Tag Archives: casual movie critic

Casual Movie Critic – Cell 211

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This is a Spanish movie (ie from Spain) that has been suggested as a winner for several movie categories and people are talking about it. I went to see it and was, again, among a small group of about 10 people in the Gran Plaza movie theater.

The movie itself has myriad online reviews ranging from ‘absolutely brilliant’ to ‘whatever’ and my opinion falls somewhere in the middle. Certainly it’s better than the other two movies reviewed earlier, but that is not much of a challenge, although some of the so-called twists in the plot were expected and predictable.

It was, however, enormous fun to hear the original Spanish dialogue – especially all the colorful swearing! – and often required some real concentration because they speak so fast! If you don’t speak Spanish that well, you will most assuredly get nothing from this movie; and there are no subtitles, English, Spanish or otherwise, to fall back on.

Watch the trailer here.

Casual Movie Critic – The Expendables (Including The Movie)

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Another film in theaters now here in sunny Merida.

When I was younger, I always thought it would be great to have all the action movie guys together in one movie. When I was younger.

Now that it has finally happened, the result is so bad as to be unwatchable. Unless you are one of those people who say ‘I paid to sit here and I am damn well going to stay here until the bitter end’, you will probably get up about 1/3 of the way through to just plain leave the theater.

I suspect that the fact that Sylvester Stallone directed, and I use the term loosely and generously, this rotten piece of celluloid, as well as receiving writing credit for it, is the reason it is so very very crappy. From the ridiculous gratuitous violence and the Rambo style shootouts where the good guys hit everyone and the bad guys can’t aim to the cartoonish and cliche South American dictator and his minions who speak Spanish with an American accent to the ‘beautiful’ latina heroine who single-handedly leads the oppressed villagers, to the ancient (how old ARE these actors now??) Stallone, Willis, Lundgren et al acting like they are in their 20’s, The Expendables is so stupidly bad on so many levels that it is difficult to process.

Unfortunately it is not funny bad, where you could at least laugh uproariously at the screen, but bad bad, where you just sit numbly until your brain explodes and you have to leave.

This movie is entirely expendable. Do not waste your money, time or neurons on this one. It is truly the worst movie I have been in the presence of in a long, long time.

Casual Movie Critic – Wall Street 2, Money Never Sleeps (But You Will)

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Once again, the Better Half is away and I have decided to see what’s going on at Meridas movie theaters.

Among the movies that are new in theaters in Merida this week is this Oliver Stone film that revisits Wall Street and Gordon Gecko played once again by Michael Douglas. As usual, regular movie critiques have already been written about this movie so I will spare you the details and give you my short opinion.

The film, IMHO, falls into the “nothing to write home about” category and to me just sort of plods along in a predictable way until the two hours or so are up. Nothing really surprising, the acting is fine but certainly not inspired and personally I found the financial shenanigans as cancer references slightly disturbing in light of Michael Douglas’ being diagnosed as having the disease. I suspect the film was completed before anyone knew he had it? Shia Lebeouf is more or less believable and the girlfriend character as well but I could not really sympathize with their situation at any point in the film. Not even the usually great Susan Sarandon had any spark in this movie. Oliver Stone himself is in there as a Wall Street dude and that Sheen guy from the last film pops in as well.

The fact that this is not a particularly exciting movie was reflected in the attendance at the giant Sala 6 of the the Gran Plaza movie theater, which contained an audience comprised of exactly 4 other people besides yours truly. I expect this movie will be taken out of Merida circulation within less than a week to be replaced with something a little more crowd pleasing.

Go see it if there is nothing better on and you are desperate for air conditioning on a hot afternoon. Otherwise, stick to a good telenovela on TV. Or better yet, have a nap.