccuracy. I'm not really sure what the filmmakers wanted me to gain from it.

That being said, it was at least fun to make fun of, as opposed to, say 10'000 BC, the most soul crushingly depressing film ever made about prehistoric persons. Also, the scenery was sort of nice, the music was bizarre but interesting and Raquel Welch was ridiculously fuckable as the iconic CaveBabe. I'd put a picture but y'all probably already have it on your wall.

And fuckit, there's a T-Rex (or something) fighting a Triceratops. That shit be bomb. Granted, with the popularity of this movie, that probably made a whole generation of people think that dinosaurs and humans actually existed at the same time, but fuck them if they can't take a joke. There were never god damn gigantic sea turtles either but that was still fucking awesome.

Honestly, I should probably start wrapping this up before I go off on a tangent about special effects. Just to get a little bit in there, the effects in this movie were pretty good - the stop motion dinosaurs courtesy of Ray Harryhausen were amazing but the giant iguana and aforementioned sea turtle attacks left something to be desired. Still, not bad all considered.

All in all, this movie defies any kind of real criticism as it's just too whack to really think about without feeling like a stoner of some variety. It's more exciting than a lot of fantasy movies and has more laughs than most comedies so what the hell, go for it.

END

Directed by: Don Chaffey.  Written by: Michael Carreras based on the film One Million B.C. written by Michell Novak, George Baker and Joseph Frickert. Starring: John Richardson, Raquel Welch, Percy Hebert, Jean Wladon.

god damnit

So I keep all of my notes for upcoming reviews in this little blue book, because I can't remember shit for longer than about ten minutes. Anyway, said book has escaped me, hence the dearth of update this past week. If there's anybody out there what reads this regularly - reviews will return as soon as I find my fucking notes.