Pineapple Express 8/10

Seth Rogan plays a stoner. The guy from Spiderman that plays Harry Osborn plays a drug dealer. The annoying boss guy from Office Space is the bad guy. Its got that one black guy from the Office in it too. Not Stanly. The other one that works in the docking place underneath. He's pretty funny in it. I guess that's mostly it. The story doesn't matter.

The plot is that these guys are getting high a lot and crazy shit happens to them. Its pretty crazy.
This is a standard stoner adventure comedy, which have a tendency to pop up every like 5 years and cause everyone I know to wet their pants over how fresh the humor is, even though its pretty much the same hat as the last stoner movie. Examples would be Harold and Kumar coming out 5 years ago, and Half Baked coming out 5 years before that.


The movie is actually pretty funny, if you arn't bothered by the positive portrayal of characters that use weed, which seems to actually be a problem for some since the imdb board are filled with anti-marijuana threads, but I still find it odd how fresh and new the movie fells when its just like every single stoner movie put out since Cheech and Chong got in the game.

 He's in this.

It starts by introducing the main characters in a standard slice of life scene where you have one guy standing around doing and saying crazy shit and the other guy being WTF?-you-crazy'd out by the craziness. Then more crazy shit happens and its pretty funny because the characters are all stoners and you think to yourself, "hey it would be fun to be friends with these guys in real life." At some point the story kicks in and you're like "Ok whatever." Then more craziness happens when crazier characters start to show up, and now its really funny, and you're think "I'v never seen anything like this before." And then the movie has to try and wrap itself all up by giving you some kind of ending that justifies all the craziness and you're like "Ok, this is still cool" even though deep done we all hate the endings of these movies and it more or less "same old shit" as the other stoner movies like in Half Baked when they are fighting that drug dealer guy that I always remember as being Samual Jackson, even though he's not, and I know that, but I can't help myself. Then you get the ending scene where the character are back to being who they are, maybe even better people in some way, and the movie ends. This one ends with one of the longest and stupidest scenes in a stoner movie, with the character talking about how much they are friends now, and because of how long, stupid, and pointless it is its probably the best ending a stoner movie could have.

Craig Robinson should be in more movies.

 
Still, the movie feels fresh, despite how much it really isn't, and I think a lot of it has to do with the budget for the movie. While Harold and Kumar always felt like a Dvd hit, and Half Baked was always a Comedy Central movie, because that's where we all saw it, don't lie like you went to the theater to see it, this movie feels like an actually... um, movie movie. And people actually saw it in the movie movie theater. So because of that, you get the feeling like, "hey, its a real movie with the stoner mentality" unlike Harold and Kumar or Half Baked, which don't count, because they aren't real movies, and I think that's where I was disappointed a bit.

The movie always sold itself as a action/thriller type outing but with all the funny craziness of a stoner movie added to it, kinda like if your favorite action movie lighted up and took itself less serious. It really isn't, but you watch it thinking it is, never noticing that its pretty much Cheech and Chong with Seth Rogan and the guy from Spiderman that plays Harry Osborn in it, and you say, "that was like nothing I've ever seen before wow!" By the time you actually reflect on it, its too late because you can't take that shit back!

The movie gets its name from weed. The movie is all about smoking weed

In the end Pineapple Express is the the most unique breath of fresh air type movie you will ever see because we all know what a big stoner you are and how terrible your memory is. Its hilarious and it has the guy from Spiderman that plays Harry Fucking Osborn in it, so don't even act like it doesn't. Your just being a jerk here.

The Last Dragon 8/10

For years I've been looking for the next cool kung fu or martial arts movie to keep an eye out for in discount bins or to put in my netflix queue when I run out of good stuff, and I have, for years, continued to stumble across the movie the Last Dragon. I always figured it was a cheap Hollywood byproduct of the kung fu and karate boom in the 80's and would be pretty boring. And while it is indeed a product of kung fu's sweeping over pop culture throughout the 80's, the movie is never boring.

The plot of The Last Dragon is of "Bruce" Leeroy Green, a kung fu practitioner in Harlem as he searches for the true master. You get it? "Bruce Lee"roy. The whole point of the movie is to take the kung fu, karate, and ninja type movie themes and place them in New York, and its the reason this movie is so much fun.

The movie can best be described as a mix between vintage 80's John Carpenter and Walter Hill. You got the east meets west surrealism from Big Trouble in Little China, mixed with the attitude of Escape from New York and The Warriors. But more then anything else the movie feels a lot like Streets of Fire but good. I know The Warriors was from '79, but whatever, same thing. the movie is pure 80's fun.

At least the poster's cool.

The movie starts with a cool training scene, some general eastern enlightenment from a small Asian man, and the introduction to Leeroy Green, who may or may not be at all related to Leroy Brown.
The second scene has Leeroy in a Harlem movie theater watching Enter the Dragon. We see a bunch of colorful characters being colorful, like having people randomly break dancing before getting their ghethobuster smashed. Leeroy is just siting in the front row, minding his own business and eating popcorn with chopsticks when a gang of music video rejects enter the theater to make way for none other then SHO' NUFF, the mother fucking SHO-GUN of Harlem; not to be confused with the Duke of New York, A-number 1.

Who da MASTA?!?!

SHo NuFF, which is how I think his name would be spelled on the internet, takes no time in declaring himself a super-badass before sitting down to enjoy the movie. He's told that Bruce Leeroy is badder, something you just don't tell SHo NuFF, and sure enough SHo NuFF starts kicking ass and biting ankles.

So by now I already love this movie, and it continues on to deliver on being ridiculously hip, in an 80's way. Which for me is good. I like the 80's and even though it could be seen as dated, because it totally is, it serves a second purpose of being a period piece. All the dancing and singing and karate kicking around is what I remember about the 80's, having been born in 84 and growing up with cheesy music videos and ninja influenced television.

Haha, what the fuck?

The acting in the movie is what it should be. Which means that it isn't good, but it shouldn't be good, because good would ruin it. Taimak, the lead, does a pretty good job, and Vanity, the love interest, is pretty good looking, despite how crazy her hair is. Theres also a weird black kid that plays Leeroy's brother that looks like he's 12 but acts like he's a full grown man. Theres something weird going on there. There's also a student of Leeroy's that declares that he can get away with not knowing martial arts by simply being Asian and acting crazy. The fact that he doesn't really look Asian, and is obviously well trained in martial arts just makes it funnier.

Not Asian.... 

There's also a lot of great 80's music, this being Berry Gordy's the Last Dragon and all, which rounds the movie out and makes it enjoyable.

This is what Vanity looks like.. Not in the movie, but, you know, in real life...

In the end The Last Dragon is a "Cult Hit" that will one day be taken by hip film intellectuals and turned trendy and gay. Until that happens you should try your hardest to see it. Unless it's already happened, in which case I say fuck that trendy overrated shit and see Streets of Fire instead, because it will never be a "Cult Hit", because it sucks.

8 out of 10 glowing masters