Escape to the Movies: Machete

Louzon

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So, if you don't like the idea that a movie "Doesn't have to be ABOUT something", can you tell me what Piranha 3D was about? And I hope there's more than just "naked hot girls on spring break" as what you mean by being "about something"...although you did bring up attractive females in this one too...

Anyways, another good movie review, I guess I'm just still a little mad about being called a sheep and the worst kind of person, but that's going away. :)
 

RTR

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I feel like such an idiot. I hadn't realized that Michelle Rodriguez looks so...
damn.
Incidently, wasn't Machete the name of Trejo's character from the Spy Kids movies (also directed by Robert Rodriguez)? Makes you think, doesn't it?
 

Mangue Surfer

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Louzon said:
So, if you don't like the idea that a movie "Doesn't have to be ABOUT something", can you tell me what Piranha 3D was about? And I hope there's more than just "naked hot girls on spring break" as what you mean by being "about something"...although you did bring up attractive females in this one too...

Anyways, another good movie review, I guess I'm just still a little mad about being called a sheep and the worst kind of person, but that's going away. :)
Piranha it's about the fear of the powers of nature. It's like Moby Dick but with less existentialism and more tits.


...
Man, can't believe I wrote this shit.

In fact, Bob is kind of wrong (in my point of view), every movie is about something (except The Road). The question is, you give a crap about the "thing" which the film deals? And the way it did?
 

Draconalis

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Sep 11, 2008
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I saw Piranha followed by Machete. Tits in 2d are better than tits in 3d... cause they don't give me a headache.

But yeah, I liked it enough to see it again in the near future.
 

AgentNein

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Brockyman said:
PhiMed said:
So, the narrative equivalent of "Let's kill all the white people" somehow makes a movie's ridiculous action sequences more tolerable to you? Obviously our standards differ, Bob.
Funny thing, when you had to shoot T-virus zombies in RE 5 that just happened to be black, it was "Oh my God, Capcom's a bunch of racists" No one cared when it was Americans or Spaniards (ironically enough)
Has to do with the whole 'white dudes mowing down Africans' thing being sort of charged imagery (you know, institutional racism across the world, African genocide, etc...). The two aren't equal. At all.
 

AgentNein

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RDubayoo said:
Kiss my ass Rodriguez. And for that matter, anyone who adopts the easy, "Oh, just show compassion and let them stream in" attitude which will only result in disaster can kiss my ass, too. You're naive, stupid, and guess what? YOU are the racist for favoring these illegal immigrants over legal citizens just because the former happens to be a little browner.
You're the only person I know who has actually equated legal and illegal immigrants with the 'brownness' of their skin. I'm not even going to get into the immigration argument here, but that statement was just...woah.

So yeah, go on about naive stupid people please.
 

MB202

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joebear15 said:
MB202 said:
Again, I feel like MovieBob missed the point of why people really disliked his Expendables review, but moving on from that...


PLEASE stop mentioning the expendables review, it just starts the war agin and I hate listing to the bitching its jsut to petty for me to handel after like 2 weeks
Hence why I said "moving on from that", implying that I didn't mean to make too big a deal about it.

radicaledward92 said:
MB202 said:
Again, I feel like MovieBob missed the point of why people really disliked his Expendables review, but moving on from that...

I never would of thought that a movie like Machete, which was basically made as joke, would turn out like the way you described it. I might check it out, if I find someone to watch it with, since I usually don't like to watch movies by myself.
Why because people dont like being told how stupid they are?
Because it's insult, especially when that might not be true!
 

Throwitawaynow

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Past 4 movies he's reviewed it's just like wow. I think he formulates his opinions about the movie before seeing them, and then tries to find things in the movie to justify his opinion.
 

Ashoten

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So without diverging into the border discussion(which is too big to cover in a couple of sentences) I would like to know how "The others guys" which is a stupid funny movie doesn't get a mention for its commentary on government/corporate shenanigans while "Machete" which is a stupid gory movie gets praise for its social commentary?
 

Amarsir

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Bob, I don't always agree with your reviews, nor do I have to. But this time I can't even get on board with what you're trying to praise. "Two-dimensional characters become better when you turn them into straw-man arguments." Really?

It wasn't the "about something" that made First Blood and District 9 so good. It's that the relation to real-world issues allowed them to create realistic characters that kept the movie grounded through the unrelatable setting. That's not the case with Machete. This movie plays the characters as cartoons and then says "if you want to hate real people based on these fictional ones I just made up, go for it lol!" The movie is fun and creative and this anvilicious "about something" message is clearly the worst part.

And it's not like you actually think "about something" is this praiseworthy habit that is worth calling out in any movie. I don't recall you saying "The Book of Eli takes the overused apocalyptic world but delivers a message about the power - for good or for harm - of religion." No I believe it went more like "Dude, the Bible? Snore! Why couldn't it have been like a Dane Cook DVD?" (See, I can do that too. It's not clever, is it?)

How about this for an alternative theory, Bob? You don't care if a movie is "about something". You liked it because there was creative violence. But you're a professional reviewer. You can't give a dedicated review and call it "one of the year's best" based simply on that! Maybe that cuts it for a toss in reference like Piranha 3D, but not for something high profile. So you have to grab at something lofty-sounding, lest you lose this illusion of superiority.

Of course if you don't like that theory there's always the change that you're the type of intellectual who prefers his opinions be based on fiction over facts. But I think I was being kinder the first time.
 

HyperionToASatyr

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I enjoyed this movie and all, but dammit, MovieBob, stop ruining my fun. Between this, last week's double-header of Piranha and Centurion, and the INCREDIBLY unacceptable review of Expendables before that, you've been getting damn pretentious. Action movies don't get better when they get smarter--they become genre hybrids, which are cool, but not straight-up action films. And Machete's political allegories weren't that heavy--such as they were, they were as much a sendup of the goofy, over-the-top political puffery of old blaxploitation movies like Super Fly and Shaft (or really any exploitation subgenre, for that matter.) So seriously, Mr. Chipman--get down off your soapbox.
 

KingPiccolOwned

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Casual Shinji said:
Well, if the political message in this movie amounts to nothing more than the usual "republicans are bad", it's probably going to be just as engaging as Avatar.
And exactly how engaging is that?
 

KingPiccolOwned

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HyperionToASatyr said:
I enjoyed this movie and all, but dammit, MovieBob, stop ruining my fun. Between this, last week's double-header of Piranha and Centurion, and the INCREDIBLY unacceptable review of Expendables before that, you've been getting damn pretentious. Action movies don't get better when they get smarter--they become genre hybrids, which are cool, but not straight-up action films. And Machete's political allegories weren't that heavy--such as they were, they were as much a sendup of the goofy, over-the-top political puffery of old blaxploitation movies like Super Fly and Shaft (or really any exploitation subgenre, for that matter.) So seriously, Mr. Chipman--get down off your soapbox.
So basically what you're saying is:

Huh, maybe I'll actually like this then.
 

OceanRunner

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I guess this film represents what the politicaly paranoid in the media and government assume the issues brought up might lead to in real life.
 

The Noble Shade

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hoboofdeath42 said:
anyone else notice the "Spy Kids" connection? Doesn't Danny Trejo play a guy codenamed Machette, and the priest guy play 'uncle Felix'?
I noticed that too, when I first saw the trailers.
 

Teeth Kicker

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Just watched this movie. When I saw the trailer for it in Grindhouse, all I could think about was how awesome of a real movie it would turn out to be...and my presumptions were correct! Loved every second of it, very similar style to "Planet Terror" in the way it was filmed. Best action movie of the year in my opinion, if you're looking for mindless violence done well.

I thought the first five minutes of this film was honestly better than "The Expendables" all-together. However bitter sweet that smug look on Arnie's face was in that movie...it just wasn't very memorable. But to each his own I suppose.
 

Casual Shinji

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KingPiccolOwned said:
Casual Shinji said:
Well, if the political message in this movie amounts to nothing more than the usual "republicans are bad", it's probably going to be just as engaging as Avatar.
And exactly how engaging is that?
About [----] this much.