Daybreakers (3.5/5)

Daybreakers is a 2009 vampire themed action horror starring Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, and Claudia Karvan. Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘Twilight has forever ruined vampires for me, they are so overdone’, and in general I agree, but I have to make an exception for this movie; it doesn’t conform to any of the traditional vampire story lines and really the vampires are more a vessel for a delivering a plot line more befitting an action movie than anything else.

According to the mythos of Daybreakers, in the year 2009 a mysterious plague spread throughout the world transforming most its population into vampires. Over the following years, society adapted to the change by making their cities, cars and homes vampire friendly, i.e. sun proof, and hunting down, capturing, and farming any remaining humans for blood to be sold to the public. The movie itself is set ten years after the plague in 2019 when the world is undergoing a widespread blood shortage causing vampires to starve and devolve into primitive, mutated, violent creatures known as sub-siders who attack and feed off other vampires. The largest blood-farming corporation, Bromley Marks, employs hematologists, including our hero Edward Dalton (Hawke), to find a blood substitute before both humans and vampires die out completely. Just as the sub-sider problem turns into an epidemic Edward encounters two humans, Audrey Bennet (Karvan) and Lionel “Elvis” Cormac (Dafoe), who claim to have found a cure to vampirism. Naturally, this being Hollywood, the Bromley Marks has ulterior motives that aren’t in humanities best interest and therefore, with the help of the military, attempt to hunt down Ed and his human friends and violent, bloody wackiness ensues.

Daybreakers is a visually appealing film with an imaginative premise and plot-line the runs the gambit from action to dystopian “Big Brother” futurism to zombie-esque horror all with a couple decent plot twists thrown in. if one wished to look hard at the film they might find a few inaccuracies like the unrealistic amount of blood spatter the film makers manage to get out of one exploding corpse, but, honestly, if you’re the sort of person who is going to take serious issue with the realism of a vampire movie you should probably stop reading this right now and go get a life. Ultimately Daybreakers is a fun, clever, and largely unappreciated little action horror film and if you like gratuitous violence, spontaneous human (or in this case, vampire) combustion, and blood-suckers you, like me, will love this movie.

Daybreakers IMDb page 

Romeo & Juliet (yeah its a play and i'm breaking the rules already, sue me) 1/5

Note: I realize this is kind of a long review, but count yourselves lucky, this is an abridged version my original was nearly 5 pages long. Also this gets a 1 star out of 5 simply because I couldn’t find a JPEG online for 0 stars.

I hate Romeo & Juliet, I know I’m one of about five people in the country I who feel this way, but seriously the thing is just a steaming pile of crap! Now don’t get me wrong I love Shakespeare, Hamlet is probably the best tragedy of all time, but I honestly believe he was higher than a 60s Berkeley student when he wrote Romeo & Juliet. Furthermore, the play’s plot is the kind angsty teen drama bull one would expect from Stephanie Meyers, not the “Immortal Bard”

First on my list of things I hate about Romeo & Juliet is its complete lack of realism. Let’s look at the major plot defects: first we have two idiotic 13 year old kids who think hormones and teenage angst is equivalent to love, a tragic ending caused by a monk and a plague placed with the kind of convenience one usually only see in 90s sitcoms, and, to top it all off, the Capulets and Montagues, who have loathed each other for generations, suddenly decide to be friends in a bull-shit kum ba yah ending that even Disney wouldn’t expect their audience to swallow.

Problem number two, in any Shakespeare play the audience can predict by the end of the first act if it’s a comedy or a tragedy because Shakespeare has a strict storytelling pattern;  Romeo & Juliet, however, breaks the pattern. Judging by the first two and half acts Romeo & Juliet should be a comedy, but just as the audience is preparing for a lovely ending where in everyone gets married and lives happily ever after, the play takes a hard left turn into death-ville.

Finally, Romeo & Juliet is Shakespeare’s most famous play which is an insult to all his other actually good plays. The fact that every American school kid is forced to read Romeo & Juliet is most likely directly responsible for America’s lack of interest in Shakespeare; honestly, if I hadn’t already seen and read several other Shakespeare plays before reading Romeo & Juliet, I would’ve written off good old Billy completely. So boys and girls if you haven’t read Edward & Be—I mean Romeo & Juliet yet, don’t and if you have, try to erase it from your memory and replace it with The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, or one of Shakespeare’s other actually decent plays.

So I Married an Axe Murderer (1/5)

Awhile ago i was severely bored and couldn't sleep so I watched 'So I Married an Axe Murderer' (1993) on Netflix, a decision which i deeply regret. 'So I Married an Axe Murderer' is a 90's comedy, and I use the term comedy very liberally here, starring Mike Meyers; the basic premise is that Meyers' character starts dating a butcher, played by Nancy Travis, and begins to suspect that she is a serial killer known for marrying men and then killing them on their honeymoons. It's actually not a half bad premise and could have been a decent movie Meyers, however, seems bent on turning what should have been a dark comedy into an immature, childish, slapstick level disaster.
Now don't get me wrong, I love some good slapstick, but it simply doesn't belong in this sort of movie and even if you were to transpose Meyers' performance to a kids movie where it belongs it would still be mediocre at best. Even worse than the comedy, again used liberally, itself is the fact that every time he tells a joke, Meyers gets this idiotic look on his face and goes in cartoon voice as if to say "I just told a joke, can ya tell?! Do ya get it?!?! Man I'm wacky!!" (at this point the audience slit their own wrists just to be free of this moron). Believe it or not folks this movie gets worse, yes still worse than all the other crap Meyers insists on doing, he also *dramatic pause* performs poetry. It's not even like Poe or Frost or someone good, no he reads his own bullshit 90's coffeehouse poetry complete with a jazz band in background, which is all about whatever girl just dumped him and what a bitch she is. It's just god-awful.
If any comedian with a little more restraint and talent than Meyers had played this part, 'So I Married an Axe Murderer' might have been a half way decent little comedy, but due to Mike Meyers and his bash-the-audience-over-the-head comedic style, this movie is nothing short of mild torture.

IMDb Page

Black Swan (5/5)

Warning: This movie is not for everyone its rated R for a couple very good reasons.

Black Swan is the latest mind-blowing film by Hollywood’s new favorite director, Darren Aronofsky. It tells the story of Nina (Natalie Portman), a dedicated ballerina in the New York City ballet company, as she struggles to portray role of the swan queen in the company’s production of Swan Lake. In order to properly play the swan queen Nina, who is extremely reserved and controlled, must be able to embody not only the sweet and innocent white swan, but also her evil counterpart the black swan (traditionally in Swan Lake the same ballerina plays both roles). In the process of accomplishing this task Nina is driven completely and totally, (forgive the language) bat-shit crazy.

By telling the entire story from Nina’s perspective, that of a constantly hallucinating insane person, Aronofsky transforms what would ordinarily be a somber film about mental disease into a genuine psychological horror flick. The true beauty of Aronofsky’s style is that he doesn’t rely on traditional horror movie tactics to scare his audience; he employs lighting, sound, and very talented actors to keep the audience so tense that even Winnie the Pooh would make them jump.

In addition to brilliant direction, this film has a beautiful storyline; Black Swan is not simply about a ballerina in Swan Lake, it’s a half metaphorical and half literal retelling of the ballet itself. Nina starts off as the embodiment of the white swan and views a fellow ballerina, Lily (Mila Kunis), as the embodiment of the black swan, and slowly unleashes her considerable dark side and becomes the black swan herself.

I honestly cannot find a substantial flaw with this movie save that it feels a tiny bit long. Black Swan is a brilliant and terrifying look at what our own minds can do to us, its imagery is verging on perfect, and, overall, it is both truly beautiful and incredibly disturbing.

 Black Swan IMDb page

New My Chemical Romance album (4.5/5)

Danger Days: The True Live of the Fabulous Killjoys, is the newest album from rock group My Chemical Romance, and may be one of their best albums yet. Danger Days is a concept album set in 2019 that follows the fictional Killjoys, Party Poison, Jet-Star, Cobra Kid, and Fun Ghoul, as they battle the evil Better Living Industries (BL/ind) in post-apocalyptic Southern California. My Chem is no stranger to concept albums, but this is their most developed and outrageous album yet. Black Parade had a more cohesive storyline, but in Danger Days we are thrown into a colorful, bizarre, and immersive world that feels oddly believable. Old My Chem fans may be dismayed and their apparent desertion of the dark and macabre and quantum leap into the colorful and punk, but true fans who have watched the band closely will not be terribly surprised by the new album. After all the guys in MCR have not changed, they were never as goth and dark as their previous work may have led listeners to believe; once you peel off all the makeup, costumes, and seemingly death-obsessed lyrics MCR's members are revealed to be massive geeks. They didn't sing about horrific deaths, tragic romances and vampires in their previous albums because they're goth or emo, but because they're obsessed with old horror movies and they watched way too much Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While many fans will see this album as a betrayal I, personally, see it not only as a refreshing change, but as the perfect album for the increasingly geeky times we live in.

For more information on Danger Days, My Chemical Romance, and the world of the Killjoys visit:
My Chemical Romance Official Site
BL/ind Official Site