27. January 2008 by Ria.

This movie stars the suave detective John Ferguson (James Stuart), nicknamed Scottie. Now Scottie has acrophobia (fear of heights) as a result of watching a fellow police officer fall to his death, while making a desperate attempt to save him. This extreme case of acrophobia causes dizziness, or in other words, vertigo. Scottie retires from police work and spends a lot of his time hanging out at his friend Midge’s (Barbara Bel Geddes) home.

As a result of extreme boredom (I suppose), he lets Midge know that he’s still “available” but she doesn’t take him up on his offer. She’s going to regret that decision because in comes woman #2, Crazy Madeline (Kim Novak). Madeline’s husband Gavin (Tom Helmore) hires Scottie to follow her because she’s turning into a space Cadette, and he’s afraid that she might try to commit suicide. Madeline is obsessed with a woman named Carlotta Valdes who killed herself over a hundred years ago.

Madeline is really strange, she loves hanging around Carlotta’s grave and seems to possess the personality of an end table, but hey, she’s good looking, so who cares, she has Scottie’s complete attention. Yes, I know he was paid to follow her, but trust me, he enjoyed every minute of it. Next, she travels to the Golden Gate Bridge, and jumps into the San Francisco Bay, where Scottie directly follows in an attempt to rescue her.

See, this is another time where looks come into play. If it was a woman with average to below average looks who jumped into the Bay, Scottie would have thrown her a stick, or what do you call those things, the balloon with a hole in it, life preservers? Yeah, that’s it, he would have thrown her a life preserver, and said, “Hold on, let me go get someone to help fish you out!”

Okay, so Madeline and Scottie fall in love and kiss, sorry Midge, you had your chance. Maybe you should go visit the nearest spa and get a face lift or something, I don’t know. Anyway, back to the love birds, Scottie takes Crazy Madeline to San Juan Bautista, so that she can overcome her nightmares, but she decides to turn into a full blown emo by running into the bell tower, climbing the stairs, and jumping to her death. Poor Scottie, He tried to save her, but remember, he has vertigo, and couldn’t quite make it all the way up the stairs, now he’s devastated and is placed in a mental hospital.

Over a woman that he only knew for a couple of days? Wow. Maybe I should visit a spa and get a facial overhaul or something. Eventually Scottie snaps out of it, sort of. Well, he’s walking the streets again, but he’s going to the places he and Madeline used to hang out at, not a good idea. He finally spots Judy, a woman who has Madeline’s features, but she’s a brunette (in contrast to Madeline who was platinum blonde), but that’s okay, because he has plans to give her a major image overhaul, and follows her to her apartment. 

Judy, with her tough inner city chick mannerisms (in contrast to Madeline’s suburban la-de-da-ness), tells Scottie to buzz off, until he tells her that he’ll take care of her. Uh oh, I’m sure she saw imaginary dollar signs floating in front of her eyes after hearing that! She was probably saying to herself, “Wow, that means I can get him to pay my rent, my phone bill, all my charge cards, then I can finally quit my job at the department store” which she eventually does, I’m assuming, so that she can hang out with Scottie all day and night.

No, I’m just joking around, Judy really does has feelings for him, but she’s harboring a secret. She is Madeline, well the Madeline that Scottie fell in love with, because the real Madeline is dead. Remember Gavin? If not, then you need to go back and read paragraph one, keep up with me, okay? He is the guy that hired Scottie to follow Madeline, his wife, who is also very rich.

Well, you know how some marriages go, he got tired of her, and instead of throwing her out on her butt, and going through a messy divorce, he decided, “Why bother with all that hassle when I can just kill her, and keep all the money”,so he starts thinking of a plan to murder her, and cover his tracks. So he hires Judy (who was also his mistress at the time) and made her over so that she could look like Madeline who was stashed somewhere out of the way until the day she was pushed from the bell tower. 

The plan was brilliant because Madeline never came to town much, so Judy was able to take over the role with ease. Scottie was bought in the mix to corroborate the fact that Madeline jumped, given her earlier suicidal behavior as he followed her around, and remember, because of his vertigo, he wasn’t able to climb to the top of the stairs, to find out that the real Madeline was pushed by her husband, to her death, who afterwards dumped Judy, and then probably ran off to the Bermuda to enjoy his new life.

I could go on, but this is supposed to a review, not a book, but I will tell you that eventually Scottie finds all this out, because Judy keeps a necklace that she was wearing while portraying Madeline. Confused? I think you should just watch the movie, and you will also find out that Judy loses her life at that same tower. Did Scottie push her? Maybe, maybe not. Alfred Hitchcock is awesome, isn’t he?

Click on this link and watch Scottie check out Judy in character as Madeline!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTm17npIYzo

Now, click on this link to see Scottie follow Madeline!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DMvyVnSfI0

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21. January 2008 by Ria.

Usually when I don’t seem able to rent movies fast enough, I will turn to pay per view, or download a movie on the computer in order to make my quota, so this week I watched Shoot em Up, and I have only one thing to say………….I WANT MY $3.99 BACK! I’m seriously thinking of calling up Dish Network and saying this, “Hello, Dish Network? I’m just calling to let you know that there’s a mistake on my bill. I never watched a movie called Shoot Em Up, what is that supposed to be anyway?

I don’t even know how my TV ended up on the pay per view channel, ’cause I didn’t turn it there. Maybe my dog sat on the remote, and accidentally ordered the movie, I don’t know…………Can you please credit my account the $3.99?” You think that will work? No? Oh well, the least I can do is bring you this review.

This movie was incredibly stupid. The leading actor, what’s his name, Clive Owen? Who’s this guy? I guess Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, and Nicholas Cage were too busy to be bothered with this mess, and I can’t blame them. First of all, I’m going to tell you that to have a baby in the midst of all of this violence is preposterous. Yes, I know they didn’t use a real baby for most of the scenes, but still, just the idea of it sounds ludicrous. I actually thought about putting this movie into my comedy archive, ’cause it’s so stupid, all you can do is laugh.

Smith (Clive Owen) is a bum who just happens to be superb with a gun, hangs out with Donna (Monica Bellucci), a lady of the evening, and together they are trying to protect a baby against a bunch of goons that want it dead. I call it an ‘it’, because its never revealed if the baby is a girl or boy. This movie is so unbelievable from the start. First, you got Smith, who was obviously trained in combat miraculously taking on twenty, maybe thirty hit men at one time, without even a scratch.

Did you know he can even do somersaults in the air, and back-flips with a baby in his arms? I wonder where he got the training for that? Okay, so Smith is highly skilled in combat, yet he’s not a police officer, a hit man, or a security guard. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have a job at all. He lives in a dump, and tries to buy a gun with food stamps. Smith is so highly skilled at fighting, did you know he can kill people with carrots? I saw it with my own eyes, Smith rammed a carrot into this guy’s throat, and it came out on the other side. Wow. Can someone teach me to do that with a piece of celery?

Then there is the sex scene. You see, whenever a movie has a weak plot, the writers will try to throw in a sex scene to balance everything out. Bad movie plot/Great sex scene, only this scene isn’t so great. Once again Smith seems to be able to take out all the bad guys while in the middle of a hot fling with Donna, who is so into it, she never realizes that the posse just busted in, and is trying to kill her. Now who in the hell is going to keep on having sex, while someone is trying to take them out?.

Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know. Then there is the parachute scene, where everyone jumps out of a plane, and start shooting at each other. Once again Smith is just so untouchable, as he is able to kill a fist full of hired hoodlums on his way down. His landing is not very pretty, and he stumbles, gets caught and is roughed up a bit.

So now he has a bad leg, and a couple of broken fingers. Somehow he is still able to take on these armed ruffians, while he’s physically a complete mess and possesses no weapon. I wasn’t going to give the movie any stars, but hey, at least they kept the kid from getting hurt, so I’ll be generous and give it one whole star.

Shoot ‘Em Up

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20. January 2008 by Ria.

The movie starts off with Detective Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) arguing with his hard headed son, Daniel (Eric Knudsen). Cute kid. Must get his looks from mom. Anyway, Daniel finally walks away, I guess he’s off to be captured by Jigsaw, while Matthews gets called to a murder scene. A clue left on the victim leads Matthews and his posse to an abandoned warehouse where he finds the infamous Jigsaw sitting at a table withering away from cancer.

Good, let’s take this rat bastard into custody, and that’s that. Well, not exactly, a computer monitor shows several people that Jigsaw has captured in a room somewhere, with one of them being Matthew’s son. There is also a timer present showing a little less than 2 hours left for them to be rescued. Matthews is mortified at this time, so lets leave him for a second and zoom in to the people trapped in this room.

 All the victims wake up, including emo Amanda, and then the fun starts. A micro cassette is found, and its no other than Jigsaw himself stating that they are slowly breathing in a toxic nerve gas that is leaking into the house and will kill them in two hours unless they find antidotes, one in which is locked in a safe in the room they’re in. All they have to do is find the combination, which they all possess somewhere in the back of their minds.

They find a key with a note attached, stating that it shouldn’t be used to open the door in that room. Needless to say, Gus (Tony Nappo) pays no attention to the note, and gets his face blown off after using the key, then looking out of the peephole. Now I can’t fault Gus for this, I would have used the key too. But then, I would have immediately jumped out of the way of the door, just in case a device went off.

My review is crawling along, so let’s fly through this: Obi, the guy who helped in the kidnapping of all the others (yeah, but how was he able to take Xavier, the muscular guy?) ends up dead by trying to obtain two of the antidotes, Jonas (Glenn Plummer) dies by Xavier’s hands, and Laura (Beverly Mitchell) dies from gas exposure, so there. Oh, I forgot about Addison (Emmanuel Vaugier), who finds what she thinks is an antidote, but who knows what it could be? Without thinking, she slides her hands through a glass box, to obtain it, gets stuck, and is left to suffer and die.

Xavier (Frankie G) is actually smart enough to realize that the combination for the antidote is a number written, or painted on the back of everone’s head, so he gets the numbers off of all the deceased, then pursues Amanda, and Daniel. Let me add that from a photo Jigsaw left lying around, everyone finds out that Daniel is Matthew’s (the officer that also framed all of them) son, but since almost everyone is dead, who in the hell cares? Xavier slices the skin from his own neck in order to read his number, which is up once Daniel slits his throat.

Back to distressed father Matthews who tries to chum up to Jigsaw in order to find out where his son is, this doesn’t work. Next, he destroys drawings, and other works of Jigsaw’s in order to make him talk, that doesn’t work. Finally Matthews loses it and gives Jigsaw a well deserved butt kicking, then he finally decides to talk. He’ll take Matthews to his son, but he must go alone. Sir-Dumb-A-Lot Matthews agrees to this, and off they go. Now if I was in the same position, and Jigsaw asked me to go alone, I would have just smiled and nodded, while flashing some sign language behind his back alerting my posse to follow me.

 So they get to the house, and Matthews decides to play hero, and goes charging into a booby trapped house with no backup, and leaves Jigsaw out in the car. Another dumb move. If you’re not going to alert your boys as to where you are, at least have enough common sense to take Jigsaw into the house with you and use him as a shield. 

But no one ever listens to me, and Matthews ends up a prisoner. Oh well, I tried to help out. Then we find out that emo Amanda will be taking over Jigsaw’s work. Fine. Can’t wait to see her go down in the sequel. 

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