компютриGrindhouse is a throwback to a time when people enjoyed watching movies at their local theater. The idea was to give modern audiences the experience of a cheap theater show, by putting together a couple of low budget films with some funny previews of equally low budget horror movies. The end result is an action packed Planet Terror by Robert Rodriquez and the more dramatic Death Proof by Quentin Tarentino. While Planet Terror is reminiscent of a good zombie film, with plenty of action and funny character lines, Death Proof seems like a 70’s exploitation film that starts out slow and then jumps into action at the end. By far I think Planet Terror was the better film, and while it was interesting to see women talk candidly about sex in Death Proof, it was also sometimes too slow to watch after you finished watching Planet Terror.

The main star of Planet Terror is of course the voluptuous Rose McGowan, but from watching her in this film, you might not recognize her. Rodriguez is unique among directors in that he is always able to show his actresses in a totally different way. If you see Salma Hayek in Desperado or Once Upon A Time In Mexico, you can immediately see that Rodriquez shoots Salma like very few directors. He actually makes her look taller by using different angles, and for McGowan, he makes the two most noticeable parts of her appearance disappear, namely her chin’s cleft and her breasts. McGowan looks taller, leaner, and sexier in this film, and by end she kind of reminded me of Angelina Jolie.

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Will Ferrell is back as professional skater Chazz Michael Michaels in Blades of Glory. By this time, we are use to seeing Ferrell in all sorts of comedies, and while some of his characters are extremely endearing, others are quite forgettable. This time the story revolves around a couple of male skaters who are polar opposites. Chazz is the rockstar of the skating world, a sexual and emotional skater who ends up being banned from skating when he and fellow skater Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) brawl each other during medals presentation. Years later Jimmy and Chazz find out they can still compete in couples skating and are reunited with Jimmy’s old coach and the skating world is never the same.

The results are mixed. While Blades of Glory is incredibly funny in some places, it feels like a half hearted attempt to make fun of skating. The movie seems to be too superficial and does not really try to insult its main subject matter, unlike Zoolander which totally makes fun of every aspect of the male fashion world. Another missed target for the film is that unlike Ferrell’s previous film in which he played the race car driver Ricky Bobby, Blades of Glory really does not give us enough quirky characters. All of the characters in Blades of Glory are predictable stereo types, there are no interesting aspects. We don’t get much background on any character, other than a few background details like Chazz growing up in Detroit.

I think most movie fans wanted to embrace this film. People love comedies and Blades of Glory had plenty of potential, but it held back most of time and never took the time to grow any of its characters.

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Last night, I was a bit bored with regular television, and decided to browse my DVD collection and see if there was anything I could throw on the DVD player and make for an enjoyable evening. I decided to give Star Wars III another chance. I only saw the film in the theater and once, when I originally picked up the DVD months ago. Since then our television set died and we replaced it with a beautiful Sony flat screen 1080 LCD monitor, so at last I can view widescreen movies in all their glory.

It always amazes me how different films can look at home, where DVD includes more frames and makes some action sequences more fluid and natural (I’m mostly thinking of Gladiator, which has some blindingly fast action scenes), or can totally bring out how badly an action sequence actually is. In the case of Star Wars III, the DVD brings out just how cartoon like Star Wars is, from the goofy looking jumps that the Jedis make all the time, to the overly shiny exteriors of Star Wars vehicles, it all looks very unrealistic and plastic like. This is in sharp contrast to the natural looking backgrounds of The Lord of The Rings films.

But let me get to the main point, which is how incredibly bad the new Star Wars films are. Revenge of The Sith, has a pretty simple moral to its story, but it gets totally ignored by George Lucas’s terrible directing and computer generated graphics that neither add to the story nor look good. All I kept thinking as I watch Natalie Portman cry is “Don’t worry Natalie you’ll actually be in good movies after this, like V For Vendetta, your career is not over!” Lucas had a good overall idea for the new trilogy, essentially it is the Jedi who misunderstand The Force, because they have made their religion so strict and passionless, that they no longer can trust their own instincts. The Sith only understand the opposite, The Force to them can only be powerful if it is practiced and executed with emotion and sheer will. When Anakin comes along and seems to possess both emotion and The Force, both sides try to use him, but alas Anakin is unbalanced and instead of changing their religion to help the young Skywalker, the Jedi end up losing him to The Sith. Their failure ultimately is their own inability to change with The Force. Of course in the end it is Anakin’s son, Luke who is balanced enough and which The Force ultimately chooses as the true Jedi. Ultimately Star Wars is about The Force, a religion of balance that wants both discipline and passion.

The irony is that just like the Jedi Council could not foresee their own demise, Lucas’s Star Wars creation no longer holds its place as the best trilogy ever made. The current generation of kids may remember Star Wars, but they’ll also remember Lord of The Rings and The Matrix Trilogy as being far more interesting and better done films, than Revenge of The Sith.

I will give Lucas credit for having a great scene where he shows Anakin legless and on fire. That looked incredibly cool, but of course he ruins it by having Obi-Wan say how much he loved Anakin?

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This is a kid’s movie. Cage is a terrible actor and he doesn’t even try anymore. While The Hulk movie was ruined by a terrible script and a director that just didn’t get what The Hulk is really about, Ghost Rider was ruined by terrible acting, and not even Eva Mendez was able to make me care about the storyline. The irony was that the two young actors that start off the movie were ten times better and could have made for a decent film. Other than that, the CGI was cool and Ghost Rider was a badass. Overall though it was a letdown, halfway between the terrible Fantastic Four film and the pretty well made Punisher film.

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