D.E.B.S.

Joe told me that D.E.B.S. is near the top of his list of favorite films. I had never seen it, so I figured I'd watch it and see what all the fuss was about. Coming into it, I didn't think I'd like it too much. The premise is as such:
Four hot schoolgirls are in a crime-fighting sorority/secret agent group known as D.E.B.S (which according to Wikipedia stands for Discipline, Energy, Beauty, and Strength, although in the movie I don't think they included the "S" in the acronym). The best spy in the group, Amy (played by a super-hot Sara Foster) breaks up with her boyfriend in the beginning of the movie, and then falls for the uber-villainess Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster from Fast and the Furious) that Amy and her cohorts are supposed to bring to justice. Sounds kind of questionable, right?



I ended up actually enjoying it. It is obviously a love story at heart, but there were a lot of funny parts in it and the dialogue was solid for a parody of this caliber. Some of my favorite aspects were:
1. In Lucy Diamond's lair, there is a sign that reads "A GOOD D.E.B. IS A DEAD D.E.B."
2. Suction cups were used to scale a wall at one point.
3. Lucy Diamond leaves (gasp) diamonds as her calling card. But she seems to have a huge supply of them and just throw handfuls of them around at will.
4. Lucy is spurned by Amy at one time in the film and steps up to her super powered laser ray and says that she is going to sink Australia to make herself feel better. She is stopped by her right hand man, whose name is Scud.
5. The following quotes -
"Love is harder than crime."
"Why aren't you killing me?"
"This isn't the Girl Scouts - this is espionage!"
Lucy: "I didn't even want to be a criminal. I wanted to be a pirate."
Amy: "Pirates ARE criminals."

I think it's important to be clear that this is definitely a parody of spy films and not merely a horrible attempt at making a "women's spy movie" or anything like that. There were blatant jabs taken at the genre, as evidenced by a certain scene in which Homeland Security and the D.E.B.S. are suspended like 70 feet above the floor of a restaurant (but still inside the building) in mechanical swing chairs which they can move laterally or vertically at their command. Another outlandish poke at the secret agent genre is the use of teleportation by the adults in the film, who are the higher-ups in the D.E.B.S. department. They seem to appear and disappear at any time in any place, fully materializing and interacting with the characters and their environment, and then disappearing as if they were a hologram the whole time. But perhaps most outlandish of all is a bank robbery scene where the D.E.B.S. are trapped in the vault and suddenly huge metal spikes come out of the ceiling and the room starts to close in. The obvious question being, "How did Lucy Diamond and her cronies manage to take out all the armed guards at this massive bank and still have time to install spikes and motors behind the ceiling in the short time before the girls arrived on the scene?" All this just contributes to the fact that D.E.B.S. doesn't take itself too seriously, and that's the main reason it works so well.

Although director Angela Robinson is openly lesbian and showcases that through the script (she wrote and edited the movie, too), she's not overly feminist and the movie isn't political at all. This served to make it that much more enjoyable, because you are left to feel for the characters and hope that the two lovers get together in the end.

The camera work didn't particularly stand out in the movie, but the music played a pretty key role. I normally don't notice music too much in films, especially when they employ actual songs and not sweeping orchestral tunes, but D.E.B.S. did a nice job of placing the right song at the right point in the film. At one point there is some chick punk rock blaring in the background at a turning point in Amy and Lucy's relationship, and the lyrics scream out what they are too shy at this point to say to each other: "Take me to the backseat!" Another noticeable point came at the necessary separation of the two main characters in any love story about two thirds of the way through, when Amy was pondering life and her situation and "If everything's just the way it should be, why am I still hungry?" plays softly in the background, clearly mirroring her thought process.

Meagan Good (Brick, You Got Served) was well-cast as the jealous best friend and heir to the D.E.B.S. throne. Devon Aoki (Sin City) and some other girl who I'm too lazy to look up could have been replaced by anyone of the correct age and not been missed. Jordana Brewster didn't exactly pad her resume with fantastic acting, but it was passable enough, and she looked good, which was all that was necessary for a film like this. If you don't take it too seriously, D.E.B.S. is sure to entertain you and quench any need you have for hi-tech lesbian spy movies along the way. (Note: The film is rated PG-13, so don't let the lesbian stuff 1. scare you into not seeing it or 2. be your only reason for seeing it.) Until next time...

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

I decided to watch Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, and it certainly wasn't the greatest idea I've ever had. Know this: I'm definitely a Stallone fan. Tango & Cash, Over the Top, Rockys, Rambos, and Spy Kids 3D's alike all did it for me. This film was awful.

Roger Spottiswoode (no, I'm not making that name up) directed this 1992 box office bomb, and it's considered by some to be the worst film ever made. I've DEFINITELY seen worse - Octopus 2, I'm talking to you - but I can see where people are coming from who make this assertion. There were plot holes bigger than Julia Roberts' lips at every corner. Why did it take the bad guys nearly two weeks to transfer illegal weapons from a burned-out warehouse to an airfield that is RIGHT NEXT to the warehouse? Why is Stallone's mom (played by Estelle Getty of "Golden Girls" fame) allowed to brandish weapons? Why did the main bad guy suddenly kill off one of his own henchmen? Why can Stallone ram the side of a moving airplane with an 18 wheeler and blow out the tire on the plane, but keep his own tire intact? How can the aforementioned 18 wheeler not explode and kill everyone within a 100 foot radius when the propeller of the plane actually starts ripping apart the hood of the car and churning into the engine block? All these and many more questions arose while watching this film, and the viewer is left with nothing to do but see if they can make it all the way through without turning it off (or, in Joe's case, falling asleep).


Look at that. Raise your eyes once again and look at that poster. How can someone approve this? I have no idea. If you guys don't know what the Razzie Awards are, allow me to enlighten you. The Oscars are obviously for what the Academy thinks are the "best" film and performances from the previous year, and the Razzies, judged by a different panel, are awarded to the worst. Stallone won "Worst Actor" for his performance in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Interesting side note: Stallone is the most "Razzed" individual in the history of the awards, garnering a mind-boggling thirty nominations and pulling down ten wins. The man's films have grossed over $3.5 billion worldwide, but he makes some pretty horrendous decisions sometimes.

I really can't write much more about this film without getting a headache. It was good for a couple of laughs, but there were so many atrocious one-liners that it was painful to watch. I was hoping it would be one of those "So bad, it's good" movies, but I was let down. I can't even give a legitimate plot summary because only about 15% of the film makes any logical sense. So I will leave you with this section, borrowed from the vast archives of Wikipedia:

"On Fox Sports' 'The Best Damn Sports Show Period', Stallone was a guest when another guest, Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Booker [sic] MacFarland told Stallone that he saw this film in the theater and that Stallone owed him $20. Stallone paid up."

I think the only redeeming factor in this movie was that it was only an hour and a half long. At least the filmmakers had the decency not to keep us involved in this train wreck for any longer than necessary. I think Joe summed it up pretty well when he said something to the effect of "This movie wouldn't be so bad if it just had a different plot." Well said, sir. Well said. Until next time...

Blood Diamond

It's the beginning of March, and you all know what that means: I'm going to start posting like a madman. This review is actually going to be fairly lengthy, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to keep that streak going for very long this month.

Before I get started on the actual movie itself, I must preface it with a couple of things.
1. When I first saw the trailer for Blood Diamond, I swore to myself that I wouldn't see it because of DiCaprio's accent. (I'll get to my thoughts on that in the actual review section.)
2. I'm not usually a fan of exploitation films (unless it's blatantly so, as is the case for the upcoming Grindhouse, directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino), but the other guys were going to see David Fincher's Zodiac and I had absolutely no interest in seeing that. Plus, I found out that this movie wasn't necessarily an exploitation film per se: it had a lot more plot to it than I predicted.

Director Edward Zwick has a couple of good films in his repertoire; the most notable of these are Glory and The Last Samurai. His complete filmography is here, if you're interested. I'm not going to talk too much about him, since I know little to nothing about the guy and I've only seen four of his films. I will say that I thought he did a really good job with Blood Diamond, although in hindsight nearly anyone with any kind of directorial competence could have churned out just as fine a product. Zwick doesn't have any sort of stand-out style that I noticed, which I guess is good because you aren't always looking for the little nuances of the director's films (cameos, flashbacks, doves, etc) while you are watching the film. He let the script and, more importantly, the cast, do the talking for him.


The movie takes place in Sierra Leone in 1999, where civil war has broken out and the illegal diamond trade is in full swing. When Solomon Vandy's (played by Djimon Hounsou - yes, the guy from Amistad and Beauty Shop) family is taken from him and his village burned to the ground by rebels, he must rely on diamond smuggler Danny Archer (DiCaprio) to get them back. Also thrown into the mix is a reporter (Jennifer Connelly) searching for a story that will finally shed light on the injustices being done to the people of Africa merely to keep the market price of diamonds high.

I can't go any further without saying it: Leonardo DiCaprio is dangerously close to becoming my favorite actor. If he keeps taking roles like this one, which he played excellently, and characters like the ones he depicted in The Departed and Catch Me If You Can, he'll be at the top of my list before you can say "Gangs of New York." Without a doubt, he 100% deserved the nomination for Best Actor for his performance in this film. OK - man love for DiCaprio aside, there were other actors in this thing also. Djimon Hounsou did a good job, although I'd like to see him in some more versatile roles than just the crying, angry black man (he was cool as the mercenary in The Island). Jen Connelly was nowhere near her hotness-peak that she hit in 1991's The Rocketeer (see below for gratuitous picture), but she was pretty smokin' nonetheless and actually pulled off playing a character other than a victim for once. Arnold Vosloo, who you would know as the titular character from The Mummy franchise, played a small part as well. I'm not going to lie, he wasn't fantastic - I just wanted to type "Arnold Vosloo."

(Connelly, circa '91. What a hottie.)

Ideologically speaking, Blood Diamond had a lot to say. The film posed a lot of questions to the audience, but the most prominent was undoubtedly "How caught up in consumerism are you willing to get before you stop and think about the consequences?" It was one of those films that kind of made you ashamed to be wearing your bling when you walked out of the theater. Granted, I'm sure the filmmakers sensationalized the situation to some degree, but with the current crisis in Darfur and other African countries today, we know that some of it has to be accurate. There were a couple of lines specifically intended for the purpose of letting us think about what's going on in the world, such as when Connelly's character walked up to a refugee camp and said "This is what a million people looks like. This is the second largest refugee camp in Africa. You might see a clip or two of it on the news, in between sports and weather." There were a lot of family themed tie-ins as well, due to the story paralleling DiCaprio going after a huge 100 carat diamond and Hounsou trying to get his family back.

(Warning: Spoilers ahoy, mateys. If you haven't seen the film, skip down to the next paragraph.)

Something that particularly stood out to me was the dichotomy of the bird and the airplane. Hounsou's character, a native African and therefore a simpler man than the slick, monetarily concerned DiCaprio, looked up at one point and noticed a hawk flying overhead. This symbolized the strength and tradition of family for him, and served as a beacon to help him press on towards his family. DiCaprio, at a different time, saw an airplane in the sky. This served as a mechanical, materialistic reminder of why he was going after the diamond in the first place: to escape the war-torn land of Africa and get rich from other people's suffering. When the two men reached the top of the cliff after procuring Hounsou's son from the rebel side (which was very reminiscent of Hook and Peter Pan regaining his son's trust from the pirates), the plane returned to pick up the three and take them to their destination. Unfortunately, DiCaprio doesn't make it on the plane, but he makes a conscious decision to give up the diamond, help Connelly bring the truth to the world, and hold off the rebel forces while Hounsou and his son make it aboard the plane. All this you could see coming from a mile away, but it was still a cool image to have DiCaprio's character make his uplifting, morally conscious, "right" decision literally at the top of a mountain. Sweat and Campbell would be proud.

(End of spoilers.)

Blood Diamond was a pretty stellar flick. I'm sure it won't be in theaters for much longer, but if you can get out there and check it out, it's worth it. There are a bunch of really gorgeous sweeping shots of the jungle, the mountains, and the desert in it, so even if you don't care for the film, it's aesthetically pleasing. The only other potential downer is that the movie is about 2 and 1/2 hours long, but it did a fantastic job with suspension of disbelief, so it wasn't as bad as many of the other 2 and 1/2 hour films I've seen recently. Give it a shot. If nothing else, see it for DiCaprio's performance. Until next time...

The Future is Looking Good

This is a small apology to anyone who has checked out this blog and hoped for more than just the two reviews that I've had up for the past month or so. I've seen so many films since I've last updated, and I've ALMOST written a couple posts about a few of them. But I just couldn't seem to pull the trigger. I didn't think that I had enough to work with. But someone close to me told me something to the effect that I don't need to write a dissertation about every movie I want to write about, and you know something? She's right.

So I'm thinking of doing something innovative (well, innovative for ME, anyway). In the month of March, I'm going to try to post something on every film that I see for the whole month. That way we can get some meat to this site and have some stuff to look back on. This will also mean that there will probably be updates like twice a week, which will be good for those of you who use this as just another reason to procrastinate. This includes myself. Mainly, I'm doing it to crack down on myself for being lazy about posting recently, and more importantly, I think it'll be fun. So follow along if you're up for the challenge, friends. Until next time...