Welcome and thanks for visiting! Unfortunately this lovely movie review site has moved onto itsleemcguire.com so feel free to have a poke around here, but the real action (and all the reviews) are happening over on my other site. And thanks again for visiting.
A movie review site by @itsleemcguire with a little twist, that twist being my balls.
That's right. Confused? Good.
Read the introduction post to learn more.
The rating system works as such:
No balls - Go and see this film. Now.
One ball - Mediocre. Average at best.
Two balls - Avoid like the plague.
Let me know what you think of my reviews by commenting on them using your Facebook or Twitter account. I'm also on Twitter as @BallsofShame if you want to get in touch.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
And so all good things must come to an end. You may argue that this blog may not necessarily be a good thing, but it’s coming to an end anyway. I made this site as an experiment to see if I could write, and as I admittedly have a severe lack of self confidence I dashed it with my idiotic sense of humour. But a problem arose when I realised I actually enjoyed writing seriously, making my voice known and sharing my opinion. My reviews got more serious and less idiotic as I started to value what I was doing, and as my peers gave positive feedback and encouragement my confidence started to improve. Just recently I even wrote an article on the cinema experience for my blog which you can see here. I was improving, I was growing up, and so should my writing. But there was always the problem of this blog. My reviews were still branded with the increasingly immature nature of the site.
So I’m closing this blog down in the name of progression. Don’t worry, I’ll keep reviewing movies at http://itsleemcguire.com and I’ll transfer the current reviews over for reference. This will be my last post, which may not mean much for some of you viewing this, but means a hell of a lot to me. I’ve learned lots and improved myself, and most of all, it’s been fun. Thanks for visiting. You helped a lot.
For the experience you just can't replicate.
My first proper non-movie-review article (about movies) just uploaded on my sister blog. Go see!
Dinner for Schmucks. I showed it no balls.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before:
Man with well paying job, beautiful girl-friend, and very successful life one day bumps into the catalyst: an idiot that proceeds to upturn his wonderful life into ruins before making amends at the end through a series of loveably hilarious incidents. And everyone learns a valuable lesson. Yawn.
Oh wait a minute, look at this cast list. That’s right, Jermaine Clement. Four down. Jermaine-Fucking-Clement. He’s like a comedy divining rod for me. Being one half of the fantastic Flight of the Conchords and his stellar performance in Eagle vs Shark means that I’ll happily pay attention to any movie he’s in. To top it off the movie also has a pretty minor role being played by Kirsten Schaal, who done this, which one of the comments sum up perfectly as being so brilliant it approaches ‘Python’ territory of apparent retardedness. Its the one time I ever agreed with a YouTube comment. Things are going to get interesting.
And things do get interesting, with Steve Carrell, he being one of my favourite actors playing his best performance yet. Of course he’s had a few slip ups (Evan Almighty rings a bell) but his performance in the American adaptation of The Office and now as the lovable Barry in Dinner for Schmucks has settled him firmly in my top ten. He’s absolutely perfect in this role, his awkward timing and intense facial expressions really bring out the humour in a way that surpasses his short (and very similar) performance as Brick Tamland in Anchorman and reaches hysterical levels of visual comedy only seen by the true classic actors like Rowan Atkinson. And, in Dinner for Schmucks, no matter how much he ruins the fictional life of Tim (played by Paul Rudd), he still has enough of a likeable charm to sway you every time the movie dives into a standard emotional scene.
However, even if a movie has the best cast in the world it’s the script that keeps you glued to your seat and not thinking about what you’re going to have for dinner later, right? Well, despite occasionally slipping into the generic plot grooves that most movies tend to do, Dinner for Schmucks managed to hold my attention throughout, if only in the hope to see some more strangely adorable dead mice art. But seriously, as the credits rolled and I pulled out my iPhone to take down some raw notes I found that I had almost nothing to complain about.
Almost.
Some jokes just seemed to miss the mark and had me wondering “should I be laughing?” while most of the audience stayed silent with occasional nervous laughter. I donned my detective coat and went hunting through IMDB and surmised the cause to stem from the writers David Guion and Michael Handelman, who also both wrote for the movie ‘Fast Track’, which seems to have the exact same mix of jokes that range from genius to weirdness. I’m not slating them in any way, their scripts seem to attract some of the best actors in Hollywood, so they must be doing something right. Plus unless they’re looking to replace all these jokes with desert-dry wit then I can offer absolutely no advice, nor should I. I’m just offering my view on the movie.
So to wrap up, with the occasional weird and slightly deflated jokes aside, I enjoyed it. It had a fantastic cast, a completely random and entertaining plot, and what more can a comedy ask for than to have me laughing all the way through? A scene where a blind swordsman turns off a lightswitch? It’s got that, and for that alone, go see it.
Toy Story 3. I showed it no balls.
11 years is a long time. Kids grow up in that time. Kids get jobs. Kids forget the magic of animated movies and they replace the memory of your first two movies with ‘other’ stuff. 11 years of waiting for another sequel (I utterly refuse to call them threequels) and people start to move on. Kids start calling themselves adults and drinking Starbucks coffee, start wearing suits and worrying about presentations and upcoming meetings, they start to like movies with guns, and death, and ghosts and gore. So, Pixar would have to do something pretty special to make up for that 11 year gap and entice those same kids back into the cinema.
And they have.
After the wonderfully engaging introduction that seems to be plucked straight from a 6 year-old’s mind Toy Story 3 begins by focusing on a grown-up, college bound Andy that has completely forgotten about Woody, Buzz and the gang. This is the moment that splits the audience into two groups: the kids — who won’t quite understanding the full story but will undoubtedly love it and laugh all the way through; and the adults (the ones that grew up with the original movies then kept growing): for them, this scene, hits a nerve, because that’s exactly what they have all done, forgotten about their own toys and childhood as well as the toys in Toy Story. This is where the movie captures you, you forget about spreadsheets, business plans and loans and you feel like a kid again. You remember the wonderful charm that seems to be unique to the Toy Story movies, the childish thrill to think that your toys actually have a soul, that they jump about and have adventures when you’re not looking and that they care about you just as much as you care about them. Toy Story 3 effortlessly slides in and carries on this charm naturally, without a moment of hesitation or awkwardness. You forget it’s been 11 years since you sat in a cinema and watched something like this. It’s like meeting an old friend, or finding a box of old family movies and watching them. It’s nostalgic from the very start.
It’s also in 3D, a subject I haven’t talked about yet in any reviews. There’s a reason for that. Like many I wasn’t convinced that 3D would be able to mature itself past the ‘gimmicky’ stage, and with movies like ‘Step Up 3D’ currently playing would you blame me? Obviously I went to see Avatar in 3D, and despite ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the screen every few minutes I stuck by my original thoughts.
3D is bound to be a premium, distracting add-on that people will tire of quickly, the glasses will become annoying to buy everytime you forget them (I have about 6 pairs at home for that reason, and for going to the cinema as an impulse decision with friends) so in my mind 3D was yet again destined to die another long drawn out death (just like in the 80s) from which we can all get back to normality and reasonable ticket prices.
That was until I had seen Toy Story 3 in 3D.
I had no choice. Cineworld were showing the 3D version in ten minutes, or the 2D one in an hour and a half. I sucked in my pride and took a risk, and I’m glad I did, because the 3D was actually very good. It was subtly done with no gimmicky perspective tricks. More importantly it actually brought realistic depth without distracting from the plot in any way, something I didn’t believe 3D would be able to do by growing up and getting over itself. I’m sure for a long time there will continue to be the very tiresome wow-this-movie-is-in-3D-and-it-looks-like-it’s-coming-right-at-us! movies being made (Piranha 3D anyone?) but Pixar proved that if it’s done with love, attention and careful thought then it can really enhance a movie, and make me think at least a little more positively about 3D’s future.
However I refuse to wear a pair of big plastic glasses in a room filled with strangers every time I go to the cinema for the rest of my life, and I don’t know what kind of people actually buy a 3D television so they can sit like utter cocks in their living rooms with said glasses on and pretend they made a good investment.
Sort out a glasses-free 3D experience please movie-industry, and then try marketing 3D again. And when you do, listen to common sense and don’t put a premium on the ticket prices. Because that sucks.
Back to Toy Story 3, and something that confused me was the disappearance of Bo-Peep, with nothing but a brief hint that she had been sold in a jumble sale. I believe the idea for this was to solidify and center on the relationship between Woody and Andy, but dropping a character like a hot coal is something I’d expect to see in Transformers 3, not from the minds of Pixar. You might not have even noticed that she was gone, I guess I just notice the little things like that in movies, like picking up on how Sid (the evil kid next door from the first Toy Story) is in Toy Story 3 as the garbage man (notice his trademark black and white skull t-shirt) or when I got some stares for giggling during a rather quiet scene when I noticed a Studio Ghibli Totoro toy cameo-ing in the background. It’s the little things that make me smile.
But the best thing about this movie wasn’t the loveable characters, how great the jokes were, or how many sticky situations they all get into. No, the best thing was the ending. Oh the ending. I was weeping like a baby when it finished, because it’s over, and there’s nothing I can do to bring it back. It’s my first break-up all over again, but this time with an animation studio. It felt like I’d been dumped by my true love, leaving me heartbroken and emotionally crippled. I may watch back over the first movies and reminisce of the fun times we had, or even go to see other movies in the hope of some comfort, but it will never be the same. Toy Story was different from all the other Pixar movies, for one it was their first Trilogy, but I think it was also their single greatest idea to date.
Pixar. They have been with me since I can remember. Even though my childhood is filled with all their other movies Toy Story 3 is leaps and bounds better than the rest, which quite frankly scares the hell out of me, because it is a masterpiece, a touching farewell to characters that have been engrained into my heart, and the end of this trilogy has left it in ruins. Because of this, I don’t think I can handle the next film that Pixar produce, but I know that I’ll be queuing up for its premiere regardless. And for their next, and their next, and their next. To infinity and beyond…
The A-Team. I showed it no balls.
So, your movie comes out mere weeks after two blockbuster smashes; Inception – one of the movies that I’m sure I’ll passionately describe to my future kids as much as one of my friends passionately raved about The Matrix when it first came out and changed the world; and Toy Story 3 – probably the most anticipated animated feature film of the century.
How does your movie respond to this?
The A-Team answers by being so crazy, so boyishly daft and over the top that it fits in perfectly with the uber-seriousness of Inception and family-friendly vibe of Toy Story 3 to provide one of the best cinema line-ups in years. The plot might be yet another tiresome cookie-cutter affair where someone took the words ‘revenge’ and ‘plot-twist’ and started throwing them all over the place but the characters, superbly-timed jokes and sheer idiocy of it had me laughing right from the start.
I’ll admit that I have yet to see an episode of the original A-Team TV series so I’m unable to talk about similarities or moan about what’s changed. I will never do something selfish like that — I promise — this is a movie review, not a bitching session about how the director in some way hasn’t lived up to the expectations of some random die-hard fan (I’m sure Michael Bay agrees with me on this). The purpose of my reviews are to endorse good movies, dissuade bad movies, and hopefully entertain people while I’m at it. Plus if they ever make a sequel to ‘The Crazies’ then hopefully I’ll be fantastically popular enough by then that the world’s population listens to my accurate two ball review causing ‘The Crazies 2: Shit on a stick’ to be the lowest grossing movie in existence, thus monumentally bringing about world peace. Quite big goals for someone who is essentially a “movie salesman” — I agree — but I consider myself a damn good salesman, it’s currently my day job, and I can be a pretty persuasive person — I can argue till I’m blue in the face about the benefits of Twitter to skeptics; I preached the word of Facebook to my hometown last year when they were still in love with AOL’s ‘Bebo,’ and they’ve never looked back; I’ve even converted the majority of my close Glasgow friends to the holy grail of cinema viewing – the Cineworld Unlimited Card – after buying one myself mere months ago; and I believe The A-Team is definitely worth seeing.
So, let’s see if I can sell it to you shall we? Alright, here goes.
Ahem.
You should go see The A-Team. Because it’s funny. Because It’s daft. And because it has a scene where they FLY A TANK.
Thank you, I’m out.
The Expendables. I showed it no balls.
Action. Explosions. An amazing cast. Witty one-liners. More explosions. Fighting. Lots of fighting. Guns. Sylvester Stallone trying to speak. A plot shallow enough for a video-game. Jason Statham kicking the living shit out of people. Evil Spanish Dictators.
This is an Action movie, and by god do you get a lot of action. And Explosions.
Greenberg. I showed it one ball. In confusion.
It’s been about 3 weeks since I seen Greenberg and I still don’t know what to make of it. Was it was meant to be a comedy or a tragedy? Some parts had me laughing, but I don’t know if I was meant to be. It’s one of those movies that have almost nothing happening in it, with Ben Stiller playing a man just recovering from a nervous breakdown and quite happily doing absolutely nothing for the majority of the movie. There’s an awkward sex scene and a girl pretending to be drunk after taking a sip of Corona. It bored the shit out of me.
Then just as soon as something interesting started happening, it ended. The guy next to me loudly said “What the hell?” as the credits rolled, and I spend the walk home struggling to make out my feelings about the whole affair. I’m still yet to find what the point of it was.
So, yeah. That’s the review. I hope you were as uninformed and confused reading it as I was watching Greenberg.
Inception. I showed it no balls.
Cinemas are a strange thing. They show good movies, and they show bad movies. They show movies so piss poor they have a 23 year old man shaking his genitals in a rapidly emptying movie theatre when they end, but they also show works of genius, hours of pure magic that have you coming out of the cinema so dazed and in awe that it looks like someone just sneaked up behind you and slapped you with a fish. Inception is such a movie.
You can never please everyone though, so I have to cover my back and admit that even a movie like this will not appease everyone in the world. So if you get confused by episodes of children’s TV shows or you clawed out your eyes and jammed straws into your ears during the commercials so that you wouldn’t need to watch that bloody Orange A-Team advert AGAIN - then this movie is probably not for you.
On a more serious note, like all good pseudo-reality movies there’s a steep learning curve and the problem is that the movie hits the ground running - fast - so some people might not keep up, and thus wont be as violently drawn into the plot in the same way I was. But if you manage to hang on right through to the insanely complicated and beautifully layered ending then you’re in for one hell of a mind-fuck, and possibly one of the most intense films I’ve seen.
Furry Vengeance. I showed it two balls.
About ten minutes in I regretted, to the bottom of my soul, not buying a horribly overpriced Coke from the foyer. This would have given me more than enough fluid to attempt an emergency drowning session right there in my seat, being both the quickest way to avoid seeing the rest of this movie and also providing some much needed entertainment for the rest of the audience.
Alas, I had no choice but to dig my fingers into the armrests, watch Brendan Fraser waste his acting skills on a plot written on a single sheet of toilet paper, and repeat in my head “Come on Lee, be professional. You can do this. You can stay to the end.”
But then Toby Huss came on, and what he did on that screen was the equivalent of walking into the cinema, jumping on the seat in front of me and laying a huge turd right on my half-empty bag of popcorn (I had already tried to kill myself by ramming half the bag down my throat).
Seriously, it was the worst performance I have ever seen - and you don’t make a website like this without seeing some pretty shoddy performances, believe me. He actually made me feel bad watching him.
So, you’re all patiently waiting to find out if the ending was any better? Well I don’t have a clue. By the time Toby Huss had finished his five minutes onscreen my friends and I had decided enough was enough and it was time to go. I can’t morally review a movie that I walked out of about a quarter of the way through, how unprofessional would that be? No one pays me to do these reviews. I do it out of the sheer love of god awful films. But I’m not experienced enough to take on Toby Huss right now.
I need time.
Iron Man 2. I showed it no balls.
This is essentially another movie about Robert Downey, Jr. doing more of the awesome things that he done in Iron Man 1, but with slightly fancier special effects and a black guy following him around this time. You also get to see Scarlett Johansson kicking ass in a leather suit, which is always good.
So, I didn’t show Iron Man 2 any balls. Scarlett Johansson on the other hand…
A Nightmare On Elm Street. I showed it two balls.
Samuel Bayer, I’m coming for you. I’m going to wait until night-time, sneak into your house, perch myself gingerly over your sleeping form and slowly roll my balls up and down your face for making this movie. Please go back to directing music videos. You cunt.
Go to see this and you’ll spend a god awful 95 minutes of your life waiting to be scared, shocked, or even adequately thrilled. You’ll just sit there munching popcorn, bored out of your face wondering what you’re going to do after the film, occasionally jumping at all the cheap scare tactics used relentlessly throughout. You’ll come out of the cinema dazed, confused, wondering what you done to deserve seeing this film.
Then halfway down the street you’ll remember that you actually paid to see it. And other people will do the same. And theres nothing you can do to stop this.
And thats the real nightmare.
And so it begins.
Welcome to the beginnings of a little movie review site. A project that me and my friend originally had the idea for after going to see “The Crazies” about 2 months ago, which ended up being so bad we very nearly got our balls out in complete protest.
Sadly our trousers stayed zipped up and we slumped out of that cinema as beaten, ashamed men, 6 pounds down and with our dignity in tatters. My friend was left emotionally crippled from that night and I don’t think I ever fully recovered. It took days before I could even look at the TV, and weeks before I could watch a movie again. Since that fateful day I’ve gained the courage to visit the cinema again, even purchased a fantastic “Unlimited Cinema card” and have began seeing an insane amount of good, bad, and downright shoddy movies. Life was slowly getting better.
However, something didn’t feel right.
I never truly got over not having the balls (Zing!) to show The Crazies how I felt about it. Emotions began to stir every time I seen a sub-par movie. I knew that something had to be done, so this blog stands proudly in support for all the moviegoers who have born witness to a shite film, for all the moviegoers who felt robbed by paying more for popcorn and a drink than the movie they didn’t even understand. For all the moviegoers without the courage to stand up, take down their trousers, grasp their manhood firmly in hand and shout “Oi, Film! This is what I think of you.”
Welcome to Two balls.
