Reviewed by Danny the Demented
Updated Aug 27 2012
Just like anyone who enjoys living, I hate bikers. And to think bicycle messenger is a legitimate profession? My gosh, if that is not the first sign of the Apocalypse, I don't know what is. GOOOOOSH DARN IT I hate bikers, I mean, seriously, you are a danger to pedestrians, cars, yourself, and most importantly, ME! .........the movie's ok though. Ooooh a twist, bet you didn't see that coming did ya you silly rabbit, trix are for kids.
Premium Rush, along with its cheesy name, tells the very cheesy story of a mother Nima (Jamie Chung) trying to save her son but in doing so has to fight off a corrupted cop named Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon) who is in some serious gambling debt. Nima enlists the help of two bike messengers Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Vanessa (Dania Ramirez) who just happened to be a couple fighting so naturally they have to solve their relationship problem while fighting off the evil cop, all at the same time. A plausible premise? Not if you treasure logic and common sense like the rest of us normal folks.
I often wondered why directors/actors/producers make movie of this caliber. It is clear that you won't win any awards and the gross number won't be anywhere near impressive. Best case scenario is that the film gains marginal acclaims and makes enough profit to avoid a loss, but seriously, what'd be the point? Is it really worth all the trouble of months and months of production efforts just to beat mediocrity all the while knowing you'd never achieve greatness with it? This type of film falls in the no man's land of movies. It isn't good enough to wow, but it isn't bad enough to piss you off either. It has a clear commercial objective but it is neither innovative (Star Trek 2009) or crappy-but-proven-formula worthy (Anything Adam Sandler has done after 2000 except for Punch Drunk Love) to make any serious dough (dough here means money, for my street-cred-lacking readers, you are welcome). What's even more perplexing is that it is CLEAR the director David Koepp and his casts know exactly what they have to work with and decided to make it anyway. Life is full of mysteries evidently.
Reviewed by Danny the Demented
Updated Aug 24 2012
So evidently there's still milk in the Bourne franchise's teet, and I am glad they invited me to suck it with them. Yeah that sounded wrong, let's move on.
The fourth and latest installment of the Bourne series, "The Bourne Legacy" tells the story of not Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), but a new protagonist named Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner). Just like Bourne, Cross is a trained government "asset" (or operative, or assassin, or I-can-kill-you-with-my-nose-hair bad ass), but unlike Bourne, Cross is not from Operation Treadstone, but another program called Operation Outcome. After the Bourne story is brought to the public's eyes by Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), Eric Byer (Edward Norton), a high level intelligence director-type, decides to wipe out every Outcome agents to prevent the project from seeing the light of day. Byer managed to wipe out everyone related to Outcome, all except for Cross and a scientist named Marta (Rachel Weisz) who was involved with Outcome's medication development. Now on the run and out of meds that enhance Outcome agents' physical strength and intelligence, Cross must find a way to save Marta, survive from the relentless chase from Byer and his goons, and most importantly, remain Aaron Cross at all costs.
Reviewed by Danny the Demented
Updated Aug 06 2012
Do you know why we do not have topless women walking about at all times, awesome though it may be? Because that would be logically incomprehensible. Logic is our friend, it keeps the world from falling apart (It and George Clooney). In Mulholland Drive, logic was ran over, backed up and ran over again, and then finally abandoned by the side of the road and what was left for the audience is one of the most irritating film I've ever seen. Which of course explains why on the right hand side of this retro reel review you don't see the usual picture of a DVD because, gladly, I don't own this piece of... work.
How can I possibly do a plot overview for this time waster? No one can, not even if you bring me everyone (Yeah I know that joke doesn't work but I love Oldman! the actor, not actual old man...this joke does work incidentally). Nothing makes sense in this movie. Every plot line, every subplot lines, every relationships, every actions, every reactions, every smile, every stare, every set and every one involved ultimately do not matter because nothing is connected to anything. What is perhaps the most frustrating thing about this film is that it actually managed to disguise its "nonsense"ness well enough for about 2/3 of the whole movie. Only at the end does the film reveals its true nature: a pile of scenes and dialogues that served no purpose, none whatsoever. When the end credit start rolling, you the audience will immediately realize that everything you've just seen made absolutely no sense at all. What director David Lynch did was that he made hints along the way implying that the audience will have an explanation in the end. In fact the entire film is constructed in this fashion: using Naomi Watts and Laura Harring to play two roles each so you'd think the characters are connected to each other in some mysterious and fascinating manner because they are played by the same person, cutting scenes in a way that you'd see the same person from a previous plot showing up in a later story so the two parts seemed to relate to each other, and placing an irreverent but consistent character in different settings to string the many different bits together so they seem to be in the same storyline. It is a solid buildup, only the prophet turned out to be false and the buildup was to a vast galaxy of nothingness where sense goes to die.
Just like anyone who enjoys living, I hate bikers. And to think bicycle messenger is a legitimate profession? My gosh, if that is not the first sign of the Apocalypse, I don't know what is. GOOOOOSH DARN IT I hate bikers, I mean, seriously, you are a danger to pedestrians, cars, yourself, and most importantly, ME! .........the movie's ok though. Ooooh a twist, bet you didn't see that coming did ya you silly rabbit, trix are for kids. 
