Montag's Movie Reviews

If I was to describe Sucker Punch in a single word, it would be this: disappointing. Now the reasons for my disappointment aren't as simple as "the movie was just bad." On the whole sucker punch isn't bad per se, it had a lot of potential and it just didn't deliver on that, hence the disappointment. When I first saw the trailer, I thought "hey, this looks like an interesting idea and with Zach Snyder at the helm, it should be well executed." Now I will admit that I made a mistake in assuming the movie would be good just because a director I liked was working on the film. I've been disappointed before in cases like Kurt Wimmer and the award winning stinker Ultra Violet. Admittedly, I should have taken a clue from the fact that Zach Snyder had only directed 4 full length films before working on Sucker Punch. 300 was sort of idiot proof because it had such a simple concept, although I know all the historians were booing and hissin...

Normally, I'm not a big fan of direct to DVD releases. They tend to have low production values, bad writing and sub par acting. However, every once in a while some titles will be released directly to DVD because of factors other than being crap. Sometimes a movie has a good idea, solid writing, and a strong cast, but the studio involved just feels like it doesn't appeal to a large enough audience to make a sufficient profit. Sometimes you can run into material that is either controversial or in the most rare cases, ends up with the almost superfluous NC-17 rating. As far as I know, there has not been a widely released title in theaters that held an NC-17 rating for as long as I have been alive (I could always be wrong about this, but I would need to do more digging before I found out for sure). In the case of Unthinkable, the film runs into the controversy category for reasons to be straight lined to DVD. The main premise of Unthinkable is torture. Not that torture is go...

If I've learned anything from writing in the public sphere it's that people don't look at your work the same way you do. Your masterpiece may never be regarded as such by anyone but yourself to the day you die. And if I've learned anything from writing reviews it's that people only seem to have fun when I'm busy ripping a film a new orifice. So in this vein here is another secretion from my literary bile duct concerning a direct to DVD (for reasons that will become abundantly apparent in this review) sequel to what I felt to be a reasonably good movie. To start 30 Days of Night was originally a comic book written by Steve Niles and it was really good and gathered a pretty loyal following from what I understand. Enough so that it found itself being adapted into a full blown movie under the direction of David Slade, who really hadn't done much film directing at the time and honestly had spent much more time doing music video productions (a...

It's time for a retro movie review! Ok, so lets jump into the way-back machine to about 9 years ago and take a brief look at an amazing but little known film called Equilibrium. It was the brain child of Writer/director Kurt Wimmer. Equilibrium was a brilliant action film and although it never took off in theaters, it has since become a cult classic. The film had excellent pacing, solid acting (thanks in large part to the surprisingly A-list casting), fantastic action and terrific concept design. Equilibrium was a good action film and a surprising social commentary given the fact that it was an action movie. Now lets jump back into the machine and take a look at a film just 5 years back called Ultra Violet. Odds are you never saw this movie and I'm going to encourage you to continue to not see Ultraviolet. Why you might ask? The simple answer is that Ultra Violet sucks out loud which is both sad and a little unexpected. It's sad because Wimmer has p...

Sometimes it's darkest before the dawn Ok, so the first and biggest thing that came to my mind when I saw the trailer for this movie "is this going to be like Independence Day?" Actually that's not true, the first thing that came to mind was "hey, there's Aaron Eckhart in an action movie, that should be pretty cool." I am admittedly something of a fan of Mr. Eckhart ever since he starred in a movie you may or may not have heard of called Thank you for smoking. I had the feeling from that point on that he had the chops to be a leading man in a bigger production, the opportunity just hadn't presented itself. So then Battle: Los Angeles came along and he got his chance to be the leading man in a summer blockbuster that came out..........before the beginning of spring I guess. So here's the rundown: no Battle LA is not ID4 (Independence Day). From the very beginning Battle LA is intense and dramatic, there is very little time f...