2.16.2010

72. Night Shift
73. Daybreakers
74. Everybody's Fine
75. Ninja Assassin


Another snow filled shitty day. Due to the never ending saga that is becoming my mother's hospital stay, I wound up calling out from work. I didn't get any new information like I was hoping to but the wife and I did work on convincing my grandmother to start shutting down my mom's apartment. It's time to consider getting rid of the cats. From there, turn off the gas and electricity. All they're doing is running up bills that aren't gonna get paid. At any rate, on with the reviews...


Night Shift is one of director Ron Howard's earliest features. It tells the story of two guys working in a morgue who hatch a scheme to become pimps. It's actually a lot better than it sounds on paper.

This flick stars Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton. Winkler is the straight laced Chuck. He's a former Wall Street guy who stressed out and needed a change of scenery so he wound up working at the city morgue. He gets stuck with the night shift to accommodate the hiring of the boss' nephew. Upon starting that shift, he meets his new partner Billy Blazejowski, played by Keaton. Billy is the exact opposite of Chuck. He's an idea man...someone who is always thinking. Chuck has a neighbor, Belinda, played by Shelley Long. She's a prostitute whose pimp has just been killed. Billy decides that taking over the operations and working out of the morgue would be a win-win situation.

The story here is pretty original. Not something that has been touched on much. Winkler and Keaton are good. They have a good chemistry and work really well off of each other. The only thing that irked me a bit is that there seem to be 4 songs on the soundtrack and they just kept getting played repeatedly. Got a little annoying as time went on.


Daybreakers is set in the year 2019. There has been an outbreak of an infectious disease turning most of the population into vampires. This happened in 2009. 10 years in, human blood is at an all time low. The human population has dwindled down to 5%. The vampires are forced to rely on blood harvested from humans captured and brought to pharmaceutical labs. The biggest of these labs is Bromley Marks. There, Edward Dalton is head hematologist and is working on a blood substitute.

This was a really good movie. The story is original and topical. You can say that the vampires' reliance on blood is similar to that of mankind's reliance on oil or other natural resources. The cast is solid, led by Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill and Willem Dafoe. There's plenty of gore and vampiric carnage to keep the gorehounds happy.

Daybreakers is recommended.


Everybody's Fine is a dramedy about a recent widower whose 4 grown children are supposed to come and visit him. One by one, they all cancel on him so he decides to take a road trip and pay them all visits instead. It's a remake of the 1990 Italian film Stanno tutti bene.

Robert DeNiro stars as Frank Goode. Kate Beckinsale, Austin Lysy, Sam Rockwell and Drew Barrymore are cast as DeNiro's grown children. All the performances here are really solid with DeNiro, Rockwell and Barrymore leading the way. The story does tend to be a bit on the predictable side but the performances make up for it. This movie has a lot of heart. Be warned though, it's not the holiday comedy that the box art makes it appear to be. It's definitely on the serious side. Of all the movies I watched this day, this is the one I liked the most.


Ninja Assassin tells the story of Raizo, an orphan taken in and raised by the Ozunu Clan. He's trained in the skills to be a ninja. After being betrayed by the clan as a young adult, he sets out to sabotage the clan.

It took me 4 attempts to make it through this movie. I wanted to like it. I really did. I just couldn't get into it though. Don't get me wrong, there are some cool fight scenes. Fight scenes alone don't make a movie though. I think the first thing that kind of took me out of this movie was all the CG blood. In a movie like this where the violence was so over the top, having CG blood serves as a constant reminder that you're watching a movie. They should have stuck with practical blood on this one...it would have made it more effective. Again, I wanted to like it but it just isn't gonna happen.