Midnight Movie Hour

MMH 018 - back in action

2011-03-29T10:45:00.001-07:00

MMH 017 - What'd up G?

2011-03-29T10:44:00.000-07:00

MMH 016 - 02/16/2011

2011-03-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

MMH 014 - 02/09/2011

2011-03-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

February 2nd's episode was lost in a terrible knife fight

MMH 13: Back in the USSR

2011-03-20T17:54:00.001-07:00

After months of waiting, we are back online. Enjoy!

MMH 12: Andy, Andrew, and Charlie

2011-01-24T02:01:00.001-08:00

First show of 2011.

The Fighter

2010-12-24T23:06:00.001-08:00

I think the title of this movie should have been The Fighters. Fighting doesn't have to be merely physical, and every character in the movie fights for something. Yes, the emphasis is supposed to be on Wahlberg's Mickey Ward, but the movie focuses much more on his family than it does on him.

This is a movie about a lot of things, but mostly about respecting yourself and the people you love. At the onset of the movie, Mickey doesn't have a very good sense of himself. He's grown up with 7 sisters and an older brother Dicky (a phenomenal Christian Bale) who is "The Pride of Lowell." Mickey has been overshadowed his entire life by the rest of his family and is just trying to keep afloat. Dicky is his trainer, but he's become addicted to crack and isn't very reliable. Mickey's mother helps get Mickey into fights, but they aren't fair and Mickey never stands a chance. He fights anyway, because his family needs the money, but he never sticks up for himself. He lets his family talk him into anything and he suffers for it.

Mickey is offered a job to get paid year round to train in Las Vegas, but he doesn't take it because his family tells him he can't. He has to stay with his family. Opportunity after opportunity passes him by, and he never sticks up for himself.

Enter Charlene (a brilliant Amy Adams). She's sassy, she's independent, and she's exactly what Mickey needs. When Mickey won't speak his mind in front of his family, Charlene says what he won't. Even when all 7 of his sisters and his mom are against him, Charlene explains exactly how Mickey feels and tells them all to screw themselves.

The family dynamic in this film is fascinating. It's easy to see how Mickey could have gotten lost in the shuffle. Even when he finally gets his chance at the title, the family's attention is on who gets to be the trainer, and who gets to be in the ring. It's a constant power struggle. I won't say anything here, but there a quite a few powerful character moments in the movie that nearly had me in tears. These aren't actors in a film, these are real people you're watching, and it's obvious David O. Russel knows what he's doing as a director. When seeing Amy Adams standing outside of a door can bring a tear to my eye, you've done something very right.

8/10

Cyrus

2010-12-24T23:05:00.001-08:00

Up until we meet Cyrus, this is a pretty good movie. It begins as the tale of a terribly depressed man named John who still hasn't gotten over his divorce from his wife seven years prior. She's getting remarried and invites him to the engagement party where (she hopes) he can meet a new woman. As luck would have it, he meets a quirky, awesome woman named Molly and even after embarrassing himself completely, manages to take her home.

Things aren't as they seem, and she leaves before he wakes up, leaving a note with her number on it. He calls, and she again comes over to his place, and again tries to leave in the early hours of the morning. "Are you married?" John asks. Negatory. "Are you a secret agent?" Also no. So what could it be? Rather than wait until the relationship develops, John decides to be proactive (and creepy) and follow Molly home. There, he falls asleep in his car and in the morning, investigates the house. Cyrus, Molly's son, comes out to say hello and invites John inside.

From here, the movie falls apart. There are things that I as a viewer need to know about these characters before I can believe the world that I'm thrust into as soon as Cyrus enters the picture. Cyrus and Molly have an extremely creepy relationship. Cyrus walks in on his mother taking a shower and this isn't thought of as weird. They wrestle together in the park. They have no other friends apart from each other. It's odd, and it's more odd that Molly would simply accept that John is inside her house suddenly when she never invited him over or told him where she lived. Instead, she simply invites him to stay for dinner, where he is questioned by Cyrus. Cyrus seems to like him, and Molly definitely likes him.

Again, things aren't as they seem, and it turns out Cyrus is a manipulative creep who is trying to keep anyone and everyone away from his mother. This I believe. Molly's interest in John I do not. She seems to like that he's very open and honest, but sometimes his honesty makes her nervous, like when he tells Cyrus that he's had sex with Molly. Which doesn't seem like something that would upset her, especially since she lets Cyrus into the bathroom while she's showering. The characterizations don't make sense, and the logic of the movie is completely unbelievable.

Later, the movie gets absurd when John and Cyrus declare war on each other for Molly's affection. It seems to me that someone would have sat down and decided it was time to have a TALK about all of this before things got out of hand. But rather than talk about anything that matters, about anyone's feelings, things just get goofy for the sake of the movie. Every conversation that needs to happen is either breezed over in odd "indie" montages or completely skipped. Thus, the characters become two-dimensional and I'm no longer interested in what happens.

Still, if you aren't looking for a movie to be completely believable, there's a few good laughs and the story is at the very least interesting. If you're looking for a great work of art of a great comedy, this isn't what you're looking for.

5/10

Black Swan

2010-12-24T23:04:00.001-08:00

Darren Aronofsky has done it again. I'm sure hundreds of reviews of this movie have started out with exactly this line, but it needs to be said. This film does exactly what it sets out to and every player involved in making it should be proud.

This is a movie about guilt, wasted potential, envy, and madness. Nina (Portman) strives to be perfect in every one of her ballet maneuvers. She practices harder than anyone else, longer than anyone else. Because of this, the other dancers don't like her. Her entire life is ballet. She wakes up preparing for practice and practices until she goes home to sleep. She has no life outside of her home or the ballet theater. At home, her mother fuels Nina's desire to be perfect. Nina's mother used to perform ballet as well, but she never reached her full potential because she had Nina. This is never explicitly stated in the movie, but it's a strength of the movie to say that this fact is quite clear. This, of course, adds to Nina's guilt. She HAS to be perfect to be what her mother wasn't able to because of her.

Vincent Cassel plays the dance instructor who cast Nina in the lead role in his upcoming rendition of Swan Lake. He has a history of sexual scandal amongst the lead performer in his ballets. It is obvious that he intends to seduce Nina as well, but her innocence makes this difficult. In casting Nina in the role of both the white and black swan, he hopes to loosen her up and free her dark side. He spends hours training with Nina, telling her that she is too stiff, too rigid, that she should let go.

Mila Kunis plays Lily, a ballet dancer who flies in to replace Beth (Winona Ryder), the former star of the ballet company, who is retiring before the performance of Swan Lake. Lily perfectly embodies the black swan. Her dancing is imperfect, but she moves with grace and style and sexiness so that the imperfections don't matter. Nina needs to become like Lily if she wants to give a good performance.

The story is simple, but the depth it goes into is amazing. Each character is astoundingly well defined and every shot in the film is designed to give us some piece of information about one of them. The movie depicts a girl descending into madness in a way that allows the viewer not to truly realize what's going on. We understand her situation, we empathize with her, and we almost believe that were we in her shoes, we would do the same thing. Insanity is relative, and we see everything through Nina's eyes.

It's a phenomenal piece of filmmaking, and I can't wait to see what Aronofsky does with The Wolverine.

10/10

MMH 010

2010-12-13T22:01:00.003-08:00

Other possible titles for episode 010 include...

Cocaine and Escorts
Next Week: Leonard Nimoy
Somehow, This is our Christmas Episode
Alan Keller
Exploding Midgets
What Am I Supposed to Say about Seven?
In Need of Editing
Suing Mexico
The Irreversible Brown Note
Nude Wrestling... High
Interrupting Andy
Internet Radio History
This is Depressing
The Accidental Unknown Baby Couple
Facial Structure
Not Glenn Beck
Killing Shia LaBeouf
Adding Emphasis
Christmas Jeer
The Chris is Back
God Dust
Give or Take... Talent

MMH 010: Working Title

2010-12-13T17:07:00.000-08:00

Rather than summarizing what happened in this show, I will now list potential titles we had for this episode:

Unstoppable: Train Wreck Part DUH
Blame It On Chris
Can't Blame That On Technical Difficulties
Dubstep Much? Womp Womp Womp Womp Womp Womp Womp Womp Womp Womp Womp Womp Womp Womp Womp
That One Show After Nick At Night
Chris Ballard... More like Chris Ball Hard
Sick Deadlifts
Asking Your Parents Why A Pregnant 16 Year Old Is In The Box
"We have mentioned sooo many things"
Lil' Jon ft. Julianne Moore and Allen Keller

MMH 009: Midnight Meat Train

2010-12-09T18:55:00.000-08:00

Our good friend Chris stops by and chats about the block buster smash "Midnight Meat Train" and much much more!

Listen to this episode!

MMH 008: Drink Pepsi

2010-11-25T12:09:00.000-08:00

Action packed episode where Justin and Andrew talk about some newly leaked movie trailers, Paris I Love You, Four Lions, Unstoppable, Daniel Tosh, and much much more.

MMH 007: but um... train wreck??

2010-11-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

Andrew does a solo show...

He obviously didn't prepare

Summary: Conan, Jimmy Fallon, Top Ten Most Torrented Movies, and much much more!

Due Date Review

2010-11-16T08:52:00.001-08:00

Due Date is a road comedy. It's episodic by nature, so we get scene after scene of things going terribly wrong and the humor comes from the characters dealing with the situation. Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) has some anger issues. He's jealous, sarcastic, and kind of an ass. He does, however, really care about his wife and his unborn child. He is determined to make it home in time for the birth to be with his wife. Unfortunately, Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis) steps into his life. Ethan Tremblay is an idiot. His father has just died, and he's on his way to L.A. to pursue an acting career, hopefully on something similar to his favorite show, "Two and a Half Men."

Due to a series of mishaps, the only way Peter can get to L.A. is to ride along with Ethan. I won't spoil these, because they're quite entertaining and Galifianakis as an idiot is always good for a laugh.

Now it's time for the question: Is this movie funny? It's not funny in the sense that the Hangover was funny, where the characters are funny and their friendship allows us to feel for their predicament. Here, it's funny because of the blatant hatred that Peter has for Ethan, and the fact that Ethan can't see it at all. It's a constant bickering, and a slow boiling rage that builds up in Peter for the inevitable explosion. And there are quite a few explosions of anger from Peter in the film. A lot of the time, it comes across as a little too harsh, but then again, Ethan is REALLY messing things up. I might react the same way. We all would, which is I think why people don't find the movie very funny. These are serious situations and the comedy is coming from a very real place, that of pain and loneliness. However, I think that works to the movie's benefit, and provides a way for these characters to coexist in the real world and make it believable.

I had a few problems with the movie, basically that the main characters never get into any trouble for some of their actions. The characters should probably be dead. Also, they should be in jail. By the end of the movie, neither of these are true. When a cop car was stolen in The Hangover, the characters got arrested and talked their way out of it. When a cop car is stolen in this movie, there are no ramifications whatsoever. I was upset by this.

If you can look past a few glaring plot holes in the movie's logic, it's actually a pretty entertaining ride, and both Downey and Galifianakis are on top of their game here. You could certainly do worse.

7/10

Four Lions Review

2010-11-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

Four Lions is of the funniest movies I've seen in ages. It's also one of the scariest. It's a satire in the most extreme, as it's asking us to follow and sympathize with characters who are terrorists. The movie basically asks, what kind of person would blow himself up in the name of god? And the answer that the movie comes up with is: someone incredibly stupid.

All four of these characters are dumb. Really, really dumb. In the opening scene, the characters are filming a threatening video, but can't determine the best way to sit or hold their guns to make themselves seem threatening. The scene is both hilarious and terrifying. If these are the types of people who are blowing themselves up, there's really nothing we can do to stop them, because logic isn't something they can understand.

The movie asks the audience to do something difficult, or impossible, which is to sympathize with terrorists. What is redeemable about these characters? The answer is that they very strongly believe in their cause. It may not make sense to any rational person, but to them, blowing themselves up is their sole purpose in life. They're just like the rest of us, in that they want to make a difference and in the end, make their lives something meaningful. The problem is that they don't understand that what they're doing won't be accomplishing their goal.

The humor in this movie comes entirely from the characters' stupidity and the mishaps they fall into in their journey. One character dies accidentally and the other characters argue about whether or not his death was meaningful. "No," says one, "because he didn't kill any infidels." "But he died while training for our cause, so he's a martyr." "He can't be a martyr, he killed a sheep!" And this raises the question again, why are they blowing themselves up?

Of course, in the end, without spoiling anything, they decide to go through with their plans. The scene is hilarious and heartbreaking, and that's all I can say about it. And the most interesting thing about this movie is that it actually makes the scene heartbreaking. These characters really don't understand why they're doing this, and it's this final realization that causes the emotion. One character is holding a Kebob shop ransom, and when the interrogator asks what his plans are, he responds that he doesn't actually have any.

All I can say is that this is one of the most important and hilarious satires that I've ever seen. I implore everyone to seek this movie out and watch it, because it's going to stay with you.

9/10

MMH 006: Justin vs Justin

2010-11-08T15:12:00.000-08:00

Andrew had to step out this episode. Justin invited his good friend Justin D. to join him in friendly movie banter.

MMH 005: Toy Story to Fargo

2010-11-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

Last weeks episode is up. Don't forget to find us on itunes.

Last week we had rediculious tangents from get him to the greek, wedding crashers, eurotrip, toy story, the player, fargo. We also list our top 20 horror films.

Check it.

MMH 004: We have a blog!

2010-10-24T21:55:00.000-07:00

Hit play for last weeks episode. iTunes podcast and a lot of other awesome things in the works.

check back later for some fresh updates.

Also the design is under construction.