Another Fun Movie Review

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Like my “Glitter” review (wow, I actually wrote that), I’m going to do this review in a different format than usual. I will describe the plot and you will guess the name of the movie. Ready?

There is a young man who happens to be a farmer who does not know his father or mother. He lives in a universe with an evil empire that rules through might. The boy is restless with his life and dreams to join the resistance against the evil ruler. The boy comes into possession of something that leads him to a wise, outcast, old man who is hiding from his past. The old man tells the boy that he needs to come with old man and joy the resistance group. The boy is hesitant but after the death of his uncle he ends up leaving. Along the journey, the boy learns how to fight with a special sword and how to use a type of magic that flows through nature. The old man teaches the boy to use special skills that were taught to him when he fought in a great and legendary war. Before getting to the resistance, they stop off in an area that has danger lurking around every corner. After a run in with the some incompetent foot soldiers, they continue on their way. The evil ruler learns of the boy’s existence and his special attributes and sends his right hand man to capture the boy for his own use. The right hand man has extraordinary magic powers that make men tremble before him. He captures a princess for the rebellion who was sent for help for the rebellion. The boy learns of the princess’ capture and decides to divert from the original path to attempt a rescue. The boy meets up with an outcast ruffian who helps in the rescue in order to get payback from a past failure. The evil magician ends up killing the old man who sacrifices himself in order to protect the escape of the young boy and his new friends. They escape and while the boy is sad over his mentor’s death, the princess consoles him. The three end up making it to the rebel base but the bad guy’s army is very close on their heels. The rebellion makes ready and the boy prepares to use his abilities to take out the evil magician’s flying death vehicle. Putting his recently learned powers to the test, he ends up defeating the magician and puts a hurt on the army of the evil ruler. As the evil ruler lays out a new plan to defeat the rebellion, the young boy is heralded a hero and is honored by the rebellion.

Now, what movie am I talking about? That’s right, I’m talking about none other than that classic motion picture…

Eragon

What? Wasn’t that obvious? What did you guess? Star Wars?! Why? Only because I didn’t have to stretch too many of my explanation points for you to think that? The sad thing; there are probably more parallels that I’m just forgetting. Let’s just go through the cast of characters to give credit where credit is due.

Luke Skywalker is played by Eragon (no, not Dragon..that’d be stupid!) acted by Ed Speleers.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is played by Brom acted by Jeremy Irons.

Princess Leia is played by Arya acted by Sienna Guillory.

R2-D2 is played by Saphira (the dragon) voiced by Rachel Weisz.

Uncle Ben is played by Uncle Garrow acted by Alun Armstrong.

Han Solo is played by Murtagh acted by Garrett Hedlund.

Darth Vader is played by Durza acted by Robert Carlyle.

The Emperor is played by Galbatorix acted by John Malkovich.

And I’m not even going to try point out the comparisons with Lord Of The Rings!

Grade – D

Re-read my initial description above as fast as you can. That’s how quick this movie moves.

This movie has a lot of character it introduces but doesn’t tell us who they are. The only somewhat fleshed out character is Brom. Jeremy Irons is so cool but I feel sorry for him being in this. Ed Speleer as Eragon is abysmal. He seems like a character from the year 2000 and not from Ye Old Dragon Age ero. Murtagh is a joke character who suddenly shows up, is quickly given a reason to stay, and leaves. There is a start of a romance between Arya and Eragon but that is completely forgotten about. It’s probably because they are brother and sister. Saphira is also hurt by the hurry up storytelling. Like “Reign Of Fire”, it seems like the movie ABOUT DRAGONS, wants to show them as little as possible. This movie ends up being boring because it tries to cram so many characters and so much story into a very little time frame. The visuals aren’t horrible but again, once you focus on them you find yourself quickly thrust into another scene. I think I went cross-eyed watching this movie move so fast.

Dragon Wars - D-War - Review

Dragon Wars - D-War

Alright, now we're talking! This is a bad movie! Yep, that's right, I am giving you the grade first! Grade - F. But that's no fun to judge B movies based on the standards of good movies. How could I take such glee in watching movie greats like "Killer Klowns From Outer Space" and "They Live" and countless others that I cherish.

I guess this movie is a big hit in Korea and was writen and directed by South Korean native, Hyung-rae Shim. This movie just has two stars of interest. Jason Behr plays our hero in this flick. You might remember him from that great, yet short lived, TV show "Roswell". I really like him in the show and it's too bad we haven't seen him in anything good. This movie has has "the black guy from 'The Office'". The black guy from "The Office"'s name is Darryl Philbin and is played by Craig Robinson.

I just want to start out by saying that whatever else I write about this movie will not do it justice. This is a movie that should be experienced through viewing more than reading a review. What I describe the story as is not as complete as it should be and is not as funny to see. The "complaint" I make are not as funny to read about, but watch it with the review and checkoff what you see and find it as hilarious as I did.

Every 500 years a group of lizards, who are really gods, do battle with the help of good and bad human subjects. So far, the good guys have thwarted all attempts for the bad guys to destroy the world. However, in the modern era, the people do not believe in dragon anymore and so are unprepared. Can humanity survive? Reporter "Ethan Kendrick" (Behr) has been chosen to be the protector and savior of humanity. Actually he is being called again because in his past life he was Korean and the protector 500 years ago. He must stop the bad dragon that is coming, the Imoogi, from eating a girl who has a mysterious illness. If the bad dragon eats her, he will gain the power to destroy the world. The girl is living in LA and so the dragon starts to wreaking havoc and destruction on the city. Ethan finds Sarah (the girl with the illness played by Amanda Brooks) and tries to protect her from not only the Imoogi but its minons who have the ability to summon dinosaur like creatures (both tank like and flying types). We later find out that there is a good dragon to come and protect them. Will Ethan and Sarah save not only themselves, but all of humanity?

I will give the grade on a B movie level scale first and then I will go into all the things to look for that make this movie so fun to watch.

Grade - C+

This movie is hilarious. It is so odd that I can't believe Shim wrote this sober. Maybe it's a Korean thing like "Pom Poko" is a "Japanese thing" movie.


1) There are flashbacks within flashbacks. This is a pet peeve of mine. It's like holding up two mirrors parallel to each other and seeing how far you can look back.

2) This movie tried to inject Korean words into the dialog and uses them. I got so mixed up on what was what that I just rooted for the destruction. The way the story is written or told through narrative make it very hard to figure out which dragon was the good one and which was the bad one.

3) There are 3 people in this movie who use to be Korean/Asian in a previous life. In this life, they have acceded and attained the level of whiteness. Then it goes on to say that the higher level above whiteness is godhood. I am not lying here. If you're Korean, in your next life, you will be white. After you die when you're white, this movie teaches, that you will attain godhood. I love it! It's like when Japanese anime base all their character looks as white people and not at all like them.

4) The bad monster is a moron. He needs to eat one person in order to be the supreme ruler of the world. However he goes from traveling 100 MPH chasing the girl and when he has her cornered, he, for some odd reason, slows down and drag it out, which means that he looses his prey and the win. He will seriously corner her on top of a building and after snaking up it with no problem, he will go towards her like she's going to hurt him. Towards the end of the movie he does the same bloody thing, which means he gets stopped.

Along those same lines, any minor distraction has to be dealt with by him instead of just quickly gobbling up his prey and THEN taking care of the minor problems after he's obtained his supreme power. A car will slam into him and he will scream, sure, but the car is destroyed and is therefore no longer a threat. Just eat the girl and then take vengeance!

5) There are helicopter pilots who believe as they are about to crash into the sides of buildings are going to avoid all injury by throwing their arms animately around their face.

6) There is an amulet Ethan wears for protect. What does it do? Why does he have to wait until he's tied up to use it? It didn't really seem to protect him at all.

7) The bad human-ish guy towards the end, instead of cutting off Ethan's head and taking out the girl's protector, he touches the amulet with his sword lightly and it suddenly destroys him. What reason is given? None. I don't know why he dies by lightly touching the amulet with his sword. I also don't understand why he did it. He makes a sarcastic comment on how well it has protected Ethan. Hey buddy! Don't touch the one thing that, for some reason, makes you evaporate!

8) Why does it take till the end of the movie for the good dragon to come help? He comes for no reason either. Also, the good dragon can somehow make the girl's energy ball, that the bad dragon needs to take over the world, to come out of the girl and he can ingest it. This causes him to transform into a super-dragon.

9) The Korean name of the movie is called D-War. But the American version is called Dragon Wars or Dragon Wars- D-War. That means you have a singular and a plural in the same title! So is the movie really Dragon War or Dragon Wars?

These are just 9 funny things about this movie. Watch it and send me others to add to the list.

This movie isn't all bad either. The animation looks pretty sweet. The biggest chunk of money was given towards the animation. The dragons fighting is awesome and the military fighting the dinosaurs are great battle scenes. If they put even half the thought and talent into the actual story that they did the graphics, this wouldn't be such a bad movie. This is definitely a great B movie though!

Reign Of Fire - Review

Reign Of Fire

Now with a poster like that and a title like that you'd expect a movie with a lot of dragons and destruction with fire. Up to this point in time, the only real dragons we movie fans have had were "Dragonheart" and Bert I. Gordon's "The Magic Sword". Briney and I actually went out into the world to visit a movie establishment to see this movie in 2002. We see trailers with dragons, we see posters with dragons, we see movie clips of a dragon taking out a tank with some awesome fire breathing action. This movie looked like it could meet our dragon movie needs!

Then we watched it.

There's only really three actors of interest in this film. Gerard Butler, Christian Bale, and Matthew McConaughey.

The movie is about how a woman screws over the world and helps to bring about its destruction. At least that's what I got out of it. Quinn Abercromby (Bale) visits his mother at her tunneling job where she unleashes a single dragon back into the world. Twenty years later the world is decimated by hordes of flying beasts and only a few patches of humanity have survived. Quinn leads one of these groups. He helps keep everyone safe by implementing rules and procedures to protect them, feed them, shelter them, and help them the best way he can. Then one day, a group of crazy American soldiers show up, in Britain nonetheless, led by Denton Van Zen (McConaughey). The American take out one of the huge dragons and become heroes to everyone in the community, except Quinn who see Van Zen as a "hot dogger" and someone who upsets the apple cart and puts his people in danger. We learn that all but one of the dragons are female and if these crazy American soldiers can find the male dragon they can kill it and let nature take its course to kill the female ones. With no reproducing dragons, man, once again, retains his rightful place at the top of the food chain.

Sounds like a good enough movie, right? Wrong! These are so many problems with this movie that I left the theater wanting to do harm to myself and whoever made this movie.

First of all, what is one thing you expect your dragon movie to have in it? If you said dragons, you get a free pass NOT to watch this movie. In this movie we are introduced to really only two dragons. That is double the number in "Dragonheart" AND THERE WAS ONLY ONE IN THERE! Note to Hollywood: dragon movie elements needed - DRAGONS!

Second of all, McConaughey is a complete douche bag in this movie. He has a flack jacket half on with the sleeves cut off through the entire movie and he's nuts.

I do have to say, this is the most clothes that McConaughey has ever warn in a movie or maybe in real life.

The Americans in this movie are very stereotypically written. First of all, these American soldiers somehow wind up in Britain and are still fighting twenty years after the initial dragon showed up. Then they come into Quinn's village and just for some reason, Van Zan and Quinn get into a fight. Then Van Zan just declares that he's going to take what he wants, when he wants.

There's also a really weird "Xtreme!" sequence in this movie of some American soldiers jumping out of the air, using one person as bait, and the others using a net to down a dragon. These people don't use parachutes, but glide to the Earth with their bat-like suits. IT'S X-TREME!!!! The "X" and the exclamation points make it more X-TREME!!!

Another glaring problem I have with this movie is how the dragons reproduced. Ok, I can buy that there is only one male and all the others are females, no problem. Yet there are two glaring problems I have with this. First of all, when the movie begins, the male dragon is released and that brings about other dragons to end the world. However, with what other dragon did this male dragon reproduce with to create other dragons? Did the male dragon start out asexual and suddenly turn sexual? Second of all, if all the dragons are females, where do the male dragons come from? If female dragons die from old age and the like, do male dragons never die? Also, where did they come from to start with? These types of post-apocalyptic movies just love to give them a way out of the apocalyptic world they live in. They write something so stupid and nonsensical just so the audience knows humanity wins in the end. I'm sorry but if I had to choose between a steroid using, crazy American soldier like Van Zan to bring about stability back to the planet I'd rather serve willingly the dragons. What's that, Dragon Overlord, more fresh babies for you? Sure, after all you ate that American muscle head!

The only thing that saves the movie from absolute failure is the final battle with the male dragon. Once you see him douse some fire on some American pig dogs you find yourself rooting for the dragon! I don't think that was the director's intentions so he even failed at failing.

Grade - D-

Two things that are essential when making a dragon movie.
1) Put more DRAGONS in the movie. When I watch a dragon movie I want more than 2 frellin' dragons in it!

2) Never, ever, EVER, even if high and think to yourself "how can I kick people in the groins the hardest" should you cast Matthew McConaughey as your macho, buff "antihero".

I'm sorry to see Christian Bale in such a bad movie, but at least his bad accent doesn't match the horrible accent of McConaughey. Also, do all British people see American saviors as driving tanks and who wear uniforms without sleeves? Is that the quintessential "tough guy" look? "Grr I'm just such a bad@$$ that I got so mad at my shirt I just ripped of my frackin' sleeves!" The only saving grace this movie has is about towards the end of the movie with the military convoy and the big dragon does his stuff! Also, I have a gripe about the logics of this movie. At least I got to see them breath fire a few times; and the Star Wars play they do in the movie was pretty good.