Mr. Cranky Rates the Movies!

Julie & Julia

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:08:43 -0600

Attention Hollywood: there are two things you should never make a movie about. Blogging. And Cooking.

Why not blogging? Do I even have to answer this? Everybody blogs. Your landlady blogs about her psoriasis. Your nephew blogs about his wet dreams. Your goldfish even blog about their short lifespan and what you do in front of your computer when your roommate is at the laundromat. No one cares. I mean, if anyone actually did, we’d all be rich, right?

Cooking is also fairly self explanatory. Despite the fact that there’s an entire television channel dedicated to food, the only people who watch it are the same sad sacks who pay way too much for beef made from cows that had their asses wiped by organically-cloned smaller cows that are later made into sausages sold at Whole Foods. In other words, total losers.

Unfortunately for us, someone had the brainwave to somehow combine both blogging and cooking and make it into a semi-biographical historical drama about a woman built with the dimensions of Big Bird. Yes, that’s right – I’m talking about “Julie & Julia.”

I guess now that Dom DeLuise is dead, there was no way they could make a believable biopic about any of the famous fat man-chefs that probably number in the thousands, so instead they turned to Julia Child. Big mistake. In order to make any movie interesting, you need to have conflict, and Child essentially lived a gilded existence on the U.S. diplomatic tip. She’s about as easy to relate to as a statue of Lincoln looking down at you sternly from the foot of your bed while you sleep.

The other main character in this film, played by noted tomboy Amy Adams, is equally off-putting. However, her inability to engage an audience is more related to the fact that she is just so boring to look at the right side of my face fell asleep halfway through the movie. Adams, the human equivalent of wallpaper, is dull enough that exposure to her role in this film is almost guaranteed to kill more brain cells than taking a direct hit off the helium tank in the back of a carney’s pickup.

I propose that the sequel to “Julie & Julia” attempt a fresh melding of the blogosphere and the cooking world, one with a more modern twist. In place of a dead American icon and a mousey New Yorker, the film could instead focus on a living-dead Midwestern cowboy and a disgraced high school chemistry teacher. Together, they don’t get to know each other through a bunch of French recipes – instead they cook up some fucking meth, create a MySpace page that’s sort of about their band but really about how lonely they both are, and then unleash their reign of terror on an unsuspecting countryside. Oh, and the movie wouldn’t need any dialogue, either. Just a loop of people screaming over and over. And maybe some crying. Do you smell something burning?

Don't Blame the Writer

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:16:42 -0600

Having done this Mr. Cranky thing for some time now, I have been on the delivering end of a barrage of insults directed toward the writer of some movie for contributing to their craft what flies contribute to piles of dog shit. In fact, I’ve probably called for more than one writer to be immediately dismissed from the Writer’s Guild and thrown out onto the street to live in the alleys or the gutters or wherever it is that they can go where they can’t possibly inflict their idea of “writing” on the rest of us. I am guilty of the very thing I am now about to criticize other critics for doing.

That being said, I think it’s informative for movie-goers to understand how movies are made. Although the screenplay is supposed to be the foundation upon which a movie is built, the screenwriter has almost no control over what ultimately comes from their work. Yet, despite this simple fact that most critics should know (at least if they were good, well-informed critics), the screenwriter is most often blamed when a movie sucks balls.

This missive comes on the heels of a well-known movie that’s being raked over the coals and a screenwriter who’s taking punishment he should not have to take. I know the screenwriter and I read the script long before the movie was completed and can tell you it was one of the most tightly-written, funny scripts, I have ever read. I have read other scripts by this screenwriter and know him to be talented and an extremely gifted, hard-working writer who didn’t just get lucky in the industry, but worked his ass off polishing his work and learning his craft. I like to write the occasional script myself, but this writer kicks my ass in every conceivable way.

The second the script got green-lighted, it was hacked apart by the studio and the stars. And it’s not as if their intentions were necessarily bad or evil, but the mere act of taking a polished work by a talented person and reducing it to a mound of notecards that can be shuffled about and remade, is almost an act of evil. A good script, like any good piece of writing, is a work of art. However, we can be sure that if paintings were made for commercial release, movie executives would have long ago erased the Mona Lisa’s wry smile and put a big ol’ happy face on her to make sure everyone felt good looking at it.

In the case of this particular movie, the genre itself was changed from one thing into another to please the audience, which meant that lots of things were removed from the script and the writer forced to re-write them for better, easier, more pleasing effect. Has such an action ever produced something improved? I seriously doubt it. After that was done, a major star was hired to play one of the parts, and immediately demanded to make changes to the script to make him look better and based on his assumption that he was both a writer and an actor and clearly a better writer than the screenwriter. Can one imagine a screenwriter telling an actor how to act? Certainly not. But virtually every actor in Hollywood believes that they know better than the writer what good writing is and are ready and willing to destroy a cogent piece of writing whenever it suits their needs.

This sort of occurrence is commonplace in Hollywood. While such collaboration sometimes produces good movies, it most often produces mediocre, dumbed-down crap. Everybody in the process shits all over the writer and then the writer is blamed for the final product. Critics across the country take great glee in bringing up the writer’s name precisely because the writer is virtually powerless to fight back. It’s easy to blame the writer. However, start calling Tom Hanks or Christian Bale a talentless hack for fucking up some movie and you’re almost guaranteed to get a call from somebody telling you you’re no longer welcome at the free screenings. Film critics may want you to believe they’re independent, free-thinkers, but they’re mostly hacks themselves – wannabe screenwriters or filmmakers who don’t have the guts to take the risk of moving to Hollywood to follow their dream. If you still think film critics have integrity, just go to a PA tour sometime and you’ll see what every advertising executive knows – offer up a plate of donuts to a group of film critics and you can demonstrably improve a film’s reviews. Most film critics are closet whores just waiting for the chance to sell themselves.

Imagine movie stars and executives yanking lines from a Robert Frost poem to suit their needs. If poems were the foundation movies, they’d gladly do it. Writing isn’t an art in Hollywood, it’s a commodity – as easily disposable and changeable as a dirty t-shirt. The total lack of respect for the writer is why so many films in Hollywood suck.

District 9

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:32:18 -0600

Sci-fi fans are some of the most beaten down in the world of cinema, second only to horror nerds in terms of being repeatedly disappointed by the projects that are green lit and eventually make it to the screen. The idea of intelligent science-fiction – you know, the kind that actually has snappy dialogue and a plot to go along with hissing alien faces and flying laser bolts – seems to have died out in the 1990’s and been replaced by special effects highlight reels that leave audiences feeling empty inside by the time the credits role.

I honestly thought “District 9” would be different. After having seen the short film it was based on, I felt that maybe they would be able to capture that same pithy, anti-Apartheid sentiment and somehow stretch it out across a full-length feature. I should have known that the chances of that actually happening were about as slim as the chances that Paris Hilton could pass an STD test without having to cast some kind of magic skank healing spell.

All the pieces are there – aliens who click and clock like Eddie Murphy mocking African tribes in the 80’s, institutionalized racism in the form of vaguely Germanic corporate bureaucrats, and a black goo that mysteriously renders your best masturbatory arm a confused tangle of slimy tendrils. Throw in some about-to-take-place ethnic cleansing and we would appear to have a winner – at least from a social commentary perspective.

It’s at this point that I can almost picture the meeting that went on between the creative principles in the film. Sitting around one of those big tables, shooting the shit and hammering out those vital plot points over a huge bowl of blow:

“Say,” says one of the honchos. “These aliens – they’ve probably got some pretty kick-ass guns, right?”

“Right,” says one of the script minions.

“Well how about a scene where they, you know, test them out. On dead pigs and stuff. And each other.”

“Errrr – ok,” says the script minion, nervously glancing around the room and wondering where this is going.

“And then how about tacking a half hour of pure mech-suit carnage onto the end of the film where we shoot as many bullets, lightning bolts and rockets as possible. Oh, and a three-way firefight between skinheads, a Nigerian gang and an unstoppable robot.”

Because that’s EXACTLY what sci-fi fans want to see. 100 metric tons of blood, hot lead and explosives smeared onto the tail end of a movie like some kind of big, ultra-violent middle finger to anyone in the audience possessing more than half a brain. Sorry, “District 9” didn’t come here to think, it came here to fuck – and it’s going to leave a great big stain on YOUR side of the bed when it’s done.

In many ways, “District 9” represents precisely what is wrong with all the torture-porn and pointless SFX garbage that gets shoveled at horror and sci-fi fans these days. Back in the day, directors knew how to ride the knife edge between tension, believability and action. Now, all they do spray as much blood as they can across the silver screen before signing their names across the bottom like some kind of obscene, stylistic finger-painting.

Why bother making alien characters compelling if you are just going to eviscerate them for everyone’s pleasure in the second hour? Why bother parking a giant alien ship in the sky if all it’s going to do is rust for 20 years and then act as deus ex machina in the final ten minutes? The real question, finally becomes why would you waste your time and money on drivel like “District 9” when you could just make Devil’s Tower out of a plate of mashed potatoes and derive the same level of artistic enjoyment?

What’s that? It’s Peter Jackson on Line 3 – he wants to option your leftovers - and then blow them up. Awesome.

No Longer a Christian Nation

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:36:52 -0600

What would Jesus Do on healthcare reform? Apparently, he’d scream all sorts of slanderous insults at the top of his lungs, call our President a Nazi, and tell the uninsured to go die in the streets like the money-grubbing suckholes that they are.

Keep in mind that the vocal opposition to healthcare reform is the Christian Right. It’s time to stop pretending that America has any form of Christianity that actually resembles real Christianity. Christianity used to be about helping thy neighbor, but now it’s just some bastardization of religion whose main tenets are: “Fuck the government. Fuck the poor. Let’s make sure I keep what’s mine.”

You can be sure that whenever a complex issue comes up, a huge portion of the American people will run in circles screaming at the top of their lungs in fear because they’re simply too stupid to understand anything and too willfully ignorant to educate themselves when information is so readily available. The right-wing and the Christian right have concocted an anti-healthcare reform platform that’s so filled with lies that it’s hard to know how to combat it. Surely, if they wanted to start a “World is Flat” campaign, they could certainly convince their constituents that the “World is Round” folks have just been shoving some giant government conspiracy down their throat for the last however many years.

These morons have been referring to healthcare reform as some kind of Nazi propaganda while being completely incapable of connecting the two (because there is no connection). These same morons have been willfully utilizing completely debunked criticisms as well: government takeover (debunked), illegal immigrant insurance (debunked), death panels (debunked) – the list goes on and on. And this is all in an effort to make sure the uninsured – the poor – stay uninsured. The irony is that the uninsured end up going to emergency rooms and driving up the cost of healthcare, costs that are put on the American taxpayer anyway.

A further irony is that the parents of all these idiots are likely on Medicaid or Medicare, a government run healthcare system that works quite well. Another irony is that old people are largely against healthcare reform, citing the “government-run” thing as their main criticism, despite the fact that the government runs their healthcare. I say that if you’re old and have the gall to oppose healthcare reform, we pull your Medicaid or Medicare and let you fucking die as soon as possible. And if you’re one of these Christian right-wing idiots and your parents are taking from the government, we let them die too.

After all, this is the mantra of our Christian nation: fuck the government, fuck the poor, give me what’s mine. Man, that Jesus must have been a hell of a guy.

Funny People

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:43:22 -0600

When you name your movie “Funny People,” you better fucking back it up. I mean, you wouldn’t name a movie “Badass Express” and then cast Kevin Kline and Bill Hader as grizzled law enforcement veterans, would you? As far as I can tell, director Judd Apatow was using the word “funny” in an ironic sense, like “wouldn’t it be funny if a comedian was dying?” Well, after having sat through almost two hours of his dead-end ruminations on this tedious theme, I can only reply by asking “wouldn’t it be funny if Apatow’s next film was a pornographic snuff film starring himself and Seth Rogen?”

Because let’s be honest here: Rogen is not a funny man. Sure he’s overweight in that non-threatening, elementary school janitor kind of way, and he talks like the friendly guy behind the counter at the local McDonalds. However, these qualities don’t make you a star, and the only reason I can conceive of for Apatow’s insistence on casting him in the majority of his films is that a secret love has blossomed between the two Hollywood hotshots. It is often said that serial killers murder their victims so that no one else can ever possess them, and from the amount of time Apatow spends directing his lens onto Rogen’s chunky face I feel it is inevitable that one day, the public will be treated to grainy, night-vision footage of their awkward physical intimacy followed by two gunshots and then silence.

But back to the movie. Rogen is far from the only actor horrendously miscast in “Funny People.” You can’t manufacture the frenetic energy and audience connection that stand-up comedians have with their audience, and supporters Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman simply can’t cut it, no matter how many times Apatow waves his magic wand over them or sprinkles their bare asses with fairy dust. Adam Sandler puts in a credible performance as the dying comedian in question, largely because he isn’t allowed to yell at pregnant women or punch Bob Barker’s corpse, but even his effort is wasted thanks to a script that meanders throughout its final third.

Mel Brooks once said, “Tragedy is when I fall down an open manhole and die. Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole and die.” Apatow apparently misunderstood and thought that as long as SOMEONE was dying, we could both laugh AND cry. He was wrong. The film is utterly ruined by Apatow’s indulgence in maudlin sentimentality. In a tedious attempt to give Sandler’s suddenly not-dying character depth, his mission goes from “trying not to die right now” to “trying not to die alone, eventually”. As he attempts to reconnect with a lover from his past, the audience becomes trapped in a seemingly endless weekend stay at the-one-that-got-away’s house. We are bombarded by images of marital bliss, then marital discord, then a bizarre boxing match on the front lawn that couldn’t possibly feel more contrived if it had instead taken place in space with the entire cast replaced by Klingons.

“Funny People” is the kind of film that Woody Allen would have made if, instead of New York, he had been born in an suburban neighborhood outside of Ohio. Even with a gamut of comedian cameos, including a bizarre turn by rapper Eminem as himself cursing at Ray Romano in a chintzy dinner lounge, the movie falls flat on it’s face and begins to implode after the first hour or so. My advice to you is take the ten dollars you were going to spend on this flick, exchange it at the bank for a roll of pennies, and then slowly eat them one by one until you either pass out or gain some kind of super power.

(500) Days of Summer

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:19:53 -0600

You would think that there are only so many movies that can be made where boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl stomps his heart with her Birkenstocks and then instantly gets married to someone else but no, Hollywood has an endless barrel of scripts that follow exactly that formula. The proof is “(500) Days of Summer,” the latest semi-romantic stomach-churner to be unleashed upon battle-hardened audiences.

From the opening shot, it looks like maybe there is hope for this quaint portrayal of love gone foul. After all, we are treated with a narrative that moves forward and backward in time, a favored tactic amongst first time directors whose previous experience consists mainly of music videos. But after a few more minutes it becomes clear that the only thing this movie shares with “Memento” is that same feeling of wanting to pull out my own entrails and fashion a crude noose. Only this time, it’s not because the film’s story is so crushingly dark – rather, it’s simply because I know I will probably lose fewer brain cells through auto-erotic asphyxiation than if I remained conscious for the duration of “(500) Days of Summer.”

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a straight-laced boy falls for a quirky girl but get this: she doesn’t believe in love. Instead of running for the hills like any sane man would, he instead subjects both his soul and his penis to a series of never-ending tortures at the hands of his callous objet d’amour.

Let’s face it – it’s the dude who played the kid in the show about those aliens (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) – so he probably didn’t read the script before signing across the dotted line and thanking his lucky stars that anyone actually remembers he is still alive. His love interest, portrayed by Zooey Deschanel is attractive in the way that spitting cobras are hypnotic, all big eyes and hair until they launch corrosive, acidic venom into your eyes and eat your heart for breakfast.

By the end of the movie, I was left wondering if there were any actors remaining in Hollywood who hadn’t played these exact same two roles at some point in their careers. Where would they dig up the next two losers to fail at romance in 35 mm? Would Vin Diesel fall hard for Whoopi Goldberg? Would Jessica Simpson coldly shut down that guy from the “time to make the donuts” commercials?

No matter which scenario I imagined, it made me shudder to my very core. Do yourself a favor and preserve at least a few illusions about how happy your life could eventually turn out to be. Avoid this film and instead stay at home with your collection of tiny dolls made out of your ex-girlfriend’s locks of hair.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:37:49 -0600

One would think that a movie whose principle cast members are made of metal and steel would be able to steer well away from racist themes and stereotypes. After all, aren’t we all one robot nation, under Prime? Unfortunately, Michael Bay has once again found a way to beat the odds and as a result what should have been a harmless summer film based on a children’s toy is in fact a never-ending, two and a half hour bout with bigotry.

"Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen" never misses a chance to make the audience feel uncomfortable about race relations. At times it feels almost as though George Lucas must have been a consultant on this film, thanks largely to the inclusion of twin robot versions of the lamentable Jar-Jar Binks. Remember how cool Jar-Jar was, and how the only thing cooler than Jar-Jar would have been two Jar-Jars? Well, Bay got that message loud and clear.

This time, not only do they swap their faux-Rasta vernacular for dialogue stolen straight out of a fourth-grade Philly education, but one of the robots even sports a GOLD TOOTH. That’s right – Transformers have TEETH, and anthropomorphized black transformers have GOLD TEETH to go with their FIREBIRD WINE and IMMACULATE WHITE PUMA SNEAKERS. This matches up well with the sensitive scene involving the only other black character in the film, a butcher who is saving up to replace his hilariously buck-toothed grille. Not quite as funny as the Binks-Bots, but then again, not everything that drops out of Bay’s ass can be made of solid gold.

Moving beyond the painful undertones of the film, it quickly becomes clear about 30 minutes in that most of the script was somehow destroyed during a terrible bender and rather than take the time to write a new one, it was decided to stage an interminable battle in the desert. Hopelessly outclassed humans take on wave after wave of nameless Deceptacons while Optimus Prime’s body lies in state in the background like some kind of metal-plated Lenin. The action is so confusing, and the robots all look so similar, that it is difficult to even care about how our heroes are doing as they run from one sand dune to another, cowering in fear.

We all know the dangers of making a videogame out of a movie – well, in this case, they made the videogame first, “Anonymous Transformer Battle Royale,” which sounds really cool until you realize it’s stuck in demo mode and you don’t get to actually interact with anything on the screen. I am sure all across America there are confused senior citizens still sitting in theaters, waiting for the actual movie to start.

The first Transformers film was flawed but watchable. This excretion, however, is pure tedium wrapped in a dazzling array of explosions and minstrel show dialogue. I kept waiting for a gigantic robotic representation of Michael Bay’s penis to jet across the screen, similar to the sneaker thrown by the frustrated “Return of the Jedi” modeler, but alas, I had to settle for Megan Fox’s ass, which if you think about it is growing more and more powerful by the day. I wouldn’t be surprised if “Transformer’s 3” was set entirely on both of her sublime cheeks, starring micro-Transformers who could babble on and on in their inane language for hours while the men in the audience remained completely silent and enraptured. It’s the closest thing I can imagine to a religious experience in cinema.

The Soloist

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:15:06 -0600

Some actors seem to get hooked on playing variations of the same role over and over. I’m not referring to those who essentially portray different variations on their own personalities in each movie – i.e. the tired shtick of Robin Williams and to a lesser extent Jim Carrey – but the ones who always end up taking the same type of role, like Harrison Ford’s spate of ruffians with a heart of gold or Sandra Bullock’s prim and proper fish out of water.

Jamie Foxx seems to be headed down a similar path, only his particular thing has become stepping into the shoes of characters with physical and mental handicaps. Having achieved acclaim with his portrayal of the blind Ray Charles in the biopic "Ray", he once again went back to the musical well with "The Soloist", only this time he switched things up and swapped his shades for a set of CRAZY PILLS. That’s right, Foxx the comedian decided to stretch his acting chops in the direction of mental illness.

This is pretty much a fatal mistake for any actor. To begin with, no on really knows what goes on in a schizophrenic’s mind, and Foxx’s lengthy experience with hookers and blow hasn’t given him any significant insight into this particular question either. Director Joe Wright makes up for this by occasionally treating the audience to 5 minute stretches of kaleidoscopic imagery and by asking Foxx to continually babble in an incoherent fashion. This is further reinforced by other characters in the film speaking over each other while the noise of the city surges in the background DO YOU FUCKING GET IT? L.A. IS A SCHIZOPHRENIC CITY!

One would think that if anyone would know what it is like to life in a chaotic world of confusing imagery and squabbling internal voices it would be Foxx’s co-lead, Robert Downey, Jr. His experiences with addiction and rehab are well documented, and honestly, would anyone have cared if the film played fast and loose with the truth and cast a white dude to play a black dude who then gets cast to play a white dude who’s now a black dude? It worked for Downey, Jr. in “Tropic Thunder”, and I think it would have been pure gold here.

Fans of some of the more amusing aspects of the mentally handicapped will be disappointed with the soloist – no one masturbates during an awkward family dinner, no one ruins Christmas by bleeding all over the tree, and no one wakes up covered in chocolate and thumb tacks. There is the requisite violent confrontation between protagonists, which of course leads to the heavy handed "I can’t fix the world" moment that every non-crazy person has in a film about crazy people, but that’s about it.

If you’ve seen "Rain Man", then you’ve already seen "The Soloist", except instead of Vegas and card-counting, it turns out that the main character is sort of good at playing the cello. Yes, the movie is as underwhelming as that description sounds. No, it won’t stop your girlfriend from taking you to see this.

Up

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:59:26 -0600

The premise of “Up” is simple. First you take a crotchety old man who hates the entire world and lives alone in a house that's about ready to fall down. Next you introduce an eight year old kid with about as much common sense as a gerbil walking into a gay bar. Somehow these types of films always manage to find some outrageous reason to put the mismatched pair together whether they like it or not. This gross mismatching reminds one of Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison in “The Odd Couple”, or Paris Hilton with any actor other than a porn star.

Ed Asner, who played a grumpy boss on both the Mary Tyler Moore and Lou Grant TV shows, has now added "old" to his repertoire to play protagonist Carl Fredricksen. Ed Asner is no ordinary crank. He is the virtuoso of vituperation and the Pavarotti of peeve. He doesn't deliver his lines, he growls them like a wood chipper on slow speed. The only other actor of note was Christopher Plummer who plays the malevolent soulless obsessive force of evil, much like he did in The Sound of Music.

There’s no use naming any of the other actors, seeing as how that damned 8-year-old could never shut his mouth long enough for anyone else to have gotten a word in edgewise. If they gave out merit badges for chatter, this twerp would have made Eagle Scout before lunch. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

The 8-year-old “Wilderness Explorer” Russell shows up on Carl’s doorstep one day in an attempt to secure his one remaining merit badge for “helping old people.” He shows Carl the empty spot on his sash where the merit badge will go: Right there between the Homo Discrimination Badge and the Pushing an Atheist Down a Staircase Badge. Much to Carl’s annoyance, and damn near everyone else’s in the theater, Russell accidentally ends up stowing away on Carl’s airborne house the morning Carl escapes.

I had no trouble suspending disbelief to where I could accept Carl's house, transported aloft by a bunch of party balloons, ending up in the precise spot on the globe thousands of miles away and exactly where Carl wanted to go. However, I could not accept that he could afford that house in the first place with his job selling balloons at the zoo, and could afford to retire from that job as well. That’s stretching it too far for even a Disney cartoon. Flying elephants are one thing, but let’s not be ridiculous.

In another return to Disney tradition, the film features talking dogs thanks to the magic of high-tech dog collars. Since they are dogs, they don't really have anything to say. Of course the dog lovers in the audience won't care about that. They will think it so lovable to hear Fido say anything at all. One may expect bon mots such as: "Throw me the ball", "Yes I would like more bacon", or the ever popular "I would like to smell your crotch now.” The pathetic thing is that these stupid dogs end up having the best lines in the entire film.

This movie is so retarded that ironically, the only person who would truly appreciate "Up" is a kid with Down Syndrome.

The Hangover

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:03:49 -0600

Visible penises. If I could boil down the greatest emerging comedy trend of the last year-and-a-half, it wouldn’t be Judd Apatow, it wouldn’t be Andy Samberg jizzing in his own pants, it would be visible penises. Apatow of course has had a hand – or whatever –in helping make this new comedic frontier a reality, but he’s also had a lot of help from a lot of exhibitionist actors.

It used to be that Harvey Keitel had the only visible penis in Hollywood. Oh, to go back to the days of yore when watching “The Bad Lieutenant” or maybe even “The Piano” meant the chance to catch a fleeting glimpse of Keitel’s fleshy monster. Then Kevin Bacon got in on the act too, not just in “Wild Things” but also “Hollow Man” where he essentially spent the entire film naked. And of course, who could ever forget Marky Mark’s prosthetic appendage at the end of “Boogie Nights” as he informed us all that “I’m a star, I’m a star, I’m a star.”

Now, as each of the actors mentioned above rocked out with their cocks out in a serious dramatic role, their frontal presentation is largely forgiven. After all, there are plenty of emotional messages that just can’t conveyed without a peek at someone’s foreskin and sac. However, modern comedies really have no message other than laughter that they need to transmit to the audience, which raises interesting questions about the resurgence in the full Monty for young comedians. Sometimes the nudity is incidental, a mere flash as a character leaps off of the john in total surprise, but other times, such as a protracted scene in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” where the protagonist has a lengthy heart to heart with his girlfriend while completely naked, the male member is played for stoic laughs, a jibe at the indignity of having to cope while your Johnson is exposed.

The reason I bring this up is because “The Hangover” is essentially an epic extension of the comedic penis’ penetration into the mainstream. Forget the drunken shenanigans, forget the tiger in the hotel bathroom, forget Mike Tyson’s awkward cameo – this movie is really about 1 thing: visible cock. Whether it’s Zach Galifianikis wandering around with no pants the morning after a decadent party, Ken Jeong leaping out of a car trunk completely naked to smother someone’s face with his junk and then brandish his wiener like a lethal weapon or Galifianikis receiving a graphic blowjob in an elevator during the film’s credits (WAS THAT A SPOILER?), cock has its winky fingerprints all over this movie.

If you don’t get enough man member in your life, whether it’s because of a farming accident when you were a little boy or a fear of men’s locker rooms that developed sometime during high school, then you are going to love “The Hangover.” If you aren’t sure just how much penis you can stomach (hawr hawr) while on a date with that girl you met online, then maybe you should skip this flick. Unless you met her on Adult Friend Finder. Or if she’s older than half your age, plus 7. I forget how that works.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Sat, 30 May 2009 12:03:04 -0600

After a promising start in independent flicks, Matthew McConaughey quickly realized that the quickest way to cut to the head of the line leading to the Hollywood ATM was to squander his career on a series of roles that essentially involved him making bedroom eyes at the film’s leading lady and then taking off his shirt, over and over again.

In a sense, he is a genius. This simple sequence of events is all it takes to slide millions of 10 dollar bills out of the pocketbooks of his devoted female audience on a regular basis. McConaughey’s slick talking, easygoing demeanor has a similar vibe to that creepy uncle in your family that no one likes to talk about but who gets invited to all the holiday gatherings, except instead of sliding a single finger further and further up your shorts Matthew’s actually got his hand in your wallet.

Unsurprisingly, “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” doesn’t deviate from the standard McConaughey playbook. A tepid re-telling of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” instead of ill-gained riches the lead character finds himself knee deep in fast and easy pussy, a situation meant to help endear him to the reluctant boyfriends dragged along to this chick flick but which unfortunately only makes every man in the audience feel completely inadequate no matter how many MILFs they might have under their belt. In a surprisingly original turn for a major motion picture, it turns out that McConaughey actually still pines for the one that got away, played by a horse-faced Jennifer Garner who still inexplicably qualifies as a sex symbol despite having recently popped out 2 of Ben Affleck’s nasty, nasty spawn.

Set at his brother’s wedding and featuring Michael Douglas as the ghost of STD’s past, the film runs through the predictable “jackass success junkie ruins everyone’s good time” plot points and manages to disengage a viewer’s interest for almost the entire 100 minutes. A series of flashbacks allowed us to witness McConaughey’s chesty magnificence in a number of period disguises and costumes, most notably his late-90’s Fabio-esque hair explosion.

Sadly, during all of this, there are no tits to be found onscreen. This was particularly disappointing as one of the co-stars of the movie, Lacey Chabert, is right about now entering the downswing of whatever lingering fame her jailbait status on “Party Of Five” might have afforded her, which means that she is ripe for a career-affirming display of gratuitous nudity. Alas, we will have to wait for whatever drunken mogul mistakenly casts her in his next gritty film about the perils of marrying into a really rich family.

I can’t recommend that you go see “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” in the same way that I can’t recommend getting a vasectomy. Sure, initially both seem like a good idea, but in the end one leaves you swollen and sore and full of regret and the other involves waking up in surgical recovery room. I’ll let you figure out which one is which.

Star Trek

Fri, 08 May 2009 23:07:01 -0600

Sometimes it’s not the best idea to reboot a movie franchise. Witness the abomination that was the fourth Indiana Jones flick, where they tried to introduce an irritating and ultimately uncharismatic son into the mix with the hope that he could carry Indy’s mantle into the future. Most of the time when you run modern mega-doses of energy through the rotting corpse of ancient movie characters and storylines, you end up with a Frankenstein-style mess of unpredictable proportions.

Star Trek is no exception. By now, most of the first generation of Trekkies are firmly ensconced in either nursing homes or cubicle-based jobs where their threat to humanity has largely been contained. William Shatner is quietly sipping pina coladas next to his pool while penning insightful lyrics to his next album, while Leonard Nimoy is off directing bizarre off-Broadway plays with an all-nude cast. However, somehow the powers that be decided that 30 years of the original franchise had not squeezed enough dollars out of Gene Roddenberry’s corpse, and ignoring the charring wreckage of Voyage and Deep Space Nine they elected to re-make classic Trek with an all new, under-25 cast.

Well, how could things possibly go wrong? Especially when the movie is set in an alternate timeline where director J.J. Abrams can pretty much do whatever the fuck he wants? Let’s start with the ship. Whereas the original Enterprise was a graceful piece of work, the new version has been butched up to the point where it pretty much looks like it spent a month at Orange Country Choppers. I almost expected Xzibit to step onscreen and say ‘yo dawg, we heard you liked Star Trek, so we put some Vulcans in your dilithium so you could warp 10 while you warp 10’. The only thing missing were giant chrome spinners and a ‘We Miss Eazy’ sticker on the shuttle bay doors.

Another highlight is the fact that once again, the villain is an evil Romulan warlord with a ridiculously huge ship. This time, they creatively named him ‘Nero’. Wasn’t that the plot of the last Next Generation movie? Or maybe the one before that? Anyways, I guess they couldn’t figure out how to get the Borg involved in this flick so they resulted to the Star Trek Plan B evil mastermind.

Not that it matters – the teenage crew of this pimped out ship barely look like they could handle putting it in park, let alone taking it into battle. I would not have been surprised if half the dialogue in this movie had to be re-recorded when the cast’s voices changed due to suddenly having their balls drop. I guess the Star Trek movie strategy has shifted from shooting flicks using the oldest actors available to using the youngest actors available. Look for the inevitable sequel to feature the Enterprise crewed entirely by fetuses.

If you loved the original Trek, don’t go see this movie. Instead, return home to your Spock shrine – which is most likely located right behind your Data shrine – and light a single candle in memory of the death of creativity and original thought.

The Uninvited

Fri, 01 May 2009 10:09:32 -0600

When Anna (Emily Browning) gets released from a mental institution, she figures she’s able to cope with the tragic death of her mother. You see, her mother died when Anna’s giant boathouse (or carriage house or guest house or whatever the hell it is) inexplicably blew up with her mother in it. Unfortunately, Anna doesn’t really understand the true nature of her problem. It’s not that her mother is dead. It’s that she had a giant boathouse in which her mother could get blown up.

Anna and her sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel) and their father, Steven (David Strathairn) live in some oasis next to a lake where there’s a main estate and then some giant extra house next to the lake, which is where Anna’s mother explodes, which is why I ask my tree falls in the forest question: “If you don’t have a boat house in the middle of nowhere and it explodes, does anybody hear it?” Basically, if you don’t have the social conceit to build the fucking boathouse in the first place, then you shift the chances that your invalid mother will explode in it to very near zero.

You’re probably wondering what precisely the “uninvited” is. Originally, I thought it was food. You see, the first time we see Anna and Alex lounging about their dock in their bathing suits, you think you’re watching some kind of emaciated zombie flick where the undead Alex tears an arm off her unsuspecting sister and proceeds to golf club some stuffed animal into the water except that her sister’s arm snaps in half from the torque of the swing because the fucking thing has the circumference of a piece of fucking twine.

Seriously, where do they get these girls? If they tried to fly to Ethiopia they wouldn’t be allowed in due to malnourishment. Normally, in a film like this one where titillating the audience is of primary concern and nubile teenage girls are walking about nearly naked either in swim clothes or nighties, their nipples are usually poking through their tops at every given opportunity. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen in this film because, I assume, Anna and Alex’s nipples are inverted because their bodies ARE FEEDING ON THEMSELVES.

Stylistically, “The Uninvited” has all the originality of a Catholic wedding. Seriously, one now goes back in the history of the PG-13 horror genre and wonders how the hell directors got along before the Japanese came by and introduced the idea of things moving inside garbage bags and pale little fucked up children haunting our dreams by staring at us funny and moving like some video game character whose console has a motherboard with a short circuit. Oh dear, whatever did we do prior to the body in a garbage bag scenario? Answer: R-ratings assholes.

And oh how I’m tiring of the movie that tells its story from the point-of-view of a character whose mental stability is questionable because inevitably the world as they see it isn’t really the world as it is. Such storytelling indulgences basically allow the director to do whatever the hell they want. In “The Uninvited”, Anna thinks that dad’s new squeeze, Rachael (Elizabeth Banks), is out to get them. How could Elizabeth Banks be out to get anyone? Nice casting. Banks looks as likely to put a gun in her own mouth before she’d step on an ant.

As if all this pretension wasn’t enough, when the credits rolled I got an eyeful of the directing credit, which read: The Brothers Guard. Who? Seriously? You direct some hack piece of PG-13 horror trash and suddenly you’re calling your directing duo “The Brothers Guard”. I get it. You’re two brothers with the last name Guard AND YOU’RE FUCKING COOL! Sure, the Wachowski brothers got away with this shit for a little while until they did the third “Matrix” movie and then everybody started laughing in their faces. A movie credit should read like a dinner reservation. Try telling the maitre d that you’re the “Brothers Guard” and after he’s pocketed your five-dollar bill and kicked you in the stones and left you writhing in the middle of the restaurant floor perhaps you’ll reconsider rejoining the human race with a regular name.

So, in a nutshell: “The Uninvited” – pretentious shit.

Wolverine

Fri, 01 May 2009 09:26:26 -0600

Remember in high school when there was always that one kid at the back of the classroom who hit puberty just a little bit sooner than everyone else and consequently had almost a full beard going by graduation, along with serious grooming issues? The one who was always just a bit too rugged for the ladies, and who drove a beat up pickup truck to all of the school dances and just sat there, sullen and alone in the parking lot watching the couples slink in and out of the gym to give each other handjobs in the bushes? Well, add in a skeleton made of indestructible metal and the lack of a father figure in early childhood and you’ve pretty much got Wolverine.

Don’t get me wrong – Wolverine is a cool character. At least, he showed some potential in the previous three X-Men movies. The thing is, while the idea of devoting an entire film to this mysterious figure’s back story was hailed by fans when it was initially announced, what ended up being delivered was a mismanaged clusterfuck of intersecting 2-minute character cameos and a script so thin I swear I could see the hollow face of Stan Lee staring at me from behind the screen.

Is it possible that a character’s supposed biopic can leave us knowing even less about what makes him tick than when we first stepped into the theatre? Thanks to the stinker that is Wolverine, we can now answer that question with a resounding ‘yes’. Sure, we get a few perfunctory explanations where we learn that Wolverine is consistently tricked and manipulated by a shadowy government organization for a large part of his life, but these are mainly present in the story to set up scenes where Hugh Jackman runs screaming down a hallway or alley with his claws extended, usually towards Liev Schrieber’s character, usually with sparks flying. In fact, there are segments of the film that consist entirely of the aforementioned scenes combined with shots of Jackman striding purposefully away from a huge explosion. It was kind of like watching ‘The Running Man’ combined with ‘The Fugitive’ combined with ‘The Power Rangers’. During these sequences I often cut to the scene in my mind of my own funeral, as I watched the gravediggers blissfully shovel 6 feet of dirt between my eyes and the movie screen.

The worst part of the film, however, were the other characters. Once again, Marvel decided to cram in as many fresh faces as they could, give them a perfunctory back story and then see which ones would make the best spin-off candidates. Because that is all the X-Men franchise is, really – a sequel machine. We’ve got the token Asian mutant who is good with guns and of course dies first, and then we’ve got the token African-American mutant who is given a full leather cowboy suit to disempower him and make him LOOK AS RIDICULOUS AS POSSIBLE before he too is killed. Oh, and don’t forget each of the female mutant characters who exist solely as objects in distress requiring rescue at every possible opportunity. For fuck’s sake, at one point a mutant of the fairer sex is GIVEN DIRECTIONS BY A BLIND MAN because of course her uterus can’t be trusted to make a simple decision to either turn left or right during their escape. If that doesn’t sum up Marvel’s attitude towards a woman’s place in the world, then I don’t know what does.

Wolverine could have been good – it could have been great. It could have actually focused the camera lens on the character in question for more than 10 seconds before requiring him to leap through the air onto a helicopter, clash with yet another disposable villain, or confront the main bad guy in the film – something he did at least 10 times. There’s no climax to Wolverine because there’s no tension – he can’t die, and everyone knows this is the prequel. This leaves us all marking time in our seats until the lights go up and like dutiful little nerds and geeks we go home to our empty basements and sit and stare at our X-Men figurines and figure out which ones would best block our primary airways. By the way, the choice is obviously Professor Xavier.

I Love You, Man

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:39:13 -0600

One day in the not too decent past, an executive at DreamWorks SKG said to another executive, ‘hey – wouldn’t it be awesome if we made a movie about a guy without any man friends – but then he gets married and he needs to find a best man, so he has to go on all these man-dates? You know, we’ll throw in some touchy-feely stuff about men getting in touch with their emotions, some relationship discord, oh and a guy with no apparent means of support who turns out the be the answer to his prayers!’

If at that moment, the second executive had shot the first executive in the face and then dissolved his body in a tub full of lye, the world would be a better place. Unfortunately he didn’t – or if he did, it wasn’t in time to stop I Love You, Man from being filmed and released – and ultimately, that’s all that matters.

I don’t understand Hollywood’s obsession with loneliness. It seems like every season we get at least 5 different flicks zeroing in on just how awful it is to not have a best friend of 20 years / wife / girlfriend / boyfriend / sympathetic German shepherd / father figure / etc. Usually, these movies are designed to prey on that biologically imprinted fear that women have of instantly turning into spinsters when the clock strikes midnight on their 30th birthday. However, apparently having mined that vein of comedic ore for all it is worth, the studios have turned their attentions to the male of the species.

The trouble is, the emotional range of men on film in a comedy is about as extensive as my collection of DVD’s that don’t contain girls going wild – that is to say, almost non-existent. Paul Rudd’s character, who fits the scenario pitched by the studio exec in the opening paragraph, never really convinces us that he actually cares about only being friends with women. If the protagonist doesn’t actually buy into the premise of the film, then how the hell is the audience supposed to come along for the ride?

In fact, Rudd manages to remain almost completely anonymous throughout the entire picture, with aspects of his personality only emerging as a particular scene calls for them. Sure, they load him with cutsie insecurities and the inability to communicate in a macho fashion, but by the end of the movie it’s easy to see why men avoid him like he’s Richard Simmons at a pool party.

Just like John C. Reilly, if Rudd isn’t paired with a strong male lead – ok, if Will Ferrell isn’t in the movie – he sucks. Don’t be fooled into thinking that Jason Segel is that guy, because he isn’t, and Andy Samberg is only in the movie long enough to collect his paycheck and shame the director for giving him any funny lines. It boils down to this. You can give me as much projectile vomit and funny billboards as you want, but you can’t make me emotionally connect with Rudd, the human dial tone, and you can’t make me love this shitty movie.

Handicapping American Idol

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:54:19 -0600

So what, I watch American Idol. I got addicted, so I thought I'd use it to my advantage.

This season has been interesting. I watch mainly to see Simon tear contestants their new assholes. It's actually kind of shocking to hear him be right so often. It's rare he says something that isn't spot on. Paula appears to be on new medication and has appeared as coherent as she is capable. Kara is a nice addition and her explanation of "artistry" has helped contestants understand what it is that separates say, a David Cook from a David Archuleta. And Randy, could you use the word "dude" more often?

If there's any justice, Lil will go home tonight, but I suspect Anoop will go.

So here's what I think:

Name: Anoop Desai
Odds of Winning: None

Although Anoop has proved he can sing, he's far too goofy and nerdy to ever win this thing and he's come further than anyone ever expected. Frankly, the only reason he's come this far is because nobody believes that somebody who looks like a Ph.D. Physics student ought to be able to sing at all.

Name: Lil Rounds
Odds of Winning: 100-1

Unless something drastic happens, Lil has no chance either. Is it just me, but is Lil singing in a competition that's inside her head? How can she continut, week after week, to do her lounge singer impression while other contestants are taking risks? That's precisely Lil's problem - she won't take a risk. Sure she can sing, but she's boring as shit.

Name: Matt Giraud
Odds of Winning: 50-1

Matt also has to do something drastic because he keeps pulling this wishy-washy crap trying to decide what kind of singer he wants to be and one week he seems like he's got it and the next week he's some kind of idiot singing a song he has no business singing. It's not that I don't like Matt, but I get pretty irritated when people are consistently stupid and Matt has been consistently stupid.

Name: Allison Iraheta
Odds of Winning: 20-1

Has she done any Heart yet? Why not? The thing that's going to get Allison is that she's so ridiculously talented and together for a 16-year-old that it's going to piss everyone off to the point that they'll start believing that she's like one of those Little League Cuban pitchers and she's really a dolled up 35-year-old professional who's reinvented herself.

Name: Kris Allen
Odds of Winning: 10-1

Kris has the same problem that Matt has except that Kris is enough better looking than Matt that Matt will get voted off first regardless of what they sing. Anyway, Kris has these moments, artistically, where he rivals Adam, but then he seems to forget what competition he's in and sings something assinine like "All She Wants to Do is Dance". I'm just betting he does at least one assinine thing here in the last few weeks to get himself kicked off, though clearly if he can keep singing songs and putting a Kris twist on them, he could surprise.

Name: Adam Lambert
Odds of Winning: 3-1

Adam is the best singer and the best performer and he's pretty much the only reason I watch the show. Basically, I watch every week to see what Adam is going to do with whatever song he's picked. In addition to having a ridiculous voice, Adam seems smarter than everyone else. I think he's decided to use the show as his own personal album audition and whether he wins or not is irrelevant. Unfortunately, I think Adam's gayness and his cross-dressing past will turn off America much like Rudy Giuliani and they'll pick Gokey over him.

Name: Danny Gokey
Odds of Winning: 2-1

Danny is likable and smart and he can sing and his wife died, so he's got pretty much everything going for him in terms of the voters. Do I think he should win? Of course not. If you took Danny's voice and stuck it in Matt's body, he'd have no chance. However, Danny basically embodies the idea of "American Idol", so if he can just stay the course and not let Adam blow him away, he'll get the votes.

Knowing

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:20:22 -0600

Major Spoilers

Knowing is the latest "sci-fi" film to hit the cinemas, and then repeatedly hit audience members in the crotch to the point that genital mutilation will seem like a day at the park. After the shenanigans director Alex Proyas pulled with I Robot, I truly hoped that he had had his fill of artistic shame. Clearly not. In fact with Knowing, it seems that the man is something of a masochist and out to prove, yet again, that all a movie needs is a famous face, an old theme and a fresh coat of paint. To hell with the incomprehensible plot, to hell with the suspense – we have Nicholas Cage.

Knowing begins when John Koestler’s (Cage) son is given an ominous envelope that was buried 50 years ago in a time capsule. Alas, he did not get a picture of a rocket ship like the other kiddies, instead he gets a series of numbers written on both sides of a piece of paper. Now of course John finds this letter and sees patterns in the numbers, for what he lacks in hair he makes up for in brains. Suddenly the end of the world is nigh. Baton down the hatches, flee for your life - a solar flair will incinerate all things on earth.

I went in thinking Knowing was a sci-fi flick. The truth is that Knowing is a disaster movie dressed in the pretentious dialogue of a movie that thinks it's way smarter than you, interchanged with some other nonsensical sci-fi elements. On one hand we have Cage bounding about trying to save the planet, and on the other hand a host of weird semi-unrelated scenes from an alien movie.

I would have mustered up the energy to try and figure out how it all fits together, but I had already spent a lot of time chewing a large hole in my cheek. I'm sure there will be people who discuss this movie on internet forums and try to debate what the real meaning is. These people are idiots. Knowing doesn’t mean a damn thing, it doesn’t teach us anything, and there is no great underlying mystery, except perhaps that Proyas switched his medication from Zoloft to Paxil.

The storyline is so incredibly contrived that the two hemispheres of my brain felt like they were being held together by Joan Rivers. The result is that you hear the creepy suspense music but it has nothing to do with what is rolling on the screen. There is a religious undercurrent in Knowing that makes less sense than deep fried celery. First of all the ‘angels’ are clearly aliens, though they look like ghosts. Their supernatural powers constitute shining light out of their gaping mouths and whispering to children. In their true forms at the end of the movie, Proyas has a nice lethargic jaunt back to I Robot as the aliens take on almost the exact shape of his previous movie's machines.

If Knowing is really about religion then according to the storyline God is a master pioneer of interstellar space travel, he has a seriously kick ass space ship and enjoys long walks on the incinerated beaches of earth. I’m starting to suspect the scientologists had something to do with this movie. God as an alien? Being incinerated for the good of the world? Sounds like some crack-pot warning that they would give people, and then charge them $3500 for it.

If Proyas and his team have crossed into the scientology inferno then all it proves is that the damn scientologists are taking over Hollywood. We can therefore look forward to more viscous and ultimately globular items of waste being dangled ahead of us in future. And what in their alien god’s name was going on with those black pebbles? The world is in danger, black pebble on the couch. His son is hearing whispers, black pebble on his bed. The leading lady dies, black pebble in her hand. Why the hell do aliens need to leave pebbles everywhere that look like rabbit shit?

Now that I think about it some more, Knowing must be the product of Proyas’ hobnobbing with the cream of the scientology crop in Hollywood. How else could such crazy, maniacal, frenetic crap make it to production level? Now here is the highlight of the movie – everyone dies - except the two kiddies who run off to procreate together in an alien paradise. And this is supposed to be a happy ending, if the music is any clue. A rusty nail in each of my shins would give me more pleasure.

Nonetheless I was not to be driven out of the cinema by the cultish indoctrination, or the increasing distance growing between each neural lobe in my brain. Unfortunately catalepsy had set in by then and all they could find four days later was a small black pebble on my chair, which they later discovered was, indeed, rabbit shit. Which means it had more artistic merit than this movie.

Adventureland

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 07:54:18 -0600

Remember in the Nineties when it became briefly cool to make movies about slacker teens just livin’ the life, usually during summer vacation, usually drunk. These films all took place in that magical decade that historians refer to as ‘the Seventies’, a wondrous era where gas was mega-expensive, disco was birthed unto the world, and high school girls stayed the saaaaame age.

Why did so many of these wistful, semi-coming of age stories get set in one of the dullest eras in American history? The reason was simple – it just happened to be the same point in time when young 90’s directors themselves had been getting swirlies in the boy’s locker room and striking out with girls at the school dance. It was a time of tears and acne for the film nerds of yesteryear, and they decided to take it all out on us by subjecting audiences to their tepid re-imaginings of what their youth might have been like if they all hadn’t been such total losers.

Well guess what – there’s been a changing of the guard, and thanks to an infusion of fresh blood into the Hollywood system we can kiss those Seventies popcorn flicks goodbye and say hello to the new time period destined to elicit misty, watercolor memories: the Eighties. That’s right – no more Lynyrd Skynyrd and Trans Ams, because it’s time to move on to high-top sneakers and Member’s Only jackets.

This is exactly the premise of the film Adventureland. This boring retread of a million other lost summer plots deals with the local stoners, deadbeats and yes, amusement park maintenance men who live in the Pittsburgh area circa the Me Decade. It turns out that someone wants to go to college, but get this – his dad lost his job so now he can’t. Oh, and double get this – he has to work at a dead-end summer job in order to save up cash for his dreams. All that is missing is a retarded sibling or an alcoholic uncle in order to turn this plot into a candidate for Best Screenplay.

The main players in Adventureland are Kristen Stewart, who spends the entire film non-acting as the local stoner / binge-drinking fuck toy, and Jesse Eisenberg, who must have been cloned from Michael Cera’s left nut as both the physical and personality resemblances between the two are uncanny. It’s almost like they created Eisenberg in a lab to keep the stream of cash-cow awkward teen comedies coming after Cera’s body is inevitably found dead in an alley with a needle in his arm. Rounding things out is Ryan Reynolds, who has entered the Matthew Lillard stage of his career where he creepily plays ‘young’ characters interacting with ‘jailbait’ characters. And by ‘interacting’ I mean ‘penetrating’.

Don’t waste your time with Adventureland. If you grew up in the Eighties, then you’ve seen it all before firsthand, and honestly, who wants to revisit that shit-hole decade. If you grew up in the Nineties, let me tell you now, so there’s no mistake: the Eighties WERE NOT COOL. So please, take off your giant plastic sunglasses and rainbow leg-warmers because you look like a fucking idiot.

Possessed

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:31:05 -0600

Unsophisticated moviegoers will say things like "They don't make films like they used to. Why don't they make such great film noirs anymore?" Fortunately, some '40s film noirs are now on DVD, enabling us to see them and feel grateful that today's movies are no longer so depressing. (Though Jerry Bruckheimer productions come close.)

POSSESSED starts with a horror-movie scene: Joan Crawford wandering through the streets of Los Angeles babbling the name "David," all WITHOUT MAKEUP! (Greater love hath no actress for a role.) She ends up in the looney bin, where the doctors give her a truth serum that takes us into Flashbackland.

It all started when Crawford was a nurse on the east coast servicing rich tycoon Raymond Massey's unseen bitchy wife. David turns out to be construction engineer Van Heflin, who rejects commitment: no doubt he's too afraid of her, and who'd blame him? Heflin flies off to drill for oil in Quebec--oil in QUEBEC??--and Mrs. Massey turns up at the bottom of the bay. (Accident, suicide or murder?)

Crawford becomes governess for Massey's son, so she can stay on long enough for Massey to marry her. (Does she teach him not to use wire hangers?) After that the movie conveniently forgets the kid, like those movies where the dog gets forgotten. But there's also an angst-ridden bobby soxer stepdaughter who meets Heflin when he returns. If you can't guess what happens next, you haven't seen MILDRED PIERCE.

In this role, La Crawford doesn't disappoint her gay fans. The scenes where she gradually goes bonkers are hilarious: her heartbeat becoming a loud thump, a piano concerto deployed with the sublety of a sledgehammer, a bedroom window artily left open in the pouring rain, her pushing the stepdaughter down the stairs but the body disappears because she was just imagining it...

(Also hilarious are the framing scenes with the psychologists. Hollywood back then loved to show shrinks giving glib, simplistic explanations for everything with words like "psychosis" and "paranoia." Other examples are SPELLBOUND and THE SNAKE PIT.)

The dialogue is to die for. Like when Massey asks "Why did you lie to me?" and Crawford replies "Because I felt like it. I wanted to do it, and I did. Let me alone." Or when Heflin says "Be reasonable!" gets slapped and adds "That's pretty reasonable." My favorite was Crawford saying "I never realized that Canada was so big and far away."

By the time this movie is over, you'll be crazy too, or asleep.

Milk

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:46:05 -0600

The gays are coming! The gays are coming!

Lock up your teenage sons! Never mind the aliens with their pod people. Just imagine what it would be like to have your peaceful middle class neighborhood invaded by a bunch of people who think Madonna and Cher are great singers. And are willing to play their songs at ear-splitting volume next door to prove it to you.

You may have heard this movie is about the political awakening of homosexuals in the USA. Nonsense. If you're a normal person - namely someone who doesn't know what a glory hole is - your sympathies will be with the heterosexuals. They were minding their own business living in the tiny Castro neighborhood of San Francisco. That is until Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn) and his gang of felch-breath fudge-packers decided to take it over. The entire neighborhood is only six blocks. Now imagine about 6000 sissy-boys cramming - and I do mean cramming - their spandex clad derrieres into a space that small.

You've heard of urban gentrification? Harvey was into urban fabulous-ification. That tacky street light simply won't do darling. Let's put a Tiffany lamp shade on it. That red fire plug? Puhleeez! Paint it chartreuse and put a raspberry beret on top. Much better!

Naturally the Irish Catholic residents of the Castro take a dim view of these shenanigans. Queer eye for the straight guy my ass. Do we really need groups of gay boys hanging out on street corners just so they can do gang makeovers on hapless passersby? What is this country coming to? You can't even wear your bowling shirt and flood pants and be left alone by God!

Roman Catholics live by the simple notion that if the closet is good enough for the parish priest it should be damn well good enough for their politicians. Harvey Milk turns this upside down. He campaigns openly as a gay candidate for city office. Even in SanFran-sissy-sco that was pretty far out in the 1970's. At this point in time the gays were getting a little tired of being treated like human pinatas by the not so friendly Irish beat cops. That's beat cop, as in: lets see how many fairies we can beat to a bloody pulp today.

The gays react to this treatment by marching and rioting in the streets. Harvey then steps in with his bull horn to talk to the mob and calm things down. It begins to dawn on the police and the political class of the city that this guy could be useful after all. After failing many times to get elected Harvey finally does make it. He becomes the first openly gay candidate ever elected to office in the country. If you can't figure out what happens next you have never heard of Martin Luther King Jr., or Bobby Kennedy.

Sean Penn won the best Actor Oscar for his role in this historical film. Of course Hollywood's historical films are usually about as accurate as Paris Hilton's ability to remember how many porn films she has been in.

The film's director, Gus Van Sant, is one of the few openly Gay movie directors around. If nothing else you can depend on this movie as being an accurate depiction of the gay lifestyle. Then again maybe you would be better off spending your ten bucks on that heavenly little tank top instead of this Tinseltown trany trash.

Che: The Roadshow Edition

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:17:40 -0600

Che Guevara was an asshole. Besides providing a romantic poster for college boys who don't know the first thing about revolution, he was also a brutal intellectual willing to get lots of peasants killed in order to liberate them. He reminds me of the Duke in SHREK telling his soldiers, "Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make."

Rush Limbaugh could say the same thing in much less time than it took you to read that paragraph, and probably has again and again ad nauseam. But Steven Soderbergh takes four hours to show us the same thing. FOUR FRIGGIN' HOURS! The "roadshow edition" I saw combines two features, and even though they moved the credits to a booklet, it still comes to a total of 257 minutes, plus intermission. Your ass will be in dreamland.

The movie predictably glosses over much of the extreme ruthlessness Che was capable of, but there's still plenty of violence for the Zach Snyder audience. At times it plays like a spaghetti western, though without the cheap photography, annoying music and obscure Italian actors. And there's even a scene with one of the most shameless war-movie cliches: when Little Cowboy, the kid who insisted on joining up even though Che thought him too young (WHATEVER do you think will happen to him?), gets killed, Che gets told "They got Little Cowboy!" and says "They'll pay for this."

Yet God knows four hours is a long sit. Between the action scenes there's endless, endless talk about revolutionary strategy. You'd think the structure would be foolproof: in the first half Che lands in Cuba with Fidel Castro, achieves a battlefield victory, achieves another, then another and another until he finally wins the war; in the second half he sneaks into Bolivia (disguised as one of those enemy-agent guest stars they were always foiling on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE), achieves a battlefield defeat, then another and another until he's shot dead. But Soderbergh still manages to mess it up with lots of those arty touches he loves, like black & white flash-forwards of Che visiting the United Nations, 270-degree camera arcs and a wordless final scene showing him on the boat to Cuba at the beginning of the story.

Most actors have some kind of specialty: Jennifer Love Hewitt looking scared, Daniel Craig trying not to blink, Jessica Alba just standing there looking pretty. And Benicio del Toro's specialty is looking perplexed. (Who's Keyzer Soze? What can one man do about the Mexican drug trade? What am I doing in EXCESS BAGGAGE?) As Che, he gets to trot out that puzzled expression once again, though here it's more along the lines of "When the Bolivian army comes to town, why don't the peasants reciprocate my love by risking their lives to protect my guerrillas?"

I paid eighteen bucks admission, but he who steals my purse steals trash. That's four hours of my life that I'll never get back, time I could have spent with my Playstation, or clipping my toenails or something. As Che seizes food from a mother who was saving it for her children, his deputy tells the townsfolk, "We want to end injustice." I'd settle for ending boredom.

Race to Witch Mountain

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 07:30:17 -0600

Watching Race to Witch Mountain was like a flashback to the early nineties when alien movies where all the rage and audiences were mesmerized by sci-fi action and special effects. Yes, people were that stupid and easily distracted. No, things haven't changed much.

Which allowed the director, Andy Fickman, to get away with strolling through the archives in the Disney vaults, notice a particularly foul wad of Post-It notes and decidd to run with it because real ideas cost too much money. We all need to save a dime in this recession. Either that or there must be a writers block pandemic surging through the hills of Hollywood for the script of Race to Witch Mountain to ever have made it to the production phase.

Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson), a testosterone ridden cab driver, discovers two alien kids in the back seat of his car. Sara (Anna Sophia Robb) and Seth (Alexander Ludwig) as it turns out have come to save the world. In a spurt of originality directly copied from every other movie like this, a government agency is after them and wants to perform alien autopsy rituals upon their lifeless bodies, so they enlist Bruno to help them on their quest. An alien assassin arrives on the scene to generate the much needed action sequences, and a love interest is snuck in there through Dr Alex Friedman’s (Carla Gugino) character.

This movie was knitted together from better, less retarded films. There are so many stylistic references, to films that have already been tossed aside and outdone. I’m going to break it into small bite size pieces so that you can understand just how agonizing this movie was to watch.

Jack Bruno’s character is a confusing mirror image of Vin Diesel’s in 'The Fast and The Furious'. He is a hulking kick ass cabbie with amazing driving ability, which of course helps him get the kids out of trouble. It’s like pasting a picture of Jean-Claude Van Damme over a picture of Dolph Lundgren and then trying to convince the world that they are two separate people. Ridiculous. Dwayne Johnson brings his Samoan charm to the film without realizing that Fickman is progressively sinking his career into mud. But hey, it worked for Arnie. Maybe they’re setting him up for a career in politics. It would explain the burgeoning repulsion every time I looked at him.

The alien assassin could be one of two figures from science fiction, either a Predator or the Terminator. His bionic suit is all we see until the very end when, shock and horror, we see his terrifying face! It looked like a wet marshmallow with eye-holes. Now excuse me for expecting something more than that but this is not the nineties when paint, cardboard and squeezing a dogs foot could make a scary alien sufficient to cause the kiddies to wet their pants. If I see an alien in 2009 I want to see the high-res technology behind it, not the after effects mock up because they overspent on their budget. And speaking of half-assed attempts, what is up with the rest of the special effects? Nothing but sparks, in every scene, showers of them cascading down upon the actors. Where are the explosions? Where are the runaway fires? A disgruntled postal worker could cause more damage than that predator wannabe.

The little blonde girl Sara can move things with her mind, and boy Seth can change his molecular structure. We know this because during the film there are sudden pauses when Bruno says, ‘What are you doing?’ to which the kids reply, ‘I am moving things with my mind,’ or ‘I am changing my molecular structure.’ This is specifically to drive the audience psychotically insane, because they think we are as mentally challenged as their writer Matt Lopez, who clearly needs step by step instructions on how to form a thought.

God help Disney if all they can produce nowadays is this fermented dog shit. I pity the children who will watch this film and love it because they don’t know any better. I swear, you put a wrestler’s face on anything these days and it sells. Race to Witch Mountain is a catastrophe of epic proportions. Compare it to the 1994 Schwarzenegger movie ‘Junior’ when the action man himself played a pregnant man and you have something to compare it too.

If aliens did exist they would smite the human race to rid the galaxy of the fools who could create such a cinematic diaper. This movie isn’t even worth watching if you’re stoned. Take some excellent advice and avoid this movie like Ebola or Andy Dick.

He's Just Not That Into You

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 07:11:56 -0600

Every once in a while Hollywood churns out a ‘comedy’ that centers around the fact that most single women above 30 live in a desperate, pervasive Hell of their own creation thanks to their inability to find non-deadbeat sperm to invade their dusty wombs. A parade of self-deluded spinsters and self-assured, independent and successful men are drawn across the screen, and at the end you ride home with your girlfriend in complete silence while she tries to hide the single tear welling up in her right eye. Nervously, you hit the button that locks all the doors in your car and hope for the best.

He’s Just Not That Into You is such a film, and even more frightening is the fact that it actually stars a couple of actresses who used to be hot before Father Time busted their tight curves and smooth faces with his ugly-whip. Jennifer Connelly and Jennifer Aniston really need to fire their agents, because any movie that casts them opposite the very definition of sex itself, Scarlett Johansson, is going to leave them looking more dried-out and leathery than Pam Anderson’s outer labia. These two once-pretty, now mom-like and sad ladies see their hearts broken and their dreams shattered while a younger friend, played to the irritating hilt by ‘Ginnifer Goodwin’ (was she born in a STRIP CLUB?) learns almost nothing about life and love.

The male cast isn’t much better. Ben Affleck rises from his crypt to remind us all that he was once good for more than just plowing that elf chick from Lord Of The Rings. In this flick, he’s a dude who gets kicked out of his own house and has to live on his sailboat – an eerie piece of foreshadowing if I’ve ever seen one. Justin Long tries to play it serious, but quickly finds himself out of his league when trying to interact with anyone not representing Microsoft Windows in human form. Flower Films couldn’t afford Ralph Fiennes, so they used TV’s Bradley Cooper instead and probably paid him in ‘seconds you can touch Scarlett’s chest’.

If you’ve ever seen any movie where men don’t understand women, or vice-versa, then you’ve already seen He’s Just Not That Into You. If you want the added bonus of watching actors past their physical prime visibly age in front of your eyes, then by all means catch this flick. If you would rather preserve your memories of ‘Friends’ and Affleck’s career-defining ‘Phantoms’, then stay at home, turn on the DVD player, and drink yourself into oblivion. Alone. And please don’t reproduce, ever.

Miss March

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:49:33 -0600

There was once a time when terrible, low-budget sex comedies were relegated to the netherworld of late-night / early morning Skinemax –style cable channels, never to oppress theatrical audiences with their terrible dialogue and lack of plot. Unfortunately, the digital revolution has made it cheap enough for any television producer with a million bucks lying around to shit out their own bowel-shaking masterpiece and distribute it to unsuspecting theatre chains across the country. Such is the case with Miss March.

Centered around two complete losers, one of whom falls (literally) into a coma and comes out years later to discover his virginal teen girlfriend is now a Playboy centerfold, Miss March has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. When Loser #1 accidentally stabs his girlfriend in the face with a fork during fellatio – yes, I just typed that – he kidnaps Loser #2 to go on a cross-country drive to the Playboy mansion while being pursued by vengeful firemen. Oh but wait, it gets better – along the way they run into their friend, Horsedick Dot MPEG. Yes, that’s his actual name. Yes, he is a rapper. No, he doesn’t actually have a penis.

And neither does this movie. Or rather, this movie has no balls. For a production that might as well have been titled ‘Playboy Pays For A 1.5 Hour Infomercial On Playboy’ and which actually stars The Hef in the most awkward bluescreen moment since Who Framed Roger Rabbit, there are almost no titties to be had in this movie. Nature’s greatest gifts to man get perhaps 30 seconds of total screen time, and put in no appearance at all during any of the mansion sequences. We DO get treated to a ‘high school girlfriend’ who looks so old I am surprised that dust didn’t fly off of the screen and into my Big Gulp every time she swiveled her head 360 degrees, ‘Death Becomes Her’-style. Oh, and we also get a dude with a STENT in his BALLSACK. TWO STENTS. IN HIS BALLSACK.

Directors Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore cast themselves in the lead Loser roles, which begs the question as to why they also didn’t write in any orgy sequences or scenes that didn’t involve genital mutilation. I guess that will have to remain one of life’s great mysteries, as I don’t think I would ever be able to ask them what they were thinking when they created this abomination of a film without carving my questions into their flesh with a rusty steak knife. Avoid this film at all costs.

The Kindle is Dead

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:01:52 -0600

The Amazon Kindle is dead.

Oh, Amazon doesn't seem to know it yet. After all, they just rolled out the Kindle 2 and apparently have a textbook Kindle in the works to compete in the college market, but nevertheless, the device is dead. As much as Amazon has been at the forefront of web retail, the Kindle may go down as one of the biggest technological blunders of all-time. Rest assured, the Amazon Kindle is dead.

The philosophical flaw in the development of the Kindle is this: it's a device for old people. It's a device that's supposed to bring people who like to read books into the digital age. Huge mistake. The entire basis for developing the Kindle almost completely ignores how the net generation uses technology and what's out there competition-wise. It's a mistake a lot of people are making.

The Kindle is designed for people who like books, so it's designed to have properties similar to a book with the convenience of a new-fangled electronic device. Reading the screen is a reasonable process process with the e-ink and navigating through different publications is easy. Downloading books is simple also through Amazon's 3G network. You can download the latest bestseller or subscribe to the New York Times.

I own a Kindle 2. It's a really cool device. I also own an Iphone. It's a better device. The difference between reading on my Iphone and reading on my Kindle isn't significant enough that I'm going to haul around both pieces of hardware. I can put my Iphone in my pocket. I can't do that with a Kindle. I can access the Internet with my Iphone – look up stocks, check out ESPN, bid on Ebay. All I can do with the Kindle is download subscriptions to books and periodicals – and pay out the nose for them, I might add. Frankly, I'm not paying $10 for a book I don't get to keep. That is what's called a butt-fucking stupid model.

While the older generation may prefer the Kindle for reading books, who gives a shit? You can't design a device for a generation who would just assume carry a book around with them. Sure, I can put 10,000 books on my Kindle or whatever, but so what? I don't own them. Ownership is important to these people. I can't go into my library and smell them or see them. Remember, this is a generation that likes books. They may like the Kindle too, but for $359, they're likely to stick with what they know.

To the net generation, the Kindle is antiquated, and this is precisely the market who's supposed to get excited about these devices. They're not excited about the Kindle. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon has designed a device for himself and for Stephen King. Unfortunately, where such devices are concerned, they're old and irrelevant. Does it play music? Store pictures? Link to Facebook? Then who gives a shit? Reading on the old paradigm is dead to this generation and the Kindle is just another reminder of days gone by. Shit, maybe Bezos's next big thing will be an abacus.

A year from now, nobody is going to be talking about the Kindle. In fact, you might be able to purchase one off Ebay for $1 because there won't be anything you can do with it. One of the bummers of a technologically advanced society like ours is sometimes you create a device that's outdated before it's released. The Kindle is one such device.

The Edge of Love

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 08:58:21 -0600

The Edge of Love is like a soap opera without the glamour. Set during World War 2, it takes place in that lethargic heyday where men beat their woman because of post traumatic stress disorder, and women slept with the town veterinarian because their husbands were in Europe fighting Hitler.

The story begins with Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley) singing on stage while London is being bombed to hell by the Germans. I admit it was a surprise hearing her sing, an emotion soon eclipsed by the fact that she sounded like Betty Boop or Marilyn Monroe when she sang happy birthday Mr. President to JFK. It was about this time my eyes started to sag, like someone had stuffed cotton wool into my head.

The plot essentially comes down to pretty people swapping sexual tension and lusty glowers. Honestly, I would have gotten more satisfaction watching a bargain bin porn flick, and that includes intellecual satisfaction. It certainly would have been less depressing.

Pretty Vera is in love with pudgy poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys) unfortunately he is married to saucy Caitlin MacNamara (Sienna Miller). Pretty Vera ends up marrying strapping William Killick (Cillian Murphy). Pudgy Dylan loves both saucy Caitlin and pretty Vera. Strapping Killick goes off to war and experiences horrors that include people dying, limbs being cut off and wide-eyed terror. They all sleep with each other and their lives are miserable because of it. Everything turns out alright in the end though, because Vera stays with wife beater Killick and Caitlin stays with cheating husband Dylan.

If you can stay awake long enough to make sense of all that you deserve an accolade handed to you by the Welsh government. The first half of the movie limps by in a haze of convoluted dialogue that I attribute to Dylan Thomas’ poetry. "How the ducks fly past the posies weighed down by the graying morning ramble," or similar kinds of senseless shit. Throw the braying Welsh accent into the mix and all you’re left with is half the cast of people bleating like naked sheep and the other half Waaa Waaa Waaaing like Charlie Brown’s faceless parents.

The Edge of Love may sound like a sex fest on the surface, but it's about as erotic as your grandmother's foot. Close up shots of hands are the most interesting bits you’ll see and dodgy faded split screens where there are two Keira Knightley faces kissing instead of one. Sorry, but there's only one anatomical part I'd like to see two of in a movie like this, and it's definitely not anything above the neck.

And this film just reeks of filth. Constant Grime on the streets, dirty babies and sweaty hair had me panting for a shower as soon as it was done, which was not near soon enough. It would not end. I could’ve taken a pilgrimage to Wales, slept with everyone, fought in the bloody war myself and come back, and that damn movie would still be spouting nonsense.

I have gained three things from watching this film, the first is a deep prejudice against Dylan Thomas’ poetry, the second a hatred for Welsh people because of how they used to live in the early nineties, and third a blood clot near my cerebellum inflicted upon my person by the cross eyed love scenes, ridiculous dialogue and bland storyline. Don’t go see The Edge of Love. There is such a thing as too much drama, and in today’s choppy world of trouble and pandemonium, who the hell wants to remember the problems of yesterday? Take the cash for the movie ticket and treat yourself to something less painful, like a nice bikini wax or a stimulating root canal.

Somebody Save Me From Nadya Suleman

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:22:10 -0600

Yes, more on Octomom...

So I'm surfing morning television today and, I'm not kidding you, every channel is doing a story on this insane woman and how she's buying some big house she shouldn't be able to afford.

Who fucking cares?

I tried switching channels. Oh look, there's another channel doing the same story. Are there people out there who really care about this shit? Are there people out there who believe anything other than this woman should BE IN JAIL?

What does this say about our society? I'll tell you, we are the biggest country of dysfunctional enablers in the world. If you're dysfunctional beyond belief, your chances of becoming famous rise. If you're completely dysfunctional, your chances of becoming rich rise. How can any self-respecting television station run a story on this woman and give her precisely what she's always wanted?

As television viewers, we ought to be writing these stations en masse and telling them we are boycotting them because they're running stories on this woman. Somebody has to stand up and try to stop this insanity. Is television news now solely the place for idiots? It's like every station is running it's own version of The National Enquirer. Literally, there's no real news there - AT ALL.

I say fuck Octomom (although that appears to be seriously dangerous) and fuck all the stations that are running stories on her. The sane people of this world need to take it back, declare shit shit, and start defining what is and what is not culturally relevant.

Watchmen

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 09:44:49 -0600

The current vogue these days is to fashion an epic film out of every single graphic novel or comic book series that had attracted a whiff of critical acclaim back in its heyday – even if said heyday was in 1985. Witness the excruciating mess that was "The Spirit" and the lifeless "Fantastic Four" films.

The latest piece of 4-color fancy to fall victim to this trend is Watchmen, a gritty tale from Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, From Hell) that focuses on a group of not-so-superheroes with about as many interesting problems as your parents bickering in the front seat of the station wagon.

The biggest problem with Watchmen is that it’s just too damn ambitious. It has long been said that the storytelling of the original comic is far too convoluted to be successfully translated onto the big screen. In fact, Alan Moore refused to have anything to do with the adaptation whatsoever. That didn’t stop Zack Snyder, director of such art-house fare as "300" and "Dawn Of The Dead" from trying. He apparently turned down the Wolverine film in order to complete Watchmen, so at least that’s one movie he won’t be capable of ruining through his mere presence.

What follows is a narrative mess about as coherent as a Baywatch Nights episode. With so much exposition to get through, there are sequences of the film that feel like someone reading page after page of the Old Testament of the Bible out loud: ‘And Jehobeth begat Jeremiah; and Jeremiah begat Methuselah; and Methuselah begat…and so on and so on.

The audience is treated to a series of poorly cut together montages every time an aspect of a character’s back story needs to be explained to the audience in order for the plot to make any sense. My favorite? A short vignette where the entire country of Vietnam personally surrenders to Dr. Manhattan’s 3-story tall glowing blue penis. Truly a cinematic first.

Other areas where Watchmen breaks new ground? A scene where a sort of hot chick has sex with a sort of Owl-man in a floating tin can; a scene with two fat men and a midget in prison where no one is penetrated or ‘sexually awakened’ in any way; and a scene where I slowly drew a razor blade down the length of my arm, breaking the skin just so I could feel alive as this train wreck of a film plodded into its third hour.

If I were capable of re-assembling matter with my mind – like the only character in this film who actually possessed a true superpower – then I would have surely created a time machine that fit into the seat beside me so that I could travel back to the previous day and kill my double before he could ever set foot inside the theatre that became my prison of boredom.

Instead of wasting a Titanic-sized chunk of your life on this stinker, consider doing something productive with your afternoon, like joining a 12-step program, or organizing your sock drawer by thickness. You’ll thank me later.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:51:29 -0600

Director Andrzej Bartkowiak brings us yet another installment of the previously defunct Street Fighter franchise. There are reasons things fall out of fashion, Bartkowiak. Street Fighter was always horrible drivel, fed to people who like to eat garbage instead of soufflé. Now, instead of Jean-Claude Van Damme, we get a neo-Asian girl with limited fighting ability, zero acting ability and a supporting cast of ill equipped charlatan stunt men. Street Fighter used to be about the fighting. Apparently, now it’s about giving B grade TV stars their very own leading roles.

The movie begins with Chun-Li’s (Kristin Kreuk) father being kidnapped. As she gets older she becomes a concert pianist. She then receives a mystical scroll, and as cheap and hastily photoshopped as it may be, it still changes her life. After a lengthy and illogical scene of her slumming it on the streets, she finds the scroll writer. Chun-Li trains with him and then goes to kill the evil Bison (Neal McDonough) who kidnapped her father. She kills Bison. The end.

Amidst this revolutionary narrative is dialogue so bad you begin to wonder if the person next to you isn’t whispering it in your ear to make fun of your intelligence. The sprawling one liners would not be out of place in a cheesy 80’s cartoon series. Writer Justin Marks should be forced to have an operation that removes the section of his brain that controls motor functions so that we can guarantee that he will never write again. Either that or just staple gun him in his temple, like they do to cattle before they get ‘processed.’

The filming is nothing short of a heinous crime to cinema. The footage has been so lethally diced and spliced and hastily reassembled that basic continuity errors abound. One minute Chun Li is tied up, the next she is at the door escaping from Bison’s henchmen. Tolkien’s imagination wouldn’t be enough to fill in that blank.

And since this is a fighting movie about supposedly interesting characters, let’s take a moment to list each fighter’s special powers:

Bison – Punches Hard

Chun-Li – Spins around fast and produces a feeble Goku hand blast

Balrog – Strong

Vega – Wears a costume

Disappointed in these descriptions? They’re worse in the film.

And why is this movie rated PG-13? I hate movies that decide to be fun for the whole family. It ruins the fight scenes, stunts the language and in reality is no fun at all for anybody’s family. I held my breath more than once as they cut away from what may have been an awesome head butt or a potentially lethal knee to the groin. Bison’s cold killer assassin Vega (Taboo) is bashed into oblivion by Chun-Li. Pianist by day, brawling street fighter at night? This should have been a definitive battle in the movie, with blood and broken bones painting the screen with mayhem. Instead it was a side gimmick to make the film actually look like it came from the video game. There are no costumes besides the tin wolverine claws Vega wears. No costumes, no arena fighting and no T&A. So as entertainment goes, there wasn’t any.

In a more than desperate attempt to add some sexuality into the film they cast an actress called Moon Bloodgood as Det. Maya Sunee. You get to see her in a bra. Once. Her part for the rest of the film is to make out with Chris Klein and pretend that she has never acted in a porn movie before.

I don’t know how many producers Kristin Kreuk had to throw her body at before they decided to cast her as a leading lady, but I do know that her plan to take the leap from small screen to big screen has failed dismally. Then, as if the world couldn’t get any worse, they cast Chris Klein as a detective. He is the ugliest, most decrepit actor ever to besmirch our screens. I have one thing to say to you Chris - the new Nicholas Cage receding hairline mullet is not for you. Somewhere in Hollywood there is a hairdresser who should refund your money. That look did not improve your acting.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is a sad addition to the game’s legacy. The exhausted narrative was spent after the first scene. The witless director flip-flops around the point and at the last second delivers a movie that had already died in the womb. The only people who should watch such a stain on cinematic history are the parents and grandparents of the cast, and even they should demand some payment for their wasted time.

Gomorrah

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:34:00 -0700

If you’ve heard all of the hype about this movie being a revelation for mafia films everywhere, you wouldn’t be the only one. You also wouldn’t be the only one joining the lynch mob to find the idiot who said that. I expected powerful Tony Soprano-type gangsters. Instead I got a nervous cast of destitute nancy-boys from Oliver Twist. Street kids and petty thieves live their unnecessarily violent little lives in front of you, trying to show you the real mafia.

I know what the real mafia is. The real mafia is Scarface, the Godfather and Donny Brasco. It’s not a socially decrepit group of Italians clawing over each other to survive. What underwater cave did writer Roberto Saviano surface from? I could have sent Dakota Fanning into those slums with a sharp toothbrush and she would have ended that perpetual war in seconds.

The film has a hundred things happening at the same time. In an effort to show us the "real mafia" they forgot that they were making a real film that requires a workable narrative. I faintly remember flashes of Italian faces before me, but who they were and what they were up to, I'll never know.

It’s almost like director Matteo Garrone tried too hard to debunk the gangster stereotype. Gangsters don’t wear suits, gangsters aren’t old emphysemic businessmen, gangsters are people too...what the hell Garrone? You just stripped the genre of all its fundamental elements! What’s the point of watching now? There are only three good reasons why this movie ever crossed into America. The first is that the director owes some people money here. The second is that he was brought up in such a filthy environment that gnats ate away part of his brain and he can’t process logical thought anymore. Either that or he used his life savings to bribe every film critic ever to have watched this soporific movie.

Gomorrah made me yawn so many times I got lockjaw. It bears no relation to any watchable movie I’ve ever seen. It's like walking outside to get a breath of fresh air, only to discover oxygen has been replaced with carbon-monoxide. Artsy movies are generally flaming piles of collected mind vomit anyway but Gomorrah is a pioneer in that genre. Stay home and watch The Godfather instead. Or even High School Musical 3, because any high school environment probably has a closer resemblance to organized crime than this self-important snooze-fest.