Embrace the bitter and post your own reviews!

"Suffer" is about a man who wakes up in a dark room surrounded by people wearing white masks and then is put to the test when a rather large (muscular-wise) man enters the scene to beat the crap out of him. What follows is a bizarre adventure that impresses on multiple levels.

Ryan Robbins does a great job as a martial artist, a freaked out man, and a hero in this short film. He is stuck in a bizarre situation that he has to get out of and he emotes everything he should as the situation dictates.

The story is simple, but what is in there is so eerie and violent you can't look away. Think "Hostel" with mixed martial arts and well directed (Yes, I had to take a shot at Eli Roth). It's a solid short film that leaves you wanting more and thankfully we will get it.

I decided to review this short, caught at MIFFF, because it was probably the only short that had me thinking, "this should be a feature." Thankfully, one of the crewmembers (Aaron Au?) made an appearance at the festival and let us know that there is in fact a feature film version of the short in the works. To this we WOOT!

This smurfing smurfed project was probably smurfed from inception, but I’ll be smurfed if I ever have to sit through it or a smurfing sequel ever smurfing again.

Ok, now that we’ve got all that smurfing bull-smurf out of the way we can move on with the review. You can assume that we judged this movie in advance. Unprofessional, sure, but the minute our asses hit the seats we were open to whatever strange surprise we’d get. Were we surprised? You bet your smurf we were, only for reasons we didn’t think.

The story is about Gargamel and his obsession over getting the Smurfs, so he can grind them up and turn them into some powerful juju. Fair enough, he wants to be the most powerful and boring wizard in all of… wherever they live. The Smurfs run away once discovered during a blue moon (sigh) and have to jump into a mysterious vortex to evade Gargamel and Azrael. The Smurfs end up in New York, which sounds like a brilliant (as in terrible) idea. Neil Patrick Harris, somehow begging for film work already, runs into the Smurfs and helps them in the process.

I’ve started writing this review three times. Each one of those three times I have been stumped as to how to go about it. It’s not that I debate whether the movie is good or bad. It is clearly a bad film, but how to describe why it sucks in an entertaining manner.

First the movie follows a cast of characters from “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Clueless”, so they were already clutching at straws when they were casting this film. Do they do a horrible job? No. Do they do a good job? No. They show up, read their lines, try to look interested in the project then cash their checks on the way home. This is almost an acceptable response from any actors who read the script for this movie. It was clearly going to be forgotten before it even past its opening night.

We are pretty big Zack Snyder fans around these parts. He gave us a great “Dawn of the Dead” remake, a chest beating “300,” and a very well adapted “Watchmen.” Heck, he even gave us a great-animated owl movie. The question remains though. Why, oh why, do we feel like we’ve been sucker punched in the nuts?

Snyder took the reigns on this one and dialed the insane action to 11, but the sad fact is that sometimes too much of a good thing is bad. The movie is way over the top and yes, reminds of a videogame. The thing here is that the plot and character development are so paper thin that even if you dialed it back to 10 it still wouldn’t impress.

I, JAS, really tried to hold on, but the action scene with the robots on the train was so epically terribly shot that had I not been sitting next to a friend I would have left the theater. It truly was much like the work of Michael Bay or, heck, even Stephen Sommers. If you have read anything else from us at Bitter Balcony you would know that that is a the worst we could say just under, “it was Uwe Boll-esque.”

Years before karma gave Kathryn Bigelow the academy award over giving it to James Cameron the two were wed. No seriously. The two rivaling directors were married before they were out back at the Oscars dueling to the death*. Thankfully, this union gave us the gem that is “Strange Days.”

Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) is a dealer of a different, and futuristic, sort. Nero deals “clips.” The drug of choice for those who want to live it up as a lesbian, bank robber or even someone who has legs, in the case they don’t. Lenny Nero is obsessed with his ex-girlfriend, Faith (Juliette Lewis) who is on her slow rise to stardom. Thanks to a “clip” their friend recorded Nero must enlist the help of Mace (Angela Bassett) and Max (Tom Sizemore) to figure out what to do with this clip before the fit hits the shan and cause riots on the eve of New Years 2000.

Michael Rapaport plays Les Franken, a meter maid who can’t find happiness in his life, in “Special.” He enrolls in a drug study on a promising new antidepressant, but Les experiences slightly different results: he believes that he's developing super powers. Super powers such as smashing into walls (we mean walking through them) and lying on the ground (we mean flying).

Rapaport’s performances are pretty much identical from film to film, and Bitter Balcony has stopped caring. In "Special" he seems more like an overgrown kid with all the annoying mannerisms, insecurities and delusion that come with the package. The whining makes it difficult to connect to his character. Alexandra Holden plays a cute semi-love interest for Les, but her overacting ruins most of her scenes.

The screenplay takes a good idea as a foundation, but could have used a rewrite to expand on the romantic elements and on the character of Les. We can't really connect with what brought Les to want to test this drug, and it affects the film negatively. The film is overexposed and grainy, though watchable.

We suspect that in a few weeks we'll forget this movie exists.

Update: