This is suppose to be a slasher flick. I repeat, SUPPOSE to be a slasher flick. Judging from the title, one would assume that the plot would have to do with some kind of job vacancy, probably to lure unsuspecting victims to the killing fetish of a calm but psychotic slasher.

Well, had it been that, it would have been a neat plot. But no, it wasn’t like that at all. Apparently, the word ‘vacancy’ in this film is referring to the level of intelligence one needed to be able to enjoy this film. I have only 1 word for this flick – BORING.

It was about an estranged couple who got stucked in the middle of nowhere at night when their car broke down after taking a shortcut off the interstate highway. Fortunately for them (or rather, unfortunately), there was a motel nearby and they decided to spend a night after couldn’t get themselves a mechanic. But that motel, turned out to be a den of a bunch of snuff film makers – who murders and records their victims inside their motel room. Adventure ensues (and both of them miraculously survived the ordeal).

Sounds like kookily fun but trust me, it is not. I shit you not but, it is more interesting to watch Fun Song Factory on Astro Playhouse Disney Channel than this crap. The film lacked of blood, lacked of gore, lacked of serious stunts and lacked of even a decent storyline. The villains (note the ‘s’ – there were more than 1 slasher in this film) were a bunch of clumsy farts and the antagonist looked like the senile version of that lewd Lieutenant Jim Dangle from Reno 911. Heck, even the chick’s not hot. (I used to have the hots for Kate Beckinsale, but after a horrific episode of seeing her semi-exposed tits with crack marks from a forwarded email, I kinda dumped her). From what I reckoned, the budget probably did not exceed 2,000 bucks had it not for the couple of moderately famous actor/actress in it. It still sucked even if it was to be marketed as a B grade movie, that is how bad it was (for me).

My rating for this movie : 2 out of 10 – this is a slasher-flick wannabe, but far from qualified to be called one.
(I think I’m gonna start giving grades for the movies I review from now on – so let’s start with this one).

This is a very, very dark movie… and I fucking loved it. If there was to be a denominator 10 score, I would have given it a mind blowing perfect 10. It has got to be one of the best serial killer movie I’ve ever seen, even better than that “Silence of the Lambs”.

The magic of this movie, I must say, lies in the character development. Unlike many serial killer movies, the plot was told from the killer’s perspective (similar to that movie “Perfume – The Story of a Murderer” – which I equally enjoy). It makes you empathize with the killer and experience the feel of how he struggled with his overwhelming inner evil – in the form of an imaginary character named Marshall, who would appear throughout the movie as his alter ego crime partner – to not kill anymore innocent people. So, he’s like trying to change his ways, but his Marshall would to prevent him from doing that.

And Kevin Costner carried this role remarkably well. He’s sick, twisted and at the same time, calm and composed, but also lets you see the ‘behind the scenes’ of serial killer’s mind. You can put it this way, he’s like the Chili Palmer of all serial killers, life similar to Spiderman’s and with a bonus of having an intelligent sidekick named Marshall to unfuck everything for him.

The plot’s damn good, enough gore scenes, a couple of uber cool gunfight scenes, some car chases, elements of dry comedy and also a bonus tits scene (nice natural tits) – all these vital ingredients blend very nicely into a classic serial killer flick which I think, I will remember for a fucking long time.

A really must watch.

Remember the movie “Saw”? Well, this is the sequel. The return of the sociopath Jigsaw Killer. Not a new title but, I only got the chance to watch it yesterday.

The story starts with a scene of a semi naked dude waking up to find himself hooked to an iron maiden like mask on his neck. He has a busted eyeball and everything else is blur. And before he can even get his shit together to realize what is going on, a TV conveniently placed in front of him fires up and on comes the video of Jigsaw Killer in his infamous puppet form, telling him that the iron maiden mask is a time triggered device, and it’s gonna fucking snap into his face if he doesn’t unlock it with a key. Killer then gives him a hint, an x-ray picture of his skull with the key surgically buried behind his busted eyeball. Poor guy freaks out and fumbles, and finds a scalpel. He’d have to use the scalpel to gouge out his eyeball and use the key to save his own life… but failed in the end. The device snaps and we get to see blood gushing out of the mask when he lies dead on the floor…

Quite an introduction eh? Yeah, if you can remember the killer’s style, this has always been his kind of shit. Playing games of death with his devious plots and traps. But this sequel, is a far departure from the first title. This is a much better movie with better budget. You don’t get a lot of ‘much better’ sequels nowadays. Some of the notable improvements and strong points compared to the first movie:

- The location is no longer confined to only a small room and a couple of blokes with plenty of drama (which I have to admit, can be quite dull after about 20 minutes). This time, it’s inside an abandoned house ala Resident Evil (the game) style. More twisted traps and naturally, also more gore.

- They brought in some famous people to act in this movie – Mark Wahlberg. Wait a minute. That guy isn’t Mark. That guy’s somebody else that looks like Mark. Who the fuck is this guy? A little bit of googling around revealed that he’s Mark’s brother – Donnie Wahlberg. You know, the guy who used to be in the famous New Kids On the Block ~~~stepp by stepp, oooh bebehhhh~~~. Yeah it’s him. Gosh he looks like an old fart now. His acting is no less fabulous than Mark. They looked almost the same and sounded the same. Just cheaper.

- They’d added in a little bit of teaser titties in this movie, which is a good thing. Though they could use some maniac ripping off their clothes or something, but there’s no room for maniacs in this movie so… I guess it is already a boon to have them around, to dampen up a little of the bore factor in the middle of the movie. You know, sometimes you need a little distraction to keep the positive vibe going. So, there’s this small tittied braless crack whore looking chick, and another 2 with bigger ones. It was alright.

- The plot is more complex and intelligent. It revolves around the Jigsaw killer himself getting caught after the iron maiden killing in the introduction, and being confronted by Donnie Wahlberg, who plays a toughnut corrupted cop called Matthews. The killer however, managed to turn the table around and got Matthews back in the ass, by revealing to him that his son has been captured in a building somewhere laced with sarin gas. From there, the movie breaks into 2 subplots – the game of death being played by Matthews with the killer to save his son, and another one being played by Matthew’s son himself to stay alive in the spooky shit trap laden hellhole. Both plots would then merge into the grand finale, where the viewer gets to learn how each and every plan and trap that Jigsaw killer deceitfully laid beforehand, falls perfectly into place to get Matthews into the very room where the first movie took place.

Overall quite impressive, I must say. I liked every minute of it. It was as if the director took heed of my advice in my previous “Saw” review, and dump them into this sequel. Nice.

If you haven’t already watched this, go get the DVD.

I was with Emily, driving to the cinema to catch this movie today when suddenly, my tire exploded and I had to make an emergency stop by the side of the highway to check what happened. Apparently, I ran over some metal contraption that was left on the middle of the road (looked like some part from a truck). I was doing too fast and couldn’t avert it in time. That thing basically shred the fuck right through my front tire from the side and the damage was irreparable. Had to get a new set of tires for my car. After a hot sweltering episode by the highway-side, 800 over bucks poorer and a couple hours later, only then I managed to carry on with my plan to pay homage to the remake of my childhood passion. That was when I said to myself – mannnn, this better be fucking worth it.

So, was the movie ‘worth it’? Nahhhhh. Somehow, I was rather disappointed. It didn’t have the “Transformers” feel to it. I think the original el cheapo animated series was way better… or shall I say, more entertaining. This CGI packed high budget movie just didn’t cut my cake and here are the reasons why (I’m gonna list this in point form for convenience’ sake)

The bad:
a) I just fucking hate the ‘camera shaking’ effect. I notice that a lot of action movies nowadays adopt this method to give the viewer the ‘feel’ of being in the haywire situation. I don’t dig that stuff. It makes me feel giddy (like that “Blair Bitch” camcorder movie. That was so fucking stupid man). Why can’t they just make movies like how they did “Die Hard” or “Matrix”? You know, slow motion and fixed angles? Things I don’t understand.

b) I noticed that there are only a handful of robots in the whole movie. Like, 6 a side? 6 a side of good and evil, fighting each other… and you call that a ‘war’? What the fuck?? That was more like a ‘gang fight’ that took place behind alleys… If you’ve watched the 1986 “Transformers The Movie” cartoon, then you’ll what I’m talking about.

c) I think it’s plain stupid to make Optimus Prime to have a mechanical moving mouth. I mean, we’re used to see him mouthless… like a ninja or something. It’s the cool thing about him to have a ninja look. But this… Oh man, he looked so messed up with a mouth. And let’s not even ponder why would a robot need a fucking mouth to speak… (we need it for food and oral sex, none of which they can perform)

d) The idea about the robots being able to scan and transform into anything they want is a fucking joke. If they’re able to do that, then what makes them stick to the only vehicular shape that they first transformed? Like, some of the Autobots could have transformed themselves into some F-22 fighters like Starscream and have that much superiority in combat… instead of just driving around the city getting their asses creamed.

e) The plot is preposterous. Maybe I just don’t get it. But I don’t dig it. Why the coordinates on a pair of specs? Why not on a piece of rock? Why Decepticons only came at 21st century? Why not 70 years ago? It was as if the whole thing was conceived right out of a drunken night out at a pub or something. I can come up with way better plots. Eg. A genius scientist invented robots for the military force in US, a few of them went rogue and started to go around mutilating and raping women/children. The remaining good ones will uphold the justice and fuck back with them. See? It’s better.

f) The girl character in this movie is redundant (maybe she’s there for the tits. Gotta check out the uncut DVD version). It would have been better if they made a comedic sidekick for that WitWicky kid.

g) That rap Transformer song sucks donkey cock. (it’s awful)

The good
1) The initial egg beater robot plowing through US military base scene was pretty badass. I kinda liked it.

2) Bumblebee speaking through excerpts from various radio programmes scene was a classic. I liked it a lott.

3) That Pentagon signal decoding expert chick with an accent is so HOTTTTTTT. I totally dig her!

4) The popcorn was ecstatic (nothing to do with the movie)

That’s about it.

In case you’re wondering, no… I am not one of those fanatic loyalist of the series that could have biased my opinion about the movie (like some of my fucking crazy friends). In fact, I wouldn’t even call myself a ‘fan’ of “The Transformers”. Hell, I couldn’t even name more than a dozen of the robots in the series. I remember Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Megatron, the damn robot that ejects cassettes from its chest to wreak havoc (I used to know his name), Starscream (my fav), Constructioncon or something. The rest are pretty vague. Omega Supreme? Yeah.

I’m looking forward for Die Hard 4 (not sure if I’d get a chance to watch it at the cinema…)

After hearing so much hype about this movie over many months, I finally managed to lay my hands on a copy of “Apocalypto” DVD. Watched it over the weekend and guess what? It wasn’t that great after all. So much about the ‘gore factor’ and stuffs. I was expecting something deeper and more meaningful, something like “Dances With Wolves”… (because for some reason, motion pictures featuring tribals always give me an impression that they’re emotionally engaging and spiritually thought provoking…).

But not this one. This one turned out to be another hackneyed ‘Mel Gibson formula’ – you know, peace loving hero had his friends/family robbed off his life by unscrupulous villains, then made to go through an episode of death defying torment and finally made a comeback as a badass one-man-army to eradicate all his nemesis. It’s nothing new really. We have watched stories like these retold a couple times before under his sleeve. “Braveheart”. “The Patriot”.

These 3 movies seem to share the same plot. Just a theme change, like my Sony Ericsson phone theme. 2007, Mayan tribals. 2009, it’ll be about some orang asli at Cameron Highlands… fighting bigfoot at Johor perhaps. The story could have used a more intelligent plot.

And there were also a lot of flaws. Let’s not even talk about the historical accuracies. It is the scientific ones that bothered me. One of them was the sacrificial scene. In the flick, it was shown that the (male) victim was made to lay on his back on top of a granite stump-like structure, and the priest would then use a knife to disembowel the poor dude at the belly and take out his heart.

See the problem here already?

The heart is actually located at the (usually) left side of the chest. How the fuck did the priest remove a person’s heart through the belly? Well, the priest could, IF… he were to shove both his hands all the way from the belly up to the chest area… along with the crudely made big ass tribal knife… then with a precise surgical precision, severe the arteries and remove the heart out. Like Jack the Ripper multiplied by ten. But that didn’t seem to happen in the movie. The priest would just reach inside the belly, and he took out the heart as if he was picking up a Zippo lighter to burn his Cuban cigar. Oh puhleez… (but the beheading scenes were pretty cool though…)

And there’s also this part, where the hero’s pregnant wife was trapped inside a cavern-hole with his kid. At the finale, it rained heavily and it was shown that she’s about to drown until the very last minute before the hero managed to get to her in time to rescue her. I was thinking, couldn’t she just hold on to the jagged walls of the cavern and literally ‘float’ up to the surface as the water level rises? In reality, it’s very easy to do that and you don’t have to be a seasoned swimmer to figure that out. The whole thing doesn’t have to be so dramatic.

And so on.

The movie was just barely surpassing the ‘ok’ mark for me. The plot was very predictable and it wasn’t as edgy as I expected it to be. (I would have ranked this movie lower than “The Departed”). A DVD should be sufficient, but don’t expect too much out of it.