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Showing posts from June, 2014

The Netflix Files: Transformers 3

With Transformers: Age of Extinction  hitting theaters tonight at 9 p.m. and because I haven't done this segment in ages I present to you the latest installment of The Netflix Files! Today, I'm looking back at the last chapter in Michael Bay's bloated Hasbro commercial, Transformers: Dark of the Moon , but in order to tell this story, I'll need to touch back on 2009's infamous Revenge of the Fallen . See, despite the first Trasnformers  sequel making over $400 million in the U.S., the film received a thrashing by the critics: a 19% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a score of 35 on Metacritic, winning top honors at the Razzies , and a few publications naming the sequel as one of the worst ever made. Even star Shia LeBeouf and Bay himself admitted the second Trasnformers outing wasn't particularly good and promised that the next one would be better.  Well, they did keep their promise. Dark of the Moon  is better than the hideous Revenge of the Fallen . For

Mr. Brown Verses Bland, Weepy Teen Melodrama

Todd in the Shadows once said that he defined the worst hit song of the calendar year as a song being the absence of good. At the time, I didn't really understood what he meant when he chose "Tonight Tonight", by Hot Chelle Rae in 2011 and "Roar", by Katy Perry in 2013. Last night, I finally understood what he meant. Because, I, too, have seen a movie that's the absence of good. Todd meant that a song could make you angry, the beat could drive you insane, the lyrics could be insulting and simply lazy, but, in his eyes, those two aforementioned songs had nothing  going for them. Nothing lyrically, nothing catchy, nothing offensive, nothing that could make you feel insulted, angry or simply seeing red, because there's literally nothing  about it that can make you feel anything. That movie belongs to Bland, Weepy Teen Melodrama , the  latest attempt to suck money out of teen girls ....I mean, young adult novel by Second Rate Nicholas Sparks that became

Mr. Brown Verses Maleficent

Who knew this would be the best movie I've seen so far this summer? I was wary of Disney's attempt to reboot Sleeping Beauty fairly tale from the perspective of the film's titular villianess after how they botched up Oz the Great and Powerful  and Alice in Wonderland , but neither retelling had emotional depth to match the stunning visuals put on-screen. Maleficent  has both, largely thanks to Angelina Jolie, in her best performance in years, as the title character, a fairy who transforms the magical woods where she calls home, into a thorny no-man's land - literally. She wants revenge for Stefan (Sharlto Copley) drugging her and hacking off her wings to please a dying king and take his place at the throne. On the surface, it's Jolie howling over her loss, but it's a much deeper betrayal - her closest friend, whom she trusted and loved, robbed her of her innocence and her identity. In a moment of extreme vulnerability, her darker nature takes shape, and the