Sex, Snakes, and Angels, oh my! — Sex is Zero — Snakes on a Plane — Black Angel — capsulefest movie reviews
Believe it or not, I’ve got capsule sized capsule reviews for once. Check check it out.
Sex is Zero
For the first half of its runtime this Korean hybrid of American Pie and Bring it On is the grossest, sexiest, funniest college comedy you’ve ever seen (Seriously, Kris and I were laughing so hard we had to keep rewinding). Then, at about the 1 hour and 5 minute mark it abruptly shifts gears and becomes an after school special about unwanted pregnancy and noncommittal playboys. What the hell? But on the whole it’s far funnier than any of the American efforts of recent memory. So long as you turn it off at the changeover, it’s the best gross out teenage gymnastic sex comedy in years.
Snakes on a Plane
For such a campy title this movie takes itself a bit too seriously. That’s too bad, because they could have used a bit more fun to round out the snake action. As a straight film it’s not bad, but as an animal attack film it’s not bad enough. Despite all the rattlers, cobras, and the anaconda, I actually found myself getting a bit bored toward the middle of the film. Nice shots of Hawaii at the start though. Fans of Snakes may want to check out Night of the Lepus, about mutant bunny rabbits that terrorize a small town for some real so-bad-it’s-good fun.
Black Angel
Takashi Ishii’s Snowblood-esque revenge tale of a young woman righting the wrongful death of her family at the hands of Yakuza starts out well, but falls apart due to some muddled pacing and Ishii’s penchant for plain old ugliness. No one wants to see bad things happen to a cute heroine, especially drawn out sadism, and thus I had to fast forward through quite a bit of the second act. Her vengeance is pretty tame considering the transgressions suffered (just bullets?), but from what I hear this was really just Ishii’s warm up for the second film (I’ll write something up once I finally watch it), which actually garnered some acclaim at the Hawaii Film Fest (thanks, Kris). I did dig the music though, and some of the random dialogue spouted by the main character’s male sidekick was pretty hilarious. But when it all comes down to spending 100 minutes with the film, I say skip it.
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