Together with his best friend Tucker (Trevor Moore), Eugene travels to Hollywood in the hopes to win Cindi back. And thus begins a series of non-humorous events. They tried to make a funny road trip movie but this isn’t one.

If they focused more on Miss March Raquel Alessi then maybe the movie will have my full attention. But she stayed in the background and wasn’t given that much screen time. Too bad, she’s the only shining light in this movie.

Tucker Cleigh (Trevor Moore): Well the country is like, what, 10 states wide? And each state is roughly 100 miles across. So that’s like 1000 miles. We’re going about 60 miles an hour, so we should be there in like 600 minutes.

I find Trevor Moore trying hard to be funny. His lines were amateurish that you might think he’s adlibbing most of the time. The Tucker and Eugene tandem got no chemistry and it’s tedious to watch them on screen.

Miss March was like Dumb and Dumber goes to the Playboy Mansion. At least the film makers achieved something I can only dream about. But that doesn’t give them the excuse of coming up with this piece of trash. No amount of lesbian boobies will tempt me into thinking otherwise.

I previously wrote about Train Man the Series and Train Man the Book a few months ago. I completed the Densha Otoko triumvirate when I finally got the chance to watch its movie version. The movie version was a condensed version of the drama series. As expected it focused on Train Man and Hermes alone. It did have subplots featuring some of the netizens but they are not as detailed as in the series.

The story revolved around Train Man and how he overcomes his lack of social skills to win the heart of a mysterious girl he met in the train. Mysterious is what Hermes is in the movie because the character is undeveloped and if I didn’t read the book or watched the series I would conclude that their love story is unbelievable.

Most of the time the movie shows how Train Man logged into an online forum to ask for love advices. We only see Hermes whenever he meets up with her. This is one of the reasons why I thought their love story is forced. Plus in my own opinion, I find the drama series Hermes (Ito Misaki) prettier than her movie counterpart.

Train Man is one of the funniest romantic comedies I’ve seen that didn’t have to resort to toilet humor for its laughs unlike the recent Hollywood flicks. It’s an inspiring movie for all ages. If you’re new to Train Man, I suggest watching this movie first as a backgrounder, then read the book, and watch the drama series.

Trouble started when Kim asked her father if she can go to Paris with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy). He hesitantly allowed her on the conditions that she must call him every night and must tell him the address and telephone number of the place she’s staying.

It’s a tale of trusting your father’s instincts. When your father tells you not to go, you better stay or else bad things might happen. On the first day of their arrival in Paris, Kim and Amanda met Peter (Nicolas Giraud), who turns out to work for a group that victimizes young foreign girls travelling alone. The two girls got kidnapped but not before Kim managed to call her dad. Bryan’s worst fear has become a reality.

Bryan (Liam Neeson): I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

The plot was rather predictable but the pacing makes it exciting. Everything happened so fast that before you know it, the movie has already reached its end. The events might not be realistic but this is an action movie where you can rest your brain once you hit the play button.

Bryan might be retired but his skills are still there. Liam Neeson is perfect for the role. It was like watching an older Bourne. You’ll feel Bryan’s love for his daughter and at the same time he needs to find her as fast as he can if he wants to see her alive.

Oh, I almost forgot. Holly Valance is in Taken as a famous pop star. Must be hard for her to act being famous and all. I know most of you don’t even know who she is. Anyway her part in the movie is forgettable and could have been cut without sacrificing the story.

If you like a no-brainer action movie, then go watch Taken. Let your brain sleep for an hour and a half and just enjoy the show.

To start with, 2012 went for the awe factor instead of developing the different characters in the movie. Because it is a disaster movie, I expected it not to have a decent plot or award winning acting. But the dialogues were too cheesy and most of the actors, except Woody Harrelson, gave unconvincing performances.

The movie failed to make the audience sympathize with the people on the screen. There’s nothing real about the characters in 2012. They remain shallow all throughout the movie and are not interesting. The saving grace had to be Woody Harrelson’s character but he had to share screen time with a dozen other characters.

Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson): This marks the last day of the United States of America. And, by tomorrow, all of mankind. And we will be visible from the Milky Way as a tiny little puff of smoke. I’m watching the earth crumble before my eyes. The giant ash cloud created by this super-volcano will first envelop Vegas and then St. Louis and then Chicago and then, at long last, Washington, D.C. will have its lights go out!

It is given that 2012 has a lot of CGI special effects. How the hell can you destroy earth without using CGI anyway? The movie provided a lot of exciting moments but it became tiring to watch. The scenarios were too out of this world that it somewhat abused our intelligence that the main characters can survive a near miss experience one after another. I had to take a reality check to see if I was watching another Final Destination movie.

You wouldn’t feel good after watching 2012. It’s a downer of a movie and even if you got 2 ½ hours to spare, don’t watch this movie. You have been warned.

The Wrestler begins in the present with The Ram wrestling with small town promoters and being locked out of his trailer home because he’s behind on his rent. He still looks good for his age, which he has steroids to thank for. He’s well loved by his peers and the neighborhood kids treat him as a hero.

He knows he can’t wrestle forever but wrestling is the only thing he’s good at. For him, being on top of the turnbuckle is the best place in the world. But once he steps out of the ring, his life is miserable. He tried to reconcile with daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) who he left to the care of his ex-wife.

Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke): When you live hard and you play hard and burn the candle at both ends… in this life, you can lose everything you love, everything that loves you. Alot of people told me that I’d never wrestle again, they said “he’s washed up”, “he’s finished” , “he’s a loser”, “he’s all through”. You know what? The only ones gonna tell me when I’m through doing my thing, is you people here. You people here… you people here. You’re my family.

The only good thing going for him is his friendship with the not-so-young stripper Cassidy (Marisa Tomei). She knows her career will end soon but she’s ready for her retirement unlike The Ram who’s just an old wrestler who doesn’t know when to give up. Marisa Tomei was perfect for the role because even for her age, she still has a sexy body.

Being a wrestling fan I enjoyed The Wrestler. It felt real even though we all know that professional wrestling is fake. The Ram is like Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage combined. Mickey Rourke could have been a Pro-wrestler if he didn’t become an actor.

One thing I hate in The Wrestler was when The Ram called Kurt Cobain a pussy for coming along and ruining the 80s Glam Rock by introducing Grunge to the world. Then he goes and blurt out that the 90s sucked. Coming from a washed up wrestler, I know that this should not be taken seriously.

But aside from that, The Wrestler is entertaining. It did a good job of showing what people loved about this spectator sport. It is an honest view into the world of professional wrestling. Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood and Mickey Rourke gave out solid performances. People who grew out with wrestling in the 80s must watch The Wrestler.

Rankography is a new website that lets its users rank movies according to their categories. In simple terms, the website gives you the power to make your own movie lists. Users can browse through the different categories or create a new category if one is not yet available.

Some of the interesting categories in Rankography Movies are:

Vampire Movies
Index of Categories
Comedies from the 80′s

Once you’ve selected a category, you can now start adding movies to that list and arrange them in order of your liking. You can also browse through the list made by other users. You’ll be surprised how other people ranked your favorite movies. You can view my Comedies from the 80s list here.

Rankography Movies is a great site for movie reviewers like me. It gives its users a tool to promote their own websites. User profiles are displayed on the home page. Browsing through other people’s lists can help you discover new movies that you haven’t seen before.

Be sure to check Rankography Movies today. This website is an essential tool for movie lovers like me. You’ll find new movies, rank your favorites, browse through interesting categories, or make your own unique list. You can find me at Rankography Movies: rebzombie reviews @ Rankography Movies

The Plot
What plot? Six year olds can make a more coherent story than High Kick Girl. Rina Takeda is the high kicking Kei Tsuchiya, a gifted student of Karate master Yoshiaki Matsumura (Tatsuya Naka). Then some kind of bad organization is trying to recruit her but it turns out her master was once part of it and the boss is using her to get to her master. Other than that, most of the movie didn’t make any sense to me.

The Action
High Kick Girl’s action sequences are boring. It used the slow motion effect often that I thought I’m watching an instructional video rather than an action movie. Plus the antagonists go down easily. You can’t feel any conflict at all. This might be the first time that I felt sleepy with a fight scene.

The Performance
The people in High Kick Girl don’t deserve to be called actors at all and this includes the main actress Rina Takeda. She should be fed with some Lucky Charms for breakfast because she was charmless. Well everyone in this movie is stoic. Well the Japanese watch stones during their break time so they might find this entertaining but I don’t!

The End
No more of this punishment please. I don’t want a High Kick Girl 2.

If you think you already know the story after watching the trailer, think again especially not when you got Sabretooth as partner. Liev Schreiber play Ted Winter, Salt’s partner and closest friend. He tried to convince the agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejofor) that Salt’s innocent. Peabody didn’t buy his plea or Winter just didn’t try hard enough.

The action sequences in Salt were well choreographed but it slightly came off as a Bourne rip-off with hints of MacGyver and Jackie Chan thrown in. It has ridiculous car chases, huge explosions, and an Angelina Jolie kicking everyone’s ass.

Salt has twists that make its plot look like a pretzel. So while on the run, she managed to assassinate the Russian president to get Orlov’s trust again. When she gets to Orlov’s lair, he kills her husband. After learning Orlov’s plan, it’s now Kill Bill time and she managed to kill a boatload of Russian spies including Orlov.

The final mission is to use the US nukes to create chaos and kill the US president after launching the nukes. And it turns out that she’s not the only Russian sleeper in the CIA. Then news of the Russain president coming out of his coma induced by Salt’s poison was shown on the screen.

So it turned out that Salt is really a Russian-spy-turned-CIA-agent-turned-Russian-spy-turned-rogue-independent-operative. She saved the day, killed Winter and escaped by jumping from an FBI helicopter into the Potomac River with the help of Peabody.

After Inception, Salt is a walk in the park. Even with all the twists and turns of the story, the audience didn’t have a hard time to guess who the bad guys are. It is still entertaining and Angelina Jolie didn’t have to show skin to make you watch this movie.

Coffee House is a Korean romantic comedy series about a famous novelist Lee Jin-soo (Kang Ji-hwan) and his relationship with the Seo Eun-yeong (Park Si-yeon), who is the CEO of the publishing company. They are friends since college. They looked like they are meant for each other but fate has other plans for them.

If you think that it’s a predictable romantic comedy, it’s not. Eun-yeong’s ex-boyfriend Han Ji-won (Jeong Woong-in) is doing all it takes to win her back. Jin-soo on the other hand hired Kang Seung-yeon (Ham Eun-jung of T-ara) and she developed a crush on her boss. Seung-yeon can’t see that Kim Dong-wook (Park Jae-jeong), the manager of the café downstairs, had his eyes on her.

Si-yeon did a good job in Coffee House even though you can see her limp in some of the scenes. Plus she is my eye-candy of the series. She’s perfect from every angle. Not that I’m saying that T-ara’s Eun-jung is not pretty. She is but Si-yeon is just perfect. And did I already say that Si-yeon is perfect?

From Page 1 to Page 18, Coffee House was unpredictable. You wouldn’t know who will end up with who until the final episode. Plus every episode has their funny moments, which makes it a very entertaining series.

PS

Coffee House is in Korea and not in Galapagos Island. Seung-yeon’s novel is set on the island and she is seen going there alone in the ending. Yes, writer ended up with the CEO.

The movie is about a veteran investigative reporter, Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe), who tried and succeeded in uncovering the truth behind the suicide of the mistress of his friend, Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck). Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) is an internet blogger hired by McAffrey’s boss (Helen Mirren) and asked McAffrey to show her the ropes. As they dug deeper into the apparent suicide, they discover facts that led them to believe that it was murder instead.

State of Play has some political overtones and it made the movie more interesting. It also turned out that McAffrey is close not only with the congressman but also with his wife Anne (Robin Wright), who was his girlfriend during their college. But she got nothing to do with the murder so let’s forget about her for a while.

Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe): The newspaper article he types reads: Three Deaths Tied to Gulf War Army Associate New evidence links Rep. Stephen Collins with the suspect in the killings of three people, including Sonia baker, the congressman’s political researcher. When confronted by the Washington Globe with information tying him to suspect Robert Bingham, Collins admitted he had directed his former Army associate to follow Baker after learning that she was secretly on the payroll of military contractor PointCorp. Collins, the chairman of the committee investigating PointCorp’s government deals, said he authorized Bingham only “to observe” Baker. He said he never intended for her to be harmed. “He just did it,” Collins said of Bingham. “He seemed more upset about what she was doing than I was.” When police went to arrest Bingham at his Northern Virginia apartment last night, he was found dead, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A rifle was next to his body. Investigators said they believe Bingham pushed Baker to her death under a Metro train earlier this week and later shot two witnesses, Deshaun Stagg and Vernon Sando, to silence them.

Russell Crowe is a guy I always love to hate but he did a pretty decent job in State of Play. Ben Affleck was perfect as a congressman with big political aspiration. Rachel McAdams held her ground against the two male leads. Jason Bateman played a pivotal role as a big shot PR guy that knew too much.

State of Play is one of the suspenseful thrillers I’ve seen in recent times. It provided all the right twists that made it unpredictable. With all the political scandals we read in the news these days, State of Play provides a very frightful scenario.