Paranormal Activity

I posted this quick review of Paranormal Activity on another website but decided to post it here as well to increase my content and to draw multitudes of readers to my blog. That's my intent. Readership. Numbers. Vagina.

I finally watched Paranormal Activity. It was pretty bad. It was probably designed to work best in a theatre full of god-fearing teens. I watched it at home which is good because it only cost me $1 to rent from the Redbox. Sure, I lost out on the screaming, jumping, throbbing mass of assholes by not going to the theatre, but that's a good thing.

A couple parts made me think that it could be scary, but the terrible acting and horrible dialogue were so distracting that the tension couldn't hold up. The arguments between the couple on whether or not to keep the camera rolling were shallow and illogical. I wasn't buying any of their reasoning. The boyfriend doesn't believe in psychics but he thinks he can contact the dead using magic Ouija board techniques? Super. I think the movie would have been much more effective if the filmmakers pursued the possibility that the female protagonist (can't remember her name) was suffering from mental illness rather than some invisible "demon". That would allow those of us that don't believe in all the supernatural nonsense to still enjoy the film on a somewhat rational level. And they could leave out the part about the demon leaving its hoofprints in baby powder.

As it stands, I hope this trend of single-camera, found-footage filmmaking is finished. Blair Witch was innovative, Cloverfield was unique (and nauseating), and Rec (and it's remake, Quarantine) was intense. But that's enough. I want to feel like I'm watching a regular movie again, not someone's crappy wedding video gone awry.

Final Destination 3

I watched Final Destination 3 last night on DVD. I saw it when it initially came out, put the DVD in a box, and revisited it to get psyched for the new film, The Final Destination. I enjoy all the Final Destination movies. They're a nice twist on the dead teenager movie genre. They all feature a set-up disaster where some teens are going to die but one of them has a premonition and a few of them are saved from their fates while their friends die. But death doesn't like to be cheated, so It comes for them in creative ways, piling up bodies by the end of the 90 minute runtime. I made my parents watch the first film and while they hate horror movies, they had a good time with it. I think the second movie is the funniest and most over-the-top of the series, each death scene more outlandish than the one before it. The third installment combines the serious tone of the first film and some of the comedy of the second to make a great sequel. I actually liked this movie a lot better on my second viewing.

The opening sequence of Final Destination 3 is my favorite of the three movies. I mean, who hasn't dreamed of dying on a roller-coaster? That's what makes them so fun to ride, such adrenaline-pumping experiences. Once you're strapped in (double check that the harness is locked, maybe even pulling it a bit tighter to your chest), you can't do anything as the cars climb the steep hill overlooking the entire park for the first, giant stomach-lifting drop and then you scream as you plummet through corkscrews, loops, and hairpin turns. After some bone-jarring bumps and screeching brakes, you arrive where you started. I remember, as a kid, claiming to have "conquered" certain rides. I conquered The Demon, The Big Dipper, The Colossus, The Ninja, The Viper, etc. I yielded and I overcame. But what would happen if the roller-coaster train came off the tracks or got stuck upside-down at the top of a loop? That would suck. And Final Destination 3 does a great job of showing you why it would suck so bad.

The surviving high school seniors, the ones who got off the ride after the main girl had a premonition of their collective demise, are now haunted by their having "cheated" death (and main girl is really sad that her boyfriend remained on the ride and was brutally killed). Death will come for them and in this film, It comes for them based on images in a series of pictures the main girl took of them at the amusement park before the ride. The pictures show how they will meet their ends. And their ends are bloody (by ends, I don't mean rear ends or butts or buttholes because that would be disgusting; I mean their deaths). I don't want to give away the circumstances of their deaths because that's the point of the movie.* The characters exist only in reference to how they will die. Some of the sequences are pretty funny. All are extremely gory. One scene in particular made me want to vomit. A fun family popcorn flick.

I hope the new film, The Final Destination (3-D in select theatres), is as good as any of the previous films. I'm not expecting much based on the previews, but maybe the 3-D approach will work. I've never seen a movie in the theatre in 3-D, so this will be the first. It will be the last if I leave with a migraine. Go Team.

*I put this at the end because it's a spoiler: There is a major flaw in the logic of the film. One of the characters (a punk kid named Ass Cheeks with a video camera) who dies in the premonition sequence is partly responsible for the crash. His video camera gets smacked out of his hands during a loop and lands on the track, and becomes part of the chain of events that causes the cars to derail. If he isn't on the ride, his camera doesn't fall on the tracks. The cars don't derail. No accident. So I'm still wondering how the ride crashed and killed all those innocent dickwads without him on it. I'm trying to find logical explanations in a movie where an operatorless fork lift drives itself through a wall because some hammers fell on its gear shift and acceleration pedal.

Drop Zone

When Gary Busey shows up wearing a pair of Zebra Pants, you realize that the amazing movie you are watching on Encore is going to grab your balls tightly and twist them slightly. After all, what wouldn’t be amazing about a bunch of criminal skydivers who hack into government computer systems to find out the undercover identities of DEA agents so they can sell the information to drug kingpins for bucks? Wesley Snipes joins the fun as a Federal Agent in charge of transporting the skydiving crew’s computer specialist by plane to prison. He doesn’t know that those skydivers are going to hijack the plane, kill his brother, scream maniacally at a little girl while making menacing faces, and “break out” their hacker. Luckily they have parachutes and guns. A daring prison escape at 35,000 feet. A little bit of exposition in the aftermath tells us how badass and impossible this feat truly is. Now Wesley Snipes has to infiltrate the underground world of competitive skydiving to find the sonofabitches that killed his brother. He loses his badge, of course, so he has to go all maverick and lone wolf. Wesley is the Lone Wolf. He goes to a skydiving school and learns to skydive by screaming like a goddamn chimpanzee while plummeting towards the earth. Or maybe a rhesus monkey. After a few jumps, he is ready to join an elite team of divers that will jump over the White House on the 4th of July during a dazzling fireworks display. It’s the only way to get at the bad guys because they can't pass up the adrenaline-pumping experience and they’ll use the jump as an opportunity to break into another government building. In skydiver world, jumpers hang out in bars and speak their own language of blue skies and burn ins. If you look out of place, four big dudes in green Adidas track suits will approach you, intimidate you, and fight you. But if you have an “in” with a hot skydiving instructor, she’ll help you out. She has friends. One of them is a dude named Swoop and he’s the hero of the story, not Snipes. Swoop is an unemployed bum (or hobo, if you prefer) who lives only to skydive. He doesn’t sleep on the streets like normal hobos (or bums, if you prefer); he sleeps on those window washer platforms among dirty rags and Snickers wrappers. Patrick Chewing. The Statchew of Liberty. Dickers. He wears his jumpsuit and his parachute everywhere he goes so he can make instant escapes. He pulls crazy moves during competitions like releasing his main chute so it wraps around an asshole skydiver while he parachutes through the sky. This is called “gift-wrapping”. Back-slapping and overly enthusiastic gestures and yelling and guffawing typify the average skydiver. So do colorful, thin jumpsuits unzipped to the belly button and spread open to reveal layers of thick, manly chest hair. (I didn’t realize that skydiving had its own unique culture until I watched this movie. It’s kind of like how I learned about the underground surfing movement from Point Break.) There are a bunch of fights between Wesley's crew and Busey's crew, including a bathroom brawl and a cat fight between our heroic female Instructor and the Evil Whore from the Badguy Team. The Instructor bashes the Whore’s head with the lid of a copy machine while the machine makes Xeroxes. I don’t remember how it all ends, but it has something to do with Gary Busey’s huge teeth and huge hair and a parachute and a Mack truck's windshield. It’s pretty fucking great. See it. It’s called Drop Zone.

Terminator 4

So there are these amazing movies about time traveling robots and explosions and wars brought about by machines that become self-aware and decide to destroy humanity because it is fun so on Judgment Day they blow shit up and the few humans that survive start a resistance movement and they are led by John Connor who the terminators have been trying to destroy in the past so he can't battle against them in the future. You might have seen The Terminator which was a 1980s movie starring Arnold as an evil menacing invincible robot terminator sent back in time from the future after Judgment Day to kill John Connor's mom who hasn't even gotten pregnant with John Connor but she will during a brief sex scene in a hotel with a hazy filter lens on the camera. Arnold rides motorcycles and blows up semi trucks but fails in his mission, so he has to protect the young John Connor in Terminator 2 from a liquid metal terminator played by the Filter guy’s brother who was also in the X-Files when Mulder wasn't. The young John Connor is an irritating asshole who you wish would die so there wouldn’t need to be another terminator movie, just terminator pinball machines with red robot eyes that light up. But he doesn’t die so there’s a Terminator 3 with lots of great effects but no story. That brings us to the incredible Terminator 4: Terminator Salvation which is J.D. Salinger’s favorite movie* of all time. I will endorse anything that the writer of Frannie and Zooey claims is a work of genius. In Terminator Salvation we finally get to see the future battles of the robots versus the human resistance with the grown up John Connor leading the way, yelling, and shooting. This film has amazing time travel implications as well. John Connor has to find his father who is only a teenager and make sure he doesn’t die so John Connor can lead the resistance and find him again to protect him so he doesn’t die so he can go back in time and fuck John Connor’s mom so John Connor will be born and run from the Terminators in Terminator 2 and 3 and eventually lead the resistance of humans against robots after Judgment Day occurs. But then he has to find his father so that his father can go back in time to fuck his mother again in this endless circle of time traveling brilliance. The director McG does a great job in making the most exciting and explosive terminator movie in the series. The one shot camera move that follows the helicopter crash at the beginning of the film is a work of sheer cinematic artistry. Only McG could pull this off. Or Tarsem. This movie has it all including underwater terminators and giant terminators with motorcycle terminators attached to their legs and terminators that look like Arnold, T-800’s or something. Arnold is a digital creation of his younger self when his balls weren’t so old because no one wants to see Arnold’s old testicles and saggy ass. When terminators die, their red eyes turn off. That’s how you know you’re safe from their relentless attacks. The big twist in this movie is that it is PG-13 rather than R like the previous 3 movies. This is so the kids can see it, even though they’re not old enough to see the preceding movies so they don’t understand what is going on and they can instead sit and text their friends about the awesome explosions or about the last episode of the life of the secret American teenager who got pregnant in high school or about Kobe Bryant. The other big twist in the movie is about a murderer who got capitally punished by lethal injection but before he goes under the needle he agrees to have his body donated to cancer science but instead of being used for cancer science it is turned into a cyborg that believes it is human because it has a human heart but the rest of it is robotic. It poses an ethical dilemma about the future of evil science and just how far will it go to fuck shit up.

*see here

Hitman

Man, my cinematic quality measuring stick must be knee-deep in colon debris lately. Every movie that I’ve recommended to my friends and foes and acquaintances has been in vain; they tell me they hate the movies and that they fall asleep during them and that I have terrible taste. I told one of my co-workers to watch Body of Lies, which I thought was brilliant. He thought it was boring and didn’t finish it. I’ve recommended In Bruges to nearly everyone, none of whom ever watched it. But who gives a fuck. Vagrancy in Jerkwater USA is all about awesomeness, not a bunch of pussy loving artistic bullshit with meaning. Take my latest favorite movie, Hitman, for example. People think it sucks, but it doesn't.

Hitman is a movie based on a stupid videogame called Hitman where you don’t get to kill too many people because every time you try, alarms go off and you have to hide in a closet or a bathroom stall or beat up some poor minimum wage janitor and steal his clothes so you can wander around in disguise, totally undetected even though you have a barcode tattooed on the back of your bald head. I suck at the game. When a videogame gives me guns, I want to use them, not sneak around and try to strangle people when I have an H&K MP5 under my sweetass custom-made leather bomber jacket. I’m not reviewing the game here though, I’m reviewing the movie. Hitman is directed by a retarded monkey looking dude named Xavier Gens. He has a great eye for cinematic artistry. He implements cool angles and lighting (lots of blue which is the latest trend in cool movies) and awesome poses. He got the Sheriff of Deadwood, Timothy Olyphant, to play the character of the Agent Number Forty-seven of the secret clone hitman squad. Some people said that Timothy doesn’t look good bald, but I disagree. His baldness is menacing. As are his tattoo and his assortment of awesome guns and swords. Olga Kurylenko is in this movie too. You’ll remember her from the beginning of Max Payne and as the Bolivian chick in James Bond and the Quantum of Solace. Her role in Hitman is my favorite of the three; she spends a good portion of the movie bandying her boobies about and her ass and stuff. She is hot. She has a cute little dragon tattoo on her cheek and this is why the Hitman has compassion on her and gets to see her naked. But he’s not super compassionate because he makes her ride around in the trunk of his car alongside a dead body and then he takes her to dinner and tells her to pick up the check even though she’s not finished eating so he can go in the bathroom and shoot some badguy brains all over the walls and stalls and mirror and tile floor. My favorite part of the movie is where the Hitman is fighting a bunch of his super-assassin clone buddies on a train car. They all have their guns pointed at each other in a circle you know where no one can shoot so it’s this crazy standoff. Hitman says something like, “what do you say we die with some dignity?” They all agree and proceed to unload the ammo from their guns and then drop their guns to the floor and then they each pull out two awesome fighting swords from under their shirts and have a kickass swordfight with lots of punching and stabbing. Fucking amazing. My other favorite part of this movie is that it has tons of blood exploding across the screen when people get shot, not like those stupid PG-13 action movies where no one bleeds when they get shot. In Hitman, when a sniper shoots someone in the head, their head explodes. Their blood sprays all over the people next to them. Machine gun bullets tear flesh. I’m glad that Xavier Gens brought some carnage back to the action film. The Bourne trend is getting old. I hate Paul Greengrass. I’m also glad to see a video game adaptation that is enjoyable. So, go rent Hitman and then come back and tell me it sucks because you like Cynicdouchebag, New York.

Blindness

Beginning in a near future time, in a nondescript, multicultural city, people will catch the disease of blindness. A blindness causing pathogen will spread through the tiers of society and drive people to commit unspeakable cruelties and atrocities due to their evil, blind nature. The uncaring government will turn a blind eye and the faceless, money-grubbing health industry will turn away the newly diseased masses like stinky asses. The movie Blindness chronicles this horrible future event. It’s a scary, apocalyptic prophecy from Fernando Meirelles, the director of City of God and The Constant Gardener. It’s based on a book of the same name by an author named Jose Saramago. It stars Julianne Moore, Danny “frequently lisping” Glover, Mark Ruffalo, and Gael Garcia Bernal. There are also a bunch of actors I don't know featured in its multicultural cast. You see, the disease of blindness affects everyone equally. It’s how you deal with this unspeakable horror that matters.

Blindness will cause you to act like a mental retard. You’ll lose any coordination or athletic ability you once possessed and stumble around like Kevin James in a mall. Or like Steve Martin. You’ll wave your hands out in front of you as you constantly run into polls, crush your nuts or vaginas on cement planters, and trip over shopping carts. You’ll moan a lot. The evil government will quarantine your sorry ass in an old building and ignore you. Sure, they’ll give you a little bit of food, but you’ll have to fight over it with the other blind assholes that are imprisoned with you. You’ll throw your trash on the floor and you’ll stop wearing clothes and wander around naked, cockandballs swaying from side to side. You won’t bathe or brush your teeth or wipe your own ass. In fact, you’ll completely forget how to use a toilet, so you’ll piss and shit on the floor in the hallway and then you’ll fuck like animals in the piss and shit. The hardfuck. Grunting like pigs. You’ll fuck strangers for food and pity. You’ll even smile and dance to shitty music played on a portable AM radio by an African-American with a pirate eye-patch and a milky eye (2%, I think). All of the sudden, the sound of some out of tune piano gives you peace. If it rains, you’ll dance outside in the downpour, raising your hands in jubilatory gestures. You'll sing a Stevie Wonder tune while mocking his familiar head bobbing, cause it's funny. You’ll cheat on your wife and fuck a prostitute. You’ll bite and murder and scream and tell stories to cute little blind kids. Fucking blindness, man…it’s a travesty.

This is a terrible movie. It’s easily one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time because it tries so hard to be good (with its "indie cred" actors and its hot new foreign director), to be meaningful, to make a statement about our current world and where it might be going, and it fails completely. The direction is uninspired, nearly every new scene beginning with a fade from white and every scene ending in a fade to white. I get it. Blindness. The director tries to give the film a rough, documentary-like look but it doesn’t mix well with the over-the-top stage style acting and cheesy dialogue. I know people will say that I didn’t get the allegory or the layered meanings or whatever, but fuck that, this movie just doesn’t work on any level. And it's really boring. The actors act like they're retarded, not like they're blind. It's sad that this director can't tell the difference. I haven’t read the book and I never will. I read Saramago’s All The Names and felt it was a sorry attempt at Kafka. Maybe I didn’t get that either (after all, he got a Nobel Prize for Literature).

Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans

Dear Chad,

I watched Underworld 3 the other day. I figured you would want me to write you and tell you about it because you like good movies (remember Cold Creek Manor…that was awesome). This is a good movie. It’s a prequel to the other two Underworld movies. As such, it doesn’t feature Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight black leather. Sorry. Instead, it has a different hot actress name Rhona Mitra in skin-tight black leather. It’s not directed by Len Wiseman. He’s too busy trying to get more Die Hard sequels in the works. Therefore, Rise of the Lycans is directed by Patrick Tatopoulos, a Frenchy. The French are good movie directors, guys like Godard and Truffaut, and now you can add Tatopoulos to the list.

There are two things about Underword: Rise of the Lycans that really stand out: the color blue and Viktor’s eyes. Viktor (Bill Nighy) is the main bad guy (or good guy if you’re rooting for the vampires but no one roots for the vampires, they root for the lycans) vampire who’s selfishness and bad decision-making skills are the catalyst for the war between the vampires and the lycans. We learn all about this from flashback scenes in the first Underworld movie. Rise of the Lycans is all about those flashbacks in full-length feature-film time and epic battles. This prequel is necessary to understand the complicated backstory of the Underworld franchise. Without it, you really wouldn’t comprehend the Shakespearean implications of it all.

So anyways, I was talking about the color blue and Viktor’s eyes. This movie is very dark and very blue. It’s like it’s supposed to be in the future, but it’s not. It’s in a blue, midevil sort of undetermined past. I think the director either had access to a blue camera lens filter or they added the blue color during editing. It doesn’t matter. Either way, it works and it works well. It adds a great atmosphere to the film. It’s like everything is cold, but without the snow. You really feel like the vampires are dark and evil. Viktor’s eyes are blue, too. But they’re a penetrating blue, like they’re looking into the depths of your hollow, evil soul (not your soul specifically, Chad, but the soul in general). Viktor never blinks and he stares a lot. There were times when I found myself hypnotized by his glare, to the extent that I missed some of the action going on around him. Very effective, in my opinion.

Well, this wouldn’t be an Underworld movie without some awesome battles between the vampires and the lycans. Lots of blood and shredding skin and biting and swordsmanship and ninja stars. Nothing beats a good Death Dealer/Lycan battle. Remember that really awesome lycan from Underworld 1? The black guy with the really deep voice (Kevin Grevioux)? This movie features his origin story and really gets to the heart of his character. His name is Raze. He was a human slave of the vampires that gets turned into a lycan and then joins up with Lucian (Michael Sheen), the lycan leader, to overthrow Viktor and end the subjugation of the lycans. Lucian has a love affair with Viktor’s hot daughter, Sonja (Rhona Mitra). This really pisses off Viktor and the battles begin, but not before Lucian gets a whipping worthy of The Passion of the Christ. Man, it’s brutal. Whipping scenes make me cringe, especially when the whip has a bunch of metal knives at the tip.

Okay, so that’s it. Give me a call when you see it so we can discuss the philosophical implications and themes of non-conformity, slavery, forbidden love, and death. Until then, you should probably re-watch the first two Underworld films because they are awesome.

Talk to you soon,

Jared

PS: In case you didn’t know, lycans are lycanthropes i.e. werewolves.

Quarantine

Dexter’s sister (Deborah Morgan) is in this new movie called Quarantine. I’m sure you’ve seen the ads for it; they appear as screen-filling pop-ups with no visible close button. You can’t get out of them because you’re fucking quarantined. A bunch of readers over on Chud got pissed and complained about it a lot. They must not understand the meaning of the word quarantine. When you’re quarantined you can complain all you want but no one is going to give a shit, no one will hear you, no one will let you out of the sealed-off situation, so you might as well shut your fucking puckered butthole of a mouth and deal with it, pussy.

I know you dirty little pricks really enjoyed that Danny Boyle movie, 28 Days Later. You would. Quarantine is kind of like that, but with less of Cillian Murphy’s wiener. Some weird rage-inducing virus infects people and causes them to beat the living shit out of each other and eat each other and kill and maim and bite and froth at the mouth and shriek and run. But you like that kind of stuff, don’t you, you filthy ballsack-toucher. It fits your M.O.. All the gory action takes place in a four story apartment complex somewhere in Los Angeles. Dexter’s sister plays a TV personality for a show that follows workers around on their nighttime jobs, kind of like that old Dave Attell show but without all the drinking. On the night portrayed, she is tailing the fire department. But you already know this. You’ve seen the trailer.

All of the action in the movie is filmed on one handheld camera. Remember Blair Witch, Cloverfield, and Diary of the Dead? Of course you do, you pinched rectum. Quarantine has that same shaky, in the middle of the action, blurry, quick moving, vomit inducing camera work, though not as bad as The Bourne Ultimatum. The cameraman’s name is Scott; I only mention this because he deserves an award for being the most perseverant cameraman in the history of everything. This guy doesn’t miss a beat. At one point in the movie, he’s at the top of the stairs filming a group of people descending in front of him. A quick cut later, he’s at the bottom of the stairs filming that same group of people as they come down the last few steps. Scott can teleport. That’s an essential skill for a lone cameraman. Another necessary skill: Scott continues shooting even when it would make more sense to drop the camera and run for his fucking life because he’s about to be eaten by a nearly naked freak in stained tighty-whiteys. But you like those tighty-whiteys, don’t you? You want to see that.

So, this group of people gets quarantined in the building by the CDC. CDC agents shoot at any of the people who try to get out. They blockade the doors and windows. They act like real assholes. This makes me think that they’re probably not the CDC, but some black-ops government agency that wants to obtain this virus for nefarious purposes or some shit but the movie doesn’t really get into that so maybe there’ll be a sequel. It’ll be DTV. Quarantine 2: Was the Dog’s Name Max? It’ll star Michael Madsen, Shannyn Sossamon, and Redman. They’ll probably use two cameras instead of one, just to up the ante. You’ll rent it in hopes of seeing Shannyn’s boobs because that’s the type of person you are, someone who would rent a Michael Madsen DTV movie just for the prospect of viewing a pair of naked jugs. Pathetic. Hell Ride.

******Spoiler Part*******
Do you want to know how Quarantine ends? Guess what, you already do. You saw the trailer, remember? You saw the camera in night vision mode, all greens and reflective eyes, Dexter’s sister being dragged away while screaming. That’s it. That’s how it ends. The people who came up with the trailer and marketing campaign for this movie failed epically (as the kids on the net like to say, you know…EPIC FAIL). They give away the ending. I’m sitting there in the theatre, completely alone…yes, I’m the only fucking person in the theatre, I’m not lying, no one else came in at any point during the movie, first time this has ever happened to me and I’m anticipating the famous scene from the trailer that I saw about fifty times, and it hasn’t happened yet, not yet, and I know the movie is getting close to the end and all of the sudden the camera goes into night vision mode and all the tension drains out of the empty theatre and out of my amazingly sculpted body and I’m left with a serene sense of awareness because I realize that I’ve already seen the ending and then the ending happens and I smile, I smile for those assholes who made the trailer and put that specific image all over the internet and on the movie poster and ruined my movie experience because of it. I’m not dumb; all the other single-camera movies I mentioned at the beginning of this review have the same ending, i.e. the found tape that explains what happened because no one was left alive to tell the story. You can thank Cannibal Holocaust for that. I just like to be surprised when that final moment happens. The Quarantine trailer makes that impossible.

You know what’s weird? Even with all my complaining and bitching and stuff, I still thought this was a pretty cool movie. The single camera isn’t too shaky or annoying, only in a couple of short parts. It creates a sense of isolation and claustrophobia that is essential to the story. There are some good jump scares and an intense scene that is reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs. I really enjoyed Jennifer Carpenter’s (Dexter’s sister) performance; she plays her part with enthusiasm and conviction. She really seems scared. Jay Hernandez, who plays one of the firefighters, literally kicks the shit out of everything. It’s pretty awesome. Finally, the gore effects are top notch. I recommend Quarantine to sick, disturbed individuals like you with your spastic colons and your tiny little chiclet teeth.

Appaloosa

This Sunday last, I caught one of them moving pictures, and a darn fine one at that if I do say so myself. This here picture is called Appaloosa, after the breed of horse that them injuns done shown a preference for. But this ain’t no story about no horse, it’s a tale about two hired guns, two real tough sonsabitches* that take over as lawmen in a town called Appaloosa. That’s where the title comes from I reckon. Or it could be the horse like I said previous because the town could be named after a horse. It don’t really matter none. These two here lawmen former mentioned are acted out by Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen. Ed is the weatherworn leader type who’s been through some real tough circunstances in his time on this here rough earth. He’s a dern quick draw with that there Colt revolver and he’s dead-eye ackurate. The other guy with the eyetalian name passes his time as Ed’s silent-type pardner being as he doesn’t talk much but he’s a mighty fine shot with his 8-gauge shotgun and that’s a hell of a gun if I do say so myself which I just done. The required female part that these pictures always got is acted by that woman named Renee Z-whatever and when she done got to the town I couldn’t reckon if she was the same woman who was in that Bridget Jones picture that my whore of a wife is always begging me to sit through. Renee’s face appears to be more pinched up and puckered and squinty-eyed than I recall from times past. And kinda puffy. No matter, I’d ride with her in the hard gallop any old time, heh. The bad guy is this fella named Bragg who is a civilized, high falutin’ type that speaks all them intalectualistic words from books and such. By hell, I wanted to slap his educated mouth or at least force him to eat some road apples to get him to shuddup for once, godammit. Anyways, this here’s a cowboy picture so there’s some gunfights and horse riding and plenty of drinkin of the devil water (the missus won’t let me get near the stuff after the last time I pissed on the goddamn cat to keep it from turding behind the sofa, the filthy demon). There’s even some whores if you’re into that kind of thing and who ain’t? But mostly it’s a story about two men and the cowboy ideals they live by, including concepts such as loyalty and pride and being a man instead of being a pussy. If you’ve got a hankerin for a good quality cowboy movie that ain’t directed by that pansyass Clint**, give a thought to watching Appaloosa. I reckon you just might like it some.

*It done come to my attention that I might could have spelt sonsabitches wrong. The correct spelling and plural grammar of the word is sonofabitches.

**Now listen here. The old Clint of them great Westerns such as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Unforgiven, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and that one about them two mules is a goddamn American icon. The pansyass Clint that I'm speaking about here in this here review is the guy who directed that Midnite Garden movie and the one about the girly boxer.

Red

I have Comcast Digital Cable. I’ve been a customer for a long time, so I no longer qualify for any of those nice introductory offers that make cable affordable. I’m beyond that. I pay twice as much as the newcomers for the same service. This is the world in which we live—a confused place where companies treat new customers like kings while shitting on their established base. The established base is established, so no need to reward those loyal bastards. Marketing in America. Capitalism. I guess I could play the switching game, where you go from DISH to Direct TV to cable and back again, making the rounds every six months or so, but I’m too goddamned lazy. Or I could call Comcast, tell them their service is too expensive for me right now, threaten to switch, and see if they offer me some kind of deal. But that would entail talking to one of their customer service representatives; I’d rather watch soccer. Comcast isn’t entirely bad. I enjoy the OnDemand service to some extent, even though every free movie they offer is Cliffhanger. If you have HBO or one of the other premium channels you can catch up on old episodes of The Wire or Dexter on OnDemand. That’s pretty cool. If you don’t have any premium channels, you can watch Cliffhanger. Or you can pay outrageous prices to watch movies that have been recently released on DVD. If you prefer your movies in HD, you can pay an extra dollar for them. So, the other night, I was searching the OnDemand menu for something to watch. I was in the HD section of the New Releases when I came across a movie that I’ve been excited about seeing: Cliffhanger (just kidding, the movie was Red). Red is the third film based on a Jack Ketchum novel. If you’ve read my reviews, you know that I’m a big Jack Ketchum fan and that I enjoyed both previous adaptations of his work, The Girl Next Door and The Lost. I was surprised to see Red offered on Pay-Per-View because it’s not out on DVD yet. It played at Sundance last January and is supposed to have a small theatrical run in August. But there it was, with a price tag of $8.99. That’s about the same amount I’d pay if I waited to see it in the theatre, but who knows if it will even come to Denver? And if it does come to Denver, it’ll probably play in some low-rent “indie” theatre with broken chairs and broken audio in a part of town where I’d have to pay to park. I have a nice widescreen TV and a pretty good surround sound system in my apartment. The decision was easy. I ordered the fucking movie. In HD.

Red is a story about an old man and his old, mangy dog named Red who is his best friend and a loving companion but in a totally platonic way, like they go fishing together and play catch and then some asshole teenagers kill the old guy’s dog and they don’t show any remorse or apologize about it, it’s just a senseless act of violence and immaturity and they lie to their parents about it and all that the old man wants is an apology, is for the kids to man-up and take responsibility for their actions, but they don’t, so Tom Sizemore gets involved and it turns out that he’s a big asshole too (which we already know because of his crazy eyes and the role he played in Scorcese’s Bringing Out The Dead) with big guns and a big truck, one of those Ford F-350 type trucks with huge tires and patriotic bumper stickers that tiny little penis dudes drive at 85 miles an hour in the fast lane when it’s snowing and icy and shit, spraying your car with road grime and slush, while listening to Toby Keith sing about some hottie with a smoking little body (even though he’s 47 and she’s 16) and things get a little crazy, in the movie I mean, not in real life, things get crazy in the movie adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s Red and the dog’s name becomes a metaphor for rage and anger and violence and then literally becomes the color of the blood that gets spilled when pointless actions and stubborn sensibilities mix and fester and boil in a cauldron of human shit. Read the book. Watch the movie.

Brian Cox, who has been in every movie released during this millennium, plays Avery Ludlow, the protagonist of the story. He carries the film, playing Ludlow as a totally sympathetic character who is pushed to the brink of insanity by actions beyond his control. Watch Red to see why the original Hannibal Lecter is one of the greatest actors working today. Kim Dickens (Joanie Stubbs from Deadwood) plays a reporter that becomes interested in Ludlow’s story and tries to help him get some justice. Other notable actors include Robert Englund, Amanda Plummer, and Richard Riehle (that guy from Office Space who invented the “Jump to Conclusions” mat). Red was directed by two people. When I first heard that this adaptation was going to be made, it always had Lucky McKee’s name attached to it. McKee previously directed the cult hit May and The Woods. I like both those movies, so I was excited about his involvement in this one. Then, for some reason that I’m too lazy to research at the moment, he was replaced by a Norwegian director named Trygve Allister Diesen. Whatever happened didn’t seem to affect the movie too much, as I was happy with how it turned out and how it remained true to the book. Thanks to Comcast for making this movie available to me at this time. I appreciate it. Back to Cliffhanger.

Inside (A l'interieur)

I’m tired. I sleep too much. But in between my time spent sleeping and my time spent working, I watch an occasional movie or flick or film. I’m back on Netflix and they haven’t throttled me yet (which was the reason I quit them in the first place), so I get to review some obscure shit again. It turns out there’s this new dimension to Dimension Films, a sub-dimension of the Weinstein Co., called Dimension Extreme. For those of you not in the know, Dimension is a studio that released mostly horror films during the 90’s (the decade when the word extreme was used to describe anything and everything that was fucking cool). They brought us some extreme movies like Scream and From Dusk Till Dawn. Now we’re nearing the end of the 00’s and Dimension is still around, though their films have gotten considerably less extreme, unless you consider the potent extremeness of Mr. 3000 and Who’s Your Caddy?. That’s where Dimension Extreme comes in. If you want to see some crazy, cutting-edge horror, the most eXtreme horror available to human eyes, you rent movies that have the words Dimension Extreme emblazoned in white across a blood-red strip on the upper left corner of the DVD box. At least that’s what the marketing department for Dimension Extreme would have you think. BTW, I drive a Nissan Xterra, so I can validate any claims of extremeness, extremity, and extremepolation.

I’ve watched three Dimension Extreme films in the past few weeks: Diary of the Dead, Black Sheep, and Inside. I hated Diary of the Dead, which makes me sad, because I usually love zombie movies, especially zombie movies directed by George Romero. Diary is complete ass. I also hated Black Sheep. It is one of those horror-comedies that isn’t funny, isn’t scary, and is gory for the sake of gore (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing unless it involves sheep zombies). That brings me to Inside, the movie I am reviewing here. Inside is a French film which means that the actors speak French and the English translation of their words appears in sentences across the bottom of the screen. Or you can watch the dubbed version but dubbing hurts my epididymis. I don’t mind reading subtitles if there aren’t too many to distract me from the picture; there aren’t a lot of subtitles in this movie because there is a lot of screaming and crying and utterances of pain that don’t require translation. So…you shouldn’t avoid this movie just because it has subtitles. I’ll give you other reasons to avoid it.

Inside is about this pregnant girl who survives a car crash that kills her boyfriend. Her baby is okay. This presents a dilemma. She’s so sad about her boyfriend’s death that she doesn’t want to have the baby. She’s reluctantly going through with it. Oh, if you want to know who the actors or directors of this movie are, go to imdb and look them up. I don’t feel like incorporating their names into my review. I’m not sure why, I just don’t. Shut up about it. So the girl goes home to get some rest the night before she is going to be induced into labor. Her doctor agrees to pick her up the next morning at 6 am. She lives alone. It’s Christmas and it’s cold and raining. She knits. I felt a little sad for her. Then some creepy person knocks on her door, asking to use the phone. The person won’t go away and tries to get into the house. The pregnant woman calls the police. The shadowy intruder intrudes. Then the scissors and knitting needles and fireplace pokers come out, fucking stabbing and slicing and poking, blood spraying everywhere, gushing from neck wounds in arterial pulses, blood-painted walls, fucking eyeball-gouging bullshit, hands getting stabbed and nailed to walls (Blood Simple), heads exploding, aerosol flame-throwers to the face, fucking hair on fire, melting skin, fucking bullets and brain matter and gaping wounds, glass shards and CGI babies and shit, without the camera cutting away. Inside wins the award for the goriest movie of the year if there is a category for that shit. Holy fucking balls this movie is gory. It’s so gory that you may be desensitized by the time the absolutely disgusting finale arrives because you’re so used to all the blood and guts and carnage. The Frenchies at the helm of this ship probably sat around a table and decided to make the sickest movie they could possibly make. They outlined all the disgusting kills. The plot would be irrelevant. They said, “Let’s make a movie even bloodier than Haute Tension” (though they said it in French). They said, “What’s grosser than gross?” Good job…you succeeded. High fives all around. Go team.

Disclaimer: I made up the stuff about the intentions of the filmmakers. I watched part of the making-of featurette and they said they were making a “horror thriller”. They wanted to make something visually disturbing and they got this script and they went for it. Good for them.

I’ve seen some people on the internet compare this movie to Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. Please don’t ever do that. Irreversible is disturbing; Inside is disgusting. There are some genuinely tense moments in this movie, but those happen before all the blood-letting. I didn’t care much about the characters or the plot, so the entire movie became a showcase for the gore effects team. They performed admirably (except for the torched head scene, I laughed at that). Give those kids a raise. Surprisingly, there are no exposed breasts in this, so if you thought that there’d be a lot of nudity in this just because it’s a French film, you are wrong. Besides, French films like to show the Cock’nBalls more than boobs anyway (I know you watch the IFC late at night).

Moral of this story: Don’t crash into pregnant ladies; their hormones will get out of whack.

Freedom's Fury

I’m not a big documentary watcher. I’ve seen a few documentaries that I really enjoy, but I don’t usually go looking for them when I’m deciding on something to watch. For some reason, I prefer fiction over non-fiction for my escapism (this includes books as well as movies and TV). So why did I decide to watch a documentary about the 1956 Hungarian Olympic water polo team called Freedom’s Fury? I have a personal attachment to this film. My childhood experience is wrapped up in it.

I was born with severe asthma. As a kid, I spent countless hours in doctor offices and hospital rooms. I took every type of asthma medication available at the time. Asthma affected every aspect of my youth. I couldn’t go on school field trips without parental supervision. I couldn’t spend the night at friends’ houses without my inhalers and nebulizers. I couldn’t run the mile during PE. My doctor told me that I needed to strengthen my lungs and he suggested swimming as the means. I joined a summer league team (the North Lake Dolphins) when I was eight and my swimming career took off.

When I was 9 years old, a coach of the local United States Swimming club saw me swim and wanted me to join his team. USS (now called USA Swimming) is a competitive, year-round program designed to produce Olympic caliber swimmers. I swam for a program in Stockton, CA called Delta Valley Aquatics (DVA). I ended up competing in numerous swim meets, including Far Westerns, a short course and long course championship meet for Pacific area swimmers. I swam numerous events at PRT times and was considered one of the best swimmers in my age group (10 and under). So, what does any of this have to do with the documentary I am supposed to be reviewing? What is my personal tie to this film? It turns out that one of the subjects of the documentary is my old coach, a crazy Hungarian dude named Ervin Zador. Ervin taught me everything I know about swimming and was a huge influence on my character during my pre-teen years.

In the fall of 1956, the country of Hungary was in turmoil. Ever since the conclusion of WWII, Hungary had been occupied by the Soviet Army. Numerous puppet regimes had been put in place to keep the Hungarian people under Soviet influence. In 1956, students and journalists led a political demonstration march through the city of Budapest. The Soviet Union seemed willing to negotiate with the Hungarians at first, but soon went back on their word, leading to a violent conflict that left over 2,500 Hungarians and 722 Soviet soldiers dead. For more details, read about the revolution here. During this time, the Hungarian water polo team was preparing for the summer Olympics in Australia.

Ervin Zador, my old swim coach, was a key member of the 1956 Hungarian water polo team. He was a young, largely untested player that was called up from the club leagues to be a part of the team for the Olympics. Hungary has always had a reputation for great water polo, having won numerous Olympic medals in the past. The 1956 team would be no exception. During the semi-finals of Olympic play, they faced a team that they had trained just a few months earlier, the Soviets--a Soviet team that represented the country that had recently invaded Hungary and killed many its people. Anticipation of the match grew at a feverous pitch with spectators and media packing the venue. The game was one of the most violent water polo games of all time, featuring numerous fouls and cheap shots. Ervin Zador scored 2 of Hungary’s 4 unanswered goals. Near the end of the match, after much verbal taunting, a Russian player named Prokopov sucker punched Zador, opening a bloody gash on his face. Blood pooled in the water and the match was stopped. The zealous media snapped pictures of the bloodied Zador, declaring the contest the Blood in the Water Match. Zador’s injury prevented him from playing in the gold medal match, which Hungary won over Yugoslavia, 2-1. Following the Olympics, Ervin Zador was one of many Hungarian athletes to defect.

I remember hearing about this story as a kid, but I didn’t ever know the details. I knew Ervin had won a gold medal and I had seen the famous picture of him, bloodied at poolside. He didn’t talk about the game. He didn’t talk about that time at all. I remember seeing his gold medal once, at a party we had at his ranch house in Linden, CA. I don’t remember if he showed it to us or if one of his kids got it out (I suspect the latter). This documentary showed me a side of my coach that I didn’t get to see when I was swimming for him. It also reminded of his great personality, his always-positive attitude, and his genuine sense of humor. Ervin is featured in many of the interviews in the documentary and in my opinion is the star of the show. Freedom’s Fury is a well-made documentary that tells one of the greatest Olympic stories of all time. Lucy Liu and Quentin Tarantino produced it, so it has to be great, right? Check it out…with the 2008 Summer Olympics starting in a few weeks, now is a perfect time.

Vantage Point

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a decent action movie. That’s a lie. I recently watched Seagal’s latest DTV movie, Pistol Whipped, which whipped my ass and my pistol simultaneously. It is an amazing tour-de-force of pure genius. But I’m not reviewing it here. I’m instead reviewing another amazing action film that I just watched. Top notch filmmaking. It’s called Vantage Point and it stars my three favorite actors of all time: Forest Whitaker, Dennis Quaid, and Matthew Fox. You may have seen the trailer for this movie when it was in theatres; it played on every TV channel during every commercial break for weeks. You may have seen a befuddled Forest Whitaker with a camcorder in a crowd, recording the assassination of the President of the United States. You may have seen Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox running and jumping and shooting and driving and crashing through the streets of Spain to catch the assassins. You may have wet your pants in anticipation of the film’s greatness.

Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox play Secret Service agents on Presidential detail. The President, or as I will refer to him from now as POTUS, is about to deliver a groundbreaking speech about terrorism in Salamanca, Spain. I went to Salamanca, Spain last January. It’s a cool city. I bought a red t-shirt that says Universidad Salamanca. That means Salamanca University in English. The location where POTUS is set to deliver his momentous speech is Plaza Mayor. I visited Plaza Mayor. I can vouch for the authenticity of this location in the film. As POTUS is getting ready to deliver his world-changing remarks, someone shoots him. Then a bomb goes off somewhere outside of the Plaza. Then a bomb goes off inside the plaza. Boom, boom, boom. Luckily, Forest Whitaker is nearby, filming his experience like a well-trained tourist. The look of shock on his face, the pure terror of violent, unexpected acts is a beautiful thing to behold. Forest has come a long way from his role as Balldozer in Vision Quest. His emotive facial contortions deliver more truth and power than any line of spoken dialogue. The man positively exudes greatness.

Once the assassination and its brief aftermath have taken place, we get to experience it all over again and again through the differing vantage points (this is where they got the idea for the movie’s title) of key onlookers. Each different point of view (i.e. standpoint) provides us, the viewers, with new insights, details, and clues as to what actually transpired. Did POTUS actually get shot? What was the cause of the explosion outside of the plaza? Why did the little girl drop her ice cream? Who are the terrorists? Why is Forest Whitaker so sad and confused? How does Dennis Quaid’s past experience inform his present decision making process? Where did Matthew Fox go and could he possibly have something to do with the assassination attempt? I enjoy how all the characters’ paths are perfectly entwined and how their miniscule actions are a requisite part of everything resolving the only way it can and should resolve. We are the USA. We love our POTUS.

Vantage Point features some truly amazing action sequences and special effects. The explosions are jarring, blunt, and brutal. The filmmakers do a great job of not showing blood during all of the violence. This is especially important to viewers who don’t like blood. Many of the children that watch PG-13 movies aren’t ready for that kind of adult material. They shouldn’t have to see mangled body parts and gore after an explosion or a gunfight…that kind of realism is just plain gratuitous. There is a car chase sequence in this film that rivals the greatest chase scenes of all time, including Bullitt, Ronin, and The Bourne Supremacy. It features some of the best sped-up camera work I have ever witnessed. The chase ends with Dennis Quaid kicking out the windshield of his car and climbing through the vacated space--a moment of untainted cinematic perfection and my favorite scene in the movie. Dennis elevates his acting to Nick Nolte levels of brilliance.

I recommend Vantage Point to anyone who likes hardcore, kickass action movies of the highest tier. I’m looking forward to the sequel, Vantage Point II: 2 Points of View. I sincerely hope that Forest Whitaker and Dennis Quaid reprise their influential roles and that the entire movie is filmed from their vantage points and shown in split-screen. I’d like to see Matthew Fox come back as well, but that would be a difficult casting situation seeing as he died in this one (spoiler).

The Happening

Am I allowed to review a movie that I didn’t finish watching, a movie that pushed me out of the theatre 30 minutes after it started, a movie so amazingly boring that I was willing to eat the $7.50 I paid for admittance? Yes, I am. My $7.50 investment entitles me to review said movie. Said move = The Happening. The Happening = poop. I paid $7.50 for poop. I can drop my own dumpage for free. I can find poop on the lawn outside my apartment and step in it and smear it on my carpet and I don’t have to pay a penny.

I was pretty excited to see The Happening after I watched the red band trailer on the internet. M. Night Shyamalan makes an R-rated movie with lots of gore starring Marky Mark and Bones’ sister (the TV show Bones, not the Snoop Dogg movie) who I used to think was kind of cute but now I’m not so sure. The trailer shows people falling off of buildings, people stabbing themselves in the neck, people getting run over by riding lawnmowers, etc. Color me stoked. Then I got to the theatre. When the movie started, I was the only person there. After a few minutes, a couple of other people wandered in. I quickly noticed that there was something wrong with the sound. The supposedly pristine Dolby Digital soundtrack was oscillating from side to side accompanied by a low level hiss that sounded like wind in a tunnel. I don’t think this was the fault of the film; there was something wrong with the AMC theatre equipment. Good sound is as important as a good picture. I paid decent money for this movie. I expect better sound than I can get on my home theatre set-up. I left the theatre (after about 30 minutes into the movie) to tell the service desk about the problem but instead of returning to finish the movie, I went home. I had no interest in discovering what else happened in The Happening because nothing had happened up to the point when I bailed. That’s not totally true. Some stuff had happened. I got to see lots of extreme close-ups of John Leguizamo’s face and nasty, crooked yellow teeth. He wore a constant expression of sadness and befuddlement. I got to see Marky Mark play the worst impersonation of a biology teacher ever put to film. Completely unbelievable. I like Mark Wahlberg; he’s great in Shooter and The Departed and Fear and Four Brothers and such. He’s terrible in this (at least in the first half-hour). I got to see extreme close-ups of Zooey Deschanel’s face, her close-set, nearly crossed eyes and her I-have-no-idea-where-the-fuck-I-am expression. I was privileged to witness a discussion about the merits of the hot dog and questions concerning the availability of mustard. The hot dog dialogue was my breaking point. I stood up and promptly exited the theatre, walked to the service desk where I notified the 16 year-old of the sound issues, and left the AMC 24 complex. I got in my car and drove home. I put my new Gangs of New York BluRay in my Sony PlayStation 3 and cleansed my mind of all things M. Night. Goodnight M. Night. See you on DTV soon.

Sleuth

Sleuth. Say the word a few times. Sleuth, sleuth, sleuth. It sounds kind of ridiculous when uttered aloud. I’m not sure why. It’s just one of those words. And one of those movies. A ridiculous one. I saw the trailer for Sleuth a few months ago and decided to give it a shot. After all, it stars Jude Law and Michael Caine, two pretty okay actors. It’s a remake of an older film of the same name that stars Michael Caine as well (only in the original, which I haven’t seen, Caine plays Jude Law’s character). It’s directed by actor Kenneth Branagh, whose previous directorial efforts mostly include Shakespeare adaptations.

Michael Caine plays an old mystery/thriller writer named Andrew whose wife is cheating on him with an out-of-work actor with really bad hair named Milo (Jude Law). Andrew invites Milo to his home to discuss the affair. Andrew lives in this ridiculous house that has lots of moving walls, weird lights, an elevator, and surveillance equipment that is all controlled by one of those little Apple remotes. My little Apple remote only controls the volume on my computer and enables me to skip past songs that I don’t want to hear. It doesn’t control my security cameras. I got ripped off. I want a remote that controls lighting to paint my apartment in teals and fuchsias. The prop department obviously didn’t watch Bruce Willis’ Hostage to see what a real multi-purpose remote should look like. Instead, they relied on the general stupidity of their intended audience (50+ year-old Michael Caine fans) to not notice their glaring technical mistake. Little did they know, a 32 year-old Jude Law fan (well, I liked him in GATTACA) and proud owner of an Apple computer would watch this film and call them out on their inaccuracies. Bastards.

The entire movie takes place in Andrew’s house. There are only two characters (spoiler). There is a part when you think there might be a third character, but that character is played so poorly and has such bad make-up that you know it’s Jude Law playing Milo trying to trick Andrew. Did I mention how bad Jude Law’s hair is in this? A greasy, stringy, unwashed mop. I think his monstrous coiffure is intentional, as Andrew insists that Milo is a hair stylist by occupation, much to Milo’s chagrin (another weird word, like sleuth, that I just had to work into this review). I think it’s supposed to be a joke but I wasn’t laughing. His hair nearly distracted my attention from the trite, “aren’t we clever”, stage dialogue (if I were British, I would refer to this film’s dialogue as utter drivel; I would also spell behavior as behaviour) and the blatantly terrible overacting. The characters recite some of the lamest lines in the history of bad Michael Caine movies. I’d reproduce some of those lines here but I didn’t take any notes while watching the movie and even if I had, they’d be incomprehensible because I was in the midst of an amazing vicodin buzz (legally prescribed for my recurring intestinal issues), which was a good thing because the pills enabled me to make it through this cinematic mess.

Warning: there are no hot chicks in this movie. Not one. It’s just Michael Caine and Jude Law, enveloped in some sort of bizarre sexual tension. We don’t even get to meet the woman they are fighting over. Also, there isn’t much sleuthing going on…just a bunch of psychological game playing and play acting. Maybe the title is in reference to the scene where Milo dresses up as a detective, but that part of the movie sucks balls (spoiler). Other apt titles for this movie might be: An 86 Minute Conversation Between Two People, Michael Caine is Gay, Shooting Blanks, Incredibly Bad Breath, etc. I can’t really think of anything positive to say about this movie. I would recommend it to all Michael Caine fans, people who like totally unrealistic, overwrought dialogue, and people who say trousers instead of pants or use words like ballyhoo. Cheers.

Rambo

Te vau bou no tre mon koo sop BOOM va keunbow lo se RATATATATATATAT ming how loon kon sing mong BANG aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! SPLAT. Live for nothing or die for something, mumble, Burma, mumble, it’s a war zone, blah, blah, something unintelligible…RATATATATATAT, pop, pop, SWOOSH, BOOM!!! Yep, I’m reviewing Rambo.

Rambo, the fourth film in the series, not to be confused with Rambo: First Blood Part II, was originally going to be called John Rambo. I’m not sure why Stallone changed the title. I’m just not willing to do the research on that one. This film is not a remake of the other Rambo; it’s a new, frenetic and brutal beast of a movie that features an aged, yet competent Sylvester Stallone in the acting, writing, and directing roles. I missed Rambo when it hit theatres this last winter. I was too busy not watching movies in theatres but instead watching movies on DVD in my apartment. It’s become a rare occurrence when I courageously venture to that fabled land of talkative, texting teens and their blue cell-phone glows. After watching it, I’m kind of bummed that I missed out on the possible community experience that would have made this movie that much more special. You know what I’m talking about. Getting hammered and seeing this movie in a theatre full of other hammered dudes (and the few awesome chicks that support this kind of mayhem), laughing at the lame one liners and useless dialogue and cheering and yelling and fist-pumping as John motherfucking Rambo mans the 50-caliber and shreds through wave after wave of Burmese soldiers. I watched it alone with the surround cranked up. And still loved it.

Rambo IV begins in Thailand. Rambo is a snake hunter; he catches cobras and sells them to retards that put on snake charming or see-how-pissed-off-you-can-make-the-snake type shows. He owns, maintains, and lives on a shitty old boat. He’s depressed and grumpy and dirty and can barely speak coherent sentences. Some Christian missionaries from Colorado (props) show up and ask Rambo if he’ll take them into Burma so they can deliver supplies and medical aid to oppressed civilians. Rambo tells the leader of the group, “no way, pal.” He doesn’t really say that but he tells them that their efforts won’t change anything because nothing ever changes which is the message of this film and the theme of Rambo’s life. Nothing ever changes. One of the women in the group, a missionary named Sarah (played by Dexter’s girlfriend), tries to convince Rambo to take them and he says no to her a few times before finally giving in to her wily, womanly ways. Rambo takes the group into Burma and shit happens and Rambo has to save them, along with a motley group of mercenaries. That’s the plot. It’s just an excuse to get Rambo out of his quiet, isolated shell and behind the armor shield of a jeep-mounted 50-caliber machine gun.

I’ve never before seen so many detached limbs, exploding heads, and severed bodies in a single film. This movie is Violent (with a capital V, twice). Rambo rips through the badguys on his quest to save Dexter’s girlfriend and the Christians. He crafts his own knife from hot metal to do so. He is relentless; he gets shit done. There’s a scene in this movie (to which I’ve alluded twice in this review already) that rivals the violence of the opening sequence in Saving Private Ryan. Real-life soldiers who have seen the film confirm that the effects of the gun in said scene are completely realistic. Wow. I watched the special features to get some background info on this stuff. You can too.

Now comes the requisite point of the review where I compare Rambo to the previous films in the series. That’s easy. This is the second best film in the series, following the unbeatable First Blood. This movie greatly surpasses the slick 80’s violence of Rambo: First Blood Part II and the steaming pile of poop that is Rambo III. I love the direction that Stallone employs…a shaky, stalking camera movement that he claims is what the film would look like if Rambo himself directed it. Stallone brings John Rambo back to the people and the people rejoice. Yea, the people weep with joy.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

One of my earliest movie theatre memories involves Raiders of the Lost Ark. My mom, my sister, and I were planning on seeing some Disney movie. The show we were going to see was sold out. So my mom took us to Raiders instead. I was 5 years old. Raiders was already playing, so we missed a good portion of it. I remember the scene where Marion is hiding in the baskets in India or somewhere while Indy is being chased by sword-wielding henchmen. That must have been the point when we walked in. I remember being scared by the creepy looking German with the coat hanger, the one who burned his hand on the medallion. I remember the ending, the scene where Indy says something like, “whatever you do, don’t look”. My mom took that to heart and told me to cover my eyes. I peeked. My sister didn’t (she’s a wuss). Ghosts flew out of The Ark of the Covenant and burned holes in people, melted some faces, and even blew one guys head apart. I was amazed. Pure face-melting brilliance. This has to be the reason why I like to watch gory horror movies. It’s my mom’s fault.

I love Raiders. It’s one of the best action films of all time. I’ve watched it numerous times. There are some genuinely tense scenes and some great humorous moments. I love the fight with the big, bald German badass who gets cut up by the airplane propeller. I love the snake in the cockpit. I love the car chase where Indy ends up on the grill of the truck and has to slide under it while it’s driving. I love the shootout in Marion’s bar. It’s over-the-top action that retains a sense of reality. Great stuff.

Then came the sequels: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade (not really…yes, it really exists, but it’s not a true sequel, it’s a tangential storyline), and the latest mouthful, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If I remember correctly, the original movie was simply called Raiders of the Lost Ark. I don’t think it had the “Indiana Jones and the…” attached to the title. I might be wrong. I don’t care. I think that when the producer/director/whoever put the Indiana Jones part at the beginning of the title, the films went downhill. Too much focus on Indy; not enough focus on the rest of the raiders. Just kidding, but not really. I enjoyed the dark and gory Temple of Doom, but could have done without the stupid side-kick and the annoying love interest character. Nothing beats a good heart-ripping scene. I also liked The Last Crusade. Sean Connery did a great job playing off of Harrison Ford. It wasn’t as gory as the earlier two films and relied a little more on humor than on action sequences. The part where the one dude drank from the wrong cup and got old really fast was kind of cool, but nowhere reached the level of awesomeness as the face melting of Raiders. I do give The Last Crusade props for severed heads, though.

Now, 19 years after The LAST Crusade, we get Indiana Jones and the whatever, whatever. It’s a sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. They completely ignored The Temple of Doom in this one, while constantly referencing the other films. Going in, I wanted to give The Castle of Crystalskull the benefit of the doubt. I avoided reading any reviews or criticisms of it before watching it. I still haven’t read anything about it; I don’t want to flavor my reviews with the opinions of others. If I wrote for Chud or AICN, I would have already seen an early screening and this review would be called Jared’s Take. It would accompany Devin’s Take and Nick’s Take and Jeremy’s Take and Russ’ Take and Harry’s Take and Moriarty’s Take but not Vern’s Take cause Vern didn’t review it. He reviewed The Class of 1984 which I just watched and it is awesome. I watched the new Indy Jones Jr. flick on Memorial Day. I didn’t take any notes or anything, so if I get something wrong in my review, fuck you.

The movie begins with the Paramount fade-in on the mountain, only this mountain is a pile of dirt. A computer generated gopher pops up. Shit. I should have left at this point but I decided to stick it out. Indy looks old. That’s fine, but he runs like Sam Cassell. Sean Connery was old in The Last Crusade but he didn’t seem old. Harrison Ford looks tired and beaten. It must be the earring and the booze. The story is set during the Eisenhower presidency. The Nazis are no longer the bad guys. Now it’s the communists, the fucking red bastards. The opening takes place in a warehouse at Area 51, where the government stores all its secrets like the Ark of the Covenant and other powerful, supernatural artifacts like aliens from Roswell and the faked moon landing stage and staplers and Sharpies and stuff. The main badguy (in this case, badgirl) is played by Cate Blanchett. She has short black hair and a bad accent and she thinks she can read minds. She’s part of the KGB’s brainwashing unit or something. She carries around a long saber, like the kind you see in those Marines commercials where it looks like the guy is going to cut off his ear (I wish that would happen, just once). Indy has a friend named Mac who is a turncoat (spoiler) and a greaser motorcycle kid named Mutt who follows him around. Mutt is played by Shia LaBoofer and his character is actually Indy’s son (spoiler, but everyone saw it coming). Indy must have had sex with Marion on the submarine in Raiders of the Lost Ark (putting two and two together) and Mutt is their spawn. Indy doesn’t realize that Mutt is his son for most of the movie. We know this going in because we aren’t that dumb. Well, the people sitting in front of me probably didn’t figure it out until the reveal because they were retarded. And they smelled like one of those pine air-freshener thingies that you hang in your car.

The rest of the movie is about a crystal skull that has magical powers. The skull is shaped like an alien head, but not like an E.T. alien because E.T.’s head looks like old Indy’s scrotum. Kids don’t need to see that on the big screen. This is a sleek, 21st century alien head. Whoever first returns the magical, mystical skull to its rightful resting place gets the skull’s power. Hence the car chases. Hundreds of car chases. Indoor car chases, outdoor car chases, chases along cliffs and through jungles. Indy is constantly crawling through windows and over hoods and over roofs and punching drivers and jumping from one car to another. Then Mutt is swinging from vines like fucking Tarzan and sword fighting while straddling two cars and being hit in the nuts by plants. Funny. And then there are a bunch of monkeys. And human-eating fire ants. And quicksand that isn’t quicksand. And aliens from another dimension (spoiler). This movie quickly devolves into The Mummy Returns. Even the ending is similar (all the shit spinning around in the air). Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a rip-off of The Mummy Returns which is a rip-off of the earlier Indiana Jones films. I’m at that nexus in the universe that Lewis Black spoke of…the one where you walk out of one Starbucks and right across the street, directly in front of you, is another Starbucks. It’s all the same. This film’s greatest flaw is that it presents nothing new. It rehashes nearly every scene from the previous films. It tries desperately to be funny, but the jokes fall flat. Karen Allen’s reprisal of her Marion role is a joke, and not a funny one. John Hurt’s Oxley character was obviously written for Sean Connery. When Connery decided not to do the film, they wrote him out with a photograph and a line of dialogue. Then, instead of re-writing his part, they just put in a different character name. Lazy.

The action sequences are computer generated blurs, sapped of any tension they could have had. If you want to see how an intense chase sequence should play out, watch Ronin or the second Bourne movie. Practical effects, people. Green screen magic should only be used for things that can’t be done with practical effects. If you can’t have Shia LaBoofer swinging from vines and straddling two cars while fencing in real life, toss the scene. Think up something else. He’s not a fucking superhero; he’s a greaser with a switchblade. It’s like the scene from Die Another Day where James Bond surfs an iceberg. Throw it out. The Scorpion King at the end of The Mummy Returns is laughable, but the new Hulk looks just as terrible. Stick an epee in it and call it done. Stop writing movies based on the fact that you can shoot all the action scenes and characters in CGI; write them as if you didn’t have that luxury and use it only when necessary. Goddamn. Spielberg is Michael Bay on Quaaludes.

Back to Indy 4: Why in the hell was there a wedding in this movie? Who wants to see a wedding in a movie? For that matter, who wants to see one in real life? Weddings are boring and have no place in action films. Same goes for funerals. If a character dies, we don’t need to see a bunch of extras mourning his/her death at graveside. Move past it. Take the unnecessary human elements out. Save stuff like that for right before the credits. Do that cheesy thing where you tell the audience what happens to the characters in the future in bold, declarative sentences: Indy and Marion settle down and get married. Oxley gets lost in the Amazon on an expedition in search of his balls. Mutt Jones rapes a gopher. The end.

Update: My friend asked me if I thought this movie was really as big a disaster as I painted it to be. This is my response that I posted on his website:

I don't know man. Vern liked it. I was bored with it. I laughed a couple of times and enjoyed some of the action, but a lot of it seemed forced. It does a good job playing on the paranoia of the 50's. I'll give it that. I was really upset that they went the whole CGI route with it, to the extreme. I think I'm getting old. I'm not willing to change with the times. This movie is like the Die Another Day of the series. I wanted a Casino Royale. Oh well. Go see it and review it. I'd like to read your take on it.

Untraceable

Add another really dumb movie to the pile of dumb movies I’ve seen this year. This one is called Untraceable. It stars Diane Lane and it’s really dumb. The plot is dumb, the acting is dumb, the writing is dumb, the quote on the cover of the DVD box proclaiming it to be “the Silence of the Lambs of the internet age” is dumb, the guy who made the quote is a dumbass and deserves to be fired from his dumb job, and I’m dumb for having watched it.

Diane Lane plays an FBI computer forensic expert. She spends a lot of time busting 13 year-olds for pirating DVD’s and music. This movie is an 88-minute version of those anti-piracy commercials. There is a dumb scene where a kid gets busted for stealing credit card information from people who torrent his pirated media. He uses some sort of Backdoor Trojan approach that doesn’t involve a butthole and a condom. Hey all you stupid people who use torrent sites, don’t you know that all your personal information is getting ripped off just because you’re too cheap and lazy to buy the actual crappy DVD version of Beowulf that you are stealing or borrowing or whatever you call it? The FBI is watching you and people like Diane Lane and her retarded assistants will find you and fine your ass or put you in jail because we all know how much our jails need to be populated with pre-pubescent teenage boys.

The dumb plot of the movie (other than the anti-piracy part) involves a killer who kidnaps people and kills them using intricate devices like heat lamps and acid baths and heparin IV injections and posts video of them struggling and suffering and dying on the internet. The more people that log on to the site to watch the torture, the faster the victim dies. It’s all live, with people commenting on what they’re seeing, typing things like omg, lol, fry dude fry, this is teh suk, u pwnd him, etc. The website is called killwithme.com. The front page features an image of a skull wearing child-molester glasses. Kill With Me is written in red over a black background. Black + red = evil. You are an accomplice to the murder if you log on to the site just as you’re an accomplice to dumbness if you watch this movie. I thought the killer would turn out to be one of the FBI assistants but it wasn’t. I’m dumb. It was just some random kid with a retarded back-story that gave him motive.

Untraceable also attempts to address other complex issues such as what it’s like to be a single, working mother. Diane Lane’s character has a daughter who she constantly has to leave with her mother when the shit hits the fan. This happens a lot. Tons of shit. She has to read her daughter bedtime stories after long hours at work to make up for it. The shit inconveniently hits the fan during the daughter’s roller-rink birthday party and mother and daughter shoot Diane some discouraging looks when she leaves. I’d have bolted first chance I got cause that party looked lame. Roller-skating sucks. There’s also the issue of the single mother still getting over the death of her recently deceased husband while being attracted to a cop. No relationship develops. This is a red herring. The cop has small balls.

Watch for the awesome OnStar advertisement at the beginning of the movie. It’s so out of place that you know they’re going to use that product in some clever way later on in the movie. Thanks GM.

Untraceable makes Feardotcom look like The Net.

Updated to add: My friend posted a blog the other day about Morse Code and the effect it would have on certain popular songs. This movie uses Morse Code in a creative way as well. While one of the characters is being tortured, he's trying to communicate with the FBI by blinking out messages in Morse Code. One of the FBI dudes says something like, "I think his right eye is the dots and his left is the dashes." Amazing.

I Know Who Killed Me

I Think I Know Who Might’ve Killed Me If I Hadn’t Been So Stoned is a movie about a serial killer and Lindsay Lohan. I'm going to make a bunch of funny Lindsay-Lohan-is-so-screwed-up jokes in this review. Those are hilarious. She’s a drug addict. Get it? LOL! Sometimes she shows off her vag in public. Ha Ha Ha, no panties. Did you hear that Lindsay is in rehab again? Ho Ho Haw Haw Har-de-Har. What a skank. She should be named Lindsay Ho-han. Giggle, giggle. Look…I don’t give a bastard’s beanbag about an actor’s personal life. I don’t. They get drunk, they say stupid shit, they fart in a club, they show a nipple, big deal. I don’t care that Tom Cruise believes in Scientology and I don’t care that Katherine Heigl is a Mormon. I watch movies because they are sometimes entertaining. The real-life personality problems of Hollywood stars don’t entertain me (unless a real-life Michelle Monaghan wants to come to my house and entertain me personally).

I Know Who Killed Me is Chris Siverston’s (The Lost) attempt at directing an entire film about the colors blue and red. That’s all you need to know about it. The symbolism of the colors. Their meaning. The psychology of pigmentation. This shit is getting deep, so put on your wading boots. We’re going to catch us some Redside Shiners and some Bluegills. Red is hot and sexy and pole-dances; blue is calm and cool and plays the piano. Red is trailer-trash; blue is affluent and cultured. Blue is first place; red is second. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Red Lindsay and Blue Lindsay and a killer with blue, nitrile gloves (he must be allergic to latex) and some blue roses and some red blood and some severed appendages. Fingers falling off. Have you figured out who killed her yet? Oh, I didn’t list the suspects: naïve boyfriend, sexy gardener, creepy piano teacher, concerned father, banal biology teacher. It doesn’t really matter. The whole point of the movie is trying to figure out how Lindsay can know who killed her if she’s already dead.

I kind of liked this movie. The acting is pretty crappy and the writing is mediocre but the direction is interesting and unique, at times. The plot twist is stupid and I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters. Yet, I was entertained. I laughed a lot. I like Lindsay Lohan’s freckles. This movie should have been released direct-to-video or direct-to-cable or as part of that After Dark Horrorfest thing. But I guess since Captivity got a theatrical release, this deserved one too. I’m looking forward to the DTV sequel starring Tara Reid and Edward Norton (who will be unfairly relegated to the DTV industry after Hulk 2 fails).

In conclusion, I’m bewildered by the trend of having actresses act as strippers in movies where they never actually strip (i.e. Jessica Alba in Sin City and Natalie Portman in Closer and Rose McGowan in Planet Terror). What does that say about our society? Do we live in a red and blue world with no shades of purple? Is it too much to ask for some basic honesty in storytelling?

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead is the most recent movie from famed octogenarian filmmaker, Sidney Lumet. He’s directed some classics like Network and Dog Day Afternoon. He’s also directed a bunch of movies I haven’t seen, nor really care to see. I like to watch movies that have either the word devil (Oh, God! You Devil) or the word dead (House of the Dead) in their titles. This one has both.

BTDKYD (you’re supposed to abbreviate long movie titles with awkward acronyms) stars Ethan Hawk and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The play brothers (Hank and Andy) who have problems like heroin addiction, infidelity, spastic behavior, needing money, etc. Stuff we’ve seen before. Their dad (Albert Finney) is a grumpy old man who always favored Hank over Andy when they were growing up. This becomes an important plot element, along with the heroin addiction, infidelity, spastic behavior, lack of money, etc. A robbery goes wrong and it affects a lot of people, leading to much crying and yelling and death. This movie is okay--a watch-it-one-night-when-it's-free-on-cable-and-you-have-some-vicodin-handy type of film. I really like both lead actors, but feel they have been better in other films like Training Day and that movie where Hoffman huffs gasoline. Just kidding about the PSH one. He’s really good in Magnolia and The Big Lebowski and that new movie I haven’t seen where he plays a CIA guy opposite Tom Hanks. I probably won’t watch that movie because I hate Julia Roberts’ fake southern accent. It makes me sleepy. He's not as creepy as he is in Happiness but you do have to endure viewing his pasty ass during a doggy-style humping scene. I have a few questions about BTDKYDMFer (Spoiler Warning):

1. Does everybody own a handgun except me?

2. Why are Marisa Tomei’s breasts so perfect?

3. Do hospitals still use those sticky chest sensors to detect heart-rate? I thought they had all switched to that finger-clamp thingy.

4. Should I sleep with my brother’s wife?

5. Does smothering someone with a pillow really work?