In a tragic turn of events, Baby Doll (Emily Browning) accidentally kills her sister while trying to protect her from their truly evil stepfather. With no other guardian to protect her, Baby Doll is sent to a worse fate than a life as her stepfather’s sex slave: She’s sent to a Vermont mental institution where she is scheduled to receive a lobotomy on her fifth day there.

In a desperate attempt at self preservation, Baby Doll begins a mission to save herself and as many of the other patients as possible. The world of burlesque dancing and implied sex slavery collides with a video game style warfront where Baby Doll and the other captors fight their way to freedom.

But is either world real, or just a splintered figment of Baby Doll‘s traumatized imagination? And does anyone actually give a shit?

I didn’t know much about this movie going into it, but I definitely was not ready for what was delivered to me. I was disgusted by the sexualization and understory of sex crimes committed by piggish men on underage girls. I should have let the girls’ costumes give that much away to me, but in my defense Sailor Moon and the gang aren’t under constant threat of being sexually assaulted while they fight evil in sexy costumes.

The war scenes were all about the girls kicking enemy ass to obtain objects that would help them escape the maximum security institution, but the scenes just did not captivate me.

As a native born Vermonter, I must defend my homeland by saying we don’t have sex dens posing as state run homes for the mentally ill. Vermonters wear flannel and shitkicker boots, not bedroom romp outfits and fuck-me pumps. So unrealistic.

Hated the plot, hated the ending, the stylization of the film didn’t fit the storyline, and the only reason I didn’t walk out with the other people who left disgusted during the film is because I was with a group of people who were enjoying the on-screen eye candy and they had the car keys.

All that said, I am absolutely certain that Jamie Chung (Amber) will have a long and successful career if she so chooses. She has that “it” factor.

Order your tickets to Sucker Punch online through Fandango or Moviefone.

Buttery’s Rating:

Staff Sargeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is at the end of a long career with the marines, and has the emotional battle scars from a failed mission to prove it. On the day he signs his papers to retire honorably an alien invasion strikes the earth and all hands are back on deck in Los Angeles to defend the territory for human annihilation.

As the troops learn of the extent of the alien takeover, and that all humans in their path are being destroyed, Nantz goes through his own journey of redemption to make himself and those around him believe that the choices he made in the past were the best given the circumstances.

This movie is a terrifying and visually mind blowing experience. The aliens who arrive to colonize the earth are here because they need one of our most precious and abundant resources: water. Considering that I have the mind of a curious child, it occurs to me to wonder why aliens would choose a planet with water where the indigenous population is so advanced in their technology and sentience, and therefore their ability to defend and learn and change strategies when one isn’t working. I understand that we think we’re the only planet with liquid water in the entire universe, but if that were the case… how would these aliens need our water?

There are some moments in the film that make you think perhaps part of it was rewritten on the fly (specifically: the discovery the humans make of knowing how the aliens are able to track them seems to be introduced several times, there are some discrepencies in the daylight vs nighttime, the seemingly unending supply of expendable people in the troop despite there not being that many people to begin with, Aaron Eckhart‘s voice changing from his regular voice to a gruff whisper, and Michelle Rodriguez‘s character seems to be a little too knowledgeable a little too quickly about the entire troop of marines). These are easy to overlook because the special effects of the aliens and their warcrafts are amazing.

The door for sequels is left open. Battle: New York, anyone?

Definitely worth a watch on the big screen despite all the plot oddities mentioned. Be sure to have a hand to hold and some popcorn to stuff in your mouth. And if you’re compelled to laugh when something bad happens, just go with it.

Order your tickets to Battle: Los Angeles online through Fandango or Moviefone.

Buttery’s Rating:

Yummy, as always, Dove.

Dove Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate is also available in a bag of individual squares for your enjoyment. Definitely more dangerous than a bar if you’re not great at moderating your sweets intake.

“Life itself is filled with no reason.”

Watch the film with this as your mantra and it keeps weirdness in check. Mostly. Kind of.

A rubber car tire named Robert erupts from the desert ground as curious onlookers watch through binoculars. Robert rolls over a water bottle, crushing it. Then a living scorpion, crushing it. Then a beer bottle, which he has a bit of trouble crushing but finally succeeds when he builds up momentum and blows up the bottle with … his mind. Yes, Robert has a brain.

Because he knows he can, Robert begins destroying everything in his path with his telepathic head exploding power, including an innocent bunny rabbit and a crow. He then turns his focus to killing humans he doesn’t particularly like, humans who are tire biased. He quickly becomes a full-fledged serial killer on the loose and no one’s safe.

This atypical “horror” movie asks the question, can anything be made into the antagonist of a movie? This tire certainly succeeds in making an unstoppable threat. But the line is blurred between what is reality and what is make believe.

Rubber plays out as if Quentin Dupieux woke up from a very twisted dream and wrote it down in script form. It could be argued as an existentialist film, but honestly it just falls into an unsuccessful attempt to make a weird dream into a movie.

The end scene and song are truly the best part of the entire film.

Rubber is officially released in theaters April 1, 2011 or see it now on iTunes.

Buttery’s Rating:

Unstoppable is the story of Will (Chris Pine), a man whose marriage is unraveling quickly and who just joined the railroad, and of Frank (Denzel Washington) whose wife recently passed away and who has one foot shoved out the railroad door. The two are paired together while Will is trained as a conductor by Frank. During their first day together a runaway train carrying toxic chemicals threatens to derail in a heavily populated Pennsylvania town. The hero spirit takes over Will and Frank and they decide to try to stop that train no matter what their fate may be.

I love trains. I love action movies. This movie had me unexpectedly on the edge of my seat for almost the entire time. I had such low expectations of this movie going in, but Rosario Dawson‘s performance as yardmaster Connie Hooper adds to an incredibly dynamic tension that keeps a movie about a train travelling all by itself into a breathtaking thrill ride.

Unstoppable is loosely based on the Crazy Eights runaway train incident in Ohio on May 15, 2001, but it’s best to consider this a straight-up work of fiction so you don’t spoil the ending for yourself.

Buttery’s Rating:

My favorite flavors of Doritos all have “spicy” in the name, but these ones warn you how spicy they are by their color alone: They are fire engine red. The ingredients list gives no indication of what specific spices are providing the heat. Not even habanero itself is listed in the ingredients. This bothers me to no end.

This tortilla chip probably qualifies as the equivalent to hot sauce. Please don’t feed it to your kids as punishment, you might end up in jail.

Doritos, you have disappointed me.

Buttery’s Rating:

John (Alex Pettyfer) is Number Four of nine specially powered beings from the planet Lorien that form the Garde, guardians of Earth from the Mogadorians whose sole mission in life is to decimate all in their path. Because the people of Lorien stand in the way of the Mogadorians taking over Earth, the Mogadorians seek to find and destroy each of the Garde before taking over the planet. Numbers One, Two, and Three have already met their demise at the hands of the Mogadorians, and John is next. He and his protector guardian Henri (Timothy Olyphant) flee their west coast town for life in quiet Paradise, Ohio. Unfortunately for John, he is unable to keep out of the public eye as he tries to control his new-found superpowerful gifts and his face keeps popping up all over the internet where wandering Mogadorian eyes can track him.

Timothy Olyphant is a show stealer as John’s protector Henri, mascarading as his father to the human world. His acting is brilliant, despite the inconsistencies in plot line given to his character. And the beagle dog who wanders into their lives on a stormy night, affectionally named Bernie Kosar, proves to be an important character to the storyline. (Dogs always do…)

There is extreme attention to small details — if a car is damaged or a shirt is ripped or a table is turned, those items never mistakenly go back to their pre-disturbed states throughout their time in the storyline. What is lacking here is attention to a few of the bigger details: We want more action, which we don’t really get until the last 20 minutes, and less boring build-up of the love story between John and Sarah (Dianne Agron), less high school angst, more plausible technology storyline. (Henri can wipe John‘s photos off the internet but can’t get through a firewall to take down a video so leaves John unprotected and goes to the home of the people with the website… uhhhhhhhh, for-really?) Also, number Number Six‘s (Teresa Palmer) involvement in the storyline is phenomenal when she finally gets in there, but she wasn’t in enough of the movie. John and Number Six‘s abilities are spectacularly well displayed, no complaints on how those were shown off. My personal favorite is John‘s built-in flashlights.

This is one of the better movies that Michael Bay has produced, but the storyline deserved a bit of tightening up to make it more plausible. Just because beings from another planet are involved doesn’t mean you can leave your audience scratching their heads on why or how certain parts of the story are supposed to be believable.

The door is left wide open for many more sequels. If more focus is made on the action and back story of the struggle between the Loriens and the Mogadorians the sequels will be worth making.

Buttery’s Rating:

Recommendation

Since John and Henri are always on the run, I recommend On The Border Cafe Style Tortilla Chips as well as their Medium Salsa for snacking.

What could be more perfect with these chips and salsa than On The Border Frozen Margarita Mix, added to some yummy tequila?

Magic Pop‘s consistency is slick and crunchy like that of a shrimp toast you might have consumed at a Chinese food establishment. It comes in a wide variety of flavors, including shrimp. We have tried plain and onion varieties. The onion variety is a bit too strong in its onioniness. The plain are pretty much tasteless, perfect for toppers such as butter or Nutella Hazelnut Spread, or butter AND Nutella! MMMMM!

Definitely worth a try. The full-sized Pops are pretty massive and could be used to make a delicate sandwich, but Kim’s also offers many other products including Mini Pops.

The fun fact about this product is that Kim’s Magic Pop is made with table top Magic Pop machines at your local grocery store, or you can buy your tabletop Magic Pop machine to make fresh Pops! (Photo courtesy of Alibaba.com)

Thanks to our friend in Pittsburgh for sending us the Magic Pops!!

Buttery’s Rating:

Recommendations

In honor of this snack’s name, it’s time to rewatch Practical Magic.

I kid you not, Newman’s Own Gorilla Grape Juice is fantastic with this snack.

I exist because I say I do.

Is that enough to keep you from the darkness? In this post-apocalyptic thriller, life goes from full speed ahead with all the sights and sounds of a bustling downtown Detroit to complete silence in the blink of an eye. Almost every person on Earth has completely vanished, leaving their clothes and personal effects behind. Those who are left to walk the earth must figure out why they are the lucky chosen ones to be alive, how to stay alive, and if indeed it is lucky to still be alive while all of the rest of humanity has been taken away to The Darkness. Without your own personal light to guide you away from the darkness you too will succumb to the fate of the vanished.

The survivors, all strangers to one another, end up meeting at a bar named Sonny’s (paying homage to the sun itself?) by chance because it is the only building around that has a working generator, so working lights to keep The Darkness away. As each day’s amount of sunlight lessens the strangers search together for the answers to Why they continue to exist. Each survivor has a strangely complicated history that leaves the viewer wondering if these characters were spared because of their attempts to leave their dark past behind them.

Thandie Newton plays the role of a recovering drug addict so well that I forgot she isn’t one. There is a nod during one of her scenes to the film Rosemary’s Baby which seems extremely out of place, but its outcome makes sense for her character. Also, Hayden Christensen is named Luke in this film, which is the name of the son of Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, the character that Christensen played in the second two films of the Star Wars series.

How is it that John Leguizamo‘s character Paul disappeared to the darkness but came back to the world, with his clothes on, when his light started working again? What happened to him during that time of darkness? This and many questions go unanswered… as if we’re supposed to have faith that all of these plot inconsistencies are just a part of life and not a flaw of its writer.

Since I am not familiar with Detroit, other than the outsider’s prejudgment that the entire place is a hellhole (and therefore a perfect location for The Darkness to strike), I still don’t know what the significance of 7th Street is. The darkness is everywhere, not just 7th Street, so perhaps it’s just a convenient narrow scope to look only at 7th Street.

The innocence of children is an important theme to this film, they are able to fight the darkness in more creative ways than adults. Unfortunately, this isn’t a compelling enough reason for me to pay theater prices to see it.

Go see this movie for yourself and weigh in on if it’s any good. The film is in theaters Friday, February 18 or available now in iTunes.

Buttery’s Rating:

Dove Milk Chocolate Silky Smooth Promises are bite-sized milk chocolate treats. The chocolate is perfectly sweet without being too sweet, and has a silky rich texture without being too rich. It’s fantastically wonderful and I cannot say enough to convey how delicious it is.

Is this chocolate from Switzerland? From Belgium? From Germany? Nope. It’s a Mars product from New Jersey. Who knew the best chocolate in the world came from Hackettstown?

Buy some Dove Milk Chocolate Silky Smooth Promises for your sweetheart this weekend. You’ll thank me later.

Buttery’s Rating:
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