Sacha Baron Cohen's new movies claims "Borat" was SO 2006. Well, Cohen, I have to ask why then it took you and three other men to come up with a story that is almost completely identical in plot structure and exactly identical in purpose to Borat?

I, for one, LOVE Borat. It's a hilarious character and the movie, while hit-and-miss for many people, was almost entirely "hit" for me. I won't deny that Bruno is funny, but it comes in spurts and feels like a cheap knockoff rather than something fresh. in fact, it got pretty stale after the first 30 minutes.

Bruno is a gay fashion espert ousted from his hit Austrian TV program, so he travels to Los Angeles to get famous. The satire here is at its best when Cohen is acting as gay as possible and we just watch what people do and say. It's sad, however, that much of what transpires feels much, much more scripted than Borat. While most of this film and some of Borat was indeed scripted, Bruno just feels it much more. Maybe that's because the situations and people involved are far too similar.

Case in point- Bruno has a partner/friend who ends up getting naked with him (just like in Borat), there's a scene where he purposely goes to a redneck-centric event (MMA fighting in this case, it was bullriding in Borat), and most of the underlying themes are strikingly similar to Borat. I suppose the purpose is to show how insensitive and spiteful Americans can be, or perhaps it's simply to just sit and laugh at middle America for it's "backwards" views. This only works if you have a very left-leaning bias or perhaps come from a foreign country.

However, the genius scenes are when Cohen stops leading people on with obviously suggestive questions and simply acts overtly gay. seeing people's reactions are seriously demented and hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing at these scenes. I especially enjoyed Westborough Baptist Church get its comeuppance. It's just not fresh or new enough and it doesn't have enough material. In fact, it's short enough and a good enough carbon copy that i almost feel like this could have been written and filmed in a month and added as a special feature on a deluxe edition of Borat.

It's a dirty shame, because some of the bits really are classic. it's just that most of it is forgettable or have lost any satirical sting its predecessor had.

Public Enemies review

Guns, girls, and gangsters come together in Michael Mann's latest film Public Enemies, a film that uses digital photography unfortunately less well than Collateral, the last film Mann implemented this technique on.

Now, I'm not here to give a plot synopsis- you can get that pretty much anywhere on the net. I am here to give my thoughts and feelings on it. As such, it should suffice for me to tell you that the film chronicles the life of John Dillinger and explores how the media and America reacted. sadly, it doesn't have the emotional punch I was hoping for, and it really seems the film needed it.

The acting is quite good and the story itself is mostly well-done, but it's a by-the-numbers gangster movie with some really ugly cinematography. That said, the sound in this film is phenominal. if only the visual aspect matched up with the audio.

The film is too long as well. It's mostly entertaining, but near the halfway mark it begins to get repetitive and tedious. it all leads up to an ending that not only is predictable by any film standards, let alone if you know your history. A film should still be able to give a good journey no matter if it's a historical film.

Now I'm not going to say this film isn't worthy. It's a competent film narratively speaking, and it doesn't totally overdo the shaky-cam, but i have to admit I was straining my eyes to make sure that david Wenham was indeed in the film. If the camera is too spastic for me to be able to tell who one of its stars is, then there is something wrong.

Marion Cotillard, however, really steals the show here. She's such a beautiful actress and gives probably the best performance of the film. She continues to show her range and any scene with her really picks up the film. I tyhink Depp, Crudup, Bale, and the rest of the cast range from serviceable to damn god,m but none hold a candle to Cotillard. I think that this film, when it comes down to it, is an average movie with some good performances, but the flaws are evident and keep me from giving it a high recommendation.

A matinee or possibly rental would be best, if you ask me.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen review

I just can't comprehend the magnitude of epicness this movie contains. It has dogs humping each other! It has robots humping humans! It has Meagan Fox looking like a prostitute! It has epic scenes of romantic dialogue accompanied by 360 degree camera pans! It has piss jokes! It has testicle jokes! It looks and sounds like a mildly retarded, roid-raged high schooler's idea for "teh coolest video game evurr."

This atrocity is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Why isn't it just Transformers 2? Why this recent spate of sequels with subtitles? Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Terminator: Salvation, Aliens vs Predator: Requiem. I'm getting tired of typing colons. But I digress.

Michael Bay has given us his magnum opus. This film has grossed over 700 million dollars worldwide in less than a month on a 200 million dollar budget and who knows how much he's pulling in on merchandising. Never mind that Bay is a corporate whore and has the maturity of a 13-year-old brat for a moment- I've dedicated three paragraphs and still haven't gotten to the crux of this entry- what the film does wrong. Well, I explained in hyperbole, if hyperbole is using exclaimation marks when not needed. I guarantee that all of the first paragraph is 100 percent accurate.

This film is first and foremost a plotless affair that is literally the world's biggest excuse to use as much money to blow shit up as possible, and likewise it feels like you're doing a disservice to the world by dedicating 10 dollars to Bay and Paramount for it. I would rather people risk bodily harm by blowing up their own shit and give that 10 dollars to charity than sit safely in a theater for this artistically challenged motion picture. Shia Labeouf is off to college now, and apparently a piece of the allspark is left and embeds in his mind some sort of blueprint to something that can, in the wrong hands, destroy the world. Cue the 20+ robots, who have somehow managed to team up with the US government in a hidden program designed to track renegade robots. Yeah, I know it's a movie, but this just goes far enough beyond reality that it starts to feel like you're in another dimension where things, no matter how hard you try, don't make sense.

The cinematography is loathesome. It's like watching an epilleptic dance in a laser show while sitting in a washer on full tumble with one eye on a kaleidescope. Either everything is too close, the camera won't stop spinning around in 360 degrees, or things don't stop shaking. The film is co-scored by once-faux metal, now-U2 ripoffs Linkin Park (if by "co-score" you mean insert three riffs from their new single "New Divide"), so be ready to have a song forcefully stuck in your head for a day.

of everything this films does wrong, it's chief crime is the atrocious writing, which takes every ounce of charisma or charm from it and reduces any character interactions down to "You're hot" or "Insert product namebrand here." The people are dimwitted and the robots witless.

Finally, it's just boring. It's long and loud and obnoxious and I don't ever want to be seen near a theater playing it again. the problem is it's a hit on par with The Dark Knight in the eyes of so many people. Why? Escapism. More power to ya, really. I'll admit there is one particular scene that wowed me- the battle in the forest and subsequent emotional scene that follows it. but aside from that, this film is useless to my sensibilities and i wish it was useless to everybody else.

Introduction

Oh, yes, welcome to my blog.

This a sad third attempt of mine to have a blogspot blog. Like people really read these. it's a free account, of course they won't actually pay attention to it!

But alas, I still feel I must write down my thoughts. Don't expect much innovation, though!