The Lincoln Lawyer Movie Review

The Setup - Attorney Mick Haller (Matthew McConaughey) is a slick talking West Coast lawyer that practices from the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car. He gets saddled with a high dollar, high profile assault case that is more than what it seems.


The Good - The film is very entertaining. It offers a lot interesting turns and some good performances. The Lincoln Lawyer offers one of the best performances from Matthew McConaughey I've seen in a long time. And that's saying a lot. McConaughey is like John Wayne - he plays the same part in EVERY SINGLE MOVIE. William H. Macy has a great turn as gay Chicago cop turned investigator and Marissa Tomei adds a certain depth and charisma as Haller's ex-wife, who happens to be a prosecuting attorney.

The Bad - I have two problems with the movie. The first is the camera work. I don't understand the fascination with all of this moving camera bullshit. There are two scenes in particular where the camera circles endlessly around a character. You shouldn't have to pay $10 to get vertigo.

My other issue with the movie is the accents. The story takes place in California but some of the characters have such thick regional accents it can be distracting. McConaughey's southern drawl colliding with Michael Pare's New York accent just seems to pull you right out of the moment.

The Ugly - I know the whole world has gone retarded for HD but The Lincoln Lawyer is a good argument for abandoning the technology. Matthew McConughey's face has gigantic canyons that would simply be lines in standard definitions. Marissa Tomei, an attractive women, looks like a train wreck in this. Crystal clear picture does wonders in exacerbating one's imperfections.

Overall the Lincoln Lawyer is a good film. In fact, it's the first reviewed film to receive 4 Flaming Midgets.

5 Third Movies That Killed The Series

 Ahh, the third movie in a series. The penultimate section of a trilogy, the saving grace of a disappointing first sequel. Or the deathblow to a once promising franchise. 

5) Superman III

The Man of Steel, The Last Son of Krypton vs Richard Pryor and the Man from U.N.C.L.E.??? And what the fuck is with that half computer-android-chick-thing? Despite the massive fail of this movie, it is very historically relevant - it gives us solid evidence that crack had infiltrated Hollywood as early as 1983.

4) X3

What can I say about this piece of crap that hasn't already been said? Wolverine's still a bitch, Juggernaut sucks so much dick he makes a porn star look like a prude and Professor X suddenly becomes a complete asshole. All the ingredients you need to kill a series that was hanging on by a thread to begin with.

3) Blade: Trinity

Let's see, we have a killer series based on a badass supernatural vampire hunter. Let's make a third movie and feature said character as a background character with minimal dialogue. We'll fill the void with a shit talking punk, a wrestler and an overrated indie movie queen with the stupidest fucking hairdo ever unleashed on the screen.

2) Matrix Revolutions


Technically Matrix Reloaded killed the series, so I guess this one committed necrophilia since it fucked the franchise silly. Can someone explain to me why the guy who is the big superpimp that can alter reality still has to rely on guns and kung fu??

1) Halloween 3

WHAT..THE...FUCK?!?!? Unhinged, possibly supernatural killer succeeded by a company making killer Halloween masks. Over the years I've done my fair share of drugs and part of someone else's and not once did this bullshit sound like a good idea.

Top 5 Sports Movies

Sports movies - the celluloid magic that makes us feel like we're part of the team, not the lazy ass couch potatoes we really are.

5) Major League

This movie has everything you could ever want in a baseball movie - Rene Russo, pre-prison Wesley Snipes, pre-spousal abuse Charlie Sheen and pre-fucked up, creepy plastic surgery Tom Berenger.

4) Slap Shot

Even if you hate hockey, I defy you to watch this movie and not laugh your ass off. Paul Newman is brilliant and the Hanson brothers are the greatest siblings to ever grace the silver screen.

 3) Caddyshack

Be the ball.

2) Rocky

The film equivalent to The Little Engine That Could. Even though some of the dialogue is unintelligible and Sylvester Stallone beats up a side of beef and chases a chicken around, it is an inspiring story.

1) Miracle

The 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey teams victory over the Russians was a monumental moment not only in sports, but also in U.S. international relations. Miracle is criminally underrated. Kurt Russel's portrayal of Herb Brooks is fantastic.


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Top 10 Movie Sequels

We're a week a way from the ultimate fan boy wet dream - a sequel to Tron. While it's been 20+ years since I've seen the original, I admit my curiosity is piqued. I started thinking about the all the great sequels that have come out over the years and I'm hoping Tron:Legacy can join the ranks.

10) Friday the 13th Part II 

The first appearance of adult Jason, this movie is a horror classic. Hillbilly Jason with the hood is a hell of a lot scarier than his crazy ass mom or the machete wielding goalie of the later films.

9) Blade II

Guillermo Del Toro took the franchise to the next level with this film. His action sequences and visual effects topped the first installment. Too bad David S. Goyer had to destroy all of his work with Blade: Trinity.

8) Aliens

How do you make a badass movie about extraterrestrial killing machines even better? I have no fucking idea but James Cameron did. He built upon Ridley Scott's brilliant original work and arguably improved it.

7) Spider-Man 2

Sam Raimi did such an amazing job on this film. He managed to inject a colossal amount of depth and emotion into a comic book movie. Best part - he paid homage to the classic Spider-Man No More cover.

6) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

When you're a world traveling, ass-kicking archaeologist up against Nazi's and biblical artifacts, who do you call? You're dad. The chemistry between Sean Connery and Harrison Ford alone makes this movie worth watching.

5) The Dark Knight

Is this the greatest movie ever? No. Is it a fantastic sequel? Most certainly. Sure it has it's faults (Why does Batman have the voice of Satan??) but they are far outweighed by it's strength's. Heath Ledger's Joker and Aaron Eckhart's Two-Face are about as perfect as you can get. As an added bonus Rachel Dawes dies a horrible, painful death.

4) Terminator 2

Damn you, James Cameron!!! How do you go from Terminators and Aliens to Titanic??

3) Empire Strikes Back

This classic film gave us a budding relationship between Han and Leia. It introduced Yoda and Boba Fett and it gave us the often misquoted line "No, I am your father."

2) Halloween II

This is what a horror sequel should be. It picks up precisely where the original leaves off and continues the story without interruption. No missing years, no back story, no what does Michael Myers do in his off time while he's waiting for October 31, just a slight recap and go.

1) The Godfather Part II

With this movie we see the story of young Vito Corleone taken from Mario Puzo's novel compared to Michael Corleone's rise and subsequent fall from grace. The stellar cast of this film make it rise above the source material, becoming a celluloid legend.


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Top 5 Christmas Movies

Yep, it's that time. Thanksgiving is over. You ate 4 times your own body weight and you still have leftovers overflowing the refrigerator, including a tub of that weird green fruit salad thing your crazy ass aunt brought. You suffered through the insanity of Black Friday, walking away broke and with a court date regarding that unfortunate incident at Wal-Mart. Now it's time to be subjected to that most cruel and unusual torture - Christmas movies. If you must endure them, go for the good ones.

5) Die Hard

This movie is how office Christmas parties should be done - explosions and machine guns. It also features everyone's secret holiday wish: the summary execution of an asshole salesperson.

 4) The Ref

Christmas at gunpoint has never been this funny.

3) Scrooged

If you must partake in Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, check into this twisted take on it. It has great dialogue, the Solid Gold Dancers and a promo for the Manson Family Christmas Special.

2) Christmas Vacation 

Nuclear powered Christmas lights, an electrocuted cat and how to fix the newel post in one easy step. What more could you ask for?

1) A Christmas Story

All I have to say is.....You'll shoot your eye out, you'll shoot your eye out.

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Faster Movie Review

The Setup - Driver (Dwayne Johnson) is released from prison after serving a 10 year sentence for a bank robbery. Upon release he sets about exacting retribution on those that murdered his brother in the aftermath of  the bank heist. On his trail is an expert assassin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and a pair of cops (Carla Gugino and Billy Bob Thornton).

The Review - I have to say I was really surprised by this movie. The trailers don't do it justice. I was expecting a Fast and Furious clone with the Rock and I got something completely different. The film really is three intertwining stories: The Driver story seen in the previews, the hitman's background and domestic life and Billy Bob's story of a near retirement cop with a history of drug abuse. Faster makes good use of the three segments to push the plot forward. You glean character history and motives as the stories develop without being hit over the head with information.

Stylistically, the film is reminiscent of 70's B movies, including a matching soundtrack and great old school muscle cars. To me, Faster seems to pay homage to those films without being overt or mocking. Rather it takes the ground work of B movies to the next level without compromising on feel.

The real highlight of the film is Dwayne Johnson as Driver. His stoic performance is very reminiscent of Arnold in the first Terminator. He's a badass and it exudes from everything he does on the screen. The only real failing of the character and the film is the inevitable emotional revelation Driver undergoes. It's not that it's poorly done or that Johnson doesn't pull it off, it just seems to make the pacing a little clunking towards the end.

The rest of the cast fairs well also. Jackson Cohen as the killer is a rather sympathetic character. A seemingly amazing feat given that he kills people for money. Billy Bob Thornton plays the cop well enough. If you seen him in any movie save Sling Blade, you've seen this character before. Not that this is a bad thing. It just makes him akin to John Wayne or Tommy Lee Jones in that regard - you know what you're going to get. Carla Gugino is decent as Billy Bob's partner. Not a knock on her, she just didn't have that much to do. There's no real character development for her. She mainly functions as a counterpoint to Thornton and she provides the viewer with information.

All in all, Faster is a pretty good movie. I give it a solid three Flaming Midgets.

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5 Worst Comic Book Movies

With the completely underwhelming response to the new Green Lantern trailer it got me thinking about all of the horribly disappointing comic book adaptations we've been subjected to over the years. Here's a few shining examples.

5) Nick Fury: Agent of Shield

The Hoff as Nick Fury? What the fuck?!? Who decided this was a good plan? KITT would have been a more convincing Fury.

4) Captain America

Wow does this movie suck. Captain America has an extensive, distinguished history. None of that appears anywhere in this movie. The Red Skull as a bad plastic surgery patient just makes you want to kick the television.

3) Judge Dredd

One more potentially great film sucked into the Hollywood greed machine. Who needs to follow the source material when we can just blow shit up. The best part of the whole movie was Rob Schneider mocking Stallone's "I am the law".

2) Superman IV

It's not bad enough that the only villain featured in the Superman series is Lex Luthor (Ross Webster in Superman III was a Luthor clone) but we have to put up with Jon Cryer as his sidekick Lenny. And what do the fearsome duo of Lex and Lenny do? They shoot a strand of Superman's hair into the sun and create Ulti-Mullet.

1) Ghost Rider

You ever see a movie that's so bad that you want to set your whole living room on fire because it has now been tainted? That's Ghost Rider. If I ever get within reaching distance of Nicholas Cage I'm going to swing him around by his toupee for making this. Do we really need Johnny Blaze to be a Carpenter's fan? We can't have a badass motorcycle hero that listens to something a little more rocking? And every time Ghost Rider appears he says the dumbest shit. All he had to do was stand there and look cool with the flaming head. That would have made the film a little better. Not much, but every little bit counts.

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Top 10 Underrated 80s Films

Being a child of the 80s I sometimes long for those nostalgic moments produced by the decade of excess (The 80s had the BEST Saturday morning cartoons, but that's another topic). Here's a list of my childhood movies that never received their just rewards.

10) Iron Eagle (1986)

A film featuring at the time modern aerial combat, Iron Eagle was overshadowed by Top Gun. While it isn't of the production quality of Top Gun it has three distinct advantages: Louis Gossett Jr., a rocking soundtrack and it doesn't have that creepy, overt homoerotic feeling that Top Gun has.

9) Runaway (1984)

Written and directed by Michael Crichton, Runaway features Magnum P.I. matching wits with robots and a makeup free Gene Simmons. It even has Kirstie Alley when she was still hot, you know before she unhinged her lower jaw and swallowed half of southern California. Unfortunately, these attributes weren't enough to top another man vs robot film from the same year - The Terminator.

8) The Last Starfighter (1984)

It's the age old tale of boy from trailer park is recruited via arcade game to fight in an intergalactic war. OK, it's not the most thought provoking story, but it kicks ass and it's creators didn't feel the need to continuously rape it's memory for money. (I'm pointing at you, George Lucas.)

7) Blind Date (1987)

This movie is hysterical! Bruce Willis and John Larroquette should be in a movie together at least every two years. On top of being funny as hell, Blind Date features Stanley Jordan in the studio laying down a killer guitar track. It has nothing to do with the story, but it's great.

6) The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

Buckaroo Bonzai is proof that people were still doing good drugs in the 80s. If you ever try to explain the plot of this movie to someone who has never seen it they will look at you like you just chopped up your family with a plastic butter knife and stored the bodies in a Coleman roll around cooler. The sign of any great film.

5) Spies Like Us (1985)

This a bittersweet film for me. It's one of the last times Chevy Chase was funny and it features the last good song Paul McCartney wrote.

4) Heavy Metal (1981)

Long before Pixar was the darling of the movie going public and 3d was all the rage, animated films had to be drawn by hand by real people. Heavy Metal is one of the finest examples. Featuring a legendary voice cast, drug sniffing aliens and a shitload of animated boobies this should be required watching for all would be animators.

3) Monster Squad (1987)

The progenitor of the timeless quote "Wolfman's got nards!" Monster Squad is like Baby's First Horror Movie.

2) Harlem Nights (1989)

This movie not being highly acclaimed is criminal. The fact that three of the funniest comedians to ever walk the earth are in the cast should be enough to warrant accolades. And remember folks, this is pre hanging out with transvestite hookers and making crappy kids movies Eddie Murphy.

1) Clue (1985)

If you had HBO in the 80s you've seen this movie roughly 2,954 times and it keeps getting funnier. It's hard to make a board game into a full length movie and even harder to do it well. Featuring a top notch comedic cast, quick witted writing and Lee Ving from Fear, Clue is the epitome of what a media crossover film should be. Maybe you should watch this a few times before you make another shitty video game movie, Uwe Boll.

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Top 5 Movies That Deserve A Remake

With the current trend in Hollywood to remake and rape every film that has ever touched celluloid, I thought I would compile a list of movies that I would like to see remade. The biggest obstacle will be keeping Michael Bay away from them.

5) Friday the 13th

Yeah, I know it has already been remade. It was fucking horrible. I've seen it twice and I still couldn't tell you what happens. How do you make a giant sadistic killer in a hockey mask boring? With Jared Padalecki in the cast it seems like the worst episode of Supernatural ever produced. I kept waiting for Dean to run over Jason with the Impala.

4) Big Trouble in Little China

You know what Jack Burton says at a time like this? A personal favorite from my childhood. I want to see a remake with better special effects and an expanded story, maybe see a flash back of Lo Pan being turned into a demon and an explanation of what that big ass creature that comes out of the hole is.

3) The Big Sleep

The reason I want to see a remake for this is simple; there haven't been any great noir films made in years and I don't trust anybody to write an original one. Remaking a Bogart classic seems like a better choice. The Big Sleep is lesser known than the Maltese Falcon so a retelling would be met with less resistance.

2) The Great Escape

I would love to see a remake of this. It does present an interesting quagmire though. Do you remain faithful to the historical events or do you go with the Steve McQueen's a badass motorcycle jump version. Either way would be good with me. Just keep Quentin Tarantino away from it. We don't need Inglourious Basterds 2.

1) The Godfather

Let me preface this by saying the original is one of my all time favorite movies. The only reason I want to see a remake is to see some of the subplots from the book that were dropped, such as the Johnny Fontane and Lucy Mancini sections.

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Morning Glory Movie Review

The setup - Ambitious and competent, but socially awkward Becky (Rachel McAdams) is chosen as the new executive producer of the failing network morning show Day Break. Becky is met with no respect, no budget, a less than competent cast and crew and aging, cantankerous co-host Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton). In an effort to revitalize the show, Becky exploits a contract loophole of acclaimed veteran newsman Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), forcing him to join the cast of Day Break. Comical headbutting ensues.

The review - The biggest downfall of Morning Glory is it tries to be too many things at one time. It's part fish out of water story, part romantic comedy and part drama. In trying to cover so much ground in an hour and half, parts of the film feel rushed. The first half of the movie is excellent. A lot of laugh out loud moments, especially in the interactions between Ford and McAdams. You will never look at a morning show the same ever again. The second half, when the story delves more into the rom-com and drama area is where the shortcoming really occurs. The major conflict and resolution of the story are rushed through. I was left with the feeling that there was more to the story that ended up on the cutting room floor. Maybe an extended director's cut DVD will add the missing segments.

Where Morning Glory really shines is the casting. Having four name actors (Jeff Goldblum appears as a television executive) may seem like overkill for this type of picture, but it really helps the movie rise above. McAdams shines as Becky, bringing a certain believability to the character. Diane Keaton seems to relish the role of an aged, difficult anchor. Her character brings a lot of laughs and if anything was underutilized. For me, the real star was Harrison Ford. His gravelly, hardened newsman reminded me of a milder, sedate Spider Jerusalem. Even during the clunky dramatic scenes, Ford's dynamic with McAdams make them palatable.

Overall this is an enjoyable movie. I give it 3 Flaming Midgets.

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