Tag: crime

video review : Home Alone 2 [ Lost In New York ]

video review : Home Alone 2 [ Lost In New York ]

Home Alone 2 may as well be a remake. That’s how close it follows in the footsteps of the original. It’s a formula starting with the McCallister family going on Christmas vacation and ending with them celebrating elsewhere after reuniting with Kevin. This time he gets left at the airport, which sends the family to Miami and Kevin to New York City. He’s Alone again, if one can ever be alone in New York City, but he’s not at Home, so the title no longer makes sense.

Once you realize you’re basically watching Home Alone again; different details with the same basic plotline; you start to anticipate the one entertaining part; the part where The Wet Bandits, now known as The Sticky Bandits, fall victim to Kevin and his booby traps. Even though you know how everything’s going to end-up, that climax does not disappoint. It’s still fun to watch those two idiots become real-life Looney Tunes characters before your eyes.

my rating : 3 of 5

1992

video review : Home Alone

video review : Home Alone

The climax of this movie, in which an eight-year-old boy booby-traps his house to prevent two burglars from robbing it while his family is away on Christmas vacation, is quite entertaining. He uses ice, tar, fire and whatever else he can find in the house to make even something as simple as walking up the stairs or turning a doorknob a dangerous experience for would-be-robbers.

In a more serious movie; one that doesn’t sugarcoat its violence in slapstick comedy; the two burglars, named The Wet Bandits because one of them likes to clog the sink and leave the water running when they rob a house, would probably be dead. Here they just hurt and humiliate themselves in amusing ways. There’s a scene involving a spider that’s actually hilarious.

What’s annoying is the boy. I guess he’s supposed to be cute and he might look cute, but the way he acts; the character and the actor who plays him; is the worst thing about the movie. When a Wet Bandit falls victim to one of his pranks, he celebrates with a “Yes!” When he glides across a sheet of ice to escape a policeman, he lets out an exaggerated “Wooah!” It’s just annoying.

With that, I think Home Alone would be better if Kevin’s character were presented in a more realistic way. I’d also like to see some background to how he’s able to come-up with such an ingenious Battle Plan. There are no scenes of him making booby traps before his family mistakenly leaves him Home Alone, which is an inclusion that would work wonders for the plot’s believability factor.

my rating : 3 of 5

1990

video review : Home Alone 2 [ Lost In New York ]
 

Ryan :

You’re joking, right? You wanted them to develop how he came up with his “battle plan?” Out of everything in this phenomenal, CLASSIC movie, that was what you found to be the most unrealistic aspect?

audio review : I’m Goin Out Lika Soldier ( album ) … Willie D

I'm Goin Out Lika Soldier ( album ) ... Willie D

Willie D is funny when he’s mad and yelling, and he’s usually mad and yelling. That’s why he’s my favorite member of the Geto Boys; a group he’s no longer a part of and might be at war with. If he’s Goin Out Lika Soldier, as the ridiculous album title insists, he’s a one-man army, but it’s best that way. When comrades arrive to Pass Da Piote, it makes for the album’s worst song.

The best or at least most entertaining; the set is scattered with clever comedy bits; are the ones on which he’s Goin off on (bald-head) hoes. There’s a diss about a Little Hooker named Choice and My Dick knocks pussy off the pedestal sexist society tries to put it on. Both songs are hilarious, but he goes the opposite way on Clean-Up Man; the anthem of a typical romantic.

When he’s not aiming at women, he’s taking shots at men; from Rodney King; there’s a whole song about how much he hates the motorist for being a racial “sellout”; to phony Gankstas to “weak-ass” rappers he wants to Die. By the end of the album, over a funky Average White Band sample, he’s put himself in a situation in which has to come-up with an Alibi for murder.

my rating : 3 of 5

1992

A Stolen Life [ A Memoir ] ( book ) … Jaycee Dugard

A Stolen Life [ A Memoir ] ( book ) ... Jaycee Dugard

Jaycee Dugard was abducted at 11 years old. She lived with her abductors, a pedophile and his wife, for 18 years, but she wasn’t held captive all that time. That’s the problem with her story. She was a victim in June of 1991 when Phillip Garrido zapped her with his stun gun, put her in his car, imprisoned her in his home and started using her as his personal sex slave, but by the time Jaycee, now living under the secret identity of Allissa; a 29-year-old mother of two; was discovered by the police and reunited with her real family, she’d become willing participant. That she attributes to being “conditioned” as she tries to play the victim role to the end, but she’s full of shit. She had countless chances to flee; at one point, she strolls thru a crowded shopping mall without Phillip; but chose not to.

Her story is nonetheless an intriguing one. Her style of writing is sometimes childish and redundant, especially at the beginning, but the personal journals she was thoughtful enough to write over the years, which she apparently saved, help her do a fine job of revisiting the past. That is assuming all the details she includes; the rape scenes, which are the most interesting parts, are surprisingly graphic; are true. This is just one side of a long story. My only major complaints are the Reflection bits, which take the reader from a factual account of the past to a present-day psychological analysis in a jolt, and the fact that it should’ve ended at the Discovery And Reunion chapter; the ending of which is genuinely poignant. The rest could’ve and should’ve been summed down to a short epilogue.

my rating : 3 of 5

2011