In a sense, doing this blog is a really strange thing for me. I’m more than happy to share my opinion with anyone about the music, movies, or games that I love, but I get nearly crippling anxiety when it comes to actually compelling them to sit down and experience the media I’m trying to recommend. It makes no sense, of course. Why would it matter if they like it or not, right? I mean, it’s not like it’s life or death or that they’ll stop being my friend, but I still get nervous.

The weird thing is that I don’t ever quite reach the point of comfort with even my closest friends. Recommending stuff to my brothers is usually pretty simple since I know them so well. It’s an uphill battle most of the time to even convince them that what I’m offering is worth spending time experiencing, but once they do, I’m right maybe 90% of the time about whether or not they’ll like it. There’s almost no stress involved unless you take away that family element…

If it was because of a specific, tragic event, I must have repressed it enough that I don’t even remember it, but I can honestly say that there are few things worse than that feeling you start to get in your gut when you can visibly see that they’re just really not feeling it. It was just a few weeks ago that I was in Chicago hanging out with a friend of mine who attends Northwestern.

“Duffy, you’ve got to hear these guys. This is the perfect music for warming you up in winter. They’re brilliant.”

The disc in question was Vampire Weekend’s latest, Contra. It’s this crazy indie rock album with these great worldbeat sounds. I don’t really understand why they call worldbeat worldbeat when they mean Afro-Caribbean, but that’s just me, I guess.

“Yeah, sure. Pop it in.”

It all goes south from there. Knowing myself, I know not to look directly at someone who is listening to something I’m making them listen to. It’s agonizing. The silence from her side of the car is deafening. I start counting the number of times that “Horchata” calls out that Koenig is drinking horchata in December. Her hands lower the volume knob twice during the first song. I try to shake it off.

“Eh…well I love it. It’s got a different sound to it and that’s really what attracts me to it, but I can see where you might not.”

She hadn’t even said a word, but I was defeated. The rest of the trip I let her control the radio as we alternated between country music, Lady Gaga, and Ke$ha (and the musical part of my soul died just a little bit).

I loved Sambomaster before I knew I loved Sambomaster, but when I read “changing the world in japanese“, a fantastic article about the band by tim rogers, I finally learned the band’s name and heard their best song. It’s hard to justify how much I love the band since I can’t understand a single lyric that Takashi Yamaguchi is saying, but the band’s music does mean a lot to me and I did my best to evangelize “Sono Nukumori ni Yō ga Aru” as best I could to my friends and family. Dave took to it instantly and even the difficult-to-please Duffy thought that the music was “alright”, but I was stonewalled when I sent it along to my good friend Min.

“Yeah, I just don’t like music in a language I can’t understand.”

I’m sure that part of the whole anxiety thing comes from your run-of-the-mill fear of rejection, but I think that it might also stem from the perhaps too extreme emotional connection that I make with my media. Many of my strongest memories are tied to the media I consume and I sometimes make these connections almost instantaneously.

One week before I went to Chicago, I was driving up to Ithaca with Min to meet up with some old friends. We were listening to podcasts and All Music Considered, one of NPR’s finest podcasts, came up with their Valentine’s Day episode featuring breakup songs. Each of the staff members presented a breakup song that had particular influence on their lives and one chose the Stars song “Your Ex-Lover is Dead”.

“Wow. That was amazing,” I told Min.

“Yeah. A friend of mine sent that to me in high school.”

I didn’t tell Min that the song touched me in a profound way, but I think he could tell from my reaction. If Min hadn’t been there in the car, I might have found myself crying. It just brought back so many memories about my long and damaging relationship with Ashley that it was overwhelming.

“I’m not sorry I met you
I’m not sorry it’s over
I’m not sorry there’s nothing to save”

It could be that my reluctance to share is preventing someone from learning about media that they’d never heard of before, (I think back to all the times I’ve successfully shared Arrested Development with friends), but then there are times when my nature is proven correct. I correctly balked at exposing my father to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, but he watched it anyway at the insistence of my brothers. He just didn’t get it.

There’s nothing like feeling that connection with someone over a shared experience. Having these interests in common gives us something to talk about and keeps conversation interesting. Maybe one day I’ll get over this fear of sharing. God knows I’m trying by writing this blog most days, even if I try to keep it a secret from most of the people I know.

Those two movies really couldn’t be more different, but that’s what I watched this week. A few words on each:

The buzz about The Hangover was everywhere when that movie came out. Heck, even Rotten Tomatoes was calling it fresh, but I refused to believe it. I’ve been burned by far too many mediocre, unfunny, lowest common denominator comedies in the past and I refused to believe that this was any different based on the trailers. I could not have been more wrong.

Maybe it’s just the absurdity of the situation and the characters, like how they stole a tiger from Mike Tyson or how they had a Chinese mobster in their trunk, or maybe it’s just the sharp dialogue and the brilliant interplay between the movie’s three stars who have hilarious on-screen interactions. Either way, it’s a surprisingly funny movie well worth renting.

On the other end of the spectrum we have the Studio Ghibli produced Howl’s Moving Castle. If you’ve ever seen anything by Miyazaki, you pretty much already know what to expect. Gorgeous art, sweeping landscapes, epic stories, and cute, well-acted characters. There’s a specific visual style that Ghibli employs and it fits in just right with the European setting of HMC. It’s great to see that someone like Miyazaki is able to capture the wonder of both Eastern and Western locales with such great skill. Some parts of the movie don’t make much sense (but that may have been because I was splitting my attention a bit) and it’s not Ghibli’s best work, but it’s still a fine movie well worth watching especially because of how well the character Calcifer is drawn and portrayed (he’s a cute little fire demon).

This is it, every movie that came out in 2009 (sometimes repeated more than once) to make a pretty sweet seven minute montage. Lord knows I’m a sucker for montages. Enjoy

In no particular order…

Memento (2000)

Guess what readers, this post is more or less one giant love letter to Christopher Nolan. With the exception of Insomnia, this list contains every movie the man’s directed since Memento (NOTE: Insomnia is not bad, it’s just not best of the decade caliber). Memento does what Christopher Nolan is known for doing very well. It shifts time and perspective (since each time episode is essentially a different Leonard with no memories of the previous events) just as well here as in future Nolan movies like Batman Begins and The Prestige. If you’ve never seen this crazy exercise in perception and memory, you’re doing yourself a major disservice. Go rent it.

WALL-E (2008)

Pixar really has a way of making you care about inanimate objects. Toys, cars, and now a robot. WALL-E has so much charm and character that it’s impossible not to love him (although I know people who do). In what is both a cautionary tale about waste and a love story between two robots, there are genuine characters who speak maybe three or four different lines of dialogue and get the audience to care about their plight like it was an Oscar-bait drama. Pixar’s best work to date.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

You probably didn’t see Robert Downey, Jr.’s best movie of the decade, but you can bet that this movie pushed him front and center for what you might think his best movie was (Iron Man). KKBB doesn’t seem like it should be so good. Its name is kind of generic and I don’t even remember hearing about it before it came out. In fact, I have no idea how it ended up on my movie queue, but it was an instant favorite that I had to share with my roommate. Bonus points to Val Kilmer for his brilliant acting as a sarcastic private detective.

Ghost Town (2008)

My favorite romantic comedy of the decade stars a pudgy British comedian and does not feature one kiss between the two leads. Ghost Town is different, but in all the best ways. Ricky Gervais’ character experiences the same clichéd character development that you’d expect in a role like this, but it still feels fresh thanks to his odd sense of humour. It also features a romantic rival who is not that bad a guy and is one of the few Gervais projects that doesn’t feature extended, super-awkward scenes. Definitely worth watching.

Mean Girls (2004)

I know, it seems really lame for a guy to love this movie, but Tina Fey’s writing is so sharp that this movie can’t help but be good. Sure, it meant that we had to deal with Lindsay Lohan for a long while after, but that’s mostly done with now and we can enjoy Tina and Rachel McAdams and everything else about this movie that’s so well put together. As an added bonus to me, the book the movie was based on was written based on the behavior of girls at the National Cathedral School, a rival all-girl private school to Holton-Arms, which some of my good friends attended, so I’m glad it gives them some bad press.

The Prestige (2006)

Oh? Is it time to praise Christopher Nolan again? How often do you see a movie based on a book that is far superior to its source material? This tale of dueling magicians in 19th century England is engaging and interesting to the bitter end. Most people’s only complaints with the movie have to do with its sci-fi plot twist, but I guess it’s probably because they don’t realize that this movie is not firmly based in reality until about 4/5 of the way in. Regardless, it’s a fantastic story and all of its roles are spectacularly acted. The narrative structure is also unique and interesting as the magicians invade the personal lives of their rivals through their diaries. A definite must see.

Snatch (2000)

There’s one thing that Guy Ritchie does well and it’s gangster films, but, given the choice, I’d say Snatch takes the prize for his best work. It’s funny, has great plot twists, and great, quotable characters.

Rent (2005)

Should this even count? It may come from the ’90s and portray NYC in the ’80s, but this musical made the transition to film quite nicely, preserving most of its atmosphere and earning its place as one of three musicals on this list.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Who said that fairy tales were dead in modern society? Slumdog Millionaire is just a great movie. The narrative structure that revolves around the interrogation of Jamal Malik and his answers on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? works beautifully and the trials and tribulations of the characters make for great drama. Will you be surprised by the ending of the film? Of course not. Will you be able to resist tapping your toes to the music of the closing number? Only if you lack a soul.

Batman Begins (2005)

Talk about a challenge. Batman movies were absolutely dead before Christopher Nolan’s adaptation. In fact, I’d go so far as to blame Batman and Robin (1997) for killing superhero movies until Spider-Man came around in 2002. All it took was hiring a real director and a close look at the source material to come up with this fantastic adaptation of one of the oldest superheroes in the business. Nolan was right in getting rid of the cheese factor and trying to make the character seem more realistic than he’d been portrayed before. His choice of antagonists, Scarecrow and Ra’s al Ghul, were great choices in establishing a world based more in reality than the earlier movies created by using Penguin, Mr. Freeze, and Poison Ivy and paved the way for the amazing direction he took for The Joker. Batman Begins is proof that a superhero movie can be as great as other movies.

City of God (Portuguese: Cidade de Deus) (2002)

Powerful in the same ways that Slumdog Millionaire explored its slums, City of God is unapologetic in its portrayal of favela life in Brazil. Splitting up the story into arcs and showing how one man can seize power and create hell through the eyes of an outsider proved to be an effective narrative technique. This movie is heavy, but it’s also quite good.

21 Grams (2003)

Another hyper-depressing movie, this time centered around a car crash with three fatalities and the fates of the people involved: the man who killed the three people, the wife and mother of the two boys and man who died in the crash, and the man who received a heart in a transfusion. I haven’t seen it in years, but it’s quite good (far better than Babel).

Juno (2007)

Yeah, no high school kid talks like her. Sure, this movie made being a hipster seem cool and caused your friends to act like insufferable idiots. Yes, Michael Cera has gone on to be pretty annoying since this movie and Arrested Development. Beyond all that, it’s still a funny movie with witty, fun dialogue. Bonus points awarded for having Jason Bateman in it.

Garden State (2004)

While we’re on the subject of movies that spawned annoying indie-ness, Garden State did it first back during my freshman year of college. I admit, part of why I like this movie so much has to do with my trek down to Cinemopolis in downtown Ithaca, but I actually enjoyed this movie. I might have a different opinion if I watched it now, but it always seemed to me that Zach Braff didn’t overdo it here with the pretentiousness. It’s also worth stating that Peter Sarsgaard is a fantastic actor in almost everything he does and that this movie proves that Natalie Portman is not as bad an actor as the prequels might lead you to believe.

Casino Royale (2006)

I don’t care what you say, but old-school James Bond was stupid. More of a superhero than a spy, he had ridiculous gadgets and was just plain campy. I think it took Austin Powers for me to fully understand how dumb the whole thing really was. Funny thing about Casino Royale is that its reinvention of the wheel stems instead from a return to source material. The Bond of CR is a brutal killer closer to a sociopath than the suave secret agent that we grew up with. Unfortunately, the second in this new series went and screwed it all up with poor casting and poor cinematography, but I like the direction this new Bond is going and I have high hopes for the future of the series.

Up (2009)

Pixar just keeps hitting them out of the park. WALL-E was fantastic and Up came along right after to prove that a movie for children can be just as mature as a movie for adults. I won’t spoil the plot too much, but let’s just say the opening 20 minutes or so will break your heart, if you’ve got one. A truly great cartoon about a man dealing with regret and clinging to his past, but eventually moving on.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

The best way I’ve heard this movie described is “A love story that starts after the love is gone.” ESofSM does many things well as it examines the memories of this failed relationship as they are yanked away from Jim Carrey’s mind while he struggles against that very darkness he hired them to create. Another great movie that I haven’t seen in too long. I should pull this out sometime soon.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

Since we’re talking about movies that deal with relationships ending, let’s push right on into a completely different type of movie. FSM is on my list because I think that, despite all the ridiculous exaggerations of the peripheral characters, the way that all of the actors interact with each other seems real. It’s a genuinely funny movie with good acting and hilarious situations.

Children of Men (2006)

With a plot remarkably similar to Y: The Last Man in many respects, this post-apocalyptic look at a world scarred by a lack of childbirth is just awesome to watch. Fresh off the success of Sin City, Clive Owen, this time with his natural accent, stars and kicks ass in all kinds of believable ways as he escorts the first pregnant woman in ages to a research vessel. This movie makes the list more for its look than anything else. That last scene in the refugee camp where Clive Owen is chased by the military and the terrorists is stunningly shot. The end scenes also remind me a lot of Half-Life 2. Great movie.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (2008)

Strangely enough, I’d never seen anything by Joss Whedon until I saw DHSAB. I wouldn’t quite call myself a browncoat yet, but this movie inspired me to start checking out and loving his work. Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion really need to start alongside each other in more things, because they’re dynamite on screen. This is my favorite musical of the modern age and you should watch it if you haven’t seen it.

The Dark Knight (2008)

One man is responsible for making this film truly great: Heath Ledger. His portrayal of The Joker was beyond amazing. The interrogation scene (and the rescue that follows) still gives me chills every time I watch it. Like no other man in film or comics, Ledger really understood that The Joker is a force of chaos and entropy. It really is too bad that it will never happen again due to Heath Ledger’s sad death. The Dark Knight is the greatest superhero movie of all time.

I’m a huge Christopher Nolan fan, but I somehow missed out on his third movie, Insomnia, back when it came out in 2002. Now that I’ve seen it, I can now say that I’ve seen all but one Nolan movie, the sole movie that escapes me being Following, which he made in 1998 and is way indie. So, needless to say, I’m about to tell you all about how much I enjoyed this movie and why. Turn back if that’s good enough for you and just go and rent the movie. The rest of you, spoilers are coming.

The plot revolves around LA cop Will Dormer, expertly played by Al Pacino, who is sent to Nightmute, Alaska with his partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) to investigate a murder. Why do LAPD need to be sent up to wipe up an AK mess? It seems that Dormer planted some evidence to force a conviction, causing Internal Affairs to come down on him and Hap, who presumably do this fairly regularly. Their boss sent them out there to get away from some of the heat. It also seems that Hap is on the verge of turning Dormer in to win immunity for him and his family. Things are tense. They get a lot more tense when Dormer accidentally shoots Hap in the fog and feels he has to cover it up, lest IA come down even harder on his ass.

It’s kind of a birds-eye view of the plot, but I think it’s good enough. The other main characters are played by Hilary Swank (the earnest, honest small-town cop), Maura Tierney (the proprietor of the lodge that Pacino is staying at), and Robin Williams (the murderer). There are a few other important parts, but these three round out the already brilliant cast and really contribute a lot to the movie. Robin Williams can be…overbearing in a lot of his parts, but he rightly plays this one with just the right amount of gravity. His character, Walter Finch, writes crummy detective novels and acts like you’d expect a murderer novelist living in Alaska to act. Quiet, calm, creepy, rational, and slightly manipulative. Swank’s Ellie Burr is just what you think she is. She idolizes Dormer and wants to be big time. She’s a touch too naïve. She can’t quite get the respect she deserves. Maura Tierney’s character just has a quiet dignity to her as you realize that she, too, is in Alaska to escape something, but, guess what, it’s not important what it is.

Insomnia is the movie’s title for a reason. See, in this part of Alaska, the sun never goes down during the summer months. Dormer, already having toruble sleeping due to his IA-related stress, is troubled even further by the perpetual daylight, causing him to go for six straight days without sleeping. While Nolan uses this to some effect, cinematically, I think that he could have gone much further with artistically expressing the exhaustion and stress caused by Dormer’s affliction. Some might argue that this would take away from the strength of the narrative and make it into a gimmicky movie, which is possibly why Nolan did not do this, since it immediately followed Memento.

Light plays a strong symbolic significance, as you might expect, standing in for the pervasive truth, while the fog goes and represents the lies and Dormer’s misdeeds. Since all of the movie takes place in the light, one would think that there would be no suspense or danger, but the exhaustion of Dormer is so well-represented and Alaska is so empty most of the time that there is actually an acute sense of claustrophobia in some scenes. One particular standout is when Dormer gets trapped underneath logs floating down a waterway. The logs keep him underwater and there is real fear from the lack of air combined with one of the few instances where light becomes scarce in the movie.

Nolan did a fantastic job with this movie, as he always does, but I can’t help but feel that this movie was a little too safe, especially considering some of the daring narrative choices that he’s made with Memento, The Prestige, and even The Dark Knight. I’m actually kind of surprised that this movie didn’t come before Memento, because of how normal it seems. That’s not to say that it’s bad, it’s definitely a top-notch, well-acted crime drama that’s worth watching. Rent it or buy it if you can.

It’s down to me to man the EBW Fort today, so today I think I’m gonna get in some quick words about Pixar’s latest movie, Up. There be spoilers here, so turn back if you don’t want to read them, mateys.

After seeing it on opening weekend, Eric said the following to me “Worst Pixar movie yet,” but the critics were saying something else entirely, so the stage was set. I’d have to go and find out for myself. I knew very little about the premise, just what I’d gathered from a few quick snippets on the movie screen, namely that the protagonist was some old dude and that he left in a flying house with some little boy scout kid. Sounded like a pretty thin plot.

In reality, it is a pretty thin plot. The main old dude, Carl, was a big fan of this adventurer dude, Charles Muntz, as was this girl he met in his childhood named Ellie. They plan on exploring some part of South America together, but never get the chance to in the heartbreaking opening due to various financial reasons. When Ellie dies, Carl is the stereotypical crotchety old man and he’s about to get sent to an old folk’s home when he has the brilliant idea to take his house to the skies using balloons. Russell, an Asian boy scout analog, ends up stowing away on the house by accident because he’s trying to earn his “assisting the elderly” merit badge.

What follows is partially predictable, Carl and Russell have their generational gap problems, Carl is curmudgeonly, and they find some bird that is exotic and being hunted by the villain who is, predictably, Charles Muntz. The unpredictable comes in the form of the talking dogs. Muntz has technology that allows his gigantic packs of dogs to communicate with each other, but the beauty of the innovation is that the dogs speak with about the same sophistication that you’d expect a dog to have. They’re obsessed with squirrels, loyalty to their master, and the pack mentality. The dogs, between Dug and Alpha, are also the funniest parts of the movie.

Pixar has this tremendous ability to rip your heart out of your chest, throw it on the ground, stomp on it, and then create a new, more loving heart to fit right into the old gap that they left earlier in the movie. Up gets dark, real quick, but then repairs all the damage done literally within the first fifteen minutes over the rest of the movie. While it doesn’t heal all wounds, mostly some of the ones regarding Russell’s father, it does leave you feeling happy at the end and I’d rate it fairly high on the Pixar movie scale. It’s definitely worth seeing, so go catch it while you can.

NOTE: I did not see the 3D version, so I have no input on that.

Like tons of other nerds, I went and saw the Watchmen movie last weekend. It’s a divisive movie, that’s for sure, with half of the internet loving it and half of it hating it. What’s really important though is what I think of it.

SPOILERS

I’m gonna say right off the bat that I enjoyed it and felt it was about as faithful a comic book adaptation as there could have been with a few rare changes that they made, both to the movies detriment and its enhancement. Seriously, if you didn’t turn back at the last spoiler tag, it’s gonna get worse from here on out. Don’t read if you don’t want the entire movie/book spoiled for you. The most prominent of these changes involves Ozymandias’ plot to unite the world. Instead of a giant alien squid killing millions in New York, we have staged attacks in every major world city made to look like Dr. Manhattan did it as a nuclear deterrent. While some feel that the giant squid would have looked ridiculous and detracted from the movie, my friend Lee pointed out, and I agree, that an action by Dr. Manhattan would be viewed as the actions of an American, even though he exiled himself from the planet just prior to the explosions. I’m sure they would have moved past it, but not without some considerable difficulty, since the US would have to account for what it did.

The other big change that I didn’t agree with was the, possibly unintentional, trivializing of the revelation that the Comedian was the father of the Silk Spectre. By removing more of her back story from the movie, Snyder either intentionally or unintentionally made her just a sex symbol in the movie, also a side effect of several sex scenes that were just a wee bit too long and stylized to be as understated as the ones in the book.

Not that strict adherence to the book would have unequivocally improved some of the issues. There were definitely lines in the movie that just fell flat in their delivery just cause of the different medium. Comic prose is not film and the Snyder style in the movie doesn’t allow some of the serious lines to come off as lame or trying too hard. The action scenes are over-emphasized and, as mentioned, the sex scenes go on for too long. Still, there are many bright lights in this movie:

Jeffrey Dean Morgan is amazing as The Comedian. There could not have been a more brilliant portrayal of the damaged, nihilistic, and barbaric hero. He steals almost every scene he’s in, just like the actual Comedian in the book. Also greatly cast were Nite Owl and Rorschach, both looked like they should and acted precisely like they should. Dr. Manhattan’s blue penis made plenty of great appearances as did Silk Spectre II’s rack.

Also amazing and worth noting, the opening montage during the credits.

The movie was definitely hurt by the removal of the meta-fiction materials. In fact, the general shortening of it makes me wonder if the uninitiated are able to grasp all of the nuances that are present in the book. What I don’t know is if the director’s cut that will try to include more of that will be too crowded and long. At two hours, forty-three minutes, the movie definitely is a marathon session to watch. I’ll reserve judgment on that until I get my hands on the blu-ray.

Should you watch it? Experiencing one of the most incredible stories in recent literary history is something everyone should do. See it, read it if your interest is piqued, even if you think you’re unsure about whether or not it’s worth reading. I absolutely love this book and you should still experience it in some form. Alan Moore’s work is just too good.

The Dark Knight

I saw The Dark Knight twice on Blu-Ray this week and after three viewings, this movies still undoubtably holds its own as the best movie in the summer and even fits into my top five of all time.

What Christopher Nolan did with this movie was incredible, creating a superhero movie that feels decidedly not like a superhero movie (in that nothing that happens in it is that far beyond what you’d see in any action movie), and still retains a sense of cinematic integrity and depth beyond any Batman movie before it (save, perhaps Batman Begins).

A superb piece of cinema. I cannot wait for the sequel, especially if Nolan directs again.

MGS5?

It really is a surprise, considering how much of the early life of this blog was devoted to Metal Gear Solid 4, that I haven’t mentioned this yet at all. There’s a teaser site out there about about Metal Gear hinting at some sort of new product. I would get the link for you now, but I don’t have access now, so I’ll do it later on, perhaps tomorrow. The general crux of the teaser is that it’s an all black site with an upside down exclamation point (or an ‘i’) plus an exclamation point is equal to a power sign, with the power sign part being an exclamation point. It looks something like this:

i + ! = power sign with exclamation point instead of a vertical dash

Underneath it says “A NEXT METAL GEAR IS” or some other Engrish-y sounding phrase. Speculation is rampant as to what this might be. The fact that the writing is all in green makes it look like it could be MGS4 on the Xbox 360. The ‘i’ and ‘!’ makes it look like it might be a sequel to Metal Gear Ac!d. No one knows yet and we’re all anxiously awaiting (unless the news has spread by now and I’ve missed it since I’m behind on gaming news).

A 360 announcement would be devastating to PS3 loyalists, but untimately intelligent for Konami, a company that probably loves to make money.

I’m hoping it’s for a new Metal Gear game, although I do hope that there’s no Solid Snake in it, his story is over.

I hope that those of you who read my blog could tell from the get go that Death Race would be a stinker. I mean, it’s a movie about a prison race to the death to earn your freedom, not to mention that Jason Statham, who never refuses a buck, is in it.

It’s hard to even justify writing a full-blown review on this movie. I only went because my friends asked me to and we hit up a bar to pregame before it. The movie is a stinker with brutal automotive violence being its only draw. If you REALLY like car movies and don’t mind stupid action movies, go see it, otherwise it’s a rental AT BEST, but should otherwise be avoided.

It’s the most random and hilarious plot I’ve ever heard of in recent history and I got to see it a couple of weeks ago. Tropic Thunder features a stellar comedic cast and absolutely no need to be serious at all with their subject matter.

Ben Stiller directed this movie and he also stars in it alongside big stars Jack Black and Robert Downey, Jr., each of them actors playing soldiers in this crazy movie. The plot happens to be about these actors who are starring in the movie Tropic Thunder, inspired by the war memoirs of a Vietnam veteran. They’re having a real problem finding proper motivation and so the director decides to take the advice of the veteran who wrote the book and put them in a “real” war situation to milk real performances out of them. They do actually end up in a real war situation and comedy ensues.

The show is absolutely stolen by Downey, Jr. in this movie, mainly due to his character. Downey’s character is an extreme method actor who doesn’t break character until a project has been fully completed, so in order to play this black man from the book, he has his skin dyed black and he spends most of the movie speaking in a stereotypical 60’s black man accent and style.

Other characters are moderately funny, but not as memorable nor interesting as Downey, Jr., especially Ben Stiller’s character who has really one key, classic moment involving a panda. I must take exception to the memorable comment though, since Tom Cruise has a character in the movie that will absolutely floor you with laughter, he’s so awesome.

Is Tropic Thunder worth seeing? It’s funny and the funny kind of grows the after you’ve seen the movie, but it’s ultimately pretty shallow (no kidding…it’s a comedy) and perhaps not worth paying full movie price to go see. Wait for the rental or go if someone else is offering to pay.