Tuesday, April 5, 2011
I Got Nothing
had no time to write. hell, i didn't even have time to capitalize anything. be back on thursday.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Time After Time After Time After...
I was reading on Friday that Source Code was the best reviewed studio film of 2011. I could just say, "What those other people said is true," and that would be sufficient but that's not why they pay me the big bucks. I've been lousy lately at predicting the quality of movies. Last week, I thought Sucker Punch was going to be great and ended up hating it. This week, I thought the trailer for Source Code looked dumb. In the trailer, it looks like the government sends a man back in time to find out who was behind the terrorist attack of a train. As important as it would be to find out who was behind a mass murder, I couldn't believe that the government would use something as risky as time travel to try and solve it and I feared that this doubt would nag at the back of my brain throughout the film. Luckily, that's not what happened.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, an Air Force Captain who has no idea how he got from his unit in Afghanistan to what appears to be the space capsule he is in now. Even more baffling is the fact that he is suddenly teleported from that capsule into the body of another man on a Chicago commuter train that blows up eight minutes after he arrives, sending him back to his own body on the capsule. There are two people who keep talking to him when he's in the capsule. One is a fellow Air Force officer named Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) and the other is a civilian named Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright). Neither one is particularly helpful in answering the numerous questions that Stevens has about his situation. They just keep coldly insisting that he complete his mission without telling him how he could be going back in time.
Eventually, they tell him that he's not really going back in time. Instead, he's entering a virtual reality that is constructed from the memories of a man who died on the train. They were able to preserve this man's last eight minutes of memories and combine them with all the records they have of the incident to create a highly detailed interactive computer model called the Source Code. The problem is that this is a highly detailed model so thorough in scope that no one really has any control over what happens inside it. The people in it think they are real, independent beings and that includes a woman named Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan). She's a friend of the man Colter in inhabiting and it's obvious that she wishes they were more than friends and, after several trips through the same eight minutes, that comes to be what Colter wants to. It's just a shame she's not real and that the real woman is already dead. Or is she?
If you've ever read anything I've written here, you know that my favorite type of movie is also the rarest type of movie, that being intelligent, serious science fiction. Science fiction movies are usually made by people who absolutely loathe science fiction and are only doing it so they can have a hit film and never have to do it again. Because they hate it, they figure everyone else does too and that means the story doesn't have to make sense as long as the CGI looks good so you have a movie populated by idiots in unbelievable situations doing mind bogglingly stupid things while running around past big monsters trying to, let's say, invade Los Angeles. Source Code doesn't have this problem. Source Code was lucky enough to be directed by Duncan Jones, director of the wonderful 2009 film Moon. Jones seems to actually like the medium in which he's working and he doesn't seem to think that having a movie be entertaining and make sense are mutually exclusive concepts and ends up giving us something that could have been written by Philip K. Dick. In fact, I checked afterward to see if this was yet another adaptation of Dick's work but, according to IMDB, it's an original story whose sole screenwriting credit goes to Ben Ripley, a fellow whose previous screenwriting credit was Species IV: The Awakening. Hmm, that sounds familiar. This adds to my theory that, if a movie sucks, the last person you should blame is the writer. It may be his fault but you should eliminate all the other suspects first.
Source Code is an excellent palate cleanser for, well, pretty much every movie that's come out so far this year. It did, of course, come in second to a cartoon rabbit that shits jelly beans but at least it was in the running and I guess we have to take what we can get.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, an Air Force Captain who has no idea how he got from his unit in Afghanistan to what appears to be the space capsule he is in now. Even more baffling is the fact that he is suddenly teleported from that capsule into the body of another man on a Chicago commuter train that blows up eight minutes after he arrives, sending him back to his own body on the capsule. There are two people who keep talking to him when he's in the capsule. One is a fellow Air Force officer named Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) and the other is a civilian named Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright). Neither one is particularly helpful in answering the numerous questions that Stevens has about his situation. They just keep coldly insisting that he complete his mission without telling him how he could be going back in time.
Eventually, they tell him that he's not really going back in time. Instead, he's entering a virtual reality that is constructed from the memories of a man who died on the train. They were able to preserve this man's last eight minutes of memories and combine them with all the records they have of the incident to create a highly detailed interactive computer model called the Source Code. The problem is that this is a highly detailed model so thorough in scope that no one really has any control over what happens inside it. The people in it think they are real, independent beings and that includes a woman named Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan). She's a friend of the man Colter in inhabiting and it's obvious that she wishes they were more than friends and, after several trips through the same eight minutes, that comes to be what Colter wants to. It's just a shame she's not real and that the real woman is already dead. Or is she?
If you've ever read anything I've written here, you know that my favorite type of movie is also the rarest type of movie, that being intelligent, serious science fiction. Science fiction movies are usually made by people who absolutely loathe science fiction and are only doing it so they can have a hit film and never have to do it again. Because they hate it, they figure everyone else does too and that means the story doesn't have to make sense as long as the CGI looks good so you have a movie populated by idiots in unbelievable situations doing mind bogglingly stupid things while running around past big monsters trying to, let's say, invade Los Angeles. Source Code doesn't have this problem. Source Code was lucky enough to be directed by Duncan Jones, director of the wonderful 2009 film Moon. Jones seems to actually like the medium in which he's working and he doesn't seem to think that having a movie be entertaining and make sense are mutually exclusive concepts and ends up giving us something that could have been written by Philip K. Dick. In fact, I checked afterward to see if this was yet another adaptation of Dick's work but, according to IMDB, it's an original story whose sole screenwriting credit goes to Ben Ripley, a fellow whose previous screenwriting credit was Species IV: The Awakening. Hmm, that sounds familiar. This adds to my theory that, if a movie sucks, the last person you should blame is the writer. It may be his fault but you should eliminate all the other suspects first.
Source Code is an excellent palate cleanser for, well, pretty much every movie that's come out so far this year. It did, of course, come in second to a cartoon rabbit that shits jelly beans but at least it was in the running and I guess we have to take what we can get.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Tie This Kangaroo Down
So far, my Liveblogs, in which I write real time comments while watching a movie on Netflix Instant, have all been horrible movies but today I decided to branch out a bit and challenge myself a bit a profile one of my favorite movies, the 1944 adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V starring Laurence Olivier. This will be a treat for both you and me and I can't wait to get started. So, here we go and HA HA HA HA APRIL FOOL! The real movie is a reportedly godawful "comedy", 2003's Kangaroo Jack.
0:10:00 -- This movie has managed to annoy several times already and we're only 10 minutes in. First, the movie has Christopher Walken in a supporting role. This means they had the gall to cast one of my favorite actors in their sucky movie. I know it's going to be a sucky movie because they open with a quick montage of Australia with narrator Jerry O'Connell (who's playing the lead character Charlie Carbone) showing us only the godforsaken parts of it while describing it as dangerous and remote. Well, yeah if you ignore all those bigass modern cities that serve as home to most of it's population of 22,000,000, it is just some hot, kangaroo infested wasteland. But enough of that, the movie thinks, as it turns its attention to a real country, the good ol' U.S. of A. We flashback to 1982 where we see a 10 year old Charlie. The movie loses some more credibility because anyone who's seen Stand By Me knows what Jerry O'Connell looked like back then and this isn't it. He is saved from drowning by another child, Louis Booker, who will someday grown up to look just like Anthony Anderson. The cost for Charlie is that now he feels obligated to participate in whatever crazy situation Louis may find himself in. Twenty years later, that would be delivering TVs that happen to be stolen. To make it a perfect day, Louis tries to hide out in a warehouse owned by Charlie's stepfather, gangster Sal Maggio (Walken). So far, the movie has averaged two jokes per minute, only one of which has made me mildly chuckle. I'd tell you what it was but I swear I've already forgotten it.
Hey look, it's those guys from those shows I don't watch.
0:30:00 -- Around the 16 minute mark there's a rather funny sequence in which Charlie and Louis are thought to be obsessed with their own shit. So far, it's the funniest thing in the movie and it actually makes me an advocate for the idea that the whole movie should have been about guys who are thought to be obsessed with shit. It's sad that this is the one bright spot of Kangaroo Jack's first 30 minutes. Well, Walken was pretty good but hell, he was good as some brain damaged janitor in Joe Dirt. Walken's gangster character in understandably upset that these two morons inadvertently caused him to lose millions of dollars in merchandise but he can't kill them because he's married to Charlie's mother. Naturally, the only option left is to trust them to take a package to Australia and successfully deliver it to one of their associates there. No one could have imagined something would go wrong. Well, I imagined it and I'd only known these guys for these than 30 minutes so why the hell didn't Sal and the other mobsters figure that this is as much beyond their skillset as everything else they've ever done in life? Anyway, Ass and Hole arrive in Australia and, against orders, open the package to find $50,000. Knowing they must now take the utmost care to safeguard this cache of mob money, they start driving through the Outback without looking where they're going and hit a kangaroo. Thinking it's dead, they do what any of us would do, that being dress it up in Louis's Brooklyn jacket so they can take pictures. Sadly, their lifetime pattern of bad luck and incompetence is not broken here as the kangaroo turns out to be alive and hops off with Louis's jacket. The jacket, by the way, has the money. After a brief chase in which their jeep hits everything it could possibly hit, they end up walking to the nearest town to call the mysterious Mr. Smith, the guy who was waiting for the package. I guess they thought Louis misunderstanding Australian slang would never get old because they do it again. And again. And some more. And I imagine they'll do it several more times too. By the way, let me wish a hearty "Welcome Back" to Martin Csokas who plays Mr. Smith. He was last seen in the Liveblog of Aeon Flux. Few actors are capable of this level of consistency in their work. Actually, he's a good actor. It's just a shame he keeps doing movies like this.
Good job, Walken. These were definitely the right guys for the job.
0:58:00 -- Louis meets a beautiful naturalist named Jessie (Estella Warren) who tells him the best way to capture their kangaroo would to shoot it from a plane with a tranquilizer dart. My greatest wish in life when I saw that was to find some way to place a large wager on whether or not the kangaroo would outsmart them and make them shoot themselves with that and, sure enough, they did less than four minutes later. Actually, they shot their pilot, a likable local named Blue, but I would have still won the bet. After they crashed, they thought it would be a good idea to wander through one of the world's most barren and inhospitable deserts to search for the kangaroo though I do admire the fact that they show no fear at the prospect of all those biker gangs looking for gasoline. While all this was going on, Sal sent his right hand man Frankie to search for and kill Louis and Charlie which, incidentally, is what Mr. Smith was supposed to do for the $50,000 fee. Smith has launched his own search and they each end up thinking it's just a swell idea to try and track these guys down when it looks like nature will probably succeed in taking them out itself. Charlie starts hallucinating and that's when they just happen to run into Jessie. Because really, what are the odds of not running into a beautiful woman in the middle of the Outback? He assumes she's another mirage and the only funny moment in the last half hour happened when, thinking she not real, he grabbed her breasts. Other than that, all other attempts at humor are just downright adorable in their sheer earnestness as they are lacking in any comedic value. Watching this movie try to be funny is like watching a duck try to perform neurosurgery. For instance, there's the seven minute sequence where they're riding camels and the camels won't stop farting. This is full on Adam Sandler level humor and that is only successful when Adam Sandler is doing it. Jessie agrees to help them for $2000 and, when they track down the kangaroo, she tells them they can knock it out by smearing mud over themselves to hide their scent and throwing bolos at it. I'm not sure what in Jessie's brief experience with these guys made her think there was a chance in Hell it wouldn't all go wrong and then SURPRISE it all goes wrong when Louis gets a sudden diarrhea attack just as the bolos are being thrown. Did I mention the dream sequence where the kangaroo rapped? It's probably best that I didn't.
Yep, this will end well.
1:28:00 -- After some scenes of awkward, pathetic flirting by both Charlie and Jessie, they manage to get captured by Smith. Jessie offers to show him where Kangaroo Jack (and Smith's money) is if they let the other two go. She goes with Smith and his henchmen take them off to be killed anyway but, in a scene that proves Smith lacks the ability to pick competent henchmen, Charlie and Louis manage to outsmart them. In fact, Charlie and Louis suddenly act with supreme competence in all they do. They find Smith and retrieve Jessie but then Frankie shows up because, really, how hard could anyone be to find in the vastness of the Australian Outback? Charlie, Louis and Jessie manage to escape while Frankie and Smith start battling it out. Louis manages to snag to money from the Brooklyn jacket Jack is wearing thinking this will get Frankie to spare them but he finally reveals that they were sent to Australia in the first place to be killed. Luckily, the writers know all about the concept of Deus Ex Machina and have an Australian policeman, a guy I never mentioned before because we thought he was just Frankie's tour guide, swoop in at the last minute and save everyone. Oh, Charlie managed to save Louis' life and there was a big emotional scene and Lord I don't want to talk about this anymore so let's skip to the end where, one year later, Charlie and Louis made a shampoo out of some berries they found in the Outback. Charlie marries Jessie, Louis does...hell, I don't know. He does something but we'll never know because the movie is over.
This scene of a kangaroo's backside perfectly sums up the movie. See ya later.
0:10:00 -- This movie has managed to annoy several times already and we're only 10 minutes in. First, the movie has Christopher Walken in a supporting role. This means they had the gall to cast one of my favorite actors in their sucky movie. I know it's going to be a sucky movie because they open with a quick montage of Australia with narrator Jerry O'Connell (who's playing the lead character Charlie Carbone) showing us only the godforsaken parts of it while describing it as dangerous and remote. Well, yeah if you ignore all those bigass modern cities that serve as home to most of it's population of 22,000,000, it is just some hot, kangaroo infested wasteland. But enough of that, the movie thinks, as it turns its attention to a real country, the good ol' U.S. of A. We flashback to 1982 where we see a 10 year old Charlie. The movie loses some more credibility because anyone who's seen Stand By Me knows what Jerry O'Connell looked like back then and this isn't it. He is saved from drowning by another child, Louis Booker, who will someday grown up to look just like Anthony Anderson. The cost for Charlie is that now he feels obligated to participate in whatever crazy situation Louis may find himself in. Twenty years later, that would be delivering TVs that happen to be stolen. To make it a perfect day, Louis tries to hide out in a warehouse owned by Charlie's stepfather, gangster Sal Maggio (Walken). So far, the movie has averaged two jokes per minute, only one of which has made me mildly chuckle. I'd tell you what it was but I swear I've already forgotten it.
Hey look, it's those guys from those shows I don't watch.0:30:00 -- Around the 16 minute mark there's a rather funny sequence in which Charlie and Louis are thought to be obsessed with their own shit. So far, it's the funniest thing in the movie and it actually makes me an advocate for the idea that the whole movie should have been about guys who are thought to be obsessed with shit. It's sad that this is the one bright spot of Kangaroo Jack's first 30 minutes. Well, Walken was pretty good but hell, he was good as some brain damaged janitor in Joe Dirt. Walken's gangster character in understandably upset that these two morons inadvertently caused him to lose millions of dollars in merchandise but he can't kill them because he's married to Charlie's mother. Naturally, the only option left is to trust them to take a package to Australia and successfully deliver it to one of their associates there. No one could have imagined something would go wrong. Well, I imagined it and I'd only known these guys for these than 30 minutes so why the hell didn't Sal and the other mobsters figure that this is as much beyond their skillset as everything else they've ever done in life? Anyway, Ass and Hole arrive in Australia and, against orders, open the package to find $50,000. Knowing they must now take the utmost care to safeguard this cache of mob money, they start driving through the Outback without looking where they're going and hit a kangaroo. Thinking it's dead, they do what any of us would do, that being dress it up in Louis's Brooklyn jacket so they can take pictures. Sadly, their lifetime pattern of bad luck and incompetence is not broken here as the kangaroo turns out to be alive and hops off with Louis's jacket. The jacket, by the way, has the money. After a brief chase in which their jeep hits everything it could possibly hit, they end up walking to the nearest town to call the mysterious Mr. Smith, the guy who was waiting for the package. I guess they thought Louis misunderstanding Australian slang would never get old because they do it again. And again. And some more. And I imagine they'll do it several more times too. By the way, let me wish a hearty "Welcome Back" to Martin Csokas who plays Mr. Smith. He was last seen in the Liveblog of Aeon Flux. Few actors are capable of this level of consistency in their work. Actually, he's a good actor. It's just a shame he keeps doing movies like this.
Good job, Walken. These were definitely the right guys for the job.0:58:00 -- Louis meets a beautiful naturalist named Jessie (Estella Warren) who tells him the best way to capture their kangaroo would to shoot it from a plane with a tranquilizer dart. My greatest wish in life when I saw that was to find some way to place a large wager on whether or not the kangaroo would outsmart them and make them shoot themselves with that and, sure enough, they did less than four minutes later. Actually, they shot their pilot, a likable local named Blue, but I would have still won the bet. After they crashed, they thought it would be a good idea to wander through one of the world's most barren and inhospitable deserts to search for the kangaroo though I do admire the fact that they show no fear at the prospect of all those biker gangs looking for gasoline. While all this was going on, Sal sent his right hand man Frankie to search for and kill Louis and Charlie which, incidentally, is what Mr. Smith was supposed to do for the $50,000 fee. Smith has launched his own search and they each end up thinking it's just a swell idea to try and track these guys down when it looks like nature will probably succeed in taking them out itself. Charlie starts hallucinating and that's when they just happen to run into Jessie. Because really, what are the odds of not running into a beautiful woman in the middle of the Outback? He assumes she's another mirage and the only funny moment in the last half hour happened when, thinking she not real, he grabbed her breasts. Other than that, all other attempts at humor are just downright adorable in their sheer earnestness as they are lacking in any comedic value. Watching this movie try to be funny is like watching a duck try to perform neurosurgery. For instance, there's the seven minute sequence where they're riding camels and the camels won't stop farting. This is full on Adam Sandler level humor and that is only successful when Adam Sandler is doing it. Jessie agrees to help them for $2000 and, when they track down the kangaroo, she tells them they can knock it out by smearing mud over themselves to hide their scent and throwing bolos at it. I'm not sure what in Jessie's brief experience with these guys made her think there was a chance in Hell it wouldn't all go wrong and then SURPRISE it all goes wrong when Louis gets a sudden diarrhea attack just as the bolos are being thrown. Did I mention the dream sequence where the kangaroo rapped? It's probably best that I didn't.
Yep, this will end well.1:28:00 -- After some scenes of awkward, pathetic flirting by both Charlie and Jessie, they manage to get captured by Smith. Jessie offers to show him where Kangaroo Jack (and Smith's money) is if they let the other two go. She goes with Smith and his henchmen take them off to be killed anyway but, in a scene that proves Smith lacks the ability to pick competent henchmen, Charlie and Louis manage to outsmart them. In fact, Charlie and Louis suddenly act with supreme competence in all they do. They find Smith and retrieve Jessie but then Frankie shows up because, really, how hard could anyone be to find in the vastness of the Australian Outback? Charlie, Louis and Jessie manage to escape while Frankie and Smith start battling it out. Louis manages to snag to money from the Brooklyn jacket Jack is wearing thinking this will get Frankie to spare them but he finally reveals that they were sent to Australia in the first place to be killed. Luckily, the writers know all about the concept of Deus Ex Machina and have an Australian policeman, a guy I never mentioned before because we thought he was just Frankie's tour guide, swoop in at the last minute and save everyone. Oh, Charlie managed to save Louis' life and there was a big emotional scene and Lord I don't want to talk about this anymore so let's skip to the end where, one year later, Charlie and Louis made a shampoo out of some berries they found in the Outback. Charlie marries Jessie, Louis does...hell, I don't know. He does something but we'll never know because the movie is over.
This scene of a kangaroo's backside perfectly sums up the movie. See ya later.Thursday, March 31, 2011
Look At My Briefs -- 3/31/11
Sorry folks, I won't be posting another edition of my brief comments on various subjects I like to call Look At My Briefs this week. HA HA, APRIL FOOL! Yes, I know that's not till tomorrow but that just means this isn't an April Fool and that makes it the GREATEST APRIL FOOL OF ALL TIME!!! Really, it does.
Here's an interesting story about Elizabeth Taylor's role in taking down the Production Code, a set of self imposed movie industry rules governed by religious zealots that not only forbade even mildly excessive sexuality but also interracial couples. The current movie rating system still has trouble separating serious adult material from pornography but at least we're better off now than we were back then. So thanks Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Mike Nichols and everyone else who dared to stand up to censorship. Thanks to you, we now have movies like Transformers and...Sucker Punch...screw you guys.
The new Dr. Who trailer looks very cool. It teases just enough without spoiling a damn thing. It's lucky I don't have sex with trailers because if I did, it would be very sore and very pregnant by now.
Everyone complained last week about the costume being worn by the latest incarnation of Wonder Woman. well America, you can't get decent healthcare income equality but by God you can get a television network to make minor wardrobe changes to the costumes of fictional characters. They still should have done what they did to Batman and reimagined it completely to be more in line with what a real person would wear because, after all, a real person is now wearing it but it is better than it was. I'll let you know if I have any trouble ripping it off Adrianne Palicki's body when I fantasize about her.
The only answer I can come up with for this headline is, "He'll get his own show on a pornographic version of the Food Network."
Joel Surnow claims that the History Channel almost killed his mini-series about the Kennedys because he's conservative. Actually, it seems the real reason is that someone at the History Channel actually sat down and read the script.
In this week's reboot news, how the hell can Child's Play be darker? Also, they are already quite literally planning to reboot the Batman franchise before The Dark Knight Rises has even been made. This news backs up my theory that the Harry Potter movies will be "rebooted" and the whole franchise will start over again six months after the last one premieres this summer.
By now, you may have heard of Jacqueline Howett, the writer of an e-book who freaked in a comments section over a critic's bad review. Truth to tell, I feel sorry for her. It was unprofessional but she is inexperienced and almost certainly didn't think the story would get the coverage it did. Still, we do live in an age where there truly isn't such a thing as bad publicity and I can't see this not moving at least a few copies of her book. Hmm...
LISTEN UP ALL YOU SYPHILITIC FUCKTARDS WHO'VE SAID THEY HATE THIS BLOG! I KNOW YOU'RE PROBABLY TOO BUSY SCREWING YOUR MOMS TO DO THINGS LIKE DEVELOP TASTE AND LEARN TO APPRECIATE GOOD WRITING BUT MAYBE YOU SHOULD PULL YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES FOR TWO SECONDS AND LEARN HOW TO READ. AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Here's an interesting story about Elizabeth Taylor's role in taking down the Production Code, a set of self imposed movie industry rules governed by religious zealots that not only forbade even mildly excessive sexuality but also interracial couples. The current movie rating system still has trouble separating serious adult material from pornography but at least we're better off now than we were back then. So thanks Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Mike Nichols and everyone else who dared to stand up to censorship. Thanks to you, we now have movies like Transformers and...Sucker Punch...screw you guys.
The new Dr. Who trailer looks very cool. It teases just enough without spoiling a damn thing. It's lucky I don't have sex with trailers because if I did, it would be very sore and very pregnant by now.
Everyone complained last week about the costume being worn by the latest incarnation of Wonder Woman. well America, you can't get decent healthcare income equality but by God you can get a television network to make minor wardrobe changes to the costumes of fictional characters. They still should have done what they did to Batman and reimagined it completely to be more in line with what a real person would wear because, after all, a real person is now wearing it but it is better than it was. I'll let you know if I have any trouble ripping it off Adrianne Palicki's body when I fantasize about her.
The only answer I can come up with for this headline is, "He'll get his own show on a pornographic version of the Food Network."
Joel Surnow claims that the History Channel almost killed his mini-series about the Kennedys because he's conservative. Actually, it seems the real reason is that someone at the History Channel actually sat down and read the script.
In this week's reboot news, how the hell can Child's Play be darker? Also, they are already quite literally planning to reboot the Batman franchise before The Dark Knight Rises has even been made. This news backs up my theory that the Harry Potter movies will be "rebooted" and the whole franchise will start over again six months after the last one premieres this summer.
By now, you may have heard of Jacqueline Howett, the writer of an e-book who freaked in a comments section over a critic's bad review. Truth to tell, I feel sorry for her. It was unprofessional but she is inexperienced and almost certainly didn't think the story would get the coverage it did. Still, we do live in an age where there truly isn't such a thing as bad publicity and I can't see this not moving at least a few copies of her book. Hmm...
LISTEN UP ALL YOU SYPHILITIC FUCKTARDS WHO'VE SAID THEY HATE THIS BLOG! I KNOW YOU'RE PROBABLY TOO BUSY SCREWING YOUR MOMS TO DO THINGS LIKE DEVELOP TASTE AND LEARN TO APPRECIATE GOOD WRITING BUT MAYBE YOU SHOULD PULL YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES FOR TWO SECONDS AND LEARN HOW TO READ. AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Meh-ga Mind
Three movies came out last week and I only had time to see two. Naturally, the one I missed was #1 at the box office. As my desire in life is to always be on the cutting edge of last week, I went to see Limitless.
The best thing I can say about Limitless is that it's bad in a bland, conventional way, not the infuriating way in which Sucker Punch was bad. The acting provided some bright spots but otherwise it was just dumb and dull piece of lame science fiction.
Bradley Cooper is pretty good as Eddie Morra, a slacker in every sense of the word. When the movie opens, he has a lot of stuff he really shouldn't have. He has these things because they were granted unto him by the godlike powers of the screenwriters and they only did that so they could take those things away. He's losing his hot girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish who was also in Sucker Punch because all he ever does is bitch about how he does nothing. He's also about to lose his book contract which he somehow got despite not having written a word ever because he still hasn't written a word since landing the contract. He's as down and out as down and out can be but, before he can comfortably settle into a future of flipping burgers and getting high, he runs into Vernon, his brother-in-law from a previous marriage. Vernon used to be just like him but now he's all cleaned up and wearing expensive suits. How'd that happen? Turns out is was because of some pill that turns on certain chemical receptors in the brain. Vernon insists it's FDA approved. It turns out that Vernon really likes to lie but Eddie didn't know that when he took the pill.
Suddenly, Eddie is a genius. He now has laser like focus, can recall any fact he's ever learned at any point in his life and can quickly form ingenious plans both short term and long and solve all the problems in his life. He finishes his book in four days and starts making gobs of cash at the stock market. He even manages to get Lindy back. Only problem is that the pills wear off. When he goes to Vernon to get more, he finds Vernon dead but he also finds a huge stockpile of the pills. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense up to this point. Then this supposed genius decides to borrow $100,000 from the Russian mob to invest despite the fact that he doubles his money every day and would have that much if he just waited a week. Then he gets mixed up with a ruthless financier named Carl van Loon (played by promising newcomer named Robert De Niro). Despite the fact that he can't fail at the market, he takes a job picking stocks for van Loon instead. Why? Because if he hadn't done any of these things, he'd have no problems. Well, turns out the pills can cause memory gaps and he may have committed a murder. (Spoiler alert at the bottom*) He'd stop taking them because of this but it turns out that this will cause life threatening withdrawal symptoms. But, in addition to all that, he now must also deal with crazy Russians who could kill him and a rich guy who could ruin his life in various other ways.
And that's just the plot. One of the first things I did when the movie was over was check to see if this was director Neil Burger's first movie. Turns out it's his fourth. The reason I thought this is because it's not uncommon for new directors to take every trick they learned in film school and toss them on the screen whether they were needed or not. Shift everything so the shot is now upside down? Sure. Show the same character in several spots at the same time? Why not. Zoom the camera into a mirror so you're closing in on the same image over and over. Go for it. It's annoying and distracting and shows why film schools should be required to teach a class called Less Is More 101.
Cooper, De Niro and the rest of the cast do just fine with what they're given and it starts as an interesting idea but that's where the compliments end. What this movie really needed were limits and yes, I know that's a lame joke but it's about the same level of joke you might hear in the movie so I thought it was one that should be used here.
*SPOILER ALERT: That stupid murder never does get solved. He may have brought a woman back to her home and killed her without realizing. The police suspect him but it never gets past that. This is one of the reasons I call the movie dumb.
The best thing I can say about Limitless is that it's bad in a bland, conventional way, not the infuriating way in which Sucker Punch was bad. The acting provided some bright spots but otherwise it was just dumb and dull piece of lame science fiction.
Bradley Cooper is pretty good as Eddie Morra, a slacker in every sense of the word. When the movie opens, he has a lot of stuff he really shouldn't have. He has these things because they were granted unto him by the godlike powers of the screenwriters and they only did that so they could take those things away. He's losing his hot girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish who was also in Sucker Punch because all he ever does is bitch about how he does nothing. He's also about to lose his book contract which he somehow got despite not having written a word ever because he still hasn't written a word since landing the contract. He's as down and out as down and out can be but, before he can comfortably settle into a future of flipping burgers and getting high, he runs into Vernon, his brother-in-law from a previous marriage. Vernon used to be just like him but now he's all cleaned up and wearing expensive suits. How'd that happen? Turns out is was because of some pill that turns on certain chemical receptors in the brain. Vernon insists it's FDA approved. It turns out that Vernon really likes to lie but Eddie didn't know that when he took the pill.
Suddenly, Eddie is a genius. He now has laser like focus, can recall any fact he's ever learned at any point in his life and can quickly form ingenious plans both short term and long and solve all the problems in his life. He finishes his book in four days and starts making gobs of cash at the stock market. He even manages to get Lindy back. Only problem is that the pills wear off. When he goes to Vernon to get more, he finds Vernon dead but he also finds a huge stockpile of the pills. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense up to this point. Then this supposed genius decides to borrow $100,000 from the Russian mob to invest despite the fact that he doubles his money every day and would have that much if he just waited a week. Then he gets mixed up with a ruthless financier named Carl van Loon (played by promising newcomer named Robert De Niro). Despite the fact that he can't fail at the market, he takes a job picking stocks for van Loon instead. Why? Because if he hadn't done any of these things, he'd have no problems. Well, turns out the pills can cause memory gaps and he may have committed a murder. (Spoiler alert at the bottom*) He'd stop taking them because of this but it turns out that this will cause life threatening withdrawal symptoms. But, in addition to all that, he now must also deal with crazy Russians who could kill him and a rich guy who could ruin his life in various other ways.
And that's just the plot. One of the first things I did when the movie was over was check to see if this was director Neil Burger's first movie. Turns out it's his fourth. The reason I thought this is because it's not uncommon for new directors to take every trick they learned in film school and toss them on the screen whether they were needed or not. Shift everything so the shot is now upside down? Sure. Show the same character in several spots at the same time? Why not. Zoom the camera into a mirror so you're closing in on the same image over and over. Go for it. It's annoying and distracting and shows why film schools should be required to teach a class called Less Is More 101.
Cooper, De Niro and the rest of the cast do just fine with what they're given and it starts as an interesting idea but that's where the compliments end. What this movie really needed were limits and yes, I know that's a lame joke but it's about the same level of joke you might hear in the movie so I thought it was one that should be used here.
*SPOILER ALERT: That stupid murder never does get solved. He may have brought a woman back to her home and killed her without realizing. The police suspect him but it never gets past that. This is one of the reasons I call the movie dumb.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Punch Stunk
On Thursday, I wrote this about director Zach Snyder and his new movie Sucker Punch:
I was expecting to enjoy Sucker Punch. Even when I saw it's Tomatometer rating was in the low 30s (it's since dropped into the low 20s), I was optimistic. I don't look at reviews after I decide to review a movie myself so I didn't know why the rating was so low but I guessed that it had a stupid, nonsensical story for which Snyder's amazing visuals failed to compensate. After seeing it, I was so disappointed with it that I wanted to see if the world shared my misery and, while they hated it too, it was for entirely different reasons. Looking through the snippets of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, the general consensus was that it was dumb, boring, misogynistic, and confusing. All these sentiments are skillfully expounded upon by Richard Roeper and, oddly, I completely disagree with them. I didn't think the story was dumb. After a bit of confusion in the beginning, I followed it fairly easily. I found it sorely lacking in misogyny. In addition to all that, I thought the visuals were simply amazing. Zach Snyder has this way of putting a camera behind his eyes and transferring his imagination directly to film and he has accomplished this once again. You know, this all sounds like a good review and, up to a certain point, it is. Then it happened. The event that pissed me off and soured me on the movie.
The story takes place on three levels, the Real World, the Dream and the Dream Within A Dream. The one doing the dreaming is Babydoll (Emily Browning). This, like almost every other name in the movie, almost certainly isn't real but rather a name she has assigned to real people about who she is now dreaming. In reality, Babydoll's mother dies and, upon finding out that she left her fortune to Babydoll and her sister, Babydoll's wicked pig of a stepfather flies into a drunken rage. First, he tries to rape Babydoll then he goes after the 10 year old sister. Babydoll escapes from where the stepfather locked her up and gets hold of his gun but the stepfather has already killed the sister. Babydoll is so traumatized by all of this that she's almost catatonic. This makes it possible for the stepfather to frame her for the sister's murder and lock her up in a mental institution where he pays a corrupt orderly named Blue (Oscar Isaac) to arrange for a lobotomy in five days. This is when Babydoll escapes her torment by embracing a fantasy but real life catches up with her there when real life events start corresponding to fantasy events.
In the dream, she's in a dance club/brothel run by Blue who plans to sell her to a man called the High Roller in five days. Here, though, she's lucid and she's also such a mesmerizing dancer that men are entranced. We, on the other hand, see an even deeper level of fantasy when she dances. Here, she and her fellow inmates/dancers are provocatively dressed members of an elite fighting force commanded by the Wiseman (Scott Glenn) who gives Babydoll a plan to escape that involves fighting demons, zombies, dragons and robots. No humans, probably because Babydoll isn't a killer, even in dreams. If she were, she'd have shot the stepfather in the face when she had the chance.
So, what didn't I like about it. That's where it gets hard. The reason I hated the movie is deep into spoiler territory. What I will say is this. What happened to Babydoll is, simply, one of the worst things that can happen to a human being. The fact that it was painted as some sort of victory made it even worse. While it was at least implied that Blue and the stepfather would have to pay for what they did, it didn't make up for doing what was done to her and, frankly, the people responsible for this movie should be ashamed of themselves. And no, I'm not exaggerating.
Snyder's visuals are amazing. The action scenes kick ass. The girls are gorgeous and Emily Browning has a face designed by nature to be featured in movie close ups. And none of that mattered. None of that kept the movie from crashing down. I imagine Snyder's next movie about Superman will end with Lex Luthor waving Superman's head around on a stick. If it does, it will still end better than Sucker Punch.
This means he now has the power to do what he wants. It also means he's about due for an epic failure that everyone knew was coming but no one had the guts to stop him. Hopefully, that will be his next movie and my weekend won't be ruined when I see Sucker Punch.I hate being right. I also hate seeing my hopes dashed. Zach Snyder has now delivered an epic failure my weekend was ruined.
I was expecting to enjoy Sucker Punch. Even when I saw it's Tomatometer rating was in the low 30s (it's since dropped into the low 20s), I was optimistic. I don't look at reviews after I decide to review a movie myself so I didn't know why the rating was so low but I guessed that it had a stupid, nonsensical story for which Snyder's amazing visuals failed to compensate. After seeing it, I was so disappointed with it that I wanted to see if the world shared my misery and, while they hated it too, it was for entirely different reasons. Looking through the snippets of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, the general consensus was that it was dumb, boring, misogynistic, and confusing. All these sentiments are skillfully expounded upon by Richard Roeper and, oddly, I completely disagree with them. I didn't think the story was dumb. After a bit of confusion in the beginning, I followed it fairly easily. I found it sorely lacking in misogyny. In addition to all that, I thought the visuals were simply amazing. Zach Snyder has this way of putting a camera behind his eyes and transferring his imagination directly to film and he has accomplished this once again. You know, this all sounds like a good review and, up to a certain point, it is. Then it happened. The event that pissed me off and soured me on the movie.
The story takes place on three levels, the Real World, the Dream and the Dream Within A Dream. The one doing the dreaming is Babydoll (Emily Browning). This, like almost every other name in the movie, almost certainly isn't real but rather a name she has assigned to real people about who she is now dreaming. In reality, Babydoll's mother dies and, upon finding out that she left her fortune to Babydoll and her sister, Babydoll's wicked pig of a stepfather flies into a drunken rage. First, he tries to rape Babydoll then he goes after the 10 year old sister. Babydoll escapes from where the stepfather locked her up and gets hold of his gun but the stepfather has already killed the sister. Babydoll is so traumatized by all of this that she's almost catatonic. This makes it possible for the stepfather to frame her for the sister's murder and lock her up in a mental institution where he pays a corrupt orderly named Blue (Oscar Isaac) to arrange for a lobotomy in five days. This is when Babydoll escapes her torment by embracing a fantasy but real life catches up with her there when real life events start corresponding to fantasy events.
In the dream, she's in a dance club/brothel run by Blue who plans to sell her to a man called the High Roller in five days. Here, though, she's lucid and she's also such a mesmerizing dancer that men are entranced. We, on the other hand, see an even deeper level of fantasy when she dances. Here, she and her fellow inmates/dancers are provocatively dressed members of an elite fighting force commanded by the Wiseman (Scott Glenn) who gives Babydoll a plan to escape that involves fighting demons, zombies, dragons and robots. No humans, probably because Babydoll isn't a killer, even in dreams. If she were, she'd have shot the stepfather in the face when she had the chance.
So, what didn't I like about it. That's where it gets hard. The reason I hated the movie is deep into spoiler territory. What I will say is this. What happened to Babydoll is, simply, one of the worst things that can happen to a human being. The fact that it was painted as some sort of victory made it even worse. While it was at least implied that Blue and the stepfather would have to pay for what they did, it didn't make up for doing what was done to her and, frankly, the people responsible for this movie should be ashamed of themselves. And no, I'm not exaggerating.
Snyder's visuals are amazing. The action scenes kick ass. The girls are gorgeous and Emily Browning has a face designed by nature to be featured in movie close ups. And none of that mattered. None of that kept the movie from crashing down. I imagine Snyder's next movie about Superman will end with Lex Luthor waving Superman's head around on a stick. If it does, it will still end better than Sucker Punch.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Things I've Learned From Watching Movies Part 89
It's time to once again see what upcoming movies have to teach us.
It turns out that pink bunnies are lethal, chickens are megalomaniacs and there's a reason that jelly beans taste like shit.
History is something that can be freely pissed away. That's what these guys say anyway.
Go ahead and remake a beloved comedy. It's not like anyone will notice or care.
I thought that Kick Ass had already taught us that little girls are unbeatable psychopaths but I guess we have to learn it all over again.
If you lose your arm in a shark attack, the way to recover and once again become a champion surfer is to have a Katy Perry song playing in the background. Also, if this girl does well, don't tell her she deserves a hand.
If you were nominated AND actually won an Oscar this year, the only worthy follow up is a crude comedy in which you are given either second or third billing to Danny McBride.
You aren't truly successful unless you've built a railroad using magic metal so you can have sex while riding on a train full of money.
Hitchcock was wrong. Birds are too stupid to ever rise up against us.
Jesus people, it's been a 150 years. Let it go.
When you run out of ideas, just do the same movie over and over.
See above only change the eternally remade movie to Blair Witch Project.
Some actors just aren't effective on screen without mumbling girlfriends and buff werewolves as their costars.
Turns out everyone who goes to prom is, at some level or other, an annoying douchebag. Again, though, we learn that all is made right by playing Katy Perry's "Firework."
It turns out that pink bunnies are lethal, chickens are megalomaniacs and there's a reason that jelly beans taste like shit.
History is something that can be freely pissed away. That's what these guys say anyway.
Go ahead and remake a beloved comedy. It's not like anyone will notice or care.
I thought that Kick Ass had already taught us that little girls are unbeatable psychopaths but I guess we have to learn it all over again.
If you lose your arm in a shark attack, the way to recover and once again become a champion surfer is to have a Katy Perry song playing in the background. Also, if this girl does well, don't tell her she deserves a hand.
If you were nominated AND actually won an Oscar this year, the only worthy follow up is a crude comedy in which you are given either second or third billing to Danny McBride.
You aren't truly successful unless you've built a railroad using magic metal so you can have sex while riding on a train full of money.
Hitchcock was wrong. Birds are too stupid to ever rise up against us.
Jesus people, it's been a 150 years. Let it go.
When you run out of ideas, just do the same movie over and over.
See above only change the eternally remade movie to Blair Witch Project.
Some actors just aren't effective on screen without mumbling girlfriends and buff werewolves as their costars.
Turns out everyone who goes to prom is, at some level or other, an annoying douchebag. Again, though, we learn that all is made right by playing Katy Perry's "Firework."
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