Never Ever Watch These Movies

I'm currently on hiatus from Netflix, but had the movie itch so I went to the local video store. Naturally, they were out of The Reader and The Wrestler, my first two choices, so I had to go to backups. I was mildly curious about The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Spirit, so I grabbed them. My bad...

The Spirit - Frank Miller, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes, AND Scarlet Johansson? How could it go wrong! Oh, they found a way and didn't take long either. The Spirit is basically a coyote and roadrunner cartoon shot in the style of Sin City. Twenty minutes into this debacle, I had lost interest and starting wondering when I was going to return it. I don't often turn movies off, but The Spirit wasn't going to suck any more of my time.

The Day the Earth Stood Still - Now with this one, I expected it to be cheesy. That doesn't mean it can't be entertaining though. Sadly, this wasn't entertaining. It was boring. Keanu Reeves was stiff and wooden throughout the entire movie. I know what you're saying, "Oh Skynet, you've clearly forgotten he's always turning in wooden performances!" I realize that. He takes wooden to a new level here though. In most of his scenes, he could have easily been replaced by a department store manequin. He just sits and stares, periodically opening his yap to reveal a frustratingly tiny bit of the plot. By the time you find out what is going on, you no longer care.

On the advice of Blue Napkins' sister, another turd of a film was rented later in the evening...

Repo: The Genetic Opera - Here we have your run of the mill goth musical staring Paul Sorvino, Paris Hilton, and some dude who looks suspiciously like Rutger Hauer. Its set in a dystopian future where organs are subject to repossession if you can't pay for them. The repo man scours the city hunting down the delinquent transplant recipients and removes them on the spot, while Paul Sorvino's kids fight over who is going to inherit the family organ business. Now, this certainly sounded promising, but its thrown together in such a careless and irritating way, I again lost interest pretty quickly. By the time Paris Hilton's face falls off in the third act, I was so ready to run to the bathroom and hang myself to make the pain stop, I couldn't properly enjoy her long overdue disfigurement.