Review of "Pacific Rim" Item 2 - Watch 6 3 movies at the theater

Pacific Rim/Jaws by Matthew Ferguson, this mash up is much better than the movie

I am on a roll recently for consuming bad media. I actually had highish hopes for this movie, I didn't expect it to reinvent the wheel or anything, but I respect Guillermo del Toro and figured he had something in mind. That something ended up being every summer action movie ever. He hit every single cliche that you can think of. Impassioned eleventh hour speech by the elder statesman? Heroic sacrifice? Protagonist's rival comes to begrudgingly respect him? Generically handsome lead ends up with the only female character given more than two lines? Yup, "Pacific Rim" ticks all the boxes essential to make a boring actioner.

And it's not just the writing that puts you to sleep; Idris Elba, who is usually such a powerful actor, sleepwalks through the entire film. Charlie Day and Ron Perlman do their best to inject some sense of life into this film, but they aren't enough. It was beautifully shot and there were some great props, which is no less than should be expected of Del Toro, but it lacked the practical special effects that made "Pan's Labyrinth" so amazing and "Hellboy" so detailed. I will rescind my previous assertion that it was a bad movie, it was just a rehash of something that we should all be tired of by now.

Review of "Django Unchained" Item 2 - Watch 6 5 movies at the theater

Django by *aerettberg

I went to "Django Unchained" with two friends and on leaving the theater I said that it was Quentin Tarantino's best film since "Jackie Brown". At that time I couldn't honestly remember exactly how many films he'd directed in the interim between "Jackie Brown," but it felt like it must have been a lot in those 15 years.

Four full films. He's directed four films in that time. So why did it feel like I'd seen so many pictures by him? For me, I think it has to do with the fact that his last few films have been... large. I've said in the past that Tarantino is the Girl Talk of directors, taking a sample of this western and putting it over that samurai film and speeding up the results. That isn't meant to be a slight. I like Girl Talk; All Day is one of my favorite albums to listen to when I need that little extra kick at the end of a long run. But the result with films like "Kill Bill" and even more so with "Inglorious Basterds" was to just tire me out. Knowing that every scene is so carefully composed to evoke something from another film left me saying "I get it, you're a smart guy who has seen more movies than most people ever will. Show me something from you."

That's a big part of why "Django" works so well. It both is and isn't a reboot of a franchise that most people have never heard of (but really should watch). It's also an homage to those same spaghetti westerns without the overt shot for shot remake of "Fistful of Dynamite"/"Duck You Sucker" (whichever title you prefer) being forced down our throat. And it's good revenge western without a harmonica playing badass awkwardly shoehorned in. And it's a ret-con origin for Shaft (or rather his great-grandparents), which is simultaneously hilarious and awesome.

I'm glad that I got to see this movie on the big screen, one of the things I mentioned to my friends after leaving was that the way I felt then must have been the way my dad felt when he first saw "Fistful of Dollars," like I'd just witnessed the start of something. Because this isn't just the best Tarantino film in 15 years, this might also be the best western made in the last two decades. Hopefully, as with "Dollars," it's just the beginning of a movement.