Things I've Learned From Watching Movies Part 69

You really should make sure you aren't a character in a movie with a title like Drag Me To Hell. Really, when you have a title like that, odds are someone's getting dragged to Hell. If the movie was called Scramble Me Some Eggs you'd sure as hell expect to see some scrambled eggs, right? This is another helpful tip from me on how to live your life.

By the way, this is Thing I've Learned From Watching Movies Part 69. I am obliged to engage in juvenile behavior whenever I see that number so...WOO SIXTY NINE! OW GIVE IT TO ME!

Sorry.

He Shall Be Levy

Night At The Museum 2 rung in at the number one spot this week. This was not surprising as the first one was the type of movie that caused kids to say, "Please can we see it please please please," to their parents for hours at a time until the spirit of Mom and Dad was sufficiently broken and they were willing to drive to the theater with little kids in the back seat screaming, "THIS IS GONNA BE THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER ooh look McDonalds can we get McDonalds after the movie WHICH IS GONNA BE THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER," in their ears the whole time. What did surprise me was this observation from Deadline Hollywood Daily. It turns out that Museum director Shawn Levy has racked up 6 movies in a row that premiered in either the number 1 or 2 spot. I read that and wondered when exactly I'd been transported to the Bizarro World. I thought it might be useful to do a quick breakdown of these six movies to see how we, as a society, could have allowed this to happen.

Big Fat Liar -- This was okay. I can see kids going nuts over it. It's about a kid (Frankie Muniz) who writes a story that is ripped off by an unscrupulous Hollywood producer (Paul Giamatti who probably has to explain why this movie made more money than his award nominated roles in American Splendor and Sideways). It also introduced us to Amanda Bynes who ended up being the best thing in the movie. She's an underrated actress who really should be getting better roles but that's neither here nor there. What is right here and also over there is that it's a cute family film that made a lot of money with a very low budget.

Just Married -- This, on the other hand, is an abomination of Lovecraftian proportions. Though made in 2001, it sat on the shelf for two years despite having Ashton Kutcher as its star. Why? Because it's a comedy that was extremely stupid and thoroughly unfunny. I suppose Kutcher's star power coupled with the lack of competition that comes with a January release date opened the door and let this pool of crap wash in and soak itself into the carpet that is the movie theater box office. With these two hits under his belt, Levy went on to direct...

Cheaper By The Dozen -- I like this one. Well, sort of. The remake of a couple with 12 kids has Steve Martin as the father doing something Martin does well, that being playing a guy who's often on the verge of completely losing it. This is the best movie on this list. Just Married was the worst which brings us to one that's smack dab in the middle...

The Pink Panther -- This is one of those movies that never should have been made. Steve Martin must has enjoyed being in a hit film so much that he let Levy talk him into trying to recreate Peter Sellers' iconic character. Martin did all right although his performance suffers when compared to that of Sellers. I think it was Roger Ebert who pointed out that Mike Meyers would have been a better choice but, oh well. We also got to see Beyonce Knowles giving one of the greatest performances ever given when she plays a character who looks like Beyonce Knowles and is supposedly attracted to a complete idiot twice her age. It had a few laughs but not enough to justify the movie's existence although none of that stopped it from opening at #1 and making $158 million worldwide. Unfortunately, all this led to the even worse Pink Panther 2, a sin for which Levy cannot be forgiven.

Night At The Museum -- This was just a lame movie. Good in some spots but mostly dumb and not entertaining. The kids disagreed with me though. They loved the slapping monkeys and the dinosaur skeleton and everything else. They liked it so much that we now have the sequel (haven't seen it yet) that has even more slapping monkeys and a giant octopus to go along with the dinosaur.

So, why is Shawn Levy so successful when his movies never really get better than average? Nikki Finke put it best:

Which just goes to show: never underestimate the drawing power of a family film.

With the exceptions of Just Married and, to a lesser extent, Pink Panther, Levy makes movies that kids love to go see and adults can at least tolerate. I also think I've discovered why his movies aren't very good. It's right there in Nikki Finke's comments section:

And he’s a nice guy.

Comment by Gogo

Mr. Go is right. Shawn Levy is said to be a very nice guy which is why he'll never be a great director. The greatest directors having always been raging assholes. You're not a great director until actors tell stories about you like, "He didn't like the way I expressed myself during a crucial take so he shoved a beer bottle up my ass and smashed it," while still having the actor say that he or she is absolutely in awe of your talent. Hell, Roman Polanski raped a 13 year old girl and still gets to be called one of the great filmmakers. So, there you have it. Our only hope of getting of getting a decent Shawn Levy movie is if he becomes a jerk or a criminal. Until then, let's all look forward to Night At the Museum 3.

Look At My Briefs

Brief comments on various subjects is really more like blogging than the full length reviews or commentaries. I should try to call someone a "ghey ray-tard" at some point to feel like a real blogger.

Twitter is participating in a reality show about people who use Twitter to track down celebrities. Ashton Kutcher does NOT like that idea and, in retaliation, has threatened to...brace yourselves...STOP TWITTERING. Yeah. Just let that sink in for a minute. I fully support Kutcher on this. Everyone knows that stalking celebrities is worse than the Holocaust. Why couldn't they have done a more acceptable form of celebrity humiliation like making them think that their home was being seized by the IRS or make them think that they're doing a charity visit to some sick kids that's actually a cruel prank. Also, if you're going to threaten people to get something you want, shouldn't it be something like, "I'll poison the world's oceans," or something along those lines? If you stop twittering, people will just start following Shaq or Stephen Fry.

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This can't possibly fail. Doing Star Wars without George Lucas is a better idea than doing Buffy without Joss Whedon. The director of the new Buffy movie is said to be the same talent free douchebag who directed the lame 1992 movie, the one who took Joss Whedon's perfectly good script and managed to remove the "perfectly good" from it. Oh well, not much you can do except not see the movie, something I feel won't be much of a sacrifice.

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Gee, I wonder who's going to win this award. Guess there's no possible way to predict. We'll find out on Sunday.

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New Doctor Who episodes are finally getting a run in America which makes me say IT'S ABOUT GOD DAMN TIME! Thanks a crapload, England. We save your ass in World War II and this is the thanks we get? I'll have you know that I had to acquire those episodes in a dirty, sleazy manner cause I wasn't going to wait for you to stop cramming fish and chips down your gullets, get off your lazy bums and make sure that we obsessive Doctor Who fans didn't have to wait more than six months to see the new stuff. Are you still mad about the whole Revolution thing? Is that it? Maybe we can work something out.

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Finally, it's nice to see that the Twilight series is no longer targeting teenage girls though I'm not sure if this new pitch to gay men will bring them more money.

Glum

I think the best show about teenagers I've ever seen is the BBC show Skins. Skins is a mixture of wild and funny adventures grounded in realism that allows its cast of colorful characters to live dramatic and interesting lives without descending into the melodramatic cliches.

Glee, on the other hand, just loves those melodramatic cliches. Okay, "loves" is a strong word. Maybe it's more like stupid television cliches (STC) about teens are Glee's no good boyfriend. The show would like to get away from them and they even break up for a while but, sure enough, you see them out at McDonalds together a week later. STC is saying that Glee has to pay cause he forgot his wallet while he slaps Glee on the ass a little too hard saying, "You know you love it."

Glee has an interesting cast of character actors that play the adults who, as is usual in shows that focus on teens, range from apathetic to utterly moronic. Jane Lynch, a gifted comic actress you've seen in movies like 40 Year Old Virgin, is especially good as a cheer coach who manages to make drinking a health shake funny. She clashes with Spanish teacher Will Shuester (Matthew Morrison) who wants to take over the Glee Club after its current teacher gets a little too friendly with a student. Will is driven by his own memories of high school in the 90s when, if his memories are accurate, the entirety of high school life revolved around the wondrous and magical world of show choir.

As for the kids themselves, as I mentioned yesterday, the only one I really liked was Rachel, played by Lea Michelle. She's a very smart girl who's also a gifted singer and is a perfect addition for the Glee Club. Her problem is that she knows all this and doesn't feel any constraint in constantly talking about how wonderful she is. Lea Michelle manages to take this annoying, self-absorbed girl who desperately needs to get over herself and make her someone interesting and fun to watch.

There are other kids in the club but the only other one you find out anything about (though all the characters would eventually get the spotlight on them) is Finn Hudson. The first thing I noticed about him is that the actor who plays him, Cory Monteith, could only be a high school sophomore if he'd been held back for the last ten years. Sure enough, he's 26, only four years younger than the man playing his teacher. One thing I liked about Skins was that they actually used real teenagers to play their teenage characters. Casting someone who's too old be a college senior as a high school sophomore is distracting and, if the show turns out to be a hit, will only become more distracting when his hairline starts to recede.

Anyway, Finn is a football star who, along with his fellow players, enjoys bullying the weaker kids. You know right off the bat though that he's a little different when he allows one kid to take off his expensive new coat before he gets tossed into the dumpster. Shuester hears Finn sing and plants drugs on him so he can blackmail the guy into joining Glee Club. Seriously.

That, at least, wasn't a common cliche of teen shows, unlike several other instances that caused this show to lose me as a fan. People in shows like this often start talking in melodramatic speeches that no human being on the face of the Earth has ever actually said. There's a point where Finn, having been enlightened by the spiritually healing powers of Glee Club, releases a kid in a wheelchair being tormented by his fellow bullies, "because he's a loser." Finn then launches into a monologue that I think lasted for twenty minutes even if the clock said it was less than two about how we're all losers which was stupid. Rachel also goes on at one point about how she really wants to accomplish something. Even Will Shuester gets in on the fun as he talks at length about how he wants to do something that makes him happy rather than take a better paying job cause after all wouldn't he want his child to do something that made him happy and OH GOD PLEASE MAKE IT STOP AAAHHHHH!!!!!

And that's why I don't like Glee. The show could improve and the things I don't like about it could be removed but I don't expect them to do this because a lot of people in the television business think that cliche filled monologues about melancholy teenage existence are high art. Oh well, we still have Gossip Girl, right?

In Lieu Of Actual Content

Had loads of stuff to do today but I do have just enough time right now to throw together something resembling a post so I thought I'd comment on a couple of YouTube videos.

This fan-made trailer has a lot of people talking. Whenever I see the words "fan-made trailer" I think of this piece of crap that made the rounds before the actual Spider-Man 3 came out. This, however, is very cool and really makes me want to see a Green Lantern movie starring Nathan Fillion be made.



If you'd told me ahead of time I'd enjoy cobbled together bits of Firefly, Matrix, Star Trek and Green Lantern cartoons as well as several other things, I'd have assumed you were off your medication. The video's creator, Jaron Pitts, should be very proud of himself.

I may do a full write up on the new Fox show Glee later in the week. For now, I'll say that the only thing I really liked about it is actress Lea Michelle who is the lead female singer in this clip. She makes an annoying, full-of-herself character very likable and, as this song shows, she's also stands out in a cast of very good singers. Do yourself a favor and turn off the annotations.



And, to leave you with a laugh, there's this. I think I've shown this German pop song before but it's worth seeing again.

"Ohhhhh, Goooood For You."

I'd like to give Terminator Salvation a ringing endorsement. I'd like to do that and would if it was good enough to deserve one. The best I can say about Terminator Salvation is that it isn't the cinematic equivalent of a slimy, pus covered abomination ripped off the walls of Hell and dragged into the world of light and sanity and reason by ancient evils to to rob us of our sanity and send our spirits screaming into the void that I thought it would be. Oh, the popcorn was good too. Tastes like they added some sort of spice to it this week. I meant to ask them about that but forgot. I'll have to make sure to bring it up the next time I'm there. Also, they had this cool looking trailer for the movie Nine. I can't wait to see that. When's it coming out? September? Darn. I'd like to see it now. Oh wait, why did I start writing this?

Yeah, ok, Terminator.

On Friday, I clearly was not optimistic about this movie's prospects. I'm happy to say that the movie exceeded my expectations. That's not saying a lot as I think I vividly described above what my expectations were. It could have been some cheap YouTube video of kids getting high and singing the theme song from the Jetsons and still exceeded my expectations.

You all know at least part of the story. It's now 2018 and all that, a computer network called Skynet, whose designers apparently neglected to delete the, "Must destroy mankind," legacy code from its original COBOL program, took control of a crapload of nuclear weapons and detonated them. Amazingly, a large portion of the world still seems to be in pretty good shape. I was sort of hoping for some mutants who maybe worship the Holy and Everlasting Bomb but I guess everything we've always heard about radioactive fallout causing sickness and birth defects was garbage since the surviving humans all seem to be fairly healthy.

Enter John Connor (Christian Bale). His late mother told him all this was going to happen and that he would someday lead the human race to victory over the machines. Unfortunately, Mom was really short on the details of exactly how and when this would happen, something which made this movie possible. The only really specific thing that Sarah Connor ever told her son was that he was destined to send his own father, Kyle Reese, back in time so that he could knock her up and then be brutally murdered by a Terminator. This is why Connor, when not getting shot at by robots, is busy looking for Kyle Reese.

Reese (Anton Yelchin, seen just last week as Chekov on Star Trek), it turns out, is living in the ruins of Los Angeles with a little girl named Star. This is where the details in which the devil lives start getting filled in. He meets a man named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) who seems remarkably ignorant of why all the buildings are falling apart* and why heavily armed killer robots are running around making the mess worse. We saw Wright at the beginning of the movie as a death row inmate who donated his body to the Cyberdyne Corporation though he missed the fine print about the nature of that research being to develop a series of homicidal androids to be used to eliminate what was left of the human race after most of it was killed during a nuclear holocaust. Wright doesn't realize he's a machine until he manages to make his way to Connor's camp and manages to set off the magnetic mines they have set up around their perimeter. And then, the fun begins.

By "fun" I mean basically the same series of explosions, rapid fire weapons, stunts and CGI effects that you see in pretty much every other big summer action film. It's entertaining though uninspired and forgettable but still better than I expected from the director of Charlie's Angels and the writers of Catwoman (one of the stupidest movies ever made, may you both be forced to watch it in Hell). If you see it, you'll probably enjoy it though it has about as much chance of creating demand for another sequel as Terminator 3 did for creating a demand for this one. This one was made because on the success of Terminators 1 and 2, not the mediocre 3.

Hard to believe it's been 25 years since James Cameron first ripped off Harlan Ellison** to create Terminator. I'm really hoping this will be the last chapter but I sense a storm coming in the form of probably two more sequels. Trust me, they'll be ba...oops, almost said it.


*How he knew that I don't know since parts of Los Angeles look like that today.

** True story. Google it.

The Reason For The Season

Memorial Day is the day set aside by the United States to remember and honor those who have fallen in noble defense of this great nation. The debt we owe these great and wonderful people is more than we can ever pay, but we try to do it by taking the day off, eating hot dogs till we puke and playing miniature golf as I'm sure our soldiers would have wanted.

Another way we may homage to our heroes is to load the theaters up with with multiple blockbusters. How has Hollywood chosen to bring glory to Memorial Day this year? To find out, I once again go to the Tomatometer.

First up, we have Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, a title that's way too long so for the remainder of this post I will refer to it as Steve. Steve is a sequel to the big hit/lame movie, Night at the Museum, (to which I will now refer as Barry). I thought Barry was mostly a bore but the kids liked it so they didn't need me to make it a hit. If the current 48% rating is anything to go by, this one looks to be more of the same. This movie is a dilemma for me as I have a huge crush on Amy Adams and know that she will someday be mine if I give good reviews to everything she's in. This means I may ignore Steve altogether if it does end up sucking or else the review will be written by my Russian cousin Майкл Клер. The bad news for movie fans is that, at 48%, it is currently the frontrunner for this week's new releases.

Chiming in at number 2 is Terminator: Salvation. It's 35% rating is about what I have been expecting ever since I heard another Terminator movie was being made. The first strike against it is that it's directed by McG, who sucks. The second strike is that it's a sequel that didn't exactly have a huge groundswell of fans demanding it. Strike three is that it's the first in this series that doesn't concentrate on Schwarzenegger's Terminator character because he was too busy driving California's economy into the ground to participate in this*. Strike four is McG again who still sucks since I wrote about him the first time. I'm guessing that 35% rating will go even lower.

I can't really say that Dance Flick is in third place since it doesn't have a rating, at least not as of this writing. It's always a good sign when studios don't make their products available for mass critic screenings ahead of time, right? One of the few people who has seen it is Matt Pais of Metromix.com who gave it this resounding endorsement:

It stinks, but the Wayans family has done a lot worse.

Cool, first time feature director Damien Wayans can now go to his family and merrily chant, "I'm not the worst, I'm not the worst." Mix all this in with the fact that this is a parody film, a genre that last produced a decent movie about twenty years ago, and I am forced to come to the conclusion that the producers said to themselves, "Twenty years? This means the odds are due to change in our favor. Greenlight it."

This may be a good weekend to go see Star Trek again. Or, you know, honor some fallen soldiers. Whichever you think would be the most fun.

*I've heard he makes a cameo somewhere. If true, I'm betting it was the day he had to spend shooting his scenes that caused his state to collapse.