I, Duddits

REVIEW(ISH): THE WALKING DEAD, Episode 5

2010-11-30T04:13:00.003-05:00

When I say that The Walking Dead almost lost me before finishing its first season, I'm not kidding. Great TV has spoiled me, and my meager attention span wont tolerate mediocrity. A run of bad episodes is enough for me to drop a show six seasons in; this show went from brilliant to crap in the first two weeks, and only managed to work its way back to 'kinda good' by episode four.

And then this week's "Wildfire." Wow. Half-way in and it's already the best episode of the season. After last week's blindsiding zombie attack finale, all of the show's subplots boil over. Everything happens. Devastating grief and the most horrific tension since the pilot. A escalating series of character moments builds toward an abrupt shift in the third act with the showstopping introduction of a new character. This is not the same series that aired last week. Gone are the bouts of clunky, expository dialog, the broad stereotypes, and the substitution of action for genuine suspense. This is the show the pilot promised us.

There are more bodies to be buried. While the traumatized survivors mourn, lingering tension between Rick and Shane erupts in a debate over Rick's latest plan: convoy up and head for the CDC building a couple hundred miles away. And... that's all that should be said. This is the kind of episode you really don't want spoiled, a turning point for everyone involved: the characters, the show, and the audience. With "Wildfire," the show finally delivers on the promise of its spectacular first airing. I'm hooked. Again.

BSG: FAVORITE MOMENTS

2009-08-06T23:10:00.003-04:00

Now that the great Battlestar Galactica is in my hands in its completion (season 4.5 is out on DVD now), I feel as though the show is actually over; even after the March finale, there was that lingering anticipation for the forthcoming box set and its myriad of bonus features, commentaries and gloriously extended episodes. With that release in my posession and only The Plan (for which I have only a passing interest) on the horizon, Battlestar is, in my heart at least, over.

So I feel like a list is in order. As I've listened to the soundtrack for season 4 the last few days (available now in a 2-disc set), I've been reminded of so many wonderful moments from the last season by Bear McCreary's beautiful score. The music for Apollo's farewell, Laura running, Starback at the piano, Gaeta's lament; they all trigger such gut emotional reactions from me (not gonna lie, I cried in the car the other day when one of these queued up - wont tell you which one, though) that are obviously tied to the scenes, but are also stirring on their own.

I'm compiling a list of my own, but I want you, dear reader, to submit yours. What are your favorite moments from the entire series? I'll probably post a list of 10, but don't feel obligated to match that number. Please, however, feel obligated to actually post something. I see that little Hits counter move up whenever I post something so I know you're out there.

REVIEW: HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

2009-07-18T16:45:00.011-04:00

(Here's my original opening to this review, which is no longer accurate - figured I'd include it for the sake of posterity and disclosure. Also, the intent was pure. Some day I will post a review within hours of seeing something new. Someday...)

This is an impromptu review, composed on the fly not an hour after I've seen the movie. That being the case, it will likely be unbalanced, hastily composed and given to frequent derailments of my always steady train of thought. Really, it'll be like every other review I've ever posted here, except minus the two-week lag between release and review.

This is easily my favorite of the Potter films thus far. While it doesn't hit the levels of perfection that Alfonso Cuaron's Prisoner of Azkaban did, it is by far the most engaging and human of the series. It also boasts a career best performances from Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and in particular Dan Radcliffe, but more about them later.

First, let me praise the welcome return of Steve Kloves. Kloves was responsible for the intelligent and efficient scripts for the first four films; his instinct for theme and character (teens especially) was always a boon to the films, never more apparent then when it was absent from the rushed and muddled fifth installment. Equally important was Kloves' skill at adaptation; he always knew what to keep, what to abridge and what to cut, and I'd say that, barring one exception, he was always right.

Still, this Potter is more assured in it's storytelling than last time. The scenes play out longer (with more character packed into each one) and that cumbersome montagey feel is gone. And again, Kloves can write terrific teens (better than Rowling does). Scenes of horny Hogwarts students eyeing each other up in the halls and nervous pre-sexual encounters populate this movie and make for several of its best moments. Among my favorites is Harry and Ron, while each laying in bed, discussing girls they like; it ends with Harry abruptly ending the conversation and switching off his light, though it's scripted and played just right to suggest (in a PG-appropriate manner, of course) that he'll be polishing his wand momentarily.

Y'know. Jerking off. Of course that's all played very discreetly so as not to offend the kiddies with "mature content." The film's actual on-screen maturity is displayed by Daniel Radcliffe, who more than exceeds expectations this go around; the dude is fantastic in this movie. He isn't just the star because he's playing the title character, he's an honest to Gods movie star here, more than holding his own with sage actors Gambon, Smih, Rickman and Broadbent. Radcliffe has developed into a very, very talented young actor. He handles the drama with more gravity than in previous installments (his go-to affectation for conveying heavy emotions was usually to just get louder), but his comic abilities are what surprises the most. While Grint has previously been the series' funniest young actor, Radcliffe steps up his game in this installment. I was howling with laughter during a scene when Harry's high as a kite on a good luck potion. Seeing Harry Potter stoned (played beautifully by Radcliffe) in a PG movie was a real subversive delight. Kids growing up with these movies are going to discover so much more burried within in them when they get older.

Like its audience and protagonists, the Potter franchise is getting older. This movie defies audience expectations of a summer movie by ending quietly and slowly. What follows is a vague and minor (though what's blacked out is specific and major) spoiler, even for those familiar with the books. Yates and Kloves opted to excise Rowling's climactic battle scene from the film, instead allowing Dumbledore's death to be, as it should be, the climax of the film. I was stunned that there was no epic wizard fight in the halls of Hogwarts afterward (the largest cut from the book); after a brief chase and a fizzle of a reveal (to a somewhat abandoned plotline that really functions only as a subtitle), the movie winds down with what must be the longest and most satisfying denouement to any recent summer blockbuster. I applaud director and writer for trimming what wasn't necessary, even though what they trimmed would certainly have been a rousing, spectacular and crowd-pleasing action scene, in favor of character, tone and emotion. I'm sure the decision, which makes more sense in the context of the movie's original winter '08 release date, will cost them at the box office, but it was the right move.

Brief Thoughts on Random Bullshit

2009-07-18T00:06:00.003-04:00

Here's a quickie, but reviews of MOON, THE HURT LOCKER and PUBLIC ENEMIES are in the works.

First of all, please don't see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Don't go despite bad reviews, even if only to satisfy your curiosity - trust me, you really aren't THAT curious. Don't give them your money. Hell, don't even download a bootleg of the thing - aside from the illegality of it, you'll be giving them your time. The thing has made over $300 million domestically so a second sequel is all but guaranteed. Please, please, please, don't encourage them.

Also, it appears as though Fox is pursuing replacements for voice-actors Katy Segal, John Dimaggio and Billy West for the forthcoming season of Futurama. This is a real heart breaker; my elation at news of the show's resurrection is all but totally dashed. Those three actors are irreplaceable to people who watched and loved the show (I came to it ashamedly quite late on DVD, but still love it dearly). This is lame.

The Emmy nominations are out, and again it seems the the people who award excellence in television don't seem to watch very much of it. Battlestar Galactica was again all but shut out, with nominations only for directing (Michael Rymer for the series finale "Daybreak, part 2," and quite deservedly) and for their pre-4.5 webisodes. Meanwhile, Mad Men and 30 Rock each snagged four writing nominations of the total five in their respective categories and, most offensively of all, Family Guy got a nod for best animated program. Seriously, Emmy's, you gotta spread the love around a little bit, but never, ever to Family Guy.

REVIEW: TRANSFORMERS - REVENGE OF THE FALLEN

2009-06-28T17:09:00.000-04:00

I'm late getting this online (shocking, I know), so anyone interested has probably read at least one review of the new Michael Bay fighting robot explosion-fest, TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE RUNTIME. If you haven't yet, read any and all of the reviews linked at the bottom of this page - they're terrifically entertaining reads. And in the nature of full disclosure, I read those incredibly negative reviews before seeing the movie myself, something I try to avoid doing in most cases. I couldn't resist, though, and still somehow mustered the will to see the movie after reading how abjectly awful it is. Don't get me wrong, if Devin, Nick or Ebert say that a movie is inherently terrible and without any redeeming qualities (which they all do), I take them at their word; when it comes to avoiding shitty movies, they've never led me astray.

But goddamn, do I love me some big robots.

Five minutes into the new TRANSFORMERS (after an opening so retardedly audacious - including Decepticons at the Dawn of Man), after a terrific robot fight that leveled Shanghai, I started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the pros and I weren't going to see eye to eye on this one. The movie, while just as dumb as the previous installment, was not the disaster I'd been told to expect. The action was bright, colorful and, most unlikely of all in a Michael Bay movie, coherent. Also, kickass. When engaging a hidden Decepticon force in the soon-to-be-craterish city, Optimus Prime drives out the back of an Air Force C-130, transforms in midair (all in one, continuous, 100% ILM shot, of course), deploys four parachutes, touches down on the freeway and, three bounds later, transforms back into a truck. Mindless, I know, but it's the kind of giddy, little boy playing with action figures fun you want when watching this kind of movie. I leaned over to my friend and commented that, so far, the movie was pretty enjoyable, with which he agreed.

ONE MINUTE LATER.
ME: What just happened?
FRIEND: Oh my god, I'm so bored.

And that's TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, condensed for your reading pleasure. There's a few minutes of robot ass-kicking scattered throughout two-and-a-half hours of horrible. Let me be clear: there is NOTHING to enjoy in this movie that doesn't involve 40-foot robots punching each other in the face. The only moments in the movie that I didn't hate featured robot fights, though I by no means am saying that there weren't robot fights that I didn't hate, which there were (and I did). The things that I hated most about the movie were the robots, which there is no shortage of. The Autobots and the Decepticons filled out their ranks since the last movie, though there is no explanation where any of these new bots came from. On the "good" side we have Shiny Silver Sports Car Robot (if this character was given a name, I didn't catch it - in my defense, it also wasn't ever given a line of dialog or anything to do onscreen except drive around looking mighty slick) and the Crotch Rocket Sisters (a trio of fast motorcycles who project holographic girl-riders when in bike form, and who roller-fucking-skate in robot form). Adding to the mounting inanity is Jetfire, the ancient SR-71 Blackbird who, to better depict his age, walks with a cane (that comes from within when he transforms) and has a shiny metal beard. And of course there are already-infamous Twins, two smaller robots who walk, talk and look like the worst black man stereotypes ever; their presence in this movie is hateful, stupid and ugly, and all involved in their creation should be ashamed of themselves.

But Mudflaps and Skids, as they're called, aren't the only offensive content vomited on the screen over the movie's unbearably long running time. American soldiers are killed off by the dozens throughout - early in the film we see their bodies being unloaded at a stateside airbase, coffins draped with American flags. This is a scene in a movie about alien robots based on an 80s toyline. It's bad enough this brainrot movie kills off U.S. troops just to up the body count, but to try (and fail) to milk an emotional moment off the solemn imagery of their deaths is beyond insulting. In addition to that public offense, the movie peppers what is (or should be) essentially a children's action movie with profanity and tasteless "humor." Little children sat in theaters this weekend watching dogs and dog-sized robots hump Megan Fox's leg. They saw at least one robot farting gag, yet another robot pissing on people gag, Sam's mom get high on pot-brownies, and John Tuturro's barely-concealed nutsack. There's nothing, absolutely nothing funny in TRANSFORMERS: ROTF, and every attempt at humor is at best dead air (but in most cases crude and tasteless).

Every human element in this movie is a complete and utter waste of time. There is not a single character in the entire movie, only human-like props that scream each other's names loudly and repeatedly. Shia Lebouf, whose sharp comic instincts were one of the first movie's few saving graces, is undeniably terrible here. Megan Fox, who suggested last time that she might be more than just a pretty everything, is strictly a piece of ass this go 'round. Her character is a pin-up in the middle of a $200 million action flick and nothing more. I almost feel bad for her. Bay & Co. follow the PIRATES 2 model, wherein any and every memorable (or not) supporting character from the first installment (dogs included) must return. Everybody's back: Sam's parents (who killed last time but, sadly, are given dreck to run with this go), Tuturro's disgraced Sector 7 agent (a needless and 100% unfunny John Tuturro thong gag hurt my soul), and even Mojo the chiuaua (who is featured two of the movie's three dog-humping-leg jokes. Seriously) all return, none of whom add anything of value to the proceedings. Let's not forget Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson's Military Dudes (I saw the movie last night and I can't remember a single character's name, or for that matter even a rudimentary outline of the plot), who function solely as... nothing. They're barely in the movie. In fact everyone feels like they're barely in the film at all. There isn't a character in the movie that I didn't hope would die by the end, and those that did ALL came back to life before the movie (finally) stopped. This is such a vacuum of talent and entertainment featuring nothing, barring a few brief robot fights and the aforementioned offensive content, even remotely noteworthy or memorable.

One thing to keep in mind while watching this movie (which you should under no circumstances do. Please, don't give them your money, your time or your brainpower) is that its principle architects HATE YOU. Michael Bay and screenwriters Orci and Kurtzman think you are of limited intelligence and are so eager to kill two hours of your tedious life that you'll endure hours of noisy, mindless drivel. They think you won't notice glaring continuity errors, like when characters on one continent in one scene are inexplicably on another in the next, or that an amphibious invasion force manages to cross the entirety of Africa in the space of minutes. Certainly they think you're a racist cretin like them, since they think you'll find it funny that black dudes can't read, even when they're robots. They assume you're a moron for laughing at shit like The Twins, Sam's intensely annoying college roommate (who annoys every character he encounters - perhaps this should have been a warning, screenwriters) and a lech for wanting nothing more from Megan Fox than to do cheesecake poses for 2.5 hours (seriously, if I wanted porn, I know where to look). They think you don't have even the most rudimentary grip on geography, going so far as to place the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in the middle of the goddamn desert and setting a journey from Egypt to Jordan (and then back) over the course of a few hours. Really, though, they think you're a mouth-breathing, bib-drooling, Maxim-reading product of hastily-unplanned mutant incest for enjoying the two hours of banal filler that populates the non-robot fighting portions of the movie.

This is a terrible, terrible, terrible movie. People that tell me they enjoyed it are no longer people I can have conversations with. This is an objectively bad movie - no one can argue otherwise. There is no plot, there are no characters, there is nothing dramatic, comedic or otherwise entertaining about anything that occurs in the film. There are a few enjoyable (but unoriginal and unexciting) robot fight scenes that were the only things I looked forward to during its punishingly-long duration. I hated, hate now and will forever continue to hate this movie until something even worse is released (and even then, I'll only hate it slightly less). This is an insult to audiences and a black mark on Hollywood.

I'm not typically inclined to make hyperbolic "best/worst" statements (and even less inclined to take seriously those who do make them), but TRANSFORMERS: ROTF is easily the worst movie I've seen this year, and among the worst I've ever seen. I can't believe I'm this offended by a damn robot movie. Avoid it at all costs.

ROGER EBERT'S REVIEW

DEVIN FARACI'S REVIEW

NICK NUNZIATA'S SEMI-REVIEW

DISCUSSION: GREATEST ACTION MOVIE

2009-06-20T15:04:00.001-04:00

My complete and total disinterest in seeing McG's TERMINATOR: SALVATION didn't prevent me from getting jazzed enough by the trailers and posters to go back and revisit the Cameron films. I have no unrealistic love for ol' Jimbo or his works; the guy is a good storyteller, spectacular craftsman and mediocre writer (dialog - hard to argue with his handle on structure*). That said, the dude has a pretty well 100% success ratio, a statistical impossibility in Hollywood (topic for another discussion: filmmakers without a bad movie to their credit. Brad Bird certainly tops the list, having made three perfect films).

Cameron's TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY has got to be one of, if not the very best action spectacle of all time. Before you lose your shit and start throwing titles at me, read that sentence again: greatest action spectacle. It isn't the best action movie of all time, as that distinction easily goes to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, which is damned flawless. No, T2 doesn't quite hit reach perfection the way Spielberg did so effortlessly with RAIDERS, but it's damn close. Where T2 exceeds RAIDERS is in the action - Cameron crafted the perfect thrill machine actioner, one that set a standard that's been mimicked, aped and shamelessly copied for almost 20 years, but never with the same skill.

The action in T2 is just spectacular. Think about the number of great action sequences in that movie. The opening future war battle. The naked Schwarzzenager bar fight. The shoot-out at the mall. The truck/dirt bike/harley chase on the spillway. The elevator fight/escape from Pescadero mental institution. The Cyberdyne systems break-in, the subsequent assault on the cops with the minigun, and then that last car chase between the SWAT van & helicopter, then the pickup and the semi. The steel works finale. EVERY sequence is different, every one is thrilling, every one was groundbreaking for its time, everyone still holds up today (I say that having re-watched the movie not an hour ago), and every single one is perfect. Cameron stumbles with the schmaltzy writing and the heavy-handed voice over, but as an action director I think he's unmatched.

Thoughts? Is there a grand action spectacle that I've overlooked in my praise of T2? Is there an action director you think tops Jim "I only shoot in underwater 3D" Cameron? Am I totally wrong about T2? Comment away, interwebs.

*Let's not get semantic and bring up the overlong special editions of ALIENS, T2 or THE ABYSS - the theatrical cut is what counts.

REVIEW: OUTLANDER

2009-06-14T18:53:00.000-04:00

There are some movies that get lauded with absurd amounts of praise wildly disproportionate to what they actually deserve (Little Miss Sunshine comes to mind, along with last year's The Dark Knight and Slumdog Millionare - which is itself rising on my own personal hype-backlash list). My issue with these movies (or more accurately those that hyperbolically over-praise them) is that they deprive other, often better, tragically underseen films of the love and accolade warranted to them. Spread the love around, critics and filmgoers.

Outlander falls in the latter category: it's a film that to 90% of people would sound terrible, but to that movie loving, film savvy 10%, it's golden. The blurb on the DVD box describes it dully as "Beowulf meets Predator." If I were to offer a polish on the language, it would read: "The 13th Warrior meets Starman, except AWESOME." Intrigued but mystified? Outlander tells the epic story of Kainin, an alien soldier on his way home when his ship crash lands on Earth circa the 8th century A.D. In the crash, a monstrous alien dragon-wolf-monster-thing called a Moorwen is freed from the ship and unleashed upon the unsuspecting fur-wearing populous of Norway and only Kainin can stop it - that's right, kids, an alien helps the Vikings fight a bitchin' looking monster. If this appeals to you, you need to watch this movie. Yesterday. If it doesn't appeal to you, I offer my condolences for your never having experienced the joys of being a child with external genitalia, 'cause this movie was made for little boys (and little boys at heart).

Jim Caviezel (just occured to me his initials are JC - do you think that was a requirement for Mel? Would he have cast another actor instead? Possibly John Cho, John Cleese or John Carpenter?) plays Kainin and alternates his performance between stoic badass and tortured hero - nothing new here, but he does an admirable job. Kainin's interactions with the local Viking tribe proves to be the center of the movie and while far from original (the script borrows heavily from any monster-in-the-dark-that-we-must-outsmart-and-destroy movie -Alien, Predator, 13th Warrior, etc and flat out steals from Beowulf - both the text and the Zemeckis movie*), the cast elevates trite material to at least fairly enjoyable level. There's an altogether ridiculous scene featuring Kainin and Wulfric (Jack Huston) competing in the mead hall game "shields" has to the two running across upheld battle shields in a circle, performing various feats of balance and agility while the drunken crowd cheers; it shouldn't work, but miraculously does. It also might be the best scene in the whole movie, and that includes several gorey Moorwen attacks.

There really isn't an original idea in the whole movie, but the cavalcade of cliches are executed with enough conviction, style and the occasional, very knowing tongue-in-cheek to sell it. In fact, Outlander is pretty damned entertaining despite and in spite of itself. The action is well-shot and varied - there's nothing repetitive from set piece to set piece - and hits all the beats you want in this kind of movie. There's a few sword fights, a ton of scares and some genuinely fun, original violence. But never does the movie tread into overkill territory like Zemeckis did. Each action scene is, by contemporary standards, quite brief. Sword fights go on just as long as they need to and never longer, as do the monster attacks scenes - never did Outlander fatigue me the way most recent action pictures have. There's a familiar low-budget efficiency to the movie that I admired a lot, something lost now that most big Hollywood productions are actually B-movies with $200 million budgets. Outlander certainly looks cheaper than its contemporaries, but it plays cheaper, too, and that's a good thing.

*There are characters named Rothgar and Boromir - seriously? Also, furthering the Beowulf theft, the Moorwen has enough time to squirt out a baby Moorwen, which naturally bites it to better enrage the already vicious parent - Grendel's mother anyone?

2009-05-13T14:47:00.001-04:00

Hey there, internets. Here it is, my first honest to gods review in, well... it has been a while. But let's move on.

STAR TREK was not the unmitigated disaster that its trailers predicted.

There was a lot of enthusiastic praise for the movie being bandied around the webs this weekend – it has an astonishing 96% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes – but I gotta wonder if these folks saw the same movie I did. Don't get me wrong, Star Trek ain't bad, but I'm hesitant to praise or even recommend it. As a summer action movie, it gets the job done: it's a noisy, brightly colored series of set pieces and space battles with an enjoyable cast and little expectations of its audience. It's also relentlessly stupid.

I know, it's hard to see that as anything other than a negative review, but it is. This isn't a bold new direction on the franchise, it's Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with spaceships. JJ's new Trek looks and sounds like the original, but only briefly and rarely touches the feel of the original.

Like with last year's Old Man Indy, I'm overall fairly apathetic about 2009's Star Trek. As a child raised on Trek in the 80s (namely The Next Generation and the Kirk-era movies), that I had no real emotional reaction to the reboot/relaunch is either JJ & co's greatest success or failure (I'm sure their $70+ million haul this weekend ranks slightly higher on their list of accomplishments than any accolade I could offer, but fuck 'em). New Trek didn't filled me with giddy, nostalgic geek joy, nor did it enrage my fiercest nerd sensibilities. It was there, and from time to time it was enjoyable, though never engaging.

The whole premise of the movie irks me in its artificiality. If you hadn't heard, this isn't a straight re-make ala Batman Begins or Casino Royale. The entire narrative is structured around relaunching the franchise with a new cast without rewriting the last 40 years of Trek cannon. Honestly, for as much as I dislike the rationale behind the story, I have to admire it. The folks behind this new one (Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman, or Paramount) built their movie around a needless and silly time-travel gimmick as to avoid offending the die hard Trekkies who kept the franchise on life support for the last ten years. And while my jaded heart is genuinely warmed by the gesture, it sure as shit doesn't make for a compelling story. Well, it could have – but it didn't. In preserving the franchise's legacy, the makers of this Trek have failed to make an actual movie. This film is all convoluted and empty set-up for a new franchise and not a movie that stands on its own merits. I would much rather have seen a straight-up reboot than this apologetic and uninteresting mess.*

In the least spoilery language possible, the basic premise of the movie is thus: Nero (Eric Bana), a tattooed and cantankerous Romulan, travels back through time to fuck shit up (which he does). In doing so, he alters history and creates a timeline separate from the one starring Shatner, Nimoy and the rest. Hence, the franchise is born anew and the old-canon adventures are protected (but are still fair game for the remaking). But these exhaustive attempts to be excruciatingly faithful to the source material by not doing all the things a typical reboot does fall apart when they do all the things a typical reboot does. I know it's nitpicky, but it seems silly to insist on tying this obvious (and necessary) reboot to the old canon while still being a reboot in every way. The technology, ships, uniforms and locations have all been updated, as has the cast, but we're still meant to assume that Chris Pine is the same Kirk that Shatner was. I realize this requires a fairly meager suspension of disbelief from the audience, but that inconsistency underlines how needless the rebootquel setup is. Audiences like reboots an inexplicably love origin stories – why not give them just that and scrap the religious devotion to what's come before?

There's a lot that does work, though, especially the cast. Most of them, at least. Chris Pine (who I've only seen in the especially mediocre Bottle Shock, in which he was especially mediocre) more than acquits himself as Jim Kirk. Even when he was given transparently expository dialog or a handful or lousy one-liners, he was good. He even threw a few welcome Shatnerisms into the mix. Karl and the Urban Rock Doom, who's been lousy in a string of post-Lord of the Rings flops, absolutely owns Bones McCoy. He's the only member of the new cast who attempts to mimic his predecessor, and he pulls it off quite well. Of the few laughs that the movie managed to elicit from me, half went to Urban. I just wish he did more than be a first-act sidekick for Kirk and then vanish for the rest of the movie. The other half of the laughs went to Simon Pegg's Scotty. The only part of the movie's initial casting to excite me was Pegg – anybody who's ever seen his work with Edgar Wright (or even last year's under appreciated How to Lose Friends & Alienate People) knows the guy is a terrific comic actor, but that's not the Pegg we get here. Instead, recall the Pegg from JJ's M:I3: funny and watchable in a completely throwaway character, Pegg elevates lousy material simply by virtue of being smarter than the script. His Scott is, alongside Urban's McCoy, one of this film's only real standouts, even when he's delivering shit double-entendre's about the Enterprise' “ample nacelles, if you know what I mean” (we do) or trading barbs with a muppet (seriously).

The one cast member I won't comment on is Zachary Quinto as Spock. He's either acceptably bland or astoundingly bad, I really can't decide. Regardless, his frequent smirking is unsettling. His Spock could flip out at any moment and choke a bitch, and that just ain't Spock-like.

The rest of the cast does what they can with the script (which gives them nothing to work with), but they're all sadly forgettable. Zoe Saldana Uhura, while sexy as hell, adds nothing to the movie but a great set of legs. I say that in defense of the actress, mind you; she's good in the movie as the confident 23rd century career woman, but a romantic entanglement with one of the main three (hint: it ain't Kirk) does not constitute a character arc, even a shitty one. John Cho's Sulu is even more one-note. The script succumbs to that age-old screenwriting cliche, which is that All Asian People Know Martial Arts. He has essentially two scenes in the movie, neither of which ask any more of Cho than to be Asian. Also, George Takei? Japanese. Sulu? Japanese. Cho? Yeah. And Anton Yeltzin's defining characteristic as Chekov is possessing an incomprehensible (and not at all convincing) Russian accent. Like Sulu and, to a lesser extent, Scott, Chekov is comic relief not because his character is inherently funny, but because funny (in a Paul Blart: Mall Cop way) things happen to him. They're the butt of the jokes.

It's that sense of humor that bugs me the most about the movie. The action is all very exciting, if never wholly original, and the cast for the most part works. But the humor aims too damn low to be actually funny. Instead of getting clever jokes and exchanges derived from character and circumstance, Orci and Kurtzman inundate us with cheap sight gags, easy jokes and some embarrassingly dumb “comic” beats, all of which come not from the characters but at their expense. Chekov's inability to give the computer recognizable voice commands is an unfunny rip on a gag in Star Trek IV, and it wasn' terribly amusing then, either. Sulu's failure to disengage the ship's parking break when disembarking spacedock is both asinine and worthless (except for providing an amateur plot convenience, but more on that later). Worst of all must be Kirk's “hilarious” allergic reaction to a shot Bones gives him, a gag borrowed from the seminal Will Smith comedy Hitch. Having seen only that film's trailer, I can only assume (rightly I'd wajor) that the gag is just as retarded in a romantic comedy as it is in science fiction.

The movie also features not only a Red Shirt (whose death is telegraphed and uninteresting), but also the old Trek staple, inexplicable death trap in the bowels of the Enterprise. I get the desire to embrace all aspects of old school Trek, but incorporating two widely-ridiculed (and repeated) devices is just damn stupid.***

There's just so much potential squandered by a lazy, seemingly-incomplete script. There were moments when I felt like I was watching place-holder scenes, where the writers dumped in cliché and archetypes, intending to replace them in later drafts with, y'know, writing. I realize Orci and Kurtzman (Transformers) aren't Tom Stoppard or William Monaghan (or even Paul Haggis), but even by their low standard this is lazy writing. Star Trek screams “strike movie,” even more so than the abhorrently bad Wolverine did, and it's frustrating - because, unlike that movie, this Trek is actually halfway decent.

*Why in the hell did this have to happen? Why did Paramount think that the Star Trek fans wouldn't accept a remake, which has become a fairly common storytelling aberration in the last decade. The James Bond and Batman fans swallowed it just fine, and like in Star Trek, there's more bad in those franchises than good.

**SPOILER! This problem (which could likely just be my problem) is brought to a head when Nimoy appears as old Spock, traveled back from the future. He looks at Pine and recognizes Kirk – obviously Pine couldn't and shouldn't appear exactly like The Shat, but Spock Prime's recognition is jarring. Not nearly as jarring as a scene he has with Quinto's Spock, though.

***Especially considering that JJ's own Lost self-consciously does Red Shirts A. more often, and B. more lazily than Roddenberry's Trek ever did.

GREATEST. POSTER. EVER.

2009-02-27T10:37:00.000-05:00

I found this on CHUD.COM and it just tickles me to no end. There are so many ways that this French poster for the horribly titled Wolverine spin-off movie is terrible, not the least of which being that it reminds audiences of the Hugh Jackman's other public persona, the all-singing, all-dancing, Tony-winning owner of a huge ackman.

Anyway, this is too funny to ignore. Please, leave comments with what YOU think angsty Logan is screaming in this candidly captured moment. I call dibs on:

"STELLA! STELLA!"

MY APOLOGIES, NEGLECTED DUDDITS (and reader).

2009-02-09T11:55:00.001-05:00

This 24-hours in a day bullshit is the bullshit. I have to work five days a week and go to school. Most days that eats up 8 hours. I want to be able to read more books, enjoy the occasional video game, and be sociable with my local group of hooligans, ne'rdowells and (insert your favorite pejorative here!)s. Each of those could take up a few hours a day. But what I desperately need to to do is watch many, many more movies and write pithy reviews of each for this here blagosphere. And that takes up at least two hours a day to watch. The writing part I'm still working the kinks out on...

So yes. Fuck the 24-hour day and its fascist restrictions on those of us with numerous time-consuming hobbies. This is the gentrification of my day, leaving only enough time for work and some (but not all) bodily functions.

Anyway, I've seen a ton of movies of late, reviews of (some of) which may or may not be coming down the pipeline in the semi-near future. Yes, that was a particularly definitive sentence. In the mean time, here are some single sentence reviews of what I've seen to whet your appetite for whatever monstrosities of bad prose I concoct for the full review.

CORALINE - I loved it for being the kind of kid's movie people don't make anymore (scary, thoughtful and intense), but was often bored by its fairly dull protagonist and protracted running time. Still, the production design was gorgeous and the 3D is used better here than ever before.

NICK & NORA'S INFINITE PLAYLIST - if I was 15 and either gay or a girl, I'd have loved this movie. Not being any of those things, however, means it was a marginally enjoyable collection of teen movie cliches, an off-screen fingerbang, and another great Michael Cera performance.

ZACK & MIRI MAKE A PORNO - Kevin Smith aping Judd Apatow does nothing for me. Nor do Smith's trademark obvious Star Wars jokes or on-screen anal leakage.

W. - Not the return to form for Oliver Stone that I'd hoped for, but not the cluster fuck train wreck that I expected either. Josh Brolin is amazing as Bush in this surprisingly sympathetic look at the now-former President.

FROZEN RIVER - This movie gives the repressed filmmaker inside me hope. Made on an incredibly modest budget, this terrific drama is going to get national acclaim when Melissa Leo wins the Best Actress Oscar in a few weeks.

MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA - Aside from the black cast and sharp visuals, there's nothing about this movie that would hint that Spike Lee was involved. Dull, drawn out and uninteresting. I turned it off an hour in.

TRANSSIBERIAN - Features the rare good post-2000 Ben Kingsley performance. Also, is a terrific thriller.

LAKEVIEW TERRACE - Features the rare good Sam Jackson performance. Also, is a terrific thriller.

ROCK-N-ROLL - The British gangster movie from Guy Ritchie, which means it's just like the last British gangster movie from Guy Ritchie: clever, funny and convoluted. Also very enjoyable.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK - Charlie Kaufman unfiltered. The biggest mind-fuck I've ever seen. A beautiful movie.

MILK - An efficient script, tight direction and all-around stellar cast makes this a very good Oscar baiter. Its timing makes it unforgettable.

DEFIANCE - So forgettable I had difficulty remember parts of it the day after. Bland, predictable, familiar. Daniel Craig and Liev Schrieber should be in better.

Thoughts? Preferences? Any particular review any body's dying to read? PLEASE SOMEONE USE THE COMMENTS SECTION, I'M DESPERATE FOR FEEDBACK/ATTENTION.

2009-01-26T21:08:00.000-05:00

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA was on my radar for a long time before I finally watched it the other day; having finally seen it, I regret the delay. Woody Allen's latest is a great little picture about love, romance, culture and sex. About that last part - for a movie that was hyped out of Cannes predominantly on the presence of red-hot sapphic action between Scarjo and PeeCruz, there's a shocking lack of sex in the film. What's there works and works well, but still. Art-house hype machine, you've deceived me yet again. Anyway, review. Plot and characters, right?

Two college grads, the titular Vicky and Cristina (Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson), are vacationing in Barcelona when artist/Lothario Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) offers to take them away for a weekend of sightseeing, fine dining, local music and red hot bedroom action. Throw his batshit-crazy ex-wife (Oscar-nominated Penelope Cruz*) into the mix and you've got a sexy recipe for disaster... or a recipe for sexy disaster.

The cast is all around terrific. Hall in particular was fantastic as the Woody Allen-type character, seemingly very comfortable with Woody's trademark nervous sarcasm coming out of her mouth. Miss Scarj, who I've grown less and less interested in over the years, acquitted herself nicely in the less-interesting Cristina role. Outshining them both are their Spanish co-stars. Bardem makes you (almost) forget his roaring rampage of shoe-checking in Texas with effortless charm and surprising sincerity, while Cruz's Maria Elana is convincingly unstable. Their scenes together are the best in the whole picture.

Despite its stellar cast, VCB manages to remain a small picture in scope and feeling and is the better for it. Woody seems more interested in the characters than actually involved with them. VCB easily could've been a devastating emotional drama, but instead the grand emotional moments are played subdued and the audience is left feeling at arm's length from the whole affair - this is a good thing. The movie is thoughtful and curious it is about relationships - not to show to us, but to explore with us. It isn't your typical romantic drama/comedy (thank gods for that), but it is a typical Woody Allen romance.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is now available on DVD.

*Pronounced "Peen-ah-low-p Cr-uh-zz"

OSCAR SNUB! Where's DARK KNIGHT'S nomination for "Super Best Picture of All Time" ?!

2009-01-22T10:29:00.000-05:00

(That, by the way, is the last of the snark I'll throw Batman's way. Today. In this post.*)

It's that time of a year again, when movie geeks like yours truly gather round excitedly and debate which of their favorites from the last year got snubbed, robbed or treated right, and when the rest of America wonders where their favorite movies are on the list at all. Flash-forward two months, when The People accept the Academy's choices as cannon and people like me rip their hair out. ANYWAY. My thoughts on the nominations that interest me, and my stunning indifference (expressed through silence) about those that don't.

BEST PICTURE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

No surprises here. I've seen all but THE READER, and unless that thing knocks me on my ass, SLUMDOG is certainly the best of these five. (My thoughts on these four coming soon, I swear).

BEST DIRECTOR
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Stephen Daldry, The Reader
Gus Van Sant, Milk

Much the same. Ron Howard more than adequately Ron Howards his way through the paint-by-numbers FROST/NIXON, just as Gus Van Sant could've been asleep at the helm and still made a decent movie out of MILK's formulaic script (he was fact awake, and made a pretty good movie out of it). Despite my love of Fincher, my affection for BENJAMIN BUTTON has dwindled since I saw it and, more importantly, since I've thought about it. That said, Fincher tricked me into thinking that BUTTON'S a great movie - it's not - and that's a work of directing wizardry. Still, though, Danny Boyle should take this one home.

Best Actor - Mickey Roarke in THE WRESTLER. That's all, let's go home.

Best Actress - What the shit? Somehow I haven't seen ANY of the films with a best actress nomination. I gots to get on that.

While Best Supporting Actor will undoubtedly go to Heath Ledger (who creepily died a year ago today), I gotta love the Academy for nominating Robert Downey, Jr. for TROPIC THUNDER. His performance was a fucking trip in the movie, sure, but the nomination is more of a recognition of how awesome he was in '08 - and how sad it is the guy won't ever get nominated for IRON MAN. That's right, I said it. Discuss.

Best Original Screenplay - Fucking aye right, IN BRUGES! I was so afraid this movie was going to get forgotten come Oscar time, especially in a category like this one where it really deserves. Good job, Oscars.

I love the Best Animated Feature category. They should just be honest and call it the Best Pixar Film and not give it out on Pixar's off years. All WALL-E.

If THE DARK KNIGHT wins Best Cinematography or Best Editing, I might shit. With RAGE. Read why.

It's a shame that Oscar-baiter BENJAMIN BUTTON had such spectacular and seamless make-up effects, because it'll likely steal HELLBOY II's much-deserved (and only) nomination.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Alexandre Desplat
Defiance, James Newton Howard
Milk, Danny Elfman
Slumdog Millionaire, A.R. Rahman
WALL-E, Thomas Newman

Woah. The one (other) category where DARK KNIGHT seemed to be a shoe-in was Best Original Score - and it got completely shut out. BENJAMIN BUTTON, WALL-E and SLUMDOG all had terrific scores (with SLUMDOG's being my favorite), though I can't say that I remember much of any music from either MILK or DEFIANCE. Really, one of the few categories where ol' Batman was truly deserving of all the hype and it gets no love? Kinda sad.

All in all, I'm more or less "meh" about the nominations this year. I don't hold with some of the naysayers who call 08 a step down from the movie-stellar 07, but I just don't see the movies I loved reflected in the nominations enough to make me care. However, I wasn't expecting too much in the way of nominations for them, either. Net game, I just don't care this year. Hey who wants to skip getting drinking watching the Oscars this year and instead get drunk doing something else?

*Actually a lie.

REVIEW: SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

2009-01-22T01:02:00.000-05:00

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is a movie I can't believe anyone paid money to produce and distribute. That was a compliment - Charlie Kaufman's latest (and his first as director) is so aggressively intellectual and so completely unapologetic about it that I'm stunned any financiers or distributors had the stones to think it was commercially viable. Thank gods they did, though, because the movie is unabashedly brilliant... I think.

The problem with trying to review a movie like SYNECDOCHE* is that, well, I don't quite get it. Yet. I hope yet - this film is so goddamn dense with characters, imagery and jarringly abstract narrative that it should take multiple viewings to get only the most rudimentary grip on what happens within. And that's not even touching the thematic content. The movie has a philosophical outlook that's either just barely optimistic or crushingly nihilistic (I'm leaning toward the former, though mostly because the latter would hurt my soul too much). Kaufman's movie is a heady examination of some pretty profound themes, but he really makes you work to figure out what the hell he's trying to say. Which I have not done yet. Yet!

In emphasizing what a colossal mindfuck SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is, I might be giving the impression that it's a cold movie for the intellect to ponder and dissect. Not true - like Kaufman's other films, it's easy to be overwhelmed by the narrative headgames, but there is a gigantic heart at the center of this movie. Actually, I take that back. There's a gigantic heart that the center of his others, ETERNAL SUNSHINE especially; SYNECDOCHE has a raw nerve at its core and it hurts like a motherfucker.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character, a playwright, describes theater as like getting punched in the mouth, or love. That hideous paraphrase clutters the point, which is that to him theater is the purest representation of emotional truth distilled to its highest potency. That's not a bad description of emotion in the movie itself. Every feeling is expressed in a razor-sharp, essential form. Even if you don't know what's necessarily going on in the movie plot-wise, you'll feel what you're supposed to be feeling.

There's an emotional gut punch in the last few scenes of the movie that I embarrassingly missed - I knew it was there but failed to connect because I was stuck trying to figure out the film's labyrinthine construction. Not that SYNECDOCHE is a puzzle movie (it really isn't, despite being endlessly puzzling) but its willfully fluid boundaries between reality, fantasy and time make it easy to get lost in the plot's convolutions and miss out on the film's emotional journey.

I realize I haven't said much of what the movie's about. Honestly, the plot isn't an easy one to summarize, nor is it one I'd want to. This is the rare movie that never ceases to surprise and I'd hate to ruin that discovery for anyone interested in experiencing it. Which should be everyone. Let me be plain: I loved SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, even though I know I didn't quite get it. If you enjoyed Kaufman's previous films, you owe it to yourself to witness his 12th-level intellect unfiltered onscreen for the first time.

*You can rest assured that every time I typed this word over the course of this review, I failed - not unlike how most of the people in line at the box office failed to pronounce it. ZING!

I swear I'll be finished taking the piss out of THE DARK KNIGHT some day...

2008-12-14T22:22:00.000-05:00

The following is in response to Josh Tyler's Editorial Note To Awards Givers: Ignore The Dark Knight At Your Own Peril. I posted this as a comment on the editorial, but since it hasn't gone live yet, I can only assume that they denied my democratic right to call their editor-in-chief an idiot on his own website. Who knows, maybe it takes them a day or two to post something... In the meantime, though.

Tyler, your infantile little diatribe demonstrates the worst (and best) thing about the democratizing effect of the internet: everybody gets a say. There's nothing you wrote here that isn't inherently flawed on even the most basic logical level, but I’m going to try to limit my response only to the most egregiously stupid things you’ve written.

First of all, someone needs to set you straight on a concept you’ve clearly misunderstood, the function of the critic. A critic has three jobs: be an expert in film (or at least more expert than their audience), watch movies, and report their opinions. That expertise is why we seek their recommendation, NOT to get our opinions validated, our tastes reflected, or our (your) obsessive praise of a so-called "cultural phenomenon" justified. Film critics (the real ones) tell us what’s good, mass appeal be damned.

Sometimes the difference between “good” and popular creates a disparity between the critic and the public, but that’s not the indicator of irrelevance that people like you make it out to be. The big difference between a critic’s top pick and the average movie-goer’s is that a critic sees hundreds of movies over the course of a year, while the average person sees maybe ten. When these two groups make such sweeping statements as “best of the year,” whose is going to hold more weight? My point is that when we seek a recommendation from a critic, someone who has seen so many more movies than we could possibly have the time to, we should expect the highest-achieving movie and not the highest-grossing.

Does that mean that critics are out of touch? Maybe, but sometimes that's part of their job description. People don't need critics to tell them what they'll like - they already know what they like! The most important function of the critic is to help advance cultural tastes by making us aware of better movies. What you call championing pet films, I call the betterment of our national intelligence.

As for awards, I’d think that someone who writes about movies for a living would’ve learned by now to completely disregard the Golden Globes. You’re doing your readership a disservice by making the Globes out to be something that actually matters. Even the Oscars, which are Nobels by comparison, don’t mean a damn thing. Awards and nominations are political, signifying only how hard-fought a PR campaign was, not how good the movie was. And if they award the “wrong” movie (as they always do), so what? CITIZEN KANE was all but shut out at the Oscars and it’s still considered one of the greatest movies ever made. So relax, man; if your movie finds an audience (and I think THE DARK KNIGHT has a fair chance of doing so), it’ll be remembered regardless of how many statues it takes home.

Speaking of THE DARK KNIGHT… I get that you love it a lot, in probably a gawkish, fanboy sort of way that might be endearing if you weren't trying to cover it up with posturing indignation, but here’s the thing: when you make a grand statement defending a movie’s position in history, and that movie just happened to make a billion dollars worldwide, you look foolish. If you were rallying support for a tragically under-seen and critically overlooked gem, I might understand. But instead you appoint yourself the champion of not only the highest-grossing movie of the year, but also one of the best reviewed?! What makes you think this movie needs defending?

And that’s another thing: you admit that THE DARK KNIGHT is one of the best reviewed movies of the year, but then slam critics for failing to recognize it. Did I properly illustrate the gaping incongruity in your statements here? Critics DID review the movie very favorably, yet you’re still whining. Just because it hasn’t made all of the critic’s ten-best lists** doesn’t mean it’s getting unfairly shut out; they just disagree with you. That’s why we have more than one film critic in America – hell, that’s why most newspapers and movie sites employ more than one critic – because ultimately film criticism is a matter of taste.

Maybe you should change jobs, Tyler, since your skills lie not in film criticism (or composing sound arguments) but in film prognostication. Think of it! You could corner the market on predicting what movies will become cultural landmarks, and you could do it without the burden of hindsight or taste! Sarcasm aside, the movie ISN’T a cultural phenomenon; it just made a boatload of money. Heath Ledger’s Joker, on the other hand, was a brilliant characterization that captured the imaginations of the movie-going public. That said, I think the popularity of both the character and the movie are riding more on our nation’s fascination with celebrity death than the quality of either.

THE DARK KNIGHT isn’t going to change the face of cinema as we know it. In fact, aside from popularizing the use of IMAX cameras in action movies, I can’t see it having much of an impact on movie-making at all. Any impact it does have, of course, won’t be comparable to the huge influence STAR WARS had on Hollywood - for the record, that influence was a bad one. (Regarding STAR WARS and ANNIE HALL at the Oscars, by the way: one of them had sharp dialogue, a terrific cast, a memorable screen romance, and a brilliant director with his finger on the pulse of the culture at the time. The other one was STAR WARS. That year, the Oscars got it right.)

As for THE DARK KNIGHT itself, I can’t say that I share your enthusiasm for the movie, or for the prospect of it becoming the “new mold from which all future movies will be poured.” But to dispute you point for point on the movie’s qualities at the end of a post defending pluralism would be hypocritical of me, though I have to ask: will the future movies forged in the great mold of THE DARK KNIGHT also be structurally retarded with a nonsensical plot and a tin-ear for dialogue?

Great site, by the way.

*In case you were pondering a retort to that remark, NO, that isn't true of you, unless your site's readership is made up of eight-year-olds. And from the other comments I’ve read, it isn’t.

** Also, I like how you conveniently ignored DARK KNIGHT’S runner-up win for the LA Critics’ Best Picture – a prize Nolan & Co. came in second to yet another pretentious independent movie that nobody saw: WALL-E. Yup, you sure are right about that critical bias against box office heavies.

WHY SO SERIOUS? or, How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love THE DARK KNIGHT

2008-12-11T01:36:00.001-05:00

Another quick one, though this time lacking the A.D.D. that I'm now convinced I have - actually going to see a doctor for it, too! Hope they accept my humble admission of mental dysfunction and don't just write me off as a smooth talkin' drug-seeker. Anyway...

Last night I briefly hit upon a topic that's been bugging me ever since THE DARK KNIGHT came out to absurdly-high critical praise and popular adoration - actually, rewind it back; it's been bugging me since before the movie even came out, when people were handicapping the odds of Heath, based solely on his terrific, scene stealing performance in the movie's trailer, winning a posthumous Oscar: completely irrational love for what is ultimately only a Batman movie.*

Okay, lemme put my thing down. THE DARK KNIGHT is a good movie. It's terribly entertaining and endlessly exciting, to the point of being draining. The movie has some memorable action and is a more realistic and timely treatment of superhero characters than audiences have seen previously. There are some great (and not so great) performances in the movie, including of course the genuinely brilliant turn by Heath Ledger that would be regarded as an instant screen classic if he were still alive today... and that's all. Yet apparently here I diverge with much of the rest of America, both the public and the critics.

The movie's now out on DVD, and if you're under 25 and came into my store to get it, you're probably one of the throngs who've excitedly told me that it's either A. the best movie of the year, B. the best movie you've ever seen, or C. the best movie of all time.** So there's that. Then the LA Film Critics Association named THE DARK KNIGHT it's runner-up for best picture of the year, second to WALL-E, a slightly less dubious choice. While these are only representative of one age bracket and one critics group, they're in line with the overall response to the film: it's rated 98% fresh on RottenTomatoes.com, which means critics all but universally thought it was good, and it made seven and a half gagillion*** dollars at the box office, which means the public ate that shit up.

Why, you might ask, does a good movie's extraordinary success and popularity bother me so? Certainly it's not because I'm a cantankerous fucker who likes to hate on what's in. Most certainly not! Yeah, so I'm in the minority thinking that THE DARK KNIGHT'S not as hot as e'rebody else does. Get over it, right?

It wouldn't bug me as much (though certainly it would still bug me) if I didn't think that people are gonna wake up in five years and go, "eww, what was I thinking?" Critics especially, but real people, too. And that's just with the hype-praise level at it's current; I can only imagine the kind of cultural morning after we'll have if the movie wins a fucking Oscar.

Assuming that you follow and agree with me thus far... that's a pretty huge assumption to make at this point, isn't it? Okay fine, here are my top reasons (briefly posited) for why the movie isn't nearly as good as most folks think it is:

It's bloated. You can easily cut two subplots and about 20 minutes of the movie without losing anything but length.
Like its predecessor, the movie features dialogue consisting mostly of characters explaining the themes and their symbolic roles.
The central love story fails miserably due to lack of screen-and-script chemistry, while the rival love story flourishes due the presence of both.
Chris Nolan still can't shoot a fight, which is kind of important in a movie about a dude who beats the piss out of people in most of his scenes.
The script aims for a five-act structure, instead feels like a typical three-act with a fat ass that should've been a sequel.
The big action finale (which is kind of a requirement in these kinds of movies) is a complete fizzle.****
Any kind of scrutiny over the plot reveals gaping holes in both logic and motivation.
Christian Bale sucks the life out of almost every scene he's in.

And still, despite all of these flaws, the combination of which should be fatal, the movie still works. More so, I like it an awful lot, certainly more than I think it deserves, and it's among my favorite movies of the year. Yet other people love it, a lot, and that shit rubs me raw. So once again, assuming that you follow and agree with me thus far, why are people nutting over such a flawed film?

Oh right. 'Cause of the dead guy.

As I wrote last night, there's a "bizarrely morbid loyalty" to Heath Ledger that not only prevents people from seeing, or wanting to see, the movie's flaws, but further enables and inspires them to say such absurd things as "it's the best movie ever made." I say that the loyalty is bizarre because I honestly don't know where it came from. What the hell movies of Heath Ledger's has a 15-year old making such bold proclamations seen? I like A Knight's Tale and hear that 10 Things I Hate About You is pretty good, but I don't think those two performances are enough to endear Ledger to the young public so, and I feel like it's safe to assume that they haven't seen him deny Jake Gyllenhaal a reach-around, or that they'd have liked the movie if they had.

But let's not limit this to the young. I've had several adults tell me that Ledger gives his best performance as the Joker, but when asked admit to not having seen BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, NED KELLY, TWO HANDS, CANDY or I'M NOT THERE. Shit, aside from the first and last, I haven't seen any of the movies on that list, but I'm not about to go and proclaim one of the guys performances his "best" without seeing his whole body of work.

Why was there a period of national mourning after Ledger died? Were people really upset to have to say goodbye to that good-looking dude from THE ORDER? Were they upset that they'd no longer see his smiling face in (new) photos on the cover of US WEEKLY under some scandalous and humiliating headline? I'm not saying that there weren't people who were genuinely upset that the guy died - he had a family after all (though they were mostly forgotten while America grieved its fallen star) and genuine fans and admirers, among them a ton of gay people who valued the symbolism of his performance and nomination for BROKEBACK. But these weren't the teeming masses who cried over their collector's editions of Entertainment Weekly while gossiping about the possible Olsen twin connection.

And then THE DARK KNIGHT came out, and through the magic of the movies (and an 8-month post-production period), Heath was somehow back on screens, delighting us once more with another maladjusted hunk with a quirky voice. And that tore the proverbial band-aid off the wound of our tragic loss, and the mourning began again, this time fused with that performance and that movie and that moment. It was significant. Like 9/11 for another generation, only sadder. The movie helped America grieve, accept and let go, only further cementing its status as a titan of populist cinema and the greatest film moment of 2008.

...until a few years later, when everybody realizes that Batman's 3D-sonar-vision was really fucking lame, and that he sounded like a chain-smoking retard with difficulty enunciating.

*Yes, that was only one sentence. Yes, it is grammatically and puntuationally correct. Yes, it took multiple drafts.

**I'm guessing that "D. all of the above" is kind of assumed when one says something as all-encompassing as C, but then again the people who said "B" tend to think it's synonymous with "A." Logic and reasoning are not their strong suits.

***Y'know, for as much as I like hyperbolically inflating the gross like that, it's somehow more shocking to cite the real number: $500+ million. Or, the scarier way: half a fucking bil.

****I can abide a fizzle-ending in IRON MAN for a lot of reasons, not least of which being that that movie didn't make me wait seven fucking hours to get to the end.

CINEMATIC QUICKIES

2008-12-10T00:54:00.001-05:00

Because I've got two long-ass pontificatory posts in the works, I'm going to err on the side of brevity for the forseeable future and crank out some knuckle children of bullet pointery.

TERMINATOR SALVATION teaser trailer is up, and I'm a little ashamed to be excited by it. With the mediocrity/franchise blasphemy that was T3 almost gone from memory, it's a lot easier to get jazzed about a movie chronicling the robot war to end all robot wars - yeah that's right Watchowskis, Terminators kick Matrix-sentinel ass any day of the week.
Yes, I know the preceeding bullet point was incessently nerdy without any redeeming value. Suck it up.
THE DARK KNIGHT on Blu-Ray (since I passed on seeing it in IMAX) is a revelation of picture clarity. The fidelity of image is really staggering, and I found myself more involved in the proceeding simply because everything filmed in IMAX just seemed to be happening before my eyes.
THE DARK KNIGHT upon multiple viewings, on the other hand, completely fucking implodes. Wanna test me? Work your way backwards through any of The Joker's plans in the film and see if you can find anything resembling logic. The movie's narrative demonstrates the kind of deductive reasoning seen regularly (and sublimely) on CSI: MIAMI, except here it's supposed to be taken seriously.
AUSTRALIA. Not a great movie. Maybe not even a very good one, I'm not sure yet, but I loved every second of it. There's plenty to nitpick (and regular-pick) at, but overall I loved the movie for its exuberant movieness and urge to please. The thing is entertaining on just about every level, even if it's only satisfying visually and viscerally. Certainly worth seeing, and definitely worth your admission price to see on the big screen. GO! Baz needs your help.
RED is a really trite concept for a movie that at every turn avoids triteness, sometimes at the last minute. The movie leads the audience (perhaps intentionally) to expect the contrived, and again defies expectations by delivering a really terrific, nuanced character in the form of Brian Cox's Avrey Ludlow. Every time I felt the movie careening towards a disastrous cliff of shallow sentimentality and cartoonish motivations, it surprised me by resisting the temptation that might've derailed a lesser film. RED is a really terrific little indie thriller, which I've intentionally avoided describing so that you'll watch it cold. Check it out (Netflixers, it's available to stream for free).
Oscar hype continues to build around THE DARK KNIGHT. Shudder. Shit bums me out that Heath's going to get nominated for being dead and not for being good.
On that topic, I've come to the conclusion, after realizing that THE DARK KNIGHT is a terribly exciting movie that uses tension and speed to convince (at least for a while) its viewer to oversee or ignore its vast array of fatal flaws, that the people that do think that the movie's genuinely great* only say so out of some bizarrely morbid loyalty to Heath. Lousy starfuckers. More thoughts on that later (but probably not).

*Great in the David Lean**, Stanley Kubrick sense, not the (more enjoyable) Sylvester Stallone sense.

**Right there? I just name-dropped a filmmaker who's movies I've never seen, in a footnote no less. Whatta twat I am.

Be Thankful, Honkey Grandmas!

2008-11-28T00:20:00.001-05:00

A few quick thoughts while I quietly ponder being thankful for nationally-endorsed gluttony and watch a House, M.D. marathon on USA (do they really need to advertise the new season of The Starter Wife every fucking c-break? I wasn't going to watch the show after the first 70 commercials, but now that I'm all but convinced that it's Entourage by way of Sex and the City, I'd rather commit ritual suicide via turkey sandwiches than watch that refried shit).

Watched The X-Files: I Want to Believe, wishing desperately that I didn't. I wanted so bad for all the reviews to be wrong, or even right so long as I could enjoy the show as a warm, nostalgic throwback to a seminal show from my upbringing. Fortunately and unfortunately, the critics were wrong: the movie isn't just bad, it's boring as hell. The plot, which is too convoluted and nonsensical to be recalled, includes kidnapping, psychics, pedophilia and surgical head transplants, and was STILL boring! Seeing Mulder and Scully onscreen certainly helped the movie, and the two leads slip back into those two characters effortlessly, but the script fails to provide either one of them anything interesting to do, say or stand peripheral to. Very, very disappointing.
Hancock. Somewhere on the editing room floor is a watchable version of this movie, but it sure as hell isn't the one they put out on DVD, regardless of which version you pick up (the "unrated extended cut" is 10-minutes longer than the theatrical DVD, but the movie needs a hell of a lot more than 10-minutes to fix what ails it). Will Smith is expectedly terrific, and Jason Bateman is flawless in a fairly dull role, though his mentally-retarded fiance from Arrested Development (Charlize Theron) is, well, mentally retarded here. Also, hot. The movie's based around a great idea that's executed very poorly - the only thing worse than the script are the visual effects, which must be hands down the ugliest and least convincing CGI since anything in anything Stephen Sommers ever directed.* Assume that the best parts of the movie are in the trailer (they are) and skip it.
Finally, Warner Bros. has started their big Oscar push for The Dark Knight, and not just for Heath Ledger. Though the movie's terrific score (the one nomination that I wouldn't begrudge the film) has been disqualified by the Academy for having too many credited composers and editors, WB is undaunted, apparently pushing to get the thing a Best Picture nomination.

Seriously? I understand that Ledger's nomination was sewed up while his body was still warm, but Best Picture? I can't even put into words how much that irks my shit. More on that later, for certain. In the mean time, here's a look at WB's "For Your Consideration" poster for Heath. As a sidenote, can I get people on board with the idea of replacing oxycontin's popular euphamism "hillbilly heroin" with the more timely, popularly-insensitive "Heath heroin?" I think it's catchy. Thoughts?

*Excluding Deep Rising, of course.

Lazy ass returns to posting! Also, QUANTUM OF SOLACE semi-review.

2008-11-24T22:23:00.001-05:00

Goodness, is it ever easy to lose track of time and ignore one of these things, especially when one is burdened with my debilitating lack of focus on, dedication to or interest in anything. Alas, Poor Yorick (that's what I call the blog*), you'll have to learn to live with neglect, just like my bookshelf, running shoes and exercise equipment.

Anyway, a few thoughts, observations, opinions and ruminations.

Quantum of Solace. I'm sure anyone with an interest has already either 1. seen the movie or 2. read a review of it, but goddamnit you're here for a reason, and it certainly isn't my stylish prose. A friend told me he liked the laid-back tone to the thing, that it was just there to say "Hey everybody, I'm a fucking James Bond movie, remember how fun these can be?" I think making that argument in the movie's defense is just as lame as Ebert saying he enjoyed Kingdom of the Crystal Prairie Dog because it felt like Indy was in the seat next to you, laughing knowingly. Quantum of Solace isn't a winking throwback to the old-school style of Bond's heyday in the '60s, it's a regressive slump back into his dreadful outings in the 90s.

I say that and I actually liked the movie. The new movie continues the relaunched series' trend of ripping off the Bourne films as much as possible, but that's a good thing. Bourne (mostly the sequels, though props to Doug Liman for setting the standard that Greengrass so brilliantly expanded, contracted and perfected) has been the best thing to happen to action movies since Die Hard (why not) , so why shouldn't the all-but-dead (creatively) Bond franchise adopt and absorb Matt Damon's kinetic fights and foot chases and hyper-real no nonsense tone? Of course, I'd rather future Bond-helmer's were a little less transparent in their "homage" to Jason B. than director Marc Forster is here. We have all the requisite Bourne beats: super-fast hand-to-hand combat that becomes knife vs. (insert random weaponizable object), hectic foot chases, a hectic foot chase across rooftops, an agent on the run from "the good guys," and emotional impotence. You might contest that the James Bond character has always been emotionally impotent, but at least he always got laid; this go 'round, the dude only nails one of the two wicked hot Bond girls, and has absolutely zero chemistry with the neglected one, despite an obligatory kiss at the end.

Really though, I liked the movie! (Okay, I'm going to get through the next paragraph without saying anything negative...) There really is plenty to like here. With the exception of a fucking horrific boat chase and an absurd fight amidst an inexplicably** exploding hotel at the finale, the action is terrific here, even better than in Casino Royale. Marc Forster has a nice eye for shooting action (actually I think he borrowed one of Paul Greengrass's), making for one of the better looking Bond films. More importantly, Forster keeps things moving along quickly, never letting (most) audiences notice how crushingly drama-free the movie's A-to-B-to-C plot is. On the topic of the screenplay (staying positive), we're two movies in now and I feel like Paul Haggis' highly publicized re-writes were for dialogue only (which remains as sharp as last time), never actually tackling the dreadful structure of the Craig-era scripts.

Really, I was trying to be positive.

Still, Forster smartly uses the movie's not so secret secret weapon: it's star. If Daniel Craig owned Casino Royale, then he fucking whips the shit out of Quantum of Solace and puts it to work in the goddamn fields. The guy is the ONLY thing keeping this movie from falling to fucking pieces. He's so good in this part that he's able to cobble together a slight character arc from nothing, expressed only through his performance. The script gives him nothing, and Craig makes nothingade. If you see it (or have seen it), just consider where Bond is emotionally at the beginning and the end of the film, and show me where that's developed in anything other than Craig's eyes.

For what the script fails to achieve in plotting or character, it succeeds in giving James Bond his first ever complex world view. The movie all but abandons the franchise's traditional cartoon villains and broad-stroke international landscape, instead opting for shades of gray all over. There's a neat (if wholly unoriginal) twist where the Americans turn out to GASP! be in bed with shady mother fuckers (the titular "Quantum," which itself has nothing to do with any solace) in exchange for oil. Nothing new, I know, but it was fun was watching M discover that the Brits are just as cock-hungry for oil as the movies' new go-to villain, the CIA. The whole thing dies when Quantum's inane plan is finally (and poorly) revealed, but it was nice to see James Bond grow up just a little bit.

Yes, I've completely failed to be a helpful reviewer, especially since I've done nothing but rag on a movie I really did like. The action kicks ass (even if James Bond has discovered super-human strength), Craig rules, the supporting cast is way better than the script deserves and the movie offers more to chew on than Bond flicks usually do, though far less than the superior Bourne sequels. It's still a huge step backwards from the refreshingly character-driven Casino Royale, but Quantum of Solace delivers the bare minimum of a Bond film: action, espionage, and Bond. We could do worse.

*Because its occasionally resurrected from a filthy grave and gazed upon mournfully. Obviously.

**At least, it would be inexplicable in an older Bond film, but this more grounded take on 007 feels the need to explain to the audience why the building is perpetually exploding, even though anyone who's ever seen a noisy action movie already knows why - because it has to.

Random Ruminations

2008-11-13T00:16:00.001-05:00

Here's some random filmic happenings from the last week or so, in randomly numeric order...

1. I watched How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, or Simon Pegg Gotta Eat as a friend described it. The first twenty minutes or so were woefully mediocre, mostly because of the movie's willingness to go for the most obvious joke possible in any situation. I was completely disinterested, even starting several conversations with friends while the movie played on... and then something happened (for the life of me I can't remember what) onscreen that silenced everyone for a moment, followed by hysterical laughter. And that was pretty much how the rest of the film played out: long patches of mediocrity punctuated by gut-bustingly funny gags.

I've loved Simon Pegg since Shaun of the Dead, and only found more respect for him as I went back and discovered Spaced, but here he impressed me more than ever by taking a not-very-good script and making it work extremely well. Points also to Gillian Anderson, 1. For still looking that good, and 2. for being goddamn hysterical. Never knew she was funny.

2. Apologies to my friend Justin, who I told that Gillian Anderson had directed a movie called Death Defying Acts. As it turns out, the director of that film was Gillian Armstrong, and I cannot read.

2.5 Apologies to Gillian Anderson for the mistake also. No apologies will be accorded to Ms. Armstrong.

3. Re-watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy over the past week brought back massive tonnage of nostalgia, in addition to some forgotten affection for the movies. I was in high school when those were coming out, and it feels like so very, very long ago. I remember hating on The Two Towers when it came out, spending a year trying to convince all my friends that it was lousy, then falling in love with the extended cut DVD the night before we saw Return of the King. I remember complain when incestuous marching bandies/rabid Tolkien fans would talk about spoilerish plot details before all three films had been released, and being rightly told that the books had been out for 50 years and I ought not feel bitch until I read the books. I remember Jamie and his impeccable Gollum voice, and how quickly it became grating. I vividly remember walking out of the third movie past dozens of people in line for the next showing, all with terrified looks on their faces as though one of us might loudly blurt out some major spoiler from the movie, and thinking the only thing I could possibly say at that moment was "Can you believe that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father?" And there was laughter in the land. I remember my pretentious anti-populism kicking in as I argued with people about how unworthy Return of the King was for it's 11 Academy Awards, and some asshat online IMing me "Hah, your bitch lost" the moment Peter Jackson beat Sophia Coppola (and three others) for Best Director. I remember thinking that anyone describing Rings as "the Star Wars of its time" was either an idiot or an asshole. Mostly though, I remember seeing Return of the King four times in theaters, each subsequent visit hoping to recapture the emotional tide that made me weep uncontrollably through the second half of the film.

Having now completed my non-marathon, the following occurred to me:

I regret my adolescent hatred of The Two Towers (theatrical)
I still haven't read the books all the way through (or The Hobbit, and I own two damn copies of that)
I kinda miss Jamie's now-retired Gollum voice
Not only do I think that Rings deserved all of its Oscars, but I kinda wish they'd won a few more.
Further, Lord of the Rings isn't Star Wars for a new generation, it's better.
I can't believe I spent $40* and 12-hours seeing one fucking movie.

Also? I cried again today during the last half of Return of the King. I really don't

know why, as the super-violent battle epic films typically have no emotional impact on me (certainly not the fantasy ones), but the battle of the Pelennor just breaks me. Maybe it's because PJ's just that goddamn good at manipulating the audience's emotions.

Or maybe I'm a sap when it comes to dudes getting stomped on by gigantic fucking war-Elephants.

4. Anybody who's been around me for the last year or so (yeah, sucks to be you) has had to endure, in one way or another, my epic hard-on for Stanley Kubrick. I got the new Kubrick box set for Christmas last year and have since watched each of the films within at least twice, including the 2-hour long biography Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. 2001, however, I've watched at least five times in the last twelve months. Having a blu-ray copy and a 42" Bravia at the store has only increased my obsession with the film: while my co-workers play Kung Fu Panda or Iron Man, I run 2001: A Space Odyssey every shit.

What's come up as a result of the film's frequent display in the store is shocking: most people don't know 2001. Not just that they haven't seen it, as that's something I could understand (the movie is 40-years old and slow as fuck, after all). But to not even recognize it when it's playing on an HDTV in front of you? I mean, the movie has to be the most-recognizable picture ever made, right? The monoliths, the apes, the spaceships, the music, HAL, the "Stargate" sequence, the Space Baby; these are all enormously iconic film images. Shit, you could probably piece together a 20-minute version of 2001 just from references on The Simpsons. So how do these people not recognize it?

Anyway, after two days of befuddled customers asking me what movie I was playing in the blu-ray, I had all but given up on mainstream movie-goers (er, renters) when this happened:

This little boy, not older than seven or eight, sat down on the floor and watched the last third of the movie. The kid was mesmerized by the damn thing. He inched closer to the screen when HAL used the Pod to kill Frank, and cocked his head repeatedly during the Stargate trip. A co-worker and friend (who watched 2001 with me twice in as many days a few months back) said, "I bet you he gets freaked out and leaves when Dave gets to the room." And so he did. When Dave arrived in the mysterious white room, the kid got up, cocked his head again, and walked away.

Despite his inability to withstand the film's mind-crushing finale, that little boy restored (some of) my faith in the movie-watching populace who frequent my store and those like it.

Then someone asked me where they could find The Love Guru, and all was right with the world.

*Adjusted for inflation, obviously - tickets were only $8 then.

HALLOWEEK OF SOMETHING, PART 2 (of 2?)

2008-11-11T13:04:00.001-05:00

Alright, "blog." I don't like you and you don't like me... well maybe you do like me, but feel neglected since I neglect the ever living crap out of you. But I certainly don't like you, and you're needy, annoying, prodding way of glaring at me from my bookmarks tab, begging for attention and typography. Fuck you, parasite! I'll write when I goddamn want to and you'll be goddamn grateful for it when I do!

...

I'm sorry. Really, I am. I should've been here for you, posting more often. Last Sunday was the last time I posted something, really? I'm terribly sorry. Here, lemme give you a long, healthy posting. Would that make things okay? Here goes.

WRAPPING UP (briefly) THE HALLOWEEK OF SOMETHING!

3. Rosemary's Baby is surprisingly not a horror movie, despite it's reputation. Hmm. And no, I don't mean that it's not scary - it is, though it lacks the typical jump scares - or that it's lost its edge due to age. I don't abide with that kind of thinking; a movie that was scary 50 years ago is still scary today, unless you're

the kind of cretin who watches The Birds or Psycho and says it's not scary because it's old. Fuck you, movie ageists.

Anyway... Rosemary's Baby isn't scary because it doesn't try to be. The movie builds a sense of dread and foreboding without ever delivering a big scare or screamer moment. The real horror comes from the very real situation that Mia Farrow finds herself in: being pregnant. Even knowing the big reveal by the end of the film (hint: her baby's got a bumpy forehead, and he ain't a Klingon), I

was still unnerved by the trials she endures as a young pregnant woman. The uncertainty of your own body, the unreliability of your emotions and your complete and total dependence on others, namely doctors, to endure nine months of biological mutation is horrific.

Better them than me, though.

4. Okay, before I dig into this, let me say that despite a prevalence on this list of horror-as-a-metaphor-for-womanity films, I am not, nor have I ever been, interested in or curious about my feminine side, transgenderification, or women's shoes. There simply seem to be a lot of horror movies about how fucked up it is to be a lady, is all.

That said, Teeth. Goddamn. If you haven't heard of this one, I'm not surprised. It's trailer made the rounds online (most people thought it looked funny) after a splash at a few film festivals, and then it made it's auspicious debut as a Blockbuster exclusive DVD release (always a sign of greatness). Regardless, the movie's fantastic. Here's what the trailer would tell you: Teeth is about a teenage girl who discovers (through a series of unfortunate coming-of-age sexual incidents) that there's a set of teeth inside her vagina. And if vagina dentata wasn't enough of a hook for a horror film about growing up female in America, here's what the trailer left out: the girl is a fundamentalist Christian who promotes abstinence in her community. So you can imagine that this movie gives its audience an awful lot to chew on.

Ha. Ha.

Shitty puns aside, Teeth is truly great. Like Rosemary's Baby, the horror doesn't come from big scares or monsters or serial killers, but from the Cronenbergian terror of not knowing your own flesh. The film has a lot to say about how young women are treated in this country, with a few even-handed zingers thrown at Christian abstinence promoters that never approaches parody.

That's not to say that the movie lacks any comedy, however. One of the chomping scenes (find me a tasteful way to phrase that and I'll consider it) is a vengeful, empowering moment, and the movie plays it with a slight wink... and that's it. This isn't an exploitation film about biting twats and sexy co-eds, even though it easily could've been. The concept could've been executed as a classic piece of trash, but writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein takes it - thankfully - in a much more tasteful direction.

Jess Weixler plays the dentata'd lead and she's terrific. She's asked to walk a very fine line between genuine horror and very black comedy, and she pulls it off flawlessly. This is an actress to keep an eye on. I'd say the same about Lichtenstein, but his next directorial effort stars Demi Moore and Parker Posey, so he's fucked.

5. I saw Halloween for the first time last week. Not the Rob Zombie one (I might skip that for the rest of my life). Yes, faithful readers, I somehow, in all my movie snobbery and watchery, never saw John Carpenter's genre-defining classic until just a few days ago. How ever have I lived with myself the last twenty-odd years? What's wrong with me? How could a child raised in the '80s have lived in a Halloween-vacuum?

Sorry, but that's the kind of shit I heard over the last week whenever I foolishly admitted to only just seeing the movie recently. Got that out of my system...

I expected a little more from Halloween, to be truthful. Not that it was bad or lacking in scares -for low-budget horror, the thing is smart as hell and scary as shit - but it kept building and building and building toward something hugely horrifying, some absurdly violent climax that would sustain a level of terror equal to its reputation... and then it just ended.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not badmouthing the movie; Carpenter's a genius for low-budget scares and this thing is full of 'em. His camera work is fucking genius, playing to the audience's expectations of where The Shape would pop up next and then cruelly making them wait for it. (I now take all the credit I gave to Neil Marshall for doing the exact same thing in The Descent and give it to Carpenter, and instead give Marshall credit for so skillfully emulating Johnny C). It's that waiting where the real horror lies in a movie like this, not in the gore or violence like so many of Halloween's followers. Watching this for the first time, I can see how a whole genre of slasher films was inspired/derived from it, even though I wish it wasn't.

NEXT UP: Whatever other horror movies I watched and haven't written about yet, and the 2001 kid.

HALLOWEEK OF SOMETHING! Part 1

2008-11-02T23:29:00.000-05:00

Okay, so maybe declaring that I'd watch a bunch of horror movies and post reviews leading up to Halloween, knowing my own proclivities when it comes to deadlines, wasn't demonstrable of my dedication to this blag.

Or maybe it was. Anyway, better late than really late... here goes.

THE BLOB. 1988. Goodness, did I love the ever-loving crap-love out of this movie... love. You know you're in for something unexpectedly special when the entire opening credits has only two names of interest; unfortunately for The Blob, one of them is Kevin Dillon. Luckily for the viewer, the other just happened to be co-writer Frank Darabont. While I dispassionately respect The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, despite the staggering amount of needless praise on the latter, it's The Mist that really makes me love Darabont, and The Blob is very much a tonal precursor to that film (only better).

The movie sets up all the standard creature-attacks-small-town characters, and kills them off in the exact opposite order from what you'd expect. And like in The Mist, those characters have just enough little moments prior to their grisly deaths to make their passing just a little sad, while still simultaneously awesome. Awesome, I say, because the kills in this movie are inventive and varied in their grotesquerie (ought to be a word), and they're almost 100% practical. As far as gorey effects movies go, the only thing I could compare The Blob to is Carpenter's The Thing. For those who've seen the latter, you know such a comparison is pretty goddamn high praise. While there isn't anything quite on par with The Thing's best gags (the stomach-mouth-spiderhead in particular), Blob still has plenty of genius creature effects. I can't decide which I love more: the kid who gets his face melted off, or the dude who gets sucked down a sink pipe whole. Well, sort of whole.

The Blob is grade-A execution of B-movie content. Witness its glory.

BUG. 2006.

If I told you that I just recently saw one of the best film performances that I've ever seen, and that it came out of Ashley Judd, you'd probably slap me... that is, if you were one of my friends, who know better than to listen to my hyperbolic fits of ecstasy over movies I'll probably only rave about for a week before viciously turning on them* and cruelly exposing all their flaws. Of course, if you were one of my friends, you really wouldn't need much of an excuse to slap me at all, would you? Long tangent short, Ashley Judd is terrible. Just fucking horrible. Really, really, retardedly bad.

At picking screenplays.

In truth, I've always thought she was a very talented actress who wasted her time and skills on generic Lifetime-with-a-budget thrillers and mindless romantic comedies, but she really surprised me with Bug. Not only does she give a fucking fantastic performance (the profanity is to emphasize my enthusiasm, obviously), but it's in an honest to gods great movie.

Oh, right. Speaking of surprises from people you expect shit from, William Friedkin directed it! Friedkin of late has been known for making very workman-like, very forgettable pictures, including The Hunted and Rules of Engagement. But for a while he was better known as the goddamn brilliant director of The French Connection, The Exorcist and To Live and Die in L.A. I'm ecstatic to report (two years after its theatrical release) that Bug is Friedkin's return to form.

Goddamn did that movie freak me the fuck out. It starts out as a simple human drama (menacingly photographed) and turns into something considerably more disturbing. Judd plays Agnes, an addict grieving a lost child and living in fear of an abusive ex-husband, who was just recently released from prison (for beating the ever-living shit out of her, of course). She encounters Peter, played brilliantly** by Michael Shannon, another damaged soul with a secret. Friedkin lets a sense of dread permeate the film, even in prosaic scenes that wouldn't feel out of place in a romantic drama. That foreboding quality makes Bug's eventual transition into true horror an expected one, though no less horrifying.

I'm not going to say anymore about the movie except that you should obtain a copy with great urgency. Bug isn't a traditional horror movie, but it's the most horrific film I've ever seen. The thing unsettled my shit in the worst way and has invaded my sleep ever since I reached its devastating finale. I've run out of evocative adjectives to describe the movie. Just watch it. Alone, and in the dark.

NEXT: Rosemary's Baby, Event Horizon, Halloween.

*Turning on the movies, not my friends, though I can do that, too.

**Really, really brilliantly, not just "I'm pretentious and am gonna call something brilliant to sound significant. Also, not British brilliant, 'cause those people throw the word around like it's candy)

The horror, the horror, the goddamn horror.

2008-10-28T02:36:00.001-04:00

Is it conceited to be in love with my own handwriting? I don't think so. My Sharpiemanship is incredibly sexy to the eye.

So in preparation for Halloween (a holiday I usually only celebrate by getting incredibly, explosively drunk) I've been watching horror movies. I watched three new (to me) horror movies in the last three nights and I plan to keep that streak up at least through Friday night, when I'll show my favorite of them my friends at our semi-annual Halloween party. Hopefully being exposed to a great, unsung horror flick will make them forgive me for throwing up and general drunken assholery.

My little horrorthon is inspired by two things. Firstly, idiot customers. Not a week goes by without a group of idiot teenagers, asshole 20-somethings or tactless 30s-people (if you can think of a better word/non-word for that, let me know) asking me for "the scariest movie ever," and during October it's a daily barrage. There are a few things that bother me about the question, not the least of which is the idea of an objective "scariest." The movies that scared me more than any others are La Moustache and 2001, yet I doubt my customers would appreciate me sending them home with a so-called horror movie that trades bloody scares for existential ones.

Of course, it doesn't really matter what I recommend to them. I've spent twenty minutes talking people's ears off, trying to put quality horror flicks in their hands. I can shill John Carpenter classics like The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness all goddamn day long, but the second I tell somebody that the movie's more than two or three years old (heaven forbid from the 80s), their nominal interest vanishes. With most people my age and younger, if a movie didn't come out in the last five minutes, it isn't of interest; if it's older than they are, it's just old.

The biggest issue I have with these supposed horror fans is that they don't like being scared! The horror genre to many has come to be defined not by scares, but by gore. Saw, for all its gruesome cruelty, is not a scary movie - the number of people who get excited for each of its many sequels, however, is fucking terrifying. My issue with these people isn't so much that they like crap, but that they dislike quality. I can't imagine anybody not being scared by The Descent, yet I'm frequently surprised by customers coming back telling me it "sucked." I feel like they're put off by the two most interesting things about the movie: its slow-burn start and challenging conclusion. Of course, that's the central issue: the majority of people coming into my store (and I suspect the majority of horror fans) aren't interested in being entertained any level higher than the basest, titillation via an excess of splatter.*

In spite of these Saw-Girls and Idiot Kids - as two of my regular gore fiends have been monickered - I'm dedicating a few hours a night this week watching movies that do more than just throw viscera around the screen for 90 minutes (though they do that, too, and oh so well).

The second impetus for my private horror fest is that, for as much of a genre geek as I am, I'm not very well versed in this particular one. As a kid I was never shown any scary movies, and wisely so: I practically shit myself in the theater during Jurassic Park. As I got older, most of the horror movies that I saw neither scared nor interested me. Of course there were exceptions: I still remember being completely freaked out watching The Shining for the first time, and conquering my fear of Alien and its sequel by watching them to death and back**. Still, horror movies were mostly left out of my voracious consumption of movies, ignored while I wolfed down the typical teenage male film menu (post-Tarantino crime, ultra-dark pseudo-indie twist-filled thrillers, and Fight Club).

Then, in my nineteenth year upon this grey Earth, I was introduced to Bob and CHUD. Bob's the guy that hired me to work for Soulless Corporate Video Chain so many, many years ago, and his love of schlock, horror and 80s action was (and is) freakishly infectious. He exposed me to Carpenter, showed me a guilty affection for direct-to-video shit, and gave me the greatest gift one film fan can give another: Frankenhooker. He also directed me to a little site called CHUD.com, where the writers had compiled a list (read its glory HERE) of "100 Movies That Deserve More Love." I absorbed the list and fell in love with CHUD in a bad way; five years later I still visit the site (at least twice daily) for news, reviews and smart-mouthed bitchery without equal on these here internets. CHUD and Bob showed me that people who are serious about movies should love all kinds of them, from the indiest of the art house to the trashiest of the grindhouse.

Wow, okay... bit of a huge sidetrack there. Me thinks most people who were duped into reading this by its sexy and amusing title*** might feel betrayed by this soft-hearted autobiographical wank. (Skip to the end...) Aside from privately spiting my dimwitted customers, I'm having this "Halloweek of Terror!"**** because, despite years of awesome Bob and CHUD recommendations, I still haven't seen that many horror movies (for gods' sake, I've never seen any of the Halloween or Friday the 13th movies, though I imagine seeing the first of each should be enough to appease my guilt).

So, every night this week I'm going to watch one horror flick new to me, and post mini-reviews here - at least, ideally mini; anyone who made it to the end my epic Indiana Jones review is either a saint or a glutton for punishment. Since Friday I've watched The Blob ('88), Teeth, and Event Horizon; expect write-ups on them soon, and more on others shortly after.

*I'm obviously leaving out the other half of modern horror movies, the PG-13 remake of a Japanese ghost movie; it's omission is simply because I can't qualify what it is people find scary about grey-skinned Asian children with eye-makeup.

**And yes, I do think there's something wrong with having two sentences in a row pivot on colons, but I also don't care that much.

***In retrospect, my titles is barely amusing and not at all sexy, unless you're turned on by fat-Brando.

****My alternate title was "My Own Private Idahorror." And yes, I know I'm out of control with the footnotes.

SoderberOMgWTFh?!

2008-10-23T22:22:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think that the manatees who write for FAMILY GUY have a side-gig during that show's hiatus picking projects for Hollywood. It's really the same job and requires no transition for them: instead of picking colored balls with random nouns, verbs and 80s pop culture icons, they pick colored balls with random actors, directors, topics, stock plots and exhausted genres, pop 'em in the hopper and a standard format screenplay pops out. It's cheap, it's easy and it guarantees more of the same cliche drivel that movie-going audiences love to shovel down their gullets. For example, this weekend's PRIDE AND GLORY was a manatee-developed amalgamation of:

CAST: Edward Norton and Collin Farrell

GENRE: Cop drama

PLOT ELEMENTS: Police family, opposing brothers, dirty cops.

SETTING: New York

Mix ingredients well, release in October, hope no one notices.

We all saw the same trailer, right? I feel like I've already seen this movie three or four times, and it was only good the first time (maybe). This is typical of the manatee-system at work in Hollywood script factories - familiar, trite, comfortable. But once in a while, the manatees stumble upon something so unique, so special, so fantastically, outlandishly, unfathomably retarded in it's glory that we must concede to their brilliance. Here's their most recent achievement:

DIRECTOR: Steven Soderbergh

CAST: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Hugh Jackman

GENRE: Musical; 3-D

PLOT: Cleopatra and Marc Antony

I swear to gods, I did not make that up. In my wildest imagination could I not have conjured something so absurd as a Soderbergh-directed 3-D musical about Cleopatra entitled (wait for it) CLEO. I'm beyond excited for this movie. It can't possibly be good, but it sure as shit will be interesting. Bless you, manatees of Hollywood!

Read the CHUD story here.

REVIEW: INDIANA JONES AND THE PRAIRIE DOG APOCALYPSE

2008-10-23T00:45:00.000-04:00

NOTE: This was posted elsewhere previously, but until I bullshit up some new content, my regurgitated word-hate will have to do.

Nostalgia alone can’t save a bad sequel (if it could, intelligent people older than ten would enjoy the Star Wars prequels), but it sure does go a long way. Watching Crystal Skull again, with all the disappointment of the opening night screening out of the way, I couldn’t help but grin whenever the man in the hat was on screen. There’s something immortal and indivisible about Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones that brings out childish glee in most people that grew up with these movies. Unfortunately, that indelible visual only goes so far.

There isn’t one area that can be pointed to as the cause of the movie’s failure. There’s a systemic blandness throughout, demonstrated in the script, the acting, the action and the direction. I was told by someone who liked the movie that if I viewed it as fan fiction and not cannon, I’d enjoy it more. My problem with that logic is that the movie already feels like fan fiction, which isn’t a quality one should seek in anything, especially not a direct sequel from most of the principles responsible for the originals. It looks an awful lot like Indy, it sounds an awful lot like Indy, and sometimes it even (briefly) feels like Indy, but just ain’t so. Despite all the efforts to convince us otherwise, this is a grade-A imitation that just happens to feature the genuine article.

The Harrison Ford that stars in this movie isn’t the one who last donned the famed hat (which is bizarrely a character itself) in 1989. Instead, the movie is anchored by the tired and disinterested Ford of the last ten years or so. In his defense, the lines he’s forced to deliver are dull at best, cringe-inducing the rest of the time. You can tell that Ford remembers every tick and gesture of Dr. Jones, but he’s not given too many moments to show it. Every once in a while he’ll throw in a smirk or a growl or a flinch the way Indy used to, with that trademark exasperation, and all the movie’s faults are forgiven… for a moment. He even makes a few terrible scenes work, like when he’s tossed the snake in the quicksand; while Shia and Karen Allen fumble their lines, Ford sells his part so well. When the guy is trying, he’s the best damn movie star alive. Here he just seems bored, and I honestly can’t blame him.

The Lucas-Nathanson-Koepp script is just god-awful. Ignoring the central premise, which I actually like despite the much-maligned aliens, the plot lacks any real dramatic thrust. Events and set pieces just seem to happen, and they’re conveniently sequential, but there’s no logical progression of events. The big action sequences are there because the movie needed big action sequences, not because they’re necessary courses of action for the characters to take. In the space of five minutes, Indy & Co. escape from Russian hands twice – the second of which results in a car-chase (the movie’s third) so long and so complex, yet still completely inconsequential (but I’ll get to that later).

Beyond the complete lack of narrative tension, the script fails to capture that Indy wit. While I’m under no illusion that any of the original three movies were Woody Allen, there was still an intelligent, adult banter and cadence to the dialogue. There’s nothing even close to that here. Crystal Skull’s dialogue falls flat throughout. Indy’s rarely ever given more to say that long-winded expository monologues, except for the occasional (bad) one-liner. David Koepp isn’t anyone’s idea of a great screenwriter, but he’s damn good at structure and his previous Spielberg collaborations (Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds) have had genuinely funny lines throughout. This time he displays a serious tin-ear for comedy; if this is his idea of what an Indy movie should sound like… I don’t even know how to finish that sentence. Anyone who’s seen any of the original three Indy films, even the weak Last Crusade, knows that they’re smarter, sharper and funnier than this. I just can’t understand how this script could’ve come about. Let there be no uncertainty: it’s a terrible, terrible screenplay.

Where uncertainty enters the picture is in the form of the director. His name was the only thing keeping my hopes for this movie afloat. Despite Lucas, months of bad buzz, Lucas, Harrison Ford’s recent output, Lucas and Lucas, Indy was still being directed by Steven Goddamn Spielberg, the greatest director of action set-pieces in movie history. While his narrative choices have moved further away from his populist adventure beginnings, he’s only gotten better as an action director (just look at Minority Report, Munich and War of the Worlds). So behold my surprise to witness a Spielberg Indy movie without a single great action beat. The action isn’t bad, it’s just dull. Not only do the action scenes lack any of the spontaneity and ingenuity of the previous pictures, but (to judge them on their own) they aren’t very interesting. I don’t know how many times Indy jumps from one car to another, but it was just as blasé the last time as it was the first. Between the gaping disparity of performance between the ambling Ford and his younger stunt doubles and less-than-convincing effects work, the car chases (all three of them) lack any thrills whatsoever. The only good beat in the whole damn movie is when Indy gets yanked off the motorcycle into the KGB car, and then hops out the other side back onto Mutt’s bike. That moment works because its real. It’s a real stunt shot outdoors in a real street. Of course the other cars and hazards were digitally added, there is still that tangible quality to natural sunlight that can’t be duplicated on a soundstage or in post-production. After that one fleeting moment, the rest of the movie looks like a greenscreen adventure, which is not Indiana Jones.

The look of the film is also a huge problem for me. The original Indy movies were all shot by Dougie Slocombe, who brought a rich, timeless look to each. Spielberg’s recent collaborator Janusz Kaminski lights much, much differently and it just doesn’t fit with the character, the time period or the mood. I’ll quote CHUD.com’s Nick Nunziata, who does a better job explaining this problem than I ever could:

“It certainly doesn't look the same. Though occasionally bathed in the warmth and glory of the original films, Janusz Kaminski's cinematography lends a much colder and synthetic look to the proceedings. In the film's introduction to the now grayed Indiana Jones, the look is so oversaturated and laden with glare it nearly overrides the content. Never before has a film in the series felt as much pieced together as here - almost as if the audience is seeing a high budget fan film or some connective Indiana Jones content for a DVD-ROM or online presentation rather than the genuine article. Never should one be reminded of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow when watching an Indiana Jones film.” (Read the rest of Nick’s review here: http://chud.com/articles/articles/16463/1/DVD-REVIEW-INDIANA-JONES-AND-THE-KINGDOM-OF-THE-CRYSTAL-SKULL/Page1.html)

I wonder if the insanely elaborate camera work in the chases is what necessitated so much soundstage work. Spielberg and Kaminski have wild cranes and tracking shots in, above and all around the action, but that kind of control comes at the cost of believability. Nicely choreographed (though numbingly repetitive) car-to-car stunts are ruined by bad CGI backgrounds and shoddy mattes.

Which brings to mind ILM’s piss-poor work: does Lucas intentionally save his company’s worst work for his own movies? Starting with the atrocious (both visually and conceptually) prairie dog “gag” that opens the movie, Crystal Skull is a parade of mostly sub-par special effects. It isn’t all bad, but for every mushroom cloud and finale-temple, there’s a patchwork jungle truck chase, a laughably bad flying saucer, and another goddamn prairie dog.

The prairie dogs, like the monkeys that teach Shia to swing like Tarzan, are the handiwork of the real auteur behind Crystal Skull, George Lucas. The man’s life dream has got to be making the most juvenile $200 million movies ever. Somehow he’s devolved as a writer, sinking to a low that makes me long for Jar Jar. The easiest way to lose my interest in an already uninteresting car chase? Have somebody straddle the void between two cars and get pounded in the balls over and over again. By plants. And when your instincts as a storyteller insist that you cut away to motherfucking CGI prairie dogs for a reaction shot three times, you have no instincts as a storyteller.

This wasn’t a Steven Spielberg film. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he’s off the hook; the man directed a shockingly dull Indiana Jones-in-name-only movie. But it’s Lucas’ baby. George conceived the story (something he should take no pride in), engineered the screenplay and obviously forced his childlike sensibilities into the mix. Spielberg was along for the ride, calling the shots and saying “cut” when the day was done. I never thought I’d see a Spielberg movie where I felt like he didn’t care. Even in his least-interesting movies (Hook and The Lost World), there was a sense of fun. Here, Steven seems bored. Well so was I.