Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Movie Tuesday - "Taxi Driver" and "Ghost Rider"

It's Tuesday, friends, and that can only mean one thing....

OK, it can mean a great many things, but what it means for The Daily Blog of the Day™ is

It's Time for the Weekly Haiku Movie Review™ of the Week!

This week's movies have a vehicular theme. We will take a look at a Ghost Rider, and a Taxi Driver.

Ghost Rider - 3 out of 6 stars

This movie is exactly what you would expect from its genre. It is about two hours of really killer special effects, fight scenes, stunts, Bravado, and stuff blowing up real cool! The effects were awfully good, though. I had seen still photos of the rider, and I thought it looked a little stupid, but the motion really works, and the flame looks real enough to melt the camera. The plot is ridiculous and simplistic, but you don't watch Ghost Rider to be intellectually challenged, now do ya'?

While Nicholas Cage was a bizzare choice to play Johnny Blaze (yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, the guy whose flesh turns into fire at night is named "Johnny Blaze". "Johnny Storm" was already taken by the other guy who turns into fire and does motorcycle stunts) I thought that the young man who played Johnny for the first twenty minutes of the movie was really good. I was a little disappointed to see Nick Cage take over. Between having his character played by a young actor, and then later by a CGI construct, Mr. Cage was lucky to get any screentime at all.

------- Haiku Movie Review™ -------
To Make a Hero
Out of the Devil's Minion
Takes some real doing.
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If you want some mindless superhero action, or if, like me, you are compelled to see every Marvel Comics-based movie that comes out, then pick it up. And watch it on the biggest Hi-Definition Screen you can find, because those effects are pretty freakin' cool!




Taxi Driver - 1 out of 6 stars.

I expected to have one good movie and one bad movie to review this week. I didn't expect the Martin Scorsese Classic, Taxi Driver, to be the bad one. This movie is about a wierdo lonely guy named Travis Bickle who keeps to himself, doesn't say much of nothing to nobody, and has a real bad case of insomnia. If only Travis had been able to watch the movie Taxi Driver, his insomnia would have been cured.

The movie, by modern standards, sucks a lot. The saxophone soundtrack alone was enough to make me want to put my foot through the TV and then go watch some paint drying to alleviate the boredom. I like M.Knight Shyamalan's movies, and Christopher Nolan's movies, where, when something is shown on the screen, you know it has a purpose within the plot and narrative structure. You might not know what it's meaning is, but you know that the stuff you are seeing on the screen will eventually make sense; that it will all "tie together" later on down the line. Taxi Driver just shows you a lot of stuff. Some of it has to do with the plot, and with character development, but some of it is just some stuff we decided to throw in, because we were stoned while we edited, and we thought that it was kinda' groovy.

------- Haiku Movie Review™ -------
Finally! A Film
With All the Excitement of
An Hours-Long Cab Ride
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If you want to see what New York looked like in 1974, then watch Taxi Driver, and fast forward through most of it. If you, like me, don't care what New York Looked like in 1974, then pass on it all together.

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