Shooter is an action packed movie about an ex-military sniper played by Mark Wahlberg (a.k.a. Jordon). Bob Lee Swagger (Wahlberg) is a retired marksman living alone with his dog in the mountains of some state with a lot of snow. He spends his days happily shooting away at cans of Dinty Moore soup in solitude when one day he is approached by a dude with Invisaligns (played by Danny Glover) who wants him to plan an assassination on the President. Not really. They believe there is a plot to kill the president, and they want Swagger to tell them how he would do it in hopes that it will help them find the killer before it’s too late.

Turns out it was all a big setup and now there’s a full out man hunt for Swagger. Through the course of the movie he ends up dodging multiple snipers and machine guns and almost single handedly takes down a bunch of fully armed men with a gun, some homemade bombs, and an FBI agent who really isn’t trained in anything at all.

I give this movie 4 out of 5 paloozas. Realistic? No. Entertaining? Yes. Good enough to see in a theater, especially with all the crap that’s out right now.

AAAA

AAAAA paloozas = See this movie in the theater for optimal viewing
AAAA paloozas = See this movie in the theater if you can
AAA paloozas = Pop some popcorn and rent this movie
AA paloozas = Watch this movie on TV … for free
A palooza = … I think you know where I’m going here…
No paloozas = Reserved for Eyes Wide Shut

WTF. I don’t even know what to say about this movie. Linda’s (Sandra Bullock’s character) husband Jim (Julian McMahon) dies one day. But the next day he’s alive. And the next he’s dead, and so on and so forth. But not really like that. She discovers a week of her life has been jumbled about. She learns she can control the outcome of some of the days’ events by the decisions she makes with the information from the days she has lived in the future. Ultimately she must decide whether or not to try to save her husband, which is outlined in the dramatic question, “If I let Jim die, is it the same as murder?”

I don’t know, is it? I was really confused during and after this movie. It consumed my thoughts for days. Now I’m just angry. Because I don’t want to recap my thoughts twice (and I’m lazy), I’ll just post a copy to the email I sent to Kristen (who saw the movie with me). Since she’s probably also the only other person who frequents jillapalooza, she will get to enjoy it twice.

**Spoiler Al… wait no, it still won’t make sense even after you see the movie.

I invested a lot of time yesterday thinking about that movie. You have a good point about why wasn’t the little girl’s face all cut up in the beginning of the movie since it apparently happened when he was alive. Then I was thinking about the week being all jarbled about. If the movie started on Thursday and we got to watch the Tuesday and Wednesday before that, does that mean she lived those days twice? Or did she go to bed on Monday and wake up and it was Thursday? And the same with the end of the movie when she saw her husband die on Wednesday…. when she woke up the next morning was it Thursday again she relived the next week, or did she wake up a week later. Or did she wake up quite a bit of time later like the movie portrayed?

Then I was also thinking that perhaps she couldn’t change the outcome of anything, only the pathway there. She couldn’t save her husband no matter what she did. The truck would have found some way to smash into the car. She couldn’t protect her daughter from getting her face ripped up, it would just happen a different way. Since “premonition” is a warning or feeling of a future event, it’s not something you can change. Ok, I feel better. Thanks.

I give this movie 3 out of 5 paloozas. I was going to go 2, but unless you have a rewind feature on your TV, you will want to rent it so you can rewind or watch it again. I did enjoy the movie. It was very mentally stimulating.

I know the picture of Kristen and me doesn’t have anything to do with the movie, but it makes about as much sense.

AAA

AAAAA paloozas = See this movie in the theater for optimal viewing
AAAA paloozas = See this movie in the theater if you can
AAA paloozas = Pop some popcorn and rent this movie
AA paloozas = Watch this movie on TV … for free
A palooza = … I think you know where I’m going here…
No paloozas = Reserved for Eyes Wide Shut

Dumb. Stupid. Idiotic. Foolish. But because the movie is supposed to be, that makes it funny.

Blades of Glory stars Will Ferrell and Jon Heder. Of course Will Ferrell gets naked at some point because the movie is… well, because he is in the movie. Has anyone else noticed the odd dent in his stomach? What is that? How does that happen? Honestly, of all the people who get naked all the time, why him? Why? Why not Christian Slater, or the hot Spartan king, or any other “it” guy of the moment? Or a chick? A chick would be 10,000 times better.

Blades of Glory is about two competing male figure skaters who get in a fight with each other and are banned from figure skating forever. After a few years of crappy sideshow skating gigs, they discover that they’ve only been banned from the male figure skating division and not the pair category. Apparently it would be impossible to either find a female partner or learn a routine with a female partner in time for the qualification round… so the obvious thing to do would be skate together, since there is no rule about same sex pairs. [Insert a multitude of gay jokes from this point forward] They train together while hating each other. Will Ferrell gets naked. They have to deal with a brother/sister pair that have cheated their way to the top and will stop at nothing to win. They end up liking each other. They learn a death defying, near impossible skating move. They have a little falling out. They pull it together to win the big competition. Not predictable at all.

The movie was funny (dumb funny). The skating moves were digitally enhanced and were quite obviously fake, which added to the dumness (funny dumb) of the movie. If you like Will Ferrell and enjoyed Napoleon Dynomite, you will probably like this movie.

I give this movie 4 out of 5 paloozas. It’s good enough to see in the theater, but if you laugh a lot you might want to save it for a rental so you can rewind.

AAAA

AAAAA paloozas = See this movie in the theater for optimal viewing
AAAA paloozas = See this movie in the theater if you can
AAA paloozas = Pop some popcorn and rent this movie
AA paloozas = Watch this movie on TV … for free
A palooza = … I think you know where I’m going here…
No paloozas = Reserved for Eyes Wide Shut

We saw the movie 300 last weekend. I didn’t think I’d like it because it’s a battle movie, and Nick told me it was loosely based on history, so I almost lost all interest completely. It was good though. The battle scenes were more believable than far fetched as far as digital animation goes. And I’m told the movie was done completely on green screen as well.

My initial thought was, “It it really necessary for men to go into battle wearing nothing but little leather shorts and a cape?”… Yes, yes it is completely necessary.

**Spoiler Alert** I guess I assumed that because they made a movie about this that the Spartans would have won… but they didn’t. All the hot guys died and that was rather disappointing.

Anyway, I give this movie 4 out of 5 paloozas (mainly because it’s all digital and looks cool in a theater). See it at one of the IMax theaters if you can.

AAAA

AAAAA paloozas = See this movie in the theater for optimal viewing
AAAA paloozas = See this movie in the theater if you can
AAA paloozas = Pop some popcorn and rent this movie
AA paloozas = Watch this movie on TV … for free
A palooza = … I think you know where I’m going here…
No paloozas = Reserved for Eyes Wide Shut

OK, so I’ve put off watching this movie for 3 years because it got horrible reviews. And because Christian Slater is in it, I figured as long as I didn’t watch it I wouldn’t have to admit to myself how horrible it really was. All in all, it wasn’t that bad…

The basic plot is about a group of FBI agents who travel to a deserted military island for the weekend for a simulated lesson on profiling. However, as members of the group start dying, they realize there is a murderer among them. Now the profilers are being profiled. Can they profile the murderer before they all end up dead?

**Spoiler Alert** This may seem like an over simplification, but it’s really not. My original plan was to watch the movie until Christian Slater’s character died. That way I wouldn’t have to suffer through the entire movie. As it turned out, I found myself quite interested in how it all went down. My biggest pet peeve about this movie is that it “stars” Val Kilmer and Christian Slater. Now, Christian is the first to kick the bucket, which was quite the disappointment. Val Kilmer on the other hand is alive for the majority of the movie, but not present during the events on the island. He makes a brief appearance at the end as a dead human puppet, which I can only assume wasn’t really him. Fortunately, for the sake of visual interest, LL Cool J was alive and present through the whole movie.

Anyway, I stayed interested through the whole movie. The acting was good. The plot kept me on my toes and there were a few twists at the end that kept me guessing who the killer really was. I give this movie 3 out of 5 paloozas.

AAA

AAAAA paloozas = See this movie in the theater for optimal viewing
AAAA paloozas = See this movie in the theater if you can
AAA paloozas = Pop some popcorn and rent this movie
AA paloozas = Watch this movie on TV … for free
A palooza = … I think you know where I’m going here…
No paloozas = Reserved for Eyes Wide Shut