Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 43 Wolf in the Fold
This episode was not exactly a pillar of women’s liberation. If one could have a real complaint with regards to this show in general it’s that in spite of all it’s attempts at racial issues, anti war, and social problems the sexism and misogyny were rampant and never so much as in this episode. 
Women are pretty much treated as inanimate sex objects and are more or less helpless in the face of masculine dominance (Not to mention brutally murdered en masse. Problem solved image, while not necessarily funny, comes from the Funny T Shirt category. Sorry it was the best misogynist image I could find). One of the worst quotes from Mr. Spock ever came from this one: “women are more easily and more deeply terrified, generating more sheer horror than the male of the species.”
If anything redeeming can be had from this episode it is that if you compare this to any of the TNG shows you can see how greatly the shift in gender parity has progressed. I won’t pretend there aren’t still major issues surrounding this today but in TNG none of this dancing sex slave girl BS would have surfaced. Also for once Kirk wasn’t the focus of the show. It’s nice to see Scotty get his chance at bat.
However, let’s talk about the psycho-tricorder for a minute. So this device records anything that happens to someone for the last 24 hours. Umm, excuse me but wouldn’t that have been the perfect answer to like 85% of the other episodes? Court Martial? Turnabout Intruder? And the Children Shall Lead? The Trouble with Tribbles? Journey to Babel? Mudd’s Women? Space Seed? Dagger of the Mind? Charlie X? The Man Trap? The Conscious of the King? Spock’s Brain? Every one of these episodes could have been solved in short order with the use of the psycho-tricorder. Just strap Kara into one of those and figure out exactly what she did with Spock’s brain. It should have been the most commonly used device after communicators.
Oh, well. I guess sometimes you just invent stuff to keep the episode moving without having to worry about how it will affect future episodes (cough cough kironide cough cough). Also by listing all those episodes I just realized that TOS had some very cool episode titles. Suck it, TNG. Encounter at Farpoint might be the worst title ever.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 44 The Trouble With Tribbles
Ah, a classic. Of course it is in my nature to be a contrarian and as this episode is beloved by almost everyone I should find a reason to hate it, but I don’t. This episode puts a big smile on my face every time. I love the story, I love the Klingons, I love the big bar fight started by Scotty; there is nothing in this episode that does not make me happy.
I could talk about the paranoia of the 70’s and how the Klingons were clearly the Russians, but honestly I have always had another question. At one point Kirk goes to the rec room to get dinner and his meal comes out of the replicator covered with Tribbles who had eaten his food. The question is this: did the replicator replicate some live Tribbles? Is the TOS replicator different from the TNG? Is it just a very high speed food processor? If so how did the Tribbles survive being microwaved or whatever process was used to heat up the food? Shouldn’t Kirk have gotten a meal of fried Tribble? Crazy Delicious image courtesy of the Star Trek t shirt collection.
Another thing I love about this episode is that is for the first time ever showed Kirk beaten down and at his wits end. The scene where he is walking slowly around the bridge picking up Tribbles pretty much says everything possible about what was going on. When he finally freaks out it the timing and tone is perfect. I also like how he started the episode not taking the grain or Tribbles at all seriously but eventually had to. Kudos to the great director Joseph Pevney.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to throw a shout out to my friend Miles, the Tribble Guy. I have seen him at every Star Trek convention we have set a booth up at and he is a good dude. He and I usually sit around bitching about the assorted conventions we do. He is not hard to spot as he drives a panel truck with giant Tribbles on it. He sells Tribbles of the highest quality, not to mention stuffed germs that are hilarious. You can find them at his site Tribble Toys.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 45 the Gamesters of Triskelion
This episode always brings a big smile to my face. As a kid my favorite episodes always had a lot of hand to hand combat and this episode was nothing but that in all of Shatners greatest shoulder roll glory.
This was also the episode that as a preteen boy most flipped my hormone switch, if you know what I mean. To this day whenever I see a girl with green hair (and/or a silver lame bikini) I flash back to the gorgeous Angelique Pettyjohn as Shahna. My ultimate fantasy would have to be her and metal bikini Leia. Yes, I know I’m a pig. At least I’m a nerdy pig.
This episode also introduced us to the currency I plan to use to replace all world currencies once I conquer this pathetic mudball, quatloos (I also plan to have martial combats be a means of settling legal disputes and caning be an Olympic event). I see the Canadian habit of calling their one dollar coin a loonie a sign of their connectivity with the gestalt human consciousness since I believe quatloos will be called “loos” for short. Kudos to our friends in the Great White North.
On a side note if I were a lowlie crewman on board the Enterprise doing my daily job of mucking out the toilets and exterminating Tribbles I think I would have a problem with Kirk betting my life and freedom in a 3 to 1 fight to the death. I’m pretty sure there is a Starfleet regulation somewhere that says your commanding officer cannot sell you into slavery. Image courtesy of the retro TV show t shirt category.
“the Infamous Dave” Inman
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 3D
Spider-Man! Spider-Man! Does whatever any other crappy comic book based movie can!
There are certain franchises that I have what can only be described as a dysfunctional relationship with. Like an abused spouse I get beaten and belittled, yet come crawling back in the vain hope that THIS time things will be different and the abuse will magically stop.
Spider-Man is exactly that kind of franchise and I have to say it might be time for me to give up on the relationship. Like most relationships the first few months were great (in this analogy represented by the original Tobey MacGuire movie) but had slipped down a steady slope of mediocrity and canon abuse. Each movie has a few points that are fun but the fun elements steadily diminish leading us to this remnant, representing the least fun movie of the franchise. I dread whatever they come up with next. I can only assume a movie so unfun that it sucks the fun out of the movies playing in the theaters adjacent to it.
(image courtesy of the Comic Book t shirt category)
If a few years ago you had told me that one day I would be rooting for Disney I probably would have either laughed or punched you out for impugning my integrity. I have always had an adversarial relationship with the Mouse that started at a security related issue in the Haunted House ride back in my childhood and has grown ever since (in 1987 I went to Grad Night at Disneyland with all of my high school “friends” who ditched me in the first 30 minutes, leaving me wandering the “happiest place on Earth” miserably by myself for 8 hours straight like a lost soul. The contrast was mind bending. That is one of the many childhood traumas that makes me the well adjusted adult I am now). In film in the past I have found them oppressive and formulaic, with little redeeming artistic value. As I work in the licensing industry Disney is a name spoken with fear and dread as they will literally hang you from a tree with a barbwire noose if they catch the slightest whiff of copyright infringement (even on images that should have been public domain 50 years ago).
Yet when shown what they have done with most of the Marvel movies I have to say they are really, really good. Spider-Man needs to be rescued from Sony by the lesser of two evils. When comparing this film too the infinitely superior Captain America: the Winter Soldier the contrast is startling. On paper the two movies should be at the same level. They are both sequels. They are both based on iconic Marvel super heroes. In fact Spider-Man is more beloved and has a richer backstory than Captain America. They both exceeded two hours in run time. So why then does this movie suck and the Winter Soldier rule? In fact rather than just list all the things I hated in this film let’s do a comparison, shall we?
1. Three times the villains =/= three times the fun. There is a weird belief in bad comic book movie making that adding more villains will automatically make the movie better. Joel Schumacher (one of the most hated men in the nerd world) proved that concept Batnipple wrong with Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. Villains are fun when they are developed like the heroes and have a personal axe to grind. Each time you add another one to the film you cut the amount of time one can spend on character development, making each one in turn that much more uninteresting. The good movies treat villains almost as importantly as the heroes. Sometimes more so in that you can have a team of heroes but only one villain (Magneto from X-Men, Khan from TWOK, Darth Vader). By adding more villains to this film you take away from the value of each one, resulting in a sum that is less than the individual parts (having Paul Giamatti speak with a Russian accent and hate Spider-Man for getting him arrested earlier is not an automatic good villain. What is this, the Rocky and Bullwinkle show?). Disney wisely opted to go with one great villain. These guys went with a bunch.
2. Have a linear plot without too much to distract from the story. I checked a bunch of other reviewers for this film and the most common joke made was something along the line of “What a tangled web they’ve weaved” or the like. Winter Soldier, while addressing some interesting social issues and having a couple of cool plot twists, had a story that did not verge off into Magical Tangentland every ten minutes. This movie is about what happened to Peter Parkers parents, how he got his powers, how another guy loved and felt betrayed by Spider-Man, Peter haunted by Gwen Stacy’s dead father, his romance with Gwen, Harry Osbourne dying of something and needing Spider-Mans blood, Harry Osbourne haunted by feelings of failure from his father, OsCorp business politics, Spider-Man being abused by the media, Aunt May keeping secrets from Peter, Aunt May’s feelings for Peter, and Harry feeling betrayed by Peter. The film has six different writing credits and it shows. In fact it looks like each one wrote about 20 minutes without ever talking to or meeting any of the others. Also can someone give Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci a job watching paint dry or something? How many crappy scripts are they going to ruin before the literature police show up and arrest them? For the record they did both Star Treks, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, and Van Helsing. I can totally see why they are the best choice for a film with a $200 million budget.
3. Ease back on the romance. Ok, in the comic book I was always more of a Gwen Stacy fan than Mary Jane and love was always a part of Peter Parkers life but jeez, how much of this film is going to be taken up with freaking Gwen Stacy, her option to move to England, her romance with Peter, and the whole thing. I am for sure a fan of Emma Stone and like looking at her on the screen but I’m here to see Spider-Man fight some guy, not watch the two of them eat ice cream. Notice that in Winter Soldier the romance was touched upon and then let rest easy in the background, secure in it’s knowledge that it had contributed just the right amount to the story.
4. No kids. Look, if we learned anything from The Phantom Menace it’s that kids in sci fi action movies suck. They generally suck as actors (not always but often), they take you out of the fantasy of the film into a legitimate concern for their safety (movies like this require suspension of disbelief, something that is hard to do when you see kids on the screen), and rarely add anything to the film. Do the producers really think that more kids are going to want to see this film because some eight year old is on the screen? Kids don’t want to be other kids in a Spider-Man movie. They want to be Spider-Man.
5. Treat the canon with SOME respect. I know I go off on this all the time, but every time you think it might be a good idea to go off canon in the interest of making the movie do something it really shouldn’t take a day to think about it and at the end of the day punch yourself in the balls really hard. If the canon change is worth a punch in the balls go for it. If not stick to the story as written. The fact is the best comic book movies try to stick to the comic book.
6. Don’t give any of your characters back stories that suck. You know, the nerdish guy who had some kind of accident and gained super powers has already been done. He’s called Spider-Man. The Electro back story was as tepid and lame as humanly possible. The whole Harry/Norman Osborne story sucked. They didn’t even bother with Rhino. If you had focused on one villain you could have had more time to develop something more interesting but that’s neither here nor there.
8. Avoiding the temptation to make your cast into a joke. This may or may not be petty but the director of this film is no joke named Mark Webb. Prior to getting on board with the new Spider-Man franchise he had directed absolutely nothing of note. This is purely speculation but I would be willing to bet at some point while considering who to put in charge of this someone at Sony said “This guys last name is Webb! That is fate! Also he must be a huge expert in Spider-Man with a name like that. The fans will love it!” and then proceeded to do more coke. Notice Winter Soldier did not hire a guy named Anthony Shield.
8. Soundtrack. Regular readers might recall me saying I never even notice soundtracks unless it is painfully obtrusive and annoying, and I will just say I haven’t “noticed” a soundtrack this painfully obtrusive in years. It was like sitting in the window seat on a plane and the guy next to you is a 300lbs homeless fan of garlic. The music used in this film would have embarrassed the creators of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica. Again, I never even noticed the soundtrack from Winter Soldier.
I could go on. Bottom line is in my opinion Sony should just sell the license back to Disney and let them make great movies instead of mediocre convoluted BS. Once I am done flagellating myself for coming down in favor of Disney I will feel a lot better about that statement.
The story. There is a lot of potential spoiler material so I am going to go easy on it (also it was so complex I am having a hard time keeping it in order). However a good amount will sneak into this so SPOILER ALERT. Skip ahead to the stars. Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield-the Social Network, I’m Here, Unscripted) starts things off by stopping a hijacking of a truck carrying plutonium (which we are told in one of the lamest plot devices ever is both radioactive and explosive. While the explosive part is sort of true it is not going to blow up like the movie implied. Also plutonium is a solid on this planet, not a liquid. Bad science makes me mad/sad). The hijacker is Paul Giamatti (Saving Private Ryan, Private Parts, the Illusionist) who will later resurface as the Rhino.
While saving the plutonium Spider-Man also saves Max Dillon (Jaime Foxx-Collateral, Django Unchained, Ray), a nebbish electrical engineer working for OsCorp. Max becomes obsessed with Spider-Man and is his biggest fan. Spider-Man goes back to Peter Parker and his college graduation with girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone-Crazy Stupid Love, the Croods, Gangster Squad). They break up for some reason (I think Peter was too worried about her getting hurt and she was pissed off because she’s a big girl and doesn’t need protection? Given that her father died in the last movie 10 feet from Spider-Man I would think his concerns might sit more heavily with her than that, but whatever).
Meanwhile Norman Osborne (Chris Cooper-The Patriot, Adaption, the Muppets) locks down his Father-of-the-Year award by telling his son Harry (Dane DeHaan-Chronicle, Lawless, Kill Your Darlings) how disappointed he is in him and also that Harry is soon going to die of the same ill defined genetic disease (not sure what they called it or if they even gave it a name. For the purposes of this review I am going to call it Shmerpes). Norman dies (without becoming the Green Goblin) and Harry takes over, dealing with internal corporate politics (fascinating, really) before the first symptoms of his Shmerpes kicks in.
Gwen works at OsCorp and meets Max on an elevator. Max’s boss tells him to stick around and work when the entire company is going home over the death of Norman. Max has to perform a high tech repair (known as plugging two cables together) and has an accident where he falls into (oh God I wish I were kidding) a tank filled with mutant electric eels, turning him into Electro.
(You know, a guy gets bitten by a radioactive animal and gains the animals powers has already been done. He’s called Spider-Man. This is just lazy writing all around.)
So Electro comes out and is attacked by cops and beaten down by Spider-Man. Meanwhile Harry is desperately searching for a cure for Shmerpes and discovers the fact that Peter Parkers father Richard was working with Norman on some mutated spiders but they were all destroyed. For some reason Harry thinks this venom is a cure and also that Spider-Man must have gotten his powers from these spiders. (Oh, yeah. Radioactive spider venom now has healing properties (cough cough Wolverine cough cough).)
So Harry asks Peter to ask Spider-Man for some of his blood in order to cure his Shmerpes but for some reason Spider-Man knows more about his blood than the entire OsCorp research team and tells Harry that the blood is too dangerous (um, Harry, Peter’s best friend, is dying. What does Spider-Man think the blood is going to do? Make Harry double dead?).
Things go haywire from there. Harry loses control of OsCorp and busts Electro out of the facility where they are torture-experimenting on him (?). They get the company back and Harry discovers that the guy who took over had the spider venom all the time. He takes some of it at gunpoint but it combines with his Shmerpes to do something bad (?). He more or less collapses and only by sticking himself into the Green Goblin suit (it just happened to be lying around) can he survive. Everyone decides they hate Spider-Man for assorted ill defined reasons and wreaking the whole city is worth getting revenge.
The stars:
Action was pretty good. They definitely captured what it’s like to be and/or fight against Spider-Man. Two stars. Visuals and special effects were great. I really liked the look of Electro and the big fight scene between him and Spidey was awesome. Two stars. I really liked Dane DeHaan as Harry Osbourne. He really brought as much heat as he could to the film. One star. As a purist I should probably hate the new Rhino suit but honestly I loved it. Extremely cool. I also loved the new Goblin suit. Too bad we never got more than three minutes of either of then. Two stars. Emma Stone is very easy on the eyes and played her role well. One star. If you don’t feel the need for character development and a coherent story this film is fun. Two stars. Total: ten stars.
The black holes.
Too many villains dammit. Give me a bad guy to get to know and sink my movie going teeth into. One black hole. Way too much going on in the story. One black hole. Way too much romance. Do we really care that Gwen is considering moving to England so much that we have to go with her on her interview? One black hole. The whole parents sub plot and his fathers part in creating Spider-man was also totally unnecessary and stupid (actually those three last words describe most of the sub plots). One black hole. Massive plot holes. How is it spiders created by Richard Parker are still alive to bite 14 years later? How did he get a secret lab built in an abandoned subway platform? Did OsCorp build it? If so why did they not come get all his research after he betrayed them? How is the lab fully functional and spotless with biological samples in Petri dishes 14 years later? How is it Peter and Harry are best friends when they haven’t seen each other in 8 years? The list goes on. One black hole. Going off canon in really stupid directions. One black hole. Bad science. One black hole. The soundtrack felt like I was wrestling Shmoo and lost. Smothering. One black hole. Total: eight black holes.
A total of two stars, and me once again frustrated with what could have been. The potential of this film was great but instead they just did the typical Hollywood design-by-committee pap. When I look a this film and the convoluted yet horribly simplified story, the massive special effects, and the lack of real character development I realize that it was clearly made with overseas audiences in mind. This sort of thing will go over great in China. Should you see it? Sure. It’s fun and it’s Spider-Man. However will you want to see it a second time? I do not. Bottom line I am eager to see Winter Soldier a third time but given the prospect of seeing this one again I’d rather watch Tobey MagGuire on DvD. For me that is the mark of a good or bad movie. Date movie? Sure, why not? I don’t think this will get her pants off but it will not keep her pants on, if you get my meaning. Bathroom break? I think the scene with Peter discovering his fathers lab is totally disposable. Either that or any of the scenes with Aunt May. In the comic she was the most boring part of the story and nothing in this film improves upon that. At 142 minutes you will probably need a break somewhere.
Thanks for reading. I’ll try to get something else watched soon. In truth I saw this Thursday night and have been putting off writing it. I know when I find myself reading old blog posts in order to correct grammar errors I really don’t want to write it, and the mundanity of a franchise I used to love does not fire my enthusiasm. Feel free to post comments on this film or my review here, or send me an email if you have off topic questions or suggestions to [email protected]. Also join the dozens of followers I have on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Thanks and have a great night.
“The Infamous Dave” Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 46 A Piece of the Action
Yes I’m back on this. In fact I need to stay on it in order to actually finish this project. I have an idea following this for TNG next.
So A Piece of the Action. I quite liked this episode. The story of how the Sigma Iotians became all 20’s gangster actually made sense, as opposed to “they just evolved into an exact replica of a Paramount backlot”. Sorry but the whole Yang thing from Omega Glory always bugged me (not to mention the Roman Empire from Bread and Circuses).
The other part about this that rocked is it really shows the importance of the Prime Directive. The book Chicago Mobs of the Twenties was left pretty much by accident by the Horizon and rewrote the entire direction of the culture of the Sigma Iotians. Would that JJ Abrams had watched this episode before creating his last abomination (actually, would that JJ Abrams had ever watched a single episode before signing up to direct the Star Trek reboot).
As an aside I recently learned that Star Trek fans at the Vegas Con voted Star Trek Into Darkness the worst movie of the series. Kudos to you all. This is why I love Trek fans and am proud to count myself among your number. Of course the TNG Fanboys voted First Contact the number two best movie in a lame homage to the Borg but as long at TWOK is number one I have no real complaint (although if we were to sit down together I could tell you in excruciating detail why First Contact also sucks. Am I too hardcore in my Star Trek purity? Mabye). I might do a blog about that list some time in the future. It puts a smile on my face.
The episode image comes from the TV Show t shirt category. Yes, I know it has the wrong number on it. I go by release order while my printer goes by production number. It is a bone of contention.
“The Infamous Dave” Inman
A Haunted House Review
Stupid, childish, offensive, and hilarious.
So I had a choice of this one or the Quiet Ones and just felt in the mood to laugh my ass off. Odds are if I were a more serious reviewer I would have gone for the Quiet Ones but in my opinion found footage horror has pretty much advanced as far as it’s going to go. I do not expect that film to blow my brain in original thought or content.
So I saw this film and it was exactly the kind of awful slapstick rated R hilarity you can expect from Marlon Wayans. There is absolutely nothing of note in terms of message or social note. The humor is crude, low brow, offensive, sexual, and derivative. The story is the barest pretext to move the film from set piece to set piece. The special effects are essentially a PA flicking the lights on and off (the movie had a budget of $4MM and it shows. In truth I think even $4MM is a generous estimate). It is a muddled mass of 3rd grade fart jokes and the t shirts you see teamsters wearing (“I’m not a gynecologist but I’ll take a look”, “FBI: Female Body Inspector”, etc.) and bad sight gags. In fact, it has only one redeeming feature and that is it is fricking hilarious.
Yes I laughed my ass off throughout the film. There is a reason crude humor is still humor and the jokes aimed at taking the pressure off racism were amazing. The cast were to a man or woman funny entertainers and knew how to deliver a punchline. Some of the jokes will have you squirming in your seat (or possible retching a little) but in general you will love it.
I will offer up a warning to anyone on the fence about taking their kids to see this film: it is about as hard an R as you can get without going NC-17. Pretty much every sexual act possible was explored (generally with a puppet, but still), the curse words flew out thick and fast, and every bad behavior possible was shown. 
Normally I don’t feel the need to express this but I saw this movie at 10pm on a Tuesday night and the theater was FULL OF FREAKING CHILDREN! I’m not even talking early teens. I’m talking kindergarteners. I know I don’t have kids and probably should keep my noise hole shut but if you take your 5 year old kid to a 10pm showing of a rated R movie that shows the act of analingus on a school night you are a selfish bastard who’s only qualification for parenthood is fertility. When I conquer the world don’t be surprised if you find yourself wearing a shock collar to keep you from doing stupid crap like this. (the children image is funny but really it should say something about parents. Image courtesy of the funny t shirt category)
Anyway, I supposed I should do a story recap although really, it’s kind of pointless. The story is of Malcolm (Marlon Wayans-Requim for a Dream, White Chicks, Scary Movie) and his cousin Ray Ray (Affion Crockett-Never Back Down, Soul Men, This Means War) escaping from Malcolm’s ex girlfriend psychotic possessed Kisha (Essence Atkins-A Haunted House, Are We There Yet, Half & Half). Apparently this was from the end of the first movie? (Is it fair to for me to review a sequel without having seen the first one? Probably not, although I feel that all movies should stand on their own without a prerequisite. Suck it, Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part II!)
Skip forward a year and Malcolm is moving into a new house with his new girlfriend Megen (Jaime Pressly-Not Another Teen Movie, I Love You Man, My Name is Earl) and her two kids Wyatt (Steele Stebbins-Wish You Were Here) and Becky (Ashley Rickards-Awkward, Gamer, Sassy Pants). Odd stuff starts happening including the dog getting crushed by a safe. Malcolm meets his Mexican neighbor Miguel (Gabriel Iglesias-Magic Mike, Planes, the Nut Job).
He finds some old footage that show an incompetent demon trying and failing to kill the previous family. Becky gets possessed while Wyatt has an imaginary friend who is not so imaginary. Malcolm has sex with a wooden doll (very graphic scene. Pretty much a harder version of the sex scene from Team America) who then ends up stalking him.
Hilarity ensues. Malcolm tries to get rid of the demon haunting him by bringing in psychic team Ned (Hayes MacArthur-the Game Plan, Life as We Know It, She’s Out of My League) and Noreen (Missi Pyle-Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters, the Artist, Big Fish) and then Father William (Cedric the Entertainer-Madagascar, Ice Age, Planes), each with different hilarious results. They jump from ridiculous and funny scene to ridiculous and funny scene.
The stars:
Really, really funny. I spent more time laughing than not. Three stars. Some really good references to current films and TV shows. I especially like the Breaking Bad one. One star. Rated R for this film translates into some great topless scenes. Thank you for remembering that the only reason guys go to see rated R is for massive violence and/or the occasional female breast. One star. In generally a really fun time watching. Two stars. Total: seven stars.
The black holes:
Some of the humor was really off putting or stomach turning. The recurring joke of the creepy wooden doll got really old by the end. One black hole. This film suffers from the same curse that the Scary Movie franchise suffers from in that once you are done watching it you will immediately start forgetting it. There is nothing here that will really stick inside your brain and I could almost hear the flushing sound as my brain started dumping the scenes out of my memory banks. One black hole. Total: two black holes.
So a grand total of five stars. Not bad, but ultimately a moot point. If you like this sort of film you will watch it and enjoy it and if you have an underdeveloped sense of humor and think laughing for longer than it would take you to say the word “laughter” is gauche you will not. Use that as your barometer of whether you should see it or not. Nothing in this film requires a big screen so wait until it shows up on Hulu or whatever. Date movie? Probably not, unless she is an avid fan of the Wayans. A lot of crude humor in this film and in my experience that is just ammunition for her to load up her rejection gun with. Bathroom break? Pretty much anywhere, but I say that in a good way. All the scenes were at least funny but none of them remotely necessary for your understanding of the “plot”. In fact you could probably see each scene randomly out of order and still enjoy it so go whenever the need takes you. It’s only 89 minutes so odds are you can hold it.
Thanks for reading as always. Naturally I’m going to see the new Spider-Man tonight. I’m both afraid and hopeful. Look for that review tomorrow. Also since big blockbusters like this tend to clear the theaters of other new releases like an unmentionable in a public swimming pool I will be able to catch up on all the films I missed while at Wondercon. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this film or my review can be left here and off topic suggestions or questions emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
“the Infamous Dave” Inman
The Other Woman Review
Testosterone draining for sure, but fun nevertheless.
There are days when I sometimes wish I had been born a woman (is this keyboard on? Dammit!). Not in any sexual sense as I have yet to see anything even remotely male that I found the slightest bit attractive (in fact, one of the biggest mysteries of the dating world for me is how you women even put up with us. If the world actually made logical sense you would all be lesbian and men would live below ground like the Morlocks (or C.H.U.D.s), fighting, drinking beer, watching sports, and occasionally being summoned up for a sperm donation.). More from a social aspect as in my imperfect dating world women have appear to have a lot more power and can use that power to do serious damage.
Now before all the feminists I went to college with write in about the unfair social power dynamic between men and women and how much more power men actually have I acknowledge all that. My perception is based on my miserable life of always being the rejected rather than the rejector and a constant grass is always greener when it comes to dating. Odds are if I looked like Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and had enough money in my bank account to actually buy a girl a meal of food I would quickly turn into the man slut he plays in this film and be singing a different toon. However, this is the world I live in and the perception I have.
Also for the record I think women have so many more cool choices in clothes. Men’s fashion has not changed significantly since 1910 and once we settle on a look we generally don’t deviate from it. Also women smell nicer and don’t have to put up a macho front in front of other women. Maintaining all this super machismo is actually a lot of work ladies. I just wish more of you appreciated the effort. Plus free dinners and you are allowed to talk in the ladies room. Sounds good to me.
Anyway, the point is sometimes when I am watching a chick flick I honestly try to see it from the distaff side and this movie made it easy to do. I am not really a Cameron Diaz fan and feel like she has been playing the same role for years but managed to engage with her character a bit. Leslie Mann was my favorite and really really funny, while Kate Upton is like the result of a scientific experiment to concentrate sexual attractiveness to a weaponized level. The fact that she spent most of the movie wearing a bikini did not in any way inhibit my enjoyment of the film if you know what I mean. Each of the three were very distinct and interesting characters and I wanted to learn more about each of them.
Therein lies the flaw however. Instead of having a protagonist for us to connect with we actually have three. Essentially not enough time and effort was spent on any of the three to let the audience really connect, leaving me wishing I knew more about each of them. Little breadcrumbs of character development were strewn about (Leslie Mann’s character was implied to be a creative genius, Kate Upton had a few lines in passing implying some serious personality issues, and there were some hints of interesting daddy issues for Cameron Diaz that could have taken away from her stoic mien) but nothing that really convinced me they were anything other than a high powered driven New York lawyer, a timid fragile suburban housewife, and a hot bimbo.
I suppose an argument could be made that this was supposed to be some kind of team up showing the value of sisterhood but that was treated as a side note. In fact the three protagonists felt like one fully developed character broken up into three distinct fragments. Also once the three of them were introduced the film more or less washed its hands of any further development and then proceeded to drag on like a pushing a car out of gas up Lombard Street. The film was a fairly short 109 minutes but it felt like all 109 of them were in the last half of Act 2.
The male lead and focus of all the feminine vitriol was as despicable as you can imaging but let me clue any female readers out there (for the sake of my self esteem and sanity I hope there are more than three of you. Otherwise 33% of my female readers is my mother) in on a little fact of dating. 
When you see a guy who looks like he just fell out of a Calvin Klein ad and every women he looks at has her skivvies burst into flame odds are far more likely he is a scumbag than the more “average” looking dude out there. Men who put in a lot of effort in looking amazing and have hours a day to be in the gym are doing so for a reason and that reason is generally pulling tail. The “good guys” you ladies claim to want are far to busy working, paying attention to their (hypothetical) girlfriend, and writing long, detailed movie reviews to get waxed and run a marathon. (the image comes from our funny t shirt category and makes me laugh whenever I see it)
Anyway, the movie. It starts out with Carly (Cameron Diaz-Bad Teacher, There’s Something About Mary, Being John Malkovich) dating the current love her her life Mark King (Marking? Really? As in a guy who marks. A little Freudian writer Melissa Stack. Oh, yeah, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau-Headhunters, Mama, Oblivion). She is a sexy, high powered lawyer who is pretty sure the sexual world revolves around her. Mark bails out on dinner with her and her father (Don Johnson-Nash Bridges, Miami Vice, Django Unchained) because his pipe burst but Carly lets her father convince her to travel to his house as a surprise.
There she meets Kate (Leslie Mann-Knocked Up, ParaNorman, This is 40), Marks wife. She bails out but the next day Kate shows up at her work. Kate more or less breaks down and Carly has to get her out and gives her some advice. 
At that point a reluctant friendship begins, mainly due to Kate not having any friends that are not shallow suburban socialites (I grew up with about 10,000 of them) and Carly more or less trying to help Kate not self destruct. Kate convinces Carly to stalk Mark on a trip to the Hamptons and there they meet his other mistress Amber (Kate Upton-Tower Heist, the Three Stooges, Exposure: Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2011).
The three of them form a friendship and bond. As a huge fan of the Count of Monte Cristo I would love to say they started cooking up a revenge plot but a lot of the film seemed to be them just stumbling from set piece to set piece. The character focus shifts from Carly to Kate (to the betterment of the film in my opinion. Kate was a more intriguing character) with Amber floating in the background. A romance starts between Carly and Kate’s brother Phil (Taylor Kinny-Zero Dark Thirty, Chicago Fire, Trauma). The film drags through a very long segment and eventually remembers that stuff is supposed to happen in time for a fairly fun if predictable denouement.
The stars:
I definitely found moments to laugh at. Parts of this film were very funny. Two stars. Acting was good all around, even Kate Upton (at least I hope it was acting). One star. I especially liked Leslie Mann and found her both funny as hell and extremely engaging. She was the character I was most interested in. One star. Kate Upton was eye-bleedingly gorgeous. One star. 
Every other woman in the film was at least super hot, especially Carly’s assistant Lydia (Nicki Minaj-Friends with Benefits, The Hangover Part 2, Pitch Perfect). One star. Mark was a total scumbag that you wanted to see bad stuff happen to and when it does you get satisfied. One star. I won’t say great story but it was competent. Given the dross that makes up most of Hollywood scripts were this being graded on a curve it would warrant a B- at least. One star. As I left the theater I decided I had not wasted my time (always the real challenge for a manly man such as myself when watching a chick flick). Two stars. Total: ten stars.
The black holes:
The splitting of character focus in three different directions was not a good move. They either needed to consolidate or add another 20 minutes to the run time. I really could have used more info on each of the characters. One black hole. I thought pacing was great at first but about 40 minutes in the whole film slowed down to an almost complete halt. I was seriously wishing for a fast forward button. This might have been the perfect time to inject some of that missing character development I just spoke of. One black hole. While Kate’s desire for revenge was both comprehensible and legitimate working to ruin the life of a man who you only dated for two months seems a little extreme. Carly and Amber seemed gung ho to literally destroy Mark and some of the stuff they pulled on him had me squirming in my seat. If you have ever had any kind of distrust of women or fear of them wrecking your life you should probably give this film a miss. One black hole. This may sound petty but I really found Don Johnson’s character fake and out of place. He wasn’t in it much but every time he showed up I disconnected from the film and remembered I was in a crummy theater in Oakland surrounded by happy couples and attractive women I was too shy to talk to. I can honestly say I have always been neutral towards him as an actor so this has no previous bias. One black hole. At the end of the film they did a whole Animal House/American Graffiti-esque “where are they now” text montage that was completely out of tone with the rest of the film and totally unnecessary. Pretty much everything they said in the text was on the screen and completely obvious. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
A grand total of 5 stars. Not bad. Worthy of your time. However nothing really needed to be seen on a giant screen except for Kate Upton slow motion jogging in a bikini so if that is not your focus wait for NetFlix. If it is your focus try to see it on IMAX. Date movie? Hell yeah. She will love it and you will have some nice eye candy to keep you interested. However if you are planning on cheating on your girlfriend you should probably stay away. This film might give her ideas. Bathroom break? Anywhere in that dead zone I talked about would do fine. If I had to pick a scene I’d the dinner with Mark and Kate is pretty missable. The film has already established that Mark is pond scum and nothing in that scene will do anything other than reinforce that.
Thanks for reading. I’m seeing either A Haunted House 2 or The Quiet Ones tonight so look for a funny horror review of some kind tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or my review please post them here and if you have off topic questions or suggestion email the to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
“The Infamous Dave” Inman
Brick Mansions Review
Let’s think of another kind of house made out of bricks.
It seems like every time I see another Luc Besson film I go off on a “what the hell happened to this guy” diatribe so I will skip it this time around. I think I am done wondering what happened to his talent and instead am wondering if he ever had any talent. I think it entirely possible his particular brand of bad movie making skills hit at the exact right time when that style of crap was considered in vogue. Either that or he spent most of his life making his few good films and has been coasting ever since (I am not discounting the possibility of some kind of serious brain injury, however).
As a fan of the Fast and Furious series I feel bad dumping on Paul Walkers last film. I know he liked working on it and I wish he had come out with something better but honestly this film is junk. It’s everything bad in modern action films plus somehow Luc keeps using his time machine to travel back to 2004 when parkour was still considered cool. I saw District B13 (I think it was called Barrio 13) in 2007 and enjoyed it but even then it seemed dated. Seeing it done again in English watered down to PG-13 with the same dude but about 100 times hokier did not make for a good movie experience.
The last few Luc Besson projects I have seen have convinced me he actually has no understanding of American culture and really should stick to doing French films. He looks at the problems in our country and proceeds to think “Wouldn’t it be cool/terrible if they did this?” and proceeds to set up his film based on that without considering the fact that it could never actually happen. Sorry, Luc, but mafia murderers in witness protection do not live lavish lifestyles in Normandy on the US dime (and get away with murder), the CIA does not have carte blanche to run rampant through France, 10 year old girls cannot life 300 pound manhole covers, US politicians are not so devoid of morals that they think dropping a neutron bomb in downtown Detroit is the fast track to urban gentrification, and the ability to jump fences and climb walls does not translate into the ability to dodge several thousand bullets shot at your main characters.
Let me expound a little on that last one and a phenomenon I have seen in certain foreign directors before. You see, whether you are for guns or against them growing up in America you learn to respect firearms. To understand their destructive power you either need to fire off a few thousand rounds or be in constant danger of having them fired at you. Foreign directors from countries where guns are much more controlled I have noticed tend to treat guns as something a few martial arts tricks can easily get around. Being an expert in parkour does not give you the ability to dodge bullets constantly.
This is all the the detriment of the film of course. The measure of a hero is in the strength of his adversaries. Every time the two main guys jump, flip, and kick another 20 well armed thugs into PG-13 friendly unconsciousness the tension of the film drains another few gallons. The best movie characters are ones who could die at any moment from any of the bad guys and take a beating just doing it. Just compare John McClane (from the first movie of course) to any modern action hero where they mow down dozens of bad guys who seem to feel the need to actually aim is purely for squares and you will see what I mean (in fact, compare John McClane from the first Die Hard to John McClane from A Good Day To Die Hard and you will understand). The weaker the villains the weaker the hero, and the villains in this film are weak.
For that matter the main villain, Tremaine, was woefully ill used. I can honestly say I liked RZA in this role far better than any film he has done to date (especially the Man with the Iron Fists) and had his character been better written I would have like him a lot. The problem is his character kept shifting back and forth from violent street thug, Robin Hood, business man, gangster poet, and sociopath. The shifts would happen rapidly and always at the exact moment to best propel the ridiculous plot.
This film is not exactly a model for positive racial relations either. The good guys are all white, the gangsters are all assorted minorities (mostly black), and the few white criminals are all more blue collar brainy types. However, Luc has never been one for steering clear of racial stereotypes (Taken-white girl kidnapped by Albanians to be sold as a sex slave to Arabs, the Professional had 0.0 non white characters, and we don’t even want to get started on his treatment of the Mangalores in the Fifth Element). The real question is is this a purposeful statement about the future socio economic status of race relations in run down American cities or is he just being a lazy writer. I bet you can guess which way my opinion leans.
For all that it is better than the last few movies he has done. I didn’t feel the need to punch someone on the way out after I did when I saw the Family, and I didn’t have to find my motivation to keep my higher brain functions operating like I did after 3 Days to Kill. The fast pace of the story kept it from being boring and if you had a sudden bout of amnesia and forgot the last 12 years you would probably think all the parkour pretty neat. 
David Belle is an amazing parkour stunt man and does most of it himself. (Stunts image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)
Anyway, let’s get this story over with, shall we? It is Detroit in the near future and the crime ridden tenement (block? building? neighborhood? How much of Detroit is a bad Escape from New York knockoff?) known as Brick Mansions has had a giant wall erected around it to keep the criminals feeding on each other and the hapless poor that live there (that’s the American spirit! Although since the residents of Brick Mansions seem to go in and out of the gates with impunity what was this supposed to do exactly? Other than give criminals the perfect place to hide out). Lino (I thought his name was Leito? Oh, that was the last time Luc made this movie. David Belle-District B13, the Family, Babylon A.D.) is a local parkour vigilante who has stolen a ton of some white powder that may or may not be drugs (isn’t PG-13 fun?) and is flushing it down the toilet for some reason (I guess he wants to clean up the street? Not a lot of explaining going on in this film). Local gangster K2 (Gouchy Boy-Maximum Conviction, Cosmopolis, Max Payne) shows up with cartoonish S&M sidekick Rayzah (Ayisha Issa-Warm Bodies, the Immortals, L’appât) and about 100 more stereotypes to get it back. Lino run, jumps, and kicks his way to freedom.
The head gangster Tremaine (RZA-the Man with the Iron Fists, Pacific Rim, Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai) is annoyed at his underlings losing his powder so they decide to kidnap Lino’s ex girlfriend Lola (Catalina Denis-Le Mac, Corsair, Go Fast) in a diner in broad daylight outside of this DMZ. Lino breaks in to rescue her in another exciting chase scene where for some reason a Browning .50 cal manages to specifically NOT turn a Mustang into a small pile of scrap metal and bloody meat (remember what I said about Luc not really respecting or understanding guns). He manages to get her to the Detroit PD checkpoint where he is betrayed by local cops on Tremaine’s payroll. Tremaine takes Lola away for some reason (? Sex slave? Someone to listen to his megalomaniacal rants? Some form of motivation for the characters might be in order) and Lino kills the corrupt cop.
Meanwhile undercover cop Damian (Paul Walker-the whole Fast and Furious series, Pawn Shop Chronicles, Takers) busts a local drug dealer in a high speed chase. The next day he is called into the mayors office and told that a neutron bomb capable of killing several square blocks of city being transported through Detroit was captured by local Brick Mansion gansters and has a special case that will activated the bomb in 12 hours if anyone unauthorized opens the case (WTF Luc??? That’s your plot device???) and he needs to sneak into the hood and deactivate it. In order to do so he needs the help of Lino (Detroit PD must take a pretty soft view of cop killers).
Damian is thrown in a moving van with Lino as a fellow prisoner and they manage to take over the van by throwing the two officers driving it out onto the freeway at speed (I’m sure they were fine). Lino smells Damian out as a cop and they fight. Lino leaves Damian to be killed by some locals but naturally Damian escapes and convinces Lino to help him (those cops who where were thrown out of a moving vehicle will no doubt be happy to know their sacrifice in the name of maintaining the whole Damian criminal facade was completely unnecessary).
At that point Damian and Lino jump, kick, punch, and flip their way through uncounted hordes of gun wielding thugs (how does any business make enough money to have a couple of hundred dudes lying around playing Xbox instead of actually producing something?). Rayzah does some kinky BDSM stuff with Lola in order to do nothing for the story (PG-13 BDSM, BTW). Tremaine has figured out that the bomb is counting down and straps it to an old missile they happened to have lying around.
Damian and Lino shoot the missile launcher (something that the mayor and his buddies are immediately aware of. How, exactly?) and the two get to the bomb to input the deactivation code. SPOILER ALERT It turns out that the mayor of Detroit actually needed the neutron bomb to go off in order to murder a few hundred thousand people so he could develop some kind of downtown shopping center. Talk about extreme real estate. The code that they gave Damian to deactivate the bomb is actually the code to activate it and in a truly stupid twist is also the zip code for Brick Mansions.
Let’s talk about how dumb this is. OK, assuming the mayor of Detroit has access to weapons of mass destruction and the the lack of morals to use it on his constituents why the hell would they use the zip code for the area they are trying to destroy as the activation key? Does he have some kind of dark sense of humor and is willing to risk his entire plot to have a laugh at all the people he is about to murder? For that matter what kind of bomb needs to be activated by a keypad on the bomb itself? No one has ever heard of remote detonation? The military is in the habit of building bombs that require someone literally committing suicide in order to set it off? Also are they really in the habit of storing bombs in cases that activate when the bomb when the case is opened? OK, now let’s assume his plan worked and the bomb went off. Does he not think there would be about 100,000 FBI, CIA, and DHS agents investigating every aspect of an event like that? Not to mention about 100,000,000 internet conspiracy trolls. And then the land goes to a development company that he happens to own. Nothing suspicious there. Is that how property is transferred in the USA? Kill the residents and then build a mall on it? Also neutron bombs kill people with radiation so I guess you will have a ton of money on power bills as everything will have a natural glow. Is the bomb set to stop its blast radius at exactly the Brick Mansions wall? Also do you really think people are going to be happy working and shopping on the mass grave of hundreds of thousands of people? Hell, we don’t even build on Native American graveyards. Did none of you ever see Pet Cemetery?
Sorry for that tangent but in a business where I am inundated with stupid evil plans and plot devices that one truly stood out as the stupidest. It’s also the most unnecessary. There are any number of other plot devices that could have worked without making my brain swell up inside my skull. The story ends up with another really dumb hokey ending.
The stars:
If you are into parkour this movie will work for you. Let me know how your MySpace page is doing, and watch out for that new company called Facebook. One star. I will have to give one for Paul Walker. I am sorry things went down for him like it did. One star. Catalina Denis is stunning, and for some reason her wholesome Americana diner uniform looked a lot like what a stripper Catholic school girl would wear. One star. If mindless action, car chases, and wildly inaccurate gunfire is your thing welcome to heaven. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes:
The whole plot couldn’t be stupider if it had been about the Garbage Pail Kids conquering the world. I’m not kidding when I say it was insultingly dumb. Two black holes. A bonus black hole for using the zip code as the suicide bomb activation code. One black hole. Every time Damian and Lino managed to defeat another 20 guys with guns without firing a shot themselves your interest in the film evaporates even more. If there is no chance of them being killed who cares? One black hole. This film fell into a PG-13 sinkhole and never climbed back out. One black hole. As hot as Ayisha Issa is her character was truly laughable. I’m pretty sure Luc put her in because he wanted something to jerk off to. One black hole. Racial stereotypes up the arse. One black hole. Tremaine’s inability to pick a character and stick with it. One black hole. Luc’s complete lack of understanding of American culture is both humerus and insulting. We don’t make a lot of films about how much France sucks in French and open it in Paris (no we do it in English and open it here in the good old USA. God Bless America!). One black hole. Total: nine black holes.
Total of 5 black holes. A pretty poor score but like I said one of the best I have given a Luc project in a while. Worth seeing at all? Maybe if you dream of the day a group of parkour ninjas takes over the world. Maybe if you are a Paul Walker fan (in that case go see any of the F&F movies IMO). Maybe if you went to the movies drunk as hell and wandered into the wrong theater by accident. Other than that not really. Date movie? Nope. Bathroom break? Well, if you are really into the story (I almost typed that sentence without bursting into laughter) I’d say the best point would be the BDSM scene between Lola and Rayzah. It is way less fun and sexy as it sounds and does nothing but make you laugh at her character even more.
Thanks for reading. I saw the Other Woman last night and will try to write it up later today. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. You can post comments on this film or my review here (although lately I am buried in spam so if I mass delete your note I apologize) and off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Thanks for reading and have a great day.
“The Infamous Dave” Inman
Transcendence Movie Review
Ironically one antonym for transcendence is failure.
Transcendence is one of the most difficult movies for a fan of hard core science fiction (and good film in general) to watch and review. It has all the best possible elements for a successful movie: interesting concept, talented cast, and a fat CGI budget. However, like a computer made of the best possible components but assembled using string, duct tape, and chewing gum the whole thing falls apart when you try to power it up.
The concept of artificial intelligence becoming self aware and trying to kill or enslave us as a sci fi trope is so old it almost predates the War of the Newts. It ultimately is the basis of the Terminator, War Games, Tron, the Matrix, West World, Blade Runner, and to a lesser extant 2001. If you actually read some books it shows up on a regular basis and does so because it is an intriguing concept and one that appeals to nerds like me. Also since it has long been my dream to one day be downloaded into a computer and live forever as an evil computer program you can imagine my disappointment when a film takes something so rich in fodder and proceeds to grow corpse flowers with it.
Where did this film fall apart? First of all, in a film chock full of talented actors the director had them all play out like computers themselves. Say what you will about Johnny Depp (like this is his fourth box office bomb in a row) but he is an actor who can convey emotions. However they pretty much had him do nothing but act like an Animatronic version of himself. His voice had absolutely zero inflection and his face never changed expression once, even when he was still human and informed of his imminent death. Morgan Freeman is another one who can deliver a powerful performance and get the audience to engage on an emotional level but when he witnesses the death of a dozen people he worked for years with he treats it with the angst normally reserved for opening a bathroom door and getting the faintest whiff of the last users two hour old fart. The supporting actors were all pretty much cardboard cutouts too. The only emotional portrayal by anyone was from Depps wife Evelyn but it was pretty clearly forced and the contrast to all the cardboard cutouts surrounding her made it even more garish. You can literally feel your interest drain away with every scene involving dialog or exposition.
The trailers sure made this film seem like there was going to be some kind of action but it was perfunctory at best. Nothing drains the tension from a scene like learning that shooting people and blowing stuff up does absolutely nothing when nanobots will repair any damage done in a few minutes. Why not have the actors run around and hit each other with teddy bears? It’s effectively the same.
Then there is the thinking part of the film. I am generally a fan of movies that make you think and this one had some interesting core concepts, such as the morality of self aware computers and forcing conformity on humans. However the film sat on the fence about being an action drama or an thinking film and like most movies that do so ended up with a fence post up its ass. There was very little debate actually going on and most of it boiled down to a few minutes at the beginning of “AI is evil” and “AI is good”. There was some moral struggling going on for one of the supporting characters as he jumps from one side to the other but really he just shifted gears at the exact moment the plot needed him to join the resistance, not from any evolutionary character arc.
And for every possible interesting concept there was the injection of flat out stupidity and painful suspension of disbelief. Hollywood should have learned from Independence Day that using a computer virus to pull the power on your enemies is farcical and boring. I guess having used an old sci fi concept the director felt he had license to cram as many sci fi movie ideas as possible with the cleanliness and oily smoothness of feeding a length of rebar into a meat grinder. By the end of the movie there were audience members laughing and I broke from my normal “scary loner” mien to ask a very pretty girl what she thought and she more or less felt the story was ham handed and lame (actually I was more intrigued at what a hot girl was doing by herself at a 10:15 showing in Jack London Square. Most of the loners that late look like Bond villain henchmen. I fit right in).
Then finally the pacing. 119 minutes and I spent most of them pushing my right foot into the floor in subconscious hope of finding the accelerator for the plot. Honestly the main plot (man downloads himself into a computer, turns into an evil AI, and tries to take over the planet) was established in the trailers. In traditional story telling Act 2 is where conflict arises and the drama is the protagonists working to overcome them. Having an evil computer work towards building an empire in a direction we all know he is going in does nothing for the drama. This film suffered from not actually having a protagonist per se but the “good” guys (some hippy anti-technology Burning Man escapees, an FBI guy, and Morgan Freeman) would only stick their heads up like prairie dogs once in a while to establish their presence for the denouement but honestly you spent half the movie trying to figure out if they were good or bad anyway. The plot, like the acting, was as flat and uninteresting as possible. It was like getting on the Merry Go Round and being stuck on one of the fixed (non up and down) horses.
The story. Will Castor (Johnny Depp-the Lone Ranger, Dark Shadows, Pirates of the Caribbean) is some kind of spacy computer genius who lives with his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall-the Prestige, Iron Man 3, the Town). He goes to lecture some computer geeks on advances in AI and gets shot by some anti technology nuts. Meanwhile the nuts attack a bunch of other computer labs and manage to kill off the entire team working with fellow researcher Joseph Tagger (Morgan Freeman-Oblivion, Now You See Me, the Lego Movie), a fact that really bums him out for like 10 minutes.
Turns out the bullet was radioactive and Will is going to die in a few weeks. Evelyn recruits another friend Max Waters (Paul Bettany-Priest, the Avengers, Blood) to hook him up to a computer and download his personality. They succeed but Max suddenly decides that AI Will is evil. He runs off to drink and gets kidnapped by the anti-tech people headed by Bree (Kate Mara-127 Hours, Shooter, Deadfall). They lock him in a cage and convince him that AIs are bad (something he more or less just decided on his own I thought?).
Evelyn uses millions of dollars Will pulled by high speed stock trading (oh, topical) to take over a crummy small town and turn it into a crummy small town with a massive solar powered data center. Will starts researching nanotechnology and figures out how to fix humans and coincidentally turn them into networked slaves. Fortunately all it takes is some copper netting to interrupt the network. The radicals are joined by the FBI guy and Morgan Freeman to attack. Stuff gets blown up and instantly fixed. Y2K finally happens (yes, they actually called it Y2K to the laughter of the audience) and the whole world sort of falls apart or something.
The stars:
Bold in concept. One star. Some great visuals, especially if you are turned on by the Apple Store. One star. Some attempt was made at an intellectual, topical story. One star. Ugh. I don’t want to bury this one in the rain of black holes I am about to unleash but that is all I can really think of. I guess I liked that a lot of it was set in East Bay, where I live? One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes:
A movie about artificial intelligence that had all the actors playing their roles like they were reprising the IRAC computer from Wonder Woman (try to out-nerd reference me, I dare you). One very ironic black hole. For all it’s pretension with regards to being a thinking film a lot of the stuff in here was pretty stupid. I bet you didn’t know brain probes could be installed by a computer guy with a power drill in an abandoned warehouse. One black hole. On the same note I’m going to hit this film for the base concept of Y2K, the use of that reference, and the implication that the worst part about it was no more power or internet rather than all of American devolving into anarchy and cannibalism in about three days. One black hole. There were implications that the question of machine intelligence and its morality were going to be addressed at some point but in fact the question was left to fester on it’s own like a roadkill possum on a hot day. One black hole. It’s clear the director really only wanted to film Rebecca Hall talking to a video screen of Johnny Depp and all the action and scenes that required a moving camera were done under protest with all the fiery heat of a bowl of soup left out overnight. One black hole. No protagonist to speak of, no antagonist, and no reason to care if anyone in the movie lived or died. A good film will get you to connect to at least one character. One black hole. Very predictable, and guilty of trying to pull in every sci fi reference possible without using any of them to add to the film. One black hole. Dull. Dull dull dull dull boring. Pacing from the slowest level of hell. One black hole. The film didn’t really end so much as sputter to a closing like a balloon leaking air. One black hole. Total: nine black holes.
So five black holes, putting this firmly in the bad film zone (although not in the brain aneurysm inducing zone. For that we need Michael Bay). Worth seeing at all? Sure, if you have long dreamed of what the love child of Skynet and Max Headroom would look like. It’s not awful on the Jack and Jill level. You won’t hate yourself any more after seeing it than you did before. Wait for Netflix. I feel bad pounding yet another spike in Johnny Depps career as I kind of like him, but really he has only himself to blame. He should take a few years off and come back as a drug addict or alcoholic like in Leaving Las Vegas. 
Date movie? Meh. Unless she loves computers (or is turned on by computer geeks. Pick up line joke comes from the cheap t shirt category) there is a lot in here a girl might find creepy (like Will taking over the body of another man in order to sex up Evelyn). I’d say pass. Bathroom break? Pretty much anywhere you like, although there is a scene where Evelyn is eating dinner with “Will” that is particularly worthless. It has already been established that she is having doubts about his humanity. Do we need to drag it out for another 10 minutes?
Thanks for reading. More to see soon (yes, I will see Heaven is Real but honestly I have my concerns). Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Feel free to post comments here on this film or my review and email me at [email protected] if you have off topic questions or suggestions. Have a great night. Talk to you soon.
Dave Inman
Draft Day Review
Dodgy.
Yes, I know. It’s been over a week since my last post but contrary to popular belief writing these reviews is not my full time job (although in truth I wish it was. The t shirt business is a lot of hard work). I spent most of the last week either at Wondercon or preparing for it (plus about 15 hours tearing along the dotted line known as the 5 freeway).
I’m back however and feeling the need to express myself with regards to film. I saw this film before I left and have had a lot of time to think about it. I have said before that while I have little to no interest in watching sports of any kind I love sports movies. I honestly find football and baseball painfully boring but a film about a plucky down-on-it’s luck team coming back and trouncing their hated rivals puts a big smile on my face (with the obvious exception of the Mighty Ducks, of course).
However, with this film I discovered that my interest level in the intricacies of managing a team from behind a desk is even lower than watching the sport in question (or watching paint dry). In the military it is said that good generals study tactics while great generals study logistics but when it comes to military film entertainment I would choose to see a film about guys fighting a major battle, not struggling to process the requisition paperwork to get canned beef to the front line. When the most exciting scenes include ducking into a supply closet for a private meeting and following the main characters mother onto a football practice field for a memorial service you can forgive me if I keep spamming the “excite me now” button.
I’m also going to bitch about the marketing for this film. I have seen this trailer several dozen times over the last few months and it tries very hard to convince you that the film is about a football super genius who has a secret plan that is going to save his beloved team and make him out to be a star. That sort of thing is very cool. However what we have hear is a hapless and modestly lost fellow who spends most of the movie bumbling around like a cat in a tumble dryer, dealing with situation after situation and more or less coming to his happy ending through dumb luck. There seems to be some kind of attempt at implying it was all some amazing plan but that part is lost in the Leaving Las Vegas approach to dealing with life that the main guy seems to have.
This film looks and feels like someone has finally realized his long term dream of doing an NFL movie in support of his favorite team. As someone who only knows what draft day is from watching the League I had no idea what most of the movie was about and even less interest in learning. The intricacies of NFL team politics seems like a lot to stake a major film on and in my mind the guys who actually would know or care about them would want to see a football film with actual football in it. The rest of us should (and based on the box office returns did) get bored pretty quick. The film may or may not have intended to be just a character study of Sonny Weaver Jr. but so much of the focus was on the team, the negotiations, the politics, and the personalities of literally dozens of minor yet fully developed characters who appear on the screen without a nonce of exposition to explain who they are or why we should give a crap about them only to have them vanish into the ether like a fart on a windy night that the study gets lost completely.
(A perfect example of this “character from nowhere” phenomenon is someone tells Sonny that some guy (don’t expect me to remember all the names) just trashed his office and I’m like “Wait, who is this guy? Why would he be pissed? Why should I care? Why isn’t Sonny having him escorted out in an arm lock?” only to find out that he is the current quarterback and due to be replaced if Sonny drafts some other dude we haven’t even seen yet. In my experience the more “W” questions an audience comes up with the “W”eaker the script).
And finally, the wipes. Did you ever see the episode of the Simpsons where Homer and Lisa are making a video and Homer insist on using a star wipe for every scene change? Well remember that when you see this movie. Someone gave Ivan Reitman some new wipes where he starts off with a guy on the phone, they split screen to the other guy, and the first guy walks through other guys scene. It would have been impressive as hell in 1993 but now it makes the movie look very much like a student film and is more than a little distracting. If you see this you will know what I mean.
All that being said this film does not totally suck. Ivan Reitman does know a thing or two about editing and story telling and the cast was literally as talented as you could possibly get (as long as you are a fan of Waterworld and the Postman, that is). Lots of good camera work and scenes shot from around the country giving fans of almost any team a chance to see their stadium and possible a player or two. However, all the good aspects of the film only manage to highlight how blase and pointless the story ultimately is.
The story is of Sonny Weaver Jr. (Kevin Costner-3 Days to Kill, 3000 Miles to Graceland (ha ha ha I totally forgot he was in that stinker), Dances with Wolves. By the way, did you know they did a Field of Dreams 2? It’s a short, but still…), general manager of the Cleveland Browns on Draft Day. He starts his day finding out from his secret girlfriend Ali (Jennifer Garner-Juno, Dallas Buyers Club, Daredevil) that she is pregnant (you know, I’m not a woman but unless I was a totally unbalanced psychotic I might have considered waiting 24 hours on what is the biggest day of Sonny’s life before telling him). His team sucks and everyone hates him so he needs to do something impressive or his boss whatshisface (sorry but it’s been eight days since I saw this and this is one of those films where IMDB lists every one of the literally dozens of characters completely out of order so unless it’s a very distinct character I’m going to be skipping on a lot of IDs).
Sonny is getting calls from guys who want to play for him including Vonte Mack (Chadwick Boseman-42, the Kill Hole, All My Children), who needs to be drafted early to pay for his nephews or something. Sonny gets a trade with some other team for first pick which gives him a chance at Bo Callahan (Josh Pence-Battleship, Gangster Squad, the Social Network), the hottest quarterback. Some people are happy with it and some pissed off. The story kind of goes from one convoluted scene after another and since I’m already at 1200 words for a movie I saw a week ago I’m going to say it ends with all the loose ends tied up except for the big one of did Sonny plan this whole thing around or did he just get incredibly lucky?
The stars:
Cast was all around great. Way more talented than the story deserved. Two stars. If you are writing your doctoral thesis on NFL draft politics this film could be quite informative. One star. I do like a film that is willing to travel to get some shots rather than shoot the whole thing within six blocks of that old studio apartment I had in downtown LA. One star. Pacing, editing, and camera work were talented. One star. Total: five stars.
The black holes:
Boring. I can honestly say that Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land had me more interested back in 4th grade and all the football insider references made it effectively inaccessible to someone who just wants to see a sports movie. One black hole. So many personalities coming in and fading out it was nigh impossible to pay attention to the actual main characters. One black hole. The convoluted nature of the trades and politics will hurt your brain and leave you wondering what the hell just happened. One black hole. The whole question of “Was Sonny Weaver Jr. some kind of mad genius with a diabolical plan or just a lucky dope?” bugged me for about six of the fifteen hours I spent driving this last weekend. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
So one star total, pretty much the very definition of a mundane film in my opinion. Worth seeing? Sure, if you are a huge Browns or football fan. If you are more intrigued by the real draft day than actually watching football you can enjoy it but if not pass. Nothing in this film needs to be seen on a big screen so feel free to Netflix it. Date movie? A big fat nope. You will be bored, and she will be bored and hate you for dragging her to this sports BS and punish you by making you watch the next three testicle shriveling chick flicks to come down the pike. Choose your battles my friend. Bathroom break? Pretty much anywhere you like but the scene with Sonny’s mother marching out onto the field to do a memorial for her dead husband is especially worthless. 
Also, why the hell was Sonny’s ex wife there? (loved and lost image courtesy of the Funny t shirt category) Also again unless his mother were a complete psychopath another event that she might have considered waiting 24 hours for.
Thanks for reading. I’m going to get back into it and hopefully caught up soon on the latest films. I’ll go see Transcendence tonight and write it up tomorrow. I have some hope for that film (of course, hope can be the cruelest poison). Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this film or review can be left here and off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave Inman
