what happens when i stay in on the weekend

as i mentioned in my previous post, i stayed in most of this weekend ( i need to get a life). i suppose i could have gone to the rivetti-based bonfire party, but again, the weather foiled my interest. anyways, this led to a lot of movie viewing. i managed to watch 5 movies over the weekend, 3 of them all the way. here are my takes on these 5 movies in the order that i watched them in.

ping pong playa
this movie about a chinese american guy in his young adulthood, refusing to grow up and accept his reality, which unfortunately for him, does not include playing in the nba. now i have previously played around with a story sort of similar to this, but where mine went a very distinctively assy direction, this movie kept it funny, but eventually worked the redemption/growing up angle. it was a sweet story with some very funny, yet real performances. it does a good job of presenting asian americans in a more realistic way than most movies. i think for me, it was nice to see an asian male play the lead in a movie that did not include martial arts. it was not a perfect movie, but i think it really accomplished what it intended to and i thoroughly enjoyed it. grade: a-

jcvd

this meta movie where jean-claude van damme plays himself seemed appealing to me. essentially, while deperately dealing with trying to regain custody of his daughter, he gets caught up in the middle of an ongoing bank robbery and is held hostage. because of some unfortunate occurances, the people outside including the police believe that jcvd is the one holding everyone hostage. i got about halfway through but got bored. van damme seems to be doing a good job playing himself, but i was expecting more from all the hype. incomplete grade: c



special

this little indie flick starred one of may faves, michael rappaport, as a meter maid who is bored and unhappy with his humdrum life. he decides to take part in a drug study where he takes an experimental antidepressant. while the goal of the drug is to lessen someone's feelings of self doubt, he has the reaction of gaining superpowers that only he seems to see (he is a comic book nerd). it was a good idea and executed pretty well for what was clearly a low budget. grade: b



blackout

this was a very questionable horror movie involving 3 people who get stuck in an elevator. they each have their own relatively formulaic back stories. time on the elevator goes on and through the retelling of said back stories, it is realized that one of them is actually a serial killer! dundundun! it was honestly pretty lame and i continued to watch due to not having anything else to do, but i did not hesitate when dave inquired about switching over to the caps game. incomplete grade: d



never surrender

oh man was this movie bad. it "starred" mma stars bj penn, gsp, rampage, heath herring and anderson silva. but the main character was played by hector echavarria...who also directed, if that tells you anything. this was essentially a rehash of various old van damme movies, but executed even more poorly. it is essentially an illegal mma organization with "no rules". they claimed to pay the same as other orgs, but without the managers and trainers to worry about....hey guess what geniuses, half of the fighters' money comes from sponsors...forget about that? why would anyone want to fight in front of way less people for roughly the same amount of money and the risk of death is like a million times higher? anyways, some key things to note:

• there were at least 3 drawn-out softcore sex scenes.
• gsp's voice was dubbed (unintentionally hilarious)
• the fighting scenes were lame
• the main character was a very old and out of shape mma champion
• the bad guy was like a roided up malkovich from rounders
• the line, "i remember _____. but he disappeared from mma a few years ago!" was stated by the main character 4 times.

grade: d

all except for never surrender are available on netflix's watch instantly, so you should check them out if any interested you or if you have some time to kill.