The Billionty-Oneth Geek: Older Than 8 Since 1991

The movie going public can sometimes be frustrating. We cry about the lack of originality and complain about the onslaught of prequels, sequels, spin-offs and what-have-you, yet when we’re finally given something new and original, we don’t go out and see it. And that’s exactly what happened with Source Code . Source Code , which received a whopping 90% on RT opened with a measly $14 million on its debut weekend (second only to Hop which did a ridiculous $37 mil despite being slammed all around). Which tells me one thing – our western nation is full of idiots. Moving on. Source Code follows Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) who wakes up one day on a train in front of a complete stranger. He has no idea what’s happened or how he got there and has no idea why this woman in front of him is calling him Sean. After a bout with confusion, he winds up in the washroom of the train. When he looks into the mirror, it’s not his own face he sees but the face of a man he doesn’t kno...

Apparently (from what I’ve read and heard) the movie was marketed completely identical to Taken, from 2 years ago. Taken is a movie that I love for its showcasing of Liam Neeson in a total badass form. Now, besides seeing the poster, I knew nothing about Unknown except for what my friend told me shortly before we walked into the theater. I don’t even think I’ve seen the trailer beforehand. All I knew was that from the poster, The story follows a scientist named Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) who arrives in Germany with his wife (January Jones) for a conference. Shortly after arriving at their hotel, he realizes that his luggage and identification was left at the airport and takes a cab back to retrieve it. However, on their way back, the cab gets into a little traffic scrimmage and ends up going off a bridge into the river below. Harris is trapped and drowns, that is until the superhero-like cab driver rescues and resuscitates him. He wakes up at a local hospital, and finds it odd...

Rottentomatoes isn't always the greatest indicator of when a movie is good. Case in point, Unstoppable . Currently, it's sitting pretty with 86% positive reviews. However, that's a deceiving number. If say, 9 out of 10 reviews gave the movie a marginal thumbs up, it would end up looking like a 90% on RT. Deceiving. However, referencing RT and Metacritic will give a fairer look at the critical reviews. MC gives an aggregate score based on professional reviews, which may give a better gauge on how a certain piece of entertainment is doing. On MC, Unstoppable garnered a 69. I think that's a lot more fair than 86%. Unstoppable is a film by Tony Scott featuring frequent collaborator, Denzel Washington, and the new Captain Kirk himself, Chris Pine. It's as you've seen it in the trailers; there's a runaway train, there's Washington, there's Pine, and they try to stop it. Whatever you think would happen probably did. It's one of those sort of ...

Before I say anything, I want to note that this will be a SPOILER-FREE look at the film, just in case you're fearful of anything important being revealed. And I think that it's best to go in this way anyhow. After all, "Don't Let Anyone Tell You What It Is", is the tagline. I caught a screening of Catfish last night and I'm still reeling in from the whole experience. It has been circulating the film festivals over the past year, oftentimes stealing all the attention. The film has created an electric buzz over its audience, causing fervent discussions amongst the crowds. Catfish is a documentary about a young man named Nev, chronicling the heated relationship he made with a girl he met on Facebook. He's a New York photographer who connects with a family in Michigan after they see his work in a newspaper. They start sending him paintings of some of the photos he takes, painted by a 9 year old prodigy named Abby. He starts to develop a relationship wit...

I've always loved movies that dealt with isolation. I think the first movie that wowed me this way was Hitchcock's Rear Window . To a lesser extent, I also enjoyed Phone Booth a few years ago. In the next little while, we're getting Buried , dealing with a man buried in a coffin alive and Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity , dealing with a man trapped in space. I guess I enjoy that minimalist approach to film making. How much can you do with so little? Which brings us to Frozen , released earlier this year in theaters. Frozen follows three college students as they hit the ski slopes during a school break. Low on cash, they bribe one of the ski lift operators to let them on. But the fun and games only last so long for these friends. That night, they are mistakenly left in the middle of the lift, abandoned and forgotten. Luck for them further diminishes as the hills are closed for the week due to the bad weather. Will they ever get off the hill or will they succumb to the cold, ...

I wanted to make sure I had two viewings before I wrote about this movie. I originally saw it early last week but came out of it confused mostly because of the first chunk of the movie. At first I thought that it was something intentional, but during my second viewing, I paid closer attention to the series of scenes that made up the first 45 minutes or so, and realized that it wasn't meant to be confusing at all. So I guess on that first time I was either too tired or it was too late of a show... but probably both. As much as I dislike 20th Century Fox and those monkeys there, I love Warner Bros., their goons, and the way they think (monkeys against the goons). Pretty much after the success of The Dark Knight , they cut Nolan a blank cheque and said, go to town! And so to town he went to create this psychological blockbuster that he dreamt up 10 years ago — Inception be thy name! I'm going to skip the story, because: a.) you've watched it already and b.) if you haven...

I don't get it. The movie is based on the book of the same name written by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson. It's part of a trilogy of novels that has sold over 23 million copies worldwide. Everytime I walk into a Chapters or an Indigo, it's always on the bestsellers shelf/rack. So two weeks ago I sat at the bookstore for about an hour and started reading it. I got to around page 40 or so but the book never captivated me. It's just a straight up thriller/mystery story, what's the sell? I just don't get it. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a Swedish produced thriller that follows an unlikely pairing of characters. The first is Mikael Blomkvist, a middle-aged journalist stuck in the middle of a controversy between his magazine company and a rich industrialist. He is hired by a rich old businessman named Henrik Vanger to solve a missing persons case, that of his beloved niece who has disappeared for 40 years. In exchange for his work, Vanger offers Blomkvi...

Okay, so this movie was bad, let's get that out of the way. It was a waste of time on my part, for taking time to watch it, and on their part, for taking time, money and effort in making it. Three key reasons come to mind. I think it was a mistake to show that the stepfather was a murderer from frame one. Right off the bat, we know he's a killer which takes away from a lot of the mystery that they could have built. I mean, we know from the trailers that obviously this stepfather is an evil dude, but there's no sense of suspense to it. The only "suspense" out of it are all the times the stepfather pops up in random places to scare the kids. It's not scary at all and by the third time, it comes across more as comedy to me. The second flaw, which is closely related, is the lack of motive for said stepfather. He just kills for the sake of killing, there's no rhyme or reason. He's just as mindless as Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th or the birds f...