Movie: "A History of Violence" (1/5 stars) 2005

This is another David Cronenberg movie. I don't like Cronenberg and never have. I'm usually pretty patriotic, but his being Canadian just embarrasses me. He's done some of the worst movies ever and people bow to him as some kind of master director.

I had no idea that this was a Cronenberg movie while watching, so my negative reactions were unbiased, and I don't think this movie is overly Cronenbergish.

The biggest negative to me was how overly simple the scenes and dialog were. They go out of their way at the beginning to show how happy and well adjusted the family is. Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello play Tom and Edie Stall, the perfect normal American couple in the mid-west, living the normal life with two well adjusted kids.

I've seen all of the actors elsewhere and they've always been pretty good, but the quality of the writing (especially the dialog) and directing was so low that there was no way they could come off looking competent. It was painful to watch it, especially at the very beginning.

Small spoiler: There was a sex scene between Maria Bello and Viggo Mortensen where they get violent and then just have sex on the stairs. It made me laugh out loud and shake my head it was so bizarre. They are always so tender at the beginning that this comes out of left field. It was like the lesbian scene in Crash.

Oh! Another thing - there were a few scenes where two men are facing each other... the moment is tense and the actors just look like they are going to kiss - all the body language is there. Both myself and Una noticed it independently.

All in all, a poor quality, let down of a movie. One of the worst I've seen in a while.

This is made worse considering that it's so highly rated, both on imdb and elsewhere.

Movie: "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1/5 stars) 1964

This is one of those movies you always plan to see but never do.

I see why now. It just was not my thing, i.e. well made, well written cinema.

I don't quite see why it's the classic that is #19 on imdb's top 250 list. It's next to good movies, there are good movies before and after it, but I don't think it is a good movie.

I think everyone thinking back remembers the few good lines in the movie, specifically, "You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"... I can't remember any of the other ones, although I vaguely remember that there were more.

Peter Sellers and George C. Scott are good, but are sitting in the middle of something even they can't save. Sorry, but I have to give a thumbs down to a 'classic'. I think the pressure is always why this movie consistently ranks high on people's lists - they think they may have missed something and come out looking stupid. Fair enough... I suppose I could give it a 1.5/5 - nah!

movie: Intimacy (1 out of 5 stars) 2001

Starring Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox, two actors I've never even heard of before. I read the DVD cover and saw that it was a movie about two people who were having a strange sexual relationship where she just shows up and has sex every Wednesday. They don't know each other, but somehow are taking comfort in their surreal relationship. That is, until he follows her home one Wednesday and starts to learn who she is.

This sounds pretty unusual and interesting - it got rented after all.

But I was never ready for the strangeness. You never quite learn how they meet, or why they are having sex (he is uglier than any lead I've seen in a while), the side bits with his friends is completely random and does nothing to carry the story forward.

The sex itself is positively shocking and is practically pornography. It was explicit and hard to watch, and decidedly not sexy at all. I'm sure some of the scenes must have gotten this movie an X rating.

In the end, I didn't learn a thing from this movie, including much about the movie itself. Weird and not interesting. It's an easy recommendation from me that you just pass on this one.

Movie: Johnny Mnemonic (1/5 stars) 1995

I watched this years ago, and my wife was really asking me not to get it again at the video store. I remembered it as good, so got it anyway.

She was so, SO right!

I can't tell you all the things wrong with this. Firstly, Johnny, the courier who carries data in his head, in 2020 has 80 Gigs of storage capacity, and gets a memory double which brings him to 160 Gigs. Considering how easy it is to figure out the data storage in the future (it's following a simple curve), you'd think a courier who gave up his childhood memories would have something bigger than what we can get for $100 at the computer store in 2007 - it's silly. I heard that the short story was even sillier, and the movie "improved" it somewhat.

Still, I knew all of that before I saw the movie. It's such a large target that I had to mention it. If I were the film maker, I would have invented a new word for storage size and just made it sounds REALLY big and impressive, and not dated the film so badly.

This is the least of the film transgressions. The acting, directing, storyline etc... are all sub-standard. It's really, really hard to watch Keanu Reeves at this point in his career. He was truly flat and cardboard actor. AND the man can't look at the camera, he's looking everywhere else. I know he still has that problem, but it's even worse here and his eyes wander everywhere. As bad as people make him out to be now, this was much worse - hard to watch.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not just a Keanu basher, I like lots of his stuff, "Speed", "The Matrix" (even #2), "Constantine" and several more. If you are thinking of taking a trip down memory lane and getting a 90's movie, steer clear of this one - it tells you how bad some of the mainstream films were in that time.

store: OPSM (1/5 stars)

OPSM is a New Zealand optometrist type store. I have bought glasses there in the past. The one that I'm talking about is at the Coastlands shopping mall in Paraparaumu, about 40 minutes outside of Wellington.

I bought some sunglasses at OPSM a while ago (they were Fish brand sunglasses, specifically the Cod model). They were getting a little loose when I was putting them on, so I brought them back, hoping they could fix them. "Sure, no problem.", the manager said. He put some kind of glue into the screw hole, and that was to fix the screw solidly. He also gave me advice on how to handle them, "They last longer if you take them on and off with two hands rather than one.", he said, being very helpful and friendly.

About 1/2 an hour later, I was walking along, still at the same mall, and the glasses literally fell off my face. The "glue" ate through the plastic like acid. I appeared at the OPSM store a few minutes later with the glasses in pieces in my hands. The manger who'd "helped" me, saw me and pushed some poor woman, a new worker, towards me to handle his screw up.

Since the service had been so friendly before, I was confident that they would take care of this without any issues. Unfortunately, the girl who was now helping me, didn't actually know what to do about this, and kept going back to the manager who had "helped" me, and kept coming back with advice. In the end, they searched all of New Zealand OPSM stores, and not a single one had the same pair of glasses. They wanted to give me another pair, preferably more expensive, but I didn't like any of them (these are a $70 dollar pair by the way).

In the end, I got my money back and used it to buy contact lenses for Una.

The story doesn't end there! The Fish sunglasses behind me, I bought a new pair of sunglasses at some some shoe outlet store for $20. I lost one of the screws holding one of the arms on and guess where I ended up to see if they could fix them? That's right, the same OPSM.

That poor woman who'd had me as a disgruntled customer was there again. There was no manger this time. I ask her if they have a screw that will fit the sunglasses and she's pretty sure, and goes into the back room. Sure enough, they have the right sized screw, and she'll fix it in right now for no cost. Sweet!

She plays with it for a minute while I look around the shop. "Oh no.", I hear over my shoulder. She comes over to me, and she's screwed the screw in too tightly, and broken the lens! There go another pair of sunglasses.

I made the mistake of telling them that it was only a $20 pair, so they send me $20 in the mail a week or so later. I forgot to charge for the gas to drive down to the place where I'd gotten them in the first place and the hassle.

Anyway - I've only been into that shop twice, and twice I've come away with a broken pair of sunglasses. Not recommended.

Movie: "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" 2003 1/5 stars

I like Clive Owen and Jonathan Rhys Meyers - they almost always pull out good performances. This is no different - they were both interesting and well portrayed characters.

The thing that killed this movie is the plot. When you get to the end, there are these huge, massive, gaping (I need another word for big!) plot holes, even entire threads of the story just dropped on the floor.

Until the very end of the movie, I thought it was going to be possible to salvage it into being an ok movie, but no, it didn't happen. It felt seriously like they ran out of budget and just dropped it. I'm pretty sure I wasn't missing any subtle bits of this one, it just stops.

I wouldn't bother with this movie, despite the ok first 95% of it.