Djanjo Unchained Review
A good/bad film you might just love/hate.
I saw this the other night and did enjoy it. However, I am truly a Tarantino fan boy and have a deep appreciation of his particular style of good/bad movie making. He writes intriguing characters and situations better than anyone else, and then delivers them without any excess dross to gum up the movie experience. However, he has a deep appreciation of camp that, for someone who thinks camp is a sign of bad movie making, can really hurt the film for the wrong person.
The good news is that, camp aside every part of this film is more or less flawlessly executed. The acting is all around brilliant, the story very interesting (think good comic book origin story without the super powers), and the camera work perfect. In all ways an extremely good example of what filming should be about.
Of course, if I am going to review this film I should address the elephant in the room, the prolific use of the dreaded “N” word. I will say it was used with great frequency. It first it was off putting, then it started to sound a lot like a three year old learning a dirty word and yelling out incessantly, but by the end of the movie I started to see what (I believe) Tarantino was going for with this. You see, this movie more than anything else tries to show the cruelty and dehumanization of the slave trade in the Antebellum South (albeit in a remarkably cartoonish, over the top style. Something of Quentin’s signature, I guess). If you feel you have not felt enough guilt in your life for being Caucasian this film will help you with that. The point is the N word is used with such frequency and in such a workaday manner that it really help illustrate how ingrained and natural the racism really was (and some might say, still is). The characters in this film used it the ease and natural cadence as one today would use the word man or woman, and that successfully drove the racism point home with all the subtlety of a machete used for brain surgery.
It wouldn’t be one of my reviews if I didn’t find something to bitch about, and fortunately there is stuff for me to latch on to. The plot Django and Dr. Schultz cook up by the end of the film to buy Django’s wife out of slavery is needlessly complicated and outright stupid. The whole time they were crafting this elaborate ruse I was thinking “Couldn’t they have just ridden up to the house and offered a large sum of money?” That’s pretty much what I would have done. A lot of time is spent setting things up, which in a lesser movie I would have called plodding and slow paced. Also, while I really liked the Dr. Schultz and Calvin Candie characters, I felt the Django character was really simple and two dimensional. He spend most of the film as a moving plot point with guns. No real depth to him.
Spoilers coming up, so if you want to avoid them skip ahead five paragraphs.
The story is of young Django (Jamie Foxx-Miami Vice, Law Abiding Citizen, Horrible Bosses. I couldn’t find an image of Jamie Foxx as Detective Tubbs, but this great image comes courtesy of the TV Show T Shirt category), a slave in the South two years prior to the Civil War. He is on a coffle traveling somewhere under the control of two with trash morons when they come across the wagon of Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz-Inglorious Basterds, Water for Elephants, Carnage), a wandering dentist and bounty hunter. Schultz wants Django to help him identify three bounties. He frees Django and the rest of the coffle (with the first of many rated R bloodbaths) and sets off after the guys.
Schultz determines that Django has a talent for bounty hunting and offers him a job helping out for the winter, after which he will help to find Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington-Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Last King of Scotland, Ray, and hopefully one day staring as the bride at my future wedding. What a heartbreaker). After a colorful montage of bounty hunting scenes they hare off to find Broomhilda. In short order they determine that she has been bought by Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio-Titanic, Inception, Shutter Island), one of the wealthiest landowners in Mississippi. He is not by nature written as a cruel man (relative to the others around him) and is in his own way a very intriguing character, although some of his actions during the film really put me off my feed.
At this point IMO the story falls off the rails for a while. Rather than ride up to the Candie Manor and offer $1,000 for a slave Candie paid $300 for they develop this amazing long and complicated plot to trick Candie out of her. I swear it made the Usual Suspects look like Legally Blonde. They are posing as investors in some kind of slave fight arena (think a more horrible version of dog fighting, if that is possible) and want to spend a ton of money buying one of Candie’s best fighters. Somehow they are going to get Broomhilda for tuppence during the course of this facade.
This plot is ruined by Candies clever head house slave Steven (played brilliantly by Samuel L Jackson-Pulp Fiction, the Incredibles, Jackie Brown. We won’t talk about his Mace Windu years) and instead of getting her for the $1,000 they could probably have gotten going they spend $12,000 on her. At that point the deal falls apart mainly due to Schultz being unable to shake Candie’s hand and the whole movie ends in a huge bloodbath.
The stars. Good film in almost all regards. One black hole. A film that for the first time in a long time takes on something more complicated than the usual dross. One star. All the stars were brilliant, and their characters really intriguing. Three stars. Dialog was spot on. One star. Nice message delivered to America. One star. All around fun movie. Two stars. Total: nine stars.
The black holes. Needlessly complicated end plot. One black hole. Run time seemed long at 165 minutes. A stronger hand on the editing would have tightened things up a lot I think. One black hole. Total: two black holes.
By the way, I spotted what I think is a huge technical error but Tarantino is such an accomplished filmmaker I can only assume he did it on purpose. In one of the gunfights towards the end all the guys stop shooting and you can here a brass casing bounce off the ground like you do in pretty much 100% of all modern gun fights. The thing is they were all using revolvers, which don’t eject brass. I supposed an argument could be made that it was a repeating rifle, but that wasn’t really developed until 1860 and this film took place in 1858. Either Tarantino is having a laugh at it, or he should fire his Foley editor. (This last passage is conclusive proof that I am a nerd, BTW)
A total of seven stars, and a big thumbs up from me. I’d put this move on the same level as Inglorious Basterds, but not as good as Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs. Definitely worth seeing, and if you want to have fun see it like I did in a theater that was literally 99% liberal white people and watch them squirm at all the racial abuse going on the screen. Date movie? Probably not. Violent and gory, and there is a dog mauling scene that will ruin canines for you for life. Bathroom break? The best part IMO is the long ride they all take out to Candieland. I’d say from the moment Schultz joins Candie on the buggy you have a good 3-4 minutes of not a lot happening.
Thanks for reading. Look for my review of Jack Reacher tomorrow. I need time to figure out a clever enough subtitle for such an epically mediocre movie. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Feel free to post comments here on this movie or my review. Off topic questions or suggestions can be sent to [email protected]. Happy New Year, and I’ll talk to you soon.
Dave
P.S. Look for my 2012 movie recap coming soon. Still looking for a clever name for my awards. So far all I have is “Nerdies” and I think that blows. Any suggestions will be seriously considered.
Les Misérables Review
I need to get a note from my doctor excusing me from writing this review.
This is the worst kind of review for me to write, if only because it is so out of my realm of experience that I might as well throw a dictionary into a tree shredder and publish whatever comes out the other end. It’s like asking a nuclear physicist to perform brain surgery; he or she may be highly intelligent and well trained in their own field of expertize but at the end of the task all you are left is a big gooey mess and a souvenir skull.
I also hate writing these because they always end up showing the world what an uncultured oaf I secretly am. I am sure I will get a lot of feedback similar to what I got for my review of Tree of Life when I called it a disjointed mass of editing room scraps masquerading as pretentious self indulgent pseudo art (I still stand by that, incidentally. If any of you are screaming Tree of Life fans let me tell you that Terrence Malick masturbated all over your face and you not only didn’t realize it but thanked him for it).
The problem stems from the fact that I am not really a fan of theater. If I am going to sit for two or more hours watching a story why would I not want to go see something with production values and all the bad bits edited out? It seems to me the only reason you would want to see something performed live is because you are hoping to see someone really screw up (kind of like how all Nascar fans secretly hope to see someone killed in a horrible car crash right in front of them). I know they are supposed to be a cornerstone of our culture (well, upper class culture) but unless your kid is in the show I don’t see a real reason to attend (and there is the proof of my cultural oafishness. Feel free to start hate spamming me now, so I can get right on ignoring you. Lincoln image courtesy of the Funny T-Shirt category).
Not to say that this movie is a play. It is a full grown film, with high production values and multiple takes for each scene. It is in fact very pretty and generally well produced. However, I never fell in love with the story as a play and have very little interest in seeing an entire script sung out loud. I don’t mind a musical when the periodic songs are used to enhance the story (Dr. Horrible, for example. I love that show). But this movie has every line of more than three words padded out into a complete musical number to the point I felt like I was drowning in lyrics and struggling for the faintest breath of expository dialog. The phrase “too much of a good thing” plays out well at this point.
The real victim of all the musical numbers is the film pacing. In a normal movie, establishing that the innkeeper and his wife are crooks would be accomplished with a couple of quick pickpocketing or ripping off scenes. Instead we are given an extended duet that keeps showing them doing the same thing over and over again in order to keep the screen moving long enough for the song to play out. It doesn’t help that most of the songs were variations on three basic songs, and if I have to listen to that Red and Black song one more time my head will literally explode.
There were parts I enjoyed, and I won’t be all black holes. I just feel like had there been a little more discrimination in the song selection and a willingness to space them out with dialog the movie would have moved a lot better and made each song have much more impact and relevance. Having Javert sing about his reasons for suicide lost a lot of meaning after listening to everyone else sing about every bowel movement and raincloud that passed overhead.
One last personal note before I get into the meat of the film. One of the actual reasons I had for seeing this film is I have had a long time love of Anne Hathaway (in spite of One Day but recently greatly enhanced by her portrayal of Sylina Kyle in the Dark Knight Rises). If you are reading this Anne I’d like to take you to dinner at the best taco truck you have ever tasted. However, in this film she is purposely made to look as ugly as possible and then dies about 40 minutes in. I totally felt ripped off, especially given that she is featured in about 80% of the screen time for all the trailers. I suppose if I had been more familiar with the story I would not have been so surprised (or bitter) but there it is.
Anyway, the story. Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman-X-Men, Real Steel, Rise of the Guardians) is a man convicted of stealing a loaf of bread and spends 19 years at hard labor. He is paroled but due to his status is destitute and starving. Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe-L.A. Confidential, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind) is on him from the moment he is released. A priest gives him the means he needs to reinvent himself and he skips on parole and takes on the identity of a well-to-do businessman. Years later Javert comes to his office and sort of recognizes him. Meanwhile single mother Fantine (Anne Hathaway-the Devil Wears Prada, the Dark Knight Rises, One Day) is fired from Valjeans factory for something (?) and has to become a prostitute in order to keep her young daughter alive. Her daughter Cosette (Isabella Allen when young, Amanda Seyfried as a teenager) lives with two horrible innkeepers. Fantine is discovered by Valjean who realizes he is responsible for her downfall. She dies of something (?) and Valjean vows to take care of Cosette. However, Javert is after him so he has to escape to the other side of Paris (can someone please tell me why he didn’t just leave town the first time he got away from Javert?) and change his name again. Skip ahead again and the two of them live together in Paris while the post Revolution revolts are going on. A young revolutionary named Marius (Eddie Redmayne-Black Death, the Other Boleyn Girl, My Week with Marilyn) sees her and they fall in love.
You know, when I was watching the film I was having to pay so much attention to the singing I failed to realized what a convoluted mess the story really is. Tolkien would struggle to follow this. Anyway, the minor revolution happens. Guys die. More singing surfaces. Marius and Valjean go swimming in raw sewage with open bullet wounds (sepsis, anyone?). Javert fails in his duty and jumps off a bridge. For the most part the movie lives up to it’s name as almost everyone in it ends up dead or unhappy in some way or another.
The stars. Very pretty movie, with lots of cool images. One star. Excellent work on the costumes and period pieces. One star. There were a couple songs that actually struck my cold, flinty heart (Marius singing about his dead friends at the end in particular). One star. From what I could discern through the fog of music I actually like most of the characters, Javert and Valjean in particular. One star. Good acting all around, if you can be said to be acting when what you are really doing is physically emoting while singing. One star. In the A for effort category I will say I was impressed by all the actors being able to sing, and for the director insisting on each song being sung in scene and not recorded post production. Russell Crowe was the weakest of the singers but even he managed to pull it off. While not my cup of tea, I have an appreciation for the work put in there. Plus I sing like a dying cow. Two stars. Grand total: seven stars.
The black holes. I’m not hitting them for the fact that it was a musical. I will hit them however for the insistence of using music in many scenes that could have been accomplished via dialog or even camera work in a matter of seconds. One black hole. This is probably the end result of adopting a play to a movie while trying to keep the play feel, but the pacing was glacier-like. The film runs 157 minutes and you will feel every one of them, mostly in your ass. One black hole. They did that period thing that bugs the hell out of me with the accents. The film is set in France, but every character has an American accent except for a few minor ones who for some inexplicably reason are British (including one ragamuffin who sounded Cockney). Of course, they insist on calling everyone Monsieur or Mademoiselle, and when they do so have a flawless French accent. Just pick one and roll with it IMO. One black hole. I feel like featuring Anne Hathaway so prominently in the trailers only to have her shuffle off the mortal coil 1/4 of the way into the film is just false advertizing. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
A grand total of three stars. However, my scoring is truly irrelevant. I’m not going to bother to recommend or unrecommended this film as I know you have all already decided if you are going to see it or not. If you lack a Y chromosome or are a fan of musical theater you probably have already seen it or plan to see it soon, and if you are not you probably won’t bother. Date movie? Abso-freaking-lutely. If sitting through this epic with a girl doesn’t get you laid you might as well become a monk because you are the least attractive man on the planet (on a side note, does anyone know of any good monasteries that are taking applications? I ask from a purely hypothetical point of view, and not at all because I saw this movie with a girl and didn’t get any). Bathroom break? The weird thing about this film is you kind of really have to pay attention to the singing in order to know what is going on, so I’d say try to hold it. However, if you need an exact point to relieve yourself any time they start singing the “Red and Black” song is pretty good. It goes on forever, is repeated ad nauseum, is towards the last 1/3rd of the film, and doesn’t really tell you much.
Thanks for reading. If you have comments on this film or my review of it feel free to post them here (even “Dave you are an idiot” comments will get approved as long as you don’t cuss). If you have off topic questions or suggestions (or happen to be Anne Hathaway taking me up on my taco truck offer) you can email me at [email protected]. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu (I really only post my reviews and the occasional new t-shirt there). Talk to you soon.
Dave
Killing Them Softly Review
Boring me majorly.
This is a film I saw a week ago but have not had the time to write up. Saying the Holidays are busy for me is like saying Red Tails is a bad movie. The actual words fail to encompass exactly how busy I am (or how bad Red Tails was). Sufficed to say things have been nuts but now I should have time to get caught up on reviews.
I am a Brad Pitt fan, and have been ever since I saw Fight Club mainly because there was nothing else on that day and walked out of the theater with the thundering realization that I had just accidentally seen my all time favorite film (I Beat Tyler Durden courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category). Inglorious Basterds was amazing, and I even got to like Meet Joe Black, although not for the story. In spite of the fact that Brad was originally sold to us as a pretty boy I have gotten to like him, and will take a serious look at any movie he opts to do.
All that being said, while he did an admirable job with the mediocre part he was handed there was nothing he could do to save this film from being a total snooze-fest. Watching this film is like staring out the window in detention in school where even the actions of two pigeons on a ledge seem fascinating because you are so painfully bored. It runs 97 minutes but felt like 197.
Like most mediocre to bad films the real sin the director committed was a failure to commit strongly enough in any single direction. At the same time this film tries to be an action film, character study, and drama while completely lacking in action, character development, or drama. Something like 75 of the 97 minutes is of two men sitting in a parked car talking about what they should do and why (different cars and different men, but almost the same scene every time). The main thing this repetitive shooting does is highlight how rote and mundane a lot of the camera work is. There is only so much shot-counter shot you can do in a film until it starts to feel like the editor is running off a metronome.
The other thing this film really lacks is a point. The whole thing seemed pitched as a character realization, either for the Brad Pitt character or the other main guy (Scoot McNairy-Argo, Monster, In Search of a Midnight Kiss). However, at the end nothing is realized and everyone is either worse off or exactly the same. There is some kind of sub plot involving James Gandolfini (the Sophranos, the Last Castle, In the Loop (<–great movie, BTW)) and his alcohol problem that just vanishing into the mist like a badly created sub plot. There might be some kind of important message about how fragile the organized crime illegal gambling economy is and how all it takes is one idiot to ruin it, but I failed to see the importance of that.
The story. Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn-Killer Elite, the Dark Knight Rises, Tresspass) are small time criminals and drug addicts who get hired (after the longest interview process in employment history) by a small kingpin (Vincent Curatola-the Sophranos, Monk, the Good Wife) to rob a local illegal poker game run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta-Goodfellas, Hannibal, Smoking Aces). (By the way, the casting director really phoned it in on this one. He or she was told this was a mafia film and called the first five guys cast typed into it (I guess Joe Pesci had other things to do)). Robbing a mafia game normally would get them all killed badly, but since Trattman was known for robbing his own game they all figured he would get the blame for it.
They rob the game, and that is pretty much the last interesting thing that happens in the entire film. The rest of it is Jackie (Brad Pitt), the mafia enforcer, being called in to find the guys and kill them. This might sounds good, but most of his search seems to involve sitting around talking about what it’s like to be a hit man or something. He hires his old frind Mickey (Gandolfini) to kill the guy who cooked the deal up but Mickey is more interested in drinking, hiring hookers, and bellyaching about his life to anyone in proximity. For some reason we are given extensive lectures on the economics of organized crime and criminal committee decision making, kind of in the same way that a lump of grass takes an extensive tour of a cows massive digestive system. There are a number of action-ish scenes that in a normal film would have been pretty cool but in this one it has all the excitement of a corpse twitching after death. I am going to use the old “I don’t want to drop any spoilers” excuse to end this story description, but the truth is just recalling it is triggering my narcolepsy.
The stars. Brad Pitt was decent even given the garbage role he was handed. One star. While the film was painfully boring the director made the merciful and wise decision to make it relatively short. One star. I don’t know where Mickey is finding his hookers, but the one that is shown is heartbreakingly hot (no nudity, however). One star (I’m kind of reaching here). Three stars total.
Boring. Boring boring boring boring boring boring dull. Two black holes. The ending felt worthless and rushed, like they suddenly all realized how dull the movie was and just wanted to end it so they could move on with their lives. One black hole. Not a single sympathetic character in the bunch, and no real protagonist. Even the main guy sucks for being so stupid. You kind of end up hating them all equally. One black hole. Mundane camera work and pulseless action. One black hole. A movie with all the pretension of having a point without actually having a point. One black hole. This is one of the very rare occasions that I can say I walked out of the theater with the definitive feeling that I had wasted my time and money. One black hole. Total: six black holes.
A total of three black holes. Worth seeing at all? Meh. If your choices are watching this or watching two pigeons on a ledge outside your window than sure. Not worth time in the theater in my opinion. See it at home. Date movie? Probably not. You will burn all your credit choosing a dude movie and then look lame when she passes out from boredom. Bathroom break? Pretty much anywhere. If you want to pick a specific scene I’d say the one where Russell and Frankie are smoking crack together. Even more nothing happens, and the only relevant plot point is restated by Brad Pitt five minutes later.
Thanks for reading, and sorry I had to start off with something dull like this. Some interesting stuff coming out this week. I will try to see something good soon. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or my review feel free to post them here. If you have any off topic questions or suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
How does Superman cut his hair?
Yes, I’m back and should have time once more to write all the wonderful reviews and theories that you, my beloved readers, have come to expect and adore. In fact I have one on deck that I am writing in a bit. However, yesterday I drove home from LA which is six hours of nothing but time to think. Sometimes I come up with something brilliant and other times I come up with questions like this one.
Think about it. Superman is effectively indestructible. Wouldn’t his hair destroy any scissors you tried to use it on? My best friend told me he was a comic once where Superman reflected his heat vision off a mirror to cut it. This is all well and good, but the thing is mirrors reflect lasers, not heat vision. He doesn’t have laser eyes. All that would happen is the mirror would just get super hot.
Let’s say that this were even true. First of all have you ever tried to cut your own hair in a mirror? I sometimes trim my eyebrows and let me tell you I am in severe danger of giving myself an accidental lobotomy every time. What happens if a fly buzzes by real fast and for just a second you track it with your eyes while styling your hair. Isn’t Superman in serious danger of giving himself an unintentional no-hawk?
For that matter, no one ever notices that Supermans hair length is the exact same as Clark Kent, and they get their hair cut at exactly the same time? How dumb is Lois Lane? If male pattern baldness runs in the -el family keeping his secret identity intact may prove problematic.
Sorry, I know. Completely irrelevant tangent. This is what keeps me up at night and awake on late night Christmas drives. Superman logo courtesy of the Superman T Shirt category. I will be working on a film review shortly. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Hobbit Review
Ever feel like there is just not enough padding and filler in your life? Looks like Peter Jackson heard you!
This is another review I had to take a full day to think about before writing up. I saw it at midnight on Thursday/Friday night with a bunch of other fanboys (some of whom clapped at the end of it. Can someone please explain this phenomenon to me? You clap to show an appreciation to the performers or presenters of something. Do these idiots really think the producers of the movie are in the theater with us, or perhaps the ushers fill out reports to the studios as to how loud the clapping really was? If not than this is clearly an pretentious attempt to show the world exactly what kind of a douchy fanboy you really are).
By the way, if you are reading this review and have never read the Hobbit I don’t know what the heck you are doing here, but I am going to be pretty generous with the spoilers in a minute so be warned. I am assuming you all know the story at least half as well as I do.
I generally consider it a warning sign when a movie’s actors and producers really overmarket the film prior to release, and it looks like once again I am right. The week leading up to this release you couldn’t flip a channel without seeing one of them on some interview or talk show.
I’ve decided I need to look at this from three different perspectives; fan of the movie series, fan of the novels, and non fan who stumbled into the theater with no previous LOTR experience. Honestly, while this movie is very pretty it kind of lags from all three perspectives.
As a fan of the movies it really isn’t much when compared to any of the three LOTR films. The story is bloated and convoluted while at the same time feeling truncated, the characters grossly underdeveloped (especially when compared to the Fellowship characters), and the movie attempts to maintain the very serious tone of the three main movies while at the same time add in a ton of Three Stooges-esque slaptstick comedy. The forcing of every LOTR character and reference into this film is done with all the subtlety of using a croquet mallet to insert a catheter. They crammed in Frodo at the beginning as part of the prologue and I guess I was OK with that. It didn’t strike me as too glaring out of place and maybe there actually are Elijah Wood fans out there (and if you do exist please stay away from me and my family). When I saw Elrond I thought “Sure, he was in the Hobbit. Looks like a good move”. Then when the shoved in Lady Galadriel I thought “OK, I suppose if they are going to have one of the main Elves why not have the other one? Odds are they brought her in to add a little femininity to what is otherwise a massive sausage-fest”. But then they force fed us Saruman FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER and discuss the danger of Sauron (who got no reference in the book whatsoever) while discussing a Morgol-blade they captured from the Witch-King of Angmar (no joke. I wish I was joking) and at that point I decided I and the rest of the audience was being pandered to. I just wish I knew what brand of baby powder Peter Jackson was using when he changed all our diapers for us.
While we are on the subject of pandering and treating the audience like we are all brain injury victims, I also want to rail on the presentation of Saruman in this film. I guess they decided we are all to stupid to understand the corruptive nature of time and evil and so presented Saruman as evil and despicable as possible. It’s like watching Chancellor Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith act exactly like a Sith Lord and wondering just how stupid every other character (who are all actively looking for a Sith Lord) in the film really is. If Elrond, Galadriel, and Gandalf (collectively acknowledged as the wisest beings in Middle Earth) couldn’t figure out that he warranted watching by is behavior at the meeting they all deserve to be crushed by Mordor for being moronic.
The last area where this movie lags behind the other three is in characters. In the LOTR series each of the Fellowship and supporting characters is a cool individual with a distinct personality that resonates well with the others. Aragorn, Gandalf, Legoalas, Gimli, and each of the hobbits is distinctive and intriging. Even Boromir was really cool, and supporting characters like Faramir added a ton to the story. In this movie the cast consists of Gandalf, Biblo, a fatter Aragorn (Thorin Oakenshield, if you want specifics), the dwarf with the white beard, the fat dwarf, and the other 10 dwarves who devolve into a faceless mass rapidly. Half of them look like they were rejected by the casting director of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for being too goofy and cartoony, and the other half look like humans. The cool thing about Gimli is he looked every inch a dwarf. In this film the dwarves look like a healthy mix of SAG extras and homeless people picked up off Hollywood Blvd. There is nothing about character here at all for any of them. Even Thorin is a 2 dimensional photocopy of Aragorn, and when you see them as a group they look exactly like a group of full sized humans.
As a fan of the book I am slightly more pleased, but only slightly. They attempted to keep the more fanciful tone for parts, and in general kept to the story. However, they surgically grafted on a ton of parts from the Silmarillion and another ton of parts they flat out made up and closed all the sutures with a mix of used dental floss and old yo-yo strings. Remember how in the book the dwarfs were more or less wandering through Middle Earth and dealing with whatever random trolls, goblins, and giant spiders they happened across (kind of like a driving trip across West Texas)? The book is a single adventure. If it were an RPG game it would be termed a “dungeon crawl”. Travel to the Lonely Mountain, steal as much gold as you can carry, and ride off into the sunset to spend it all on good wine and bad women. There are no portents of the ultimate doom of Middle Earth. Not so here, however. I guess the film producers decided our soft brains would never accept a motivation for our main characters as simple and morally grey as just getting rich. Instead we are fed a massive undercurrent of conspiracies, evil powers manipulating things from afar, and portents of incoming doom that is totally at odds with the lighthearted nature of the book. As I have said many times before, it’s OK for a movie to not rest on the ultimate fate of the world.
Where the movie suffers the most, however, is from the perspective of a guy off the street who is not really a massive fan of anything and only wants to see decent film. For this hapless individual the movie is a huge, slogging, incoherent mess. The pacing movies like a giant amoeba crawling across the ground, getting around objects with occasional bursts of speed as it squeezes though a narrow passage but in general progressing with turtle-esque velocity. There are a ton of irrelevant scenes to pad out the script run time, including a massive block dedicated to the completely annoying Radagast the Brown as he spends 10 agonizing minutes (from the audience perspective) nursing a sick hedgehog back to life (God I wish I was joking). There are flashbacks within flashbacks (the only one which would have been really cool was the attack of Smaug. Would have been cool had they actually shown Smaug. It was pretty much just stuff burning and glimpses of giant clawed feet and wings. Thanks for wasting my time on something that was covered in the book by three lines of expository dialog). Also, if there is one thing that sucked about the books that they managed to avoid in LOTR trilogy it was the insuferable singing. I defy you to find any reader of the books who has read even most of the lines of those songs. As soon as you see the indented italic passages that is any sane readers cue to skip to the next real paragraph. In the main movies they touched on it only briefly, with elves singing in the background. Here it is the perfect excuse to kill another five minutes of screen time and some audience brain cells.
However, the thing that surprised the hell out of me was the fact that the CGI and special effects appear to have taken a serious downgrade since the last movie. I know this magical 48 frame deal that Peter Jackson is so bent out of shape about is somehow supposed to enhance the visuals, but in fact the movie looks a lot worse. The monsters all look more cartoonish (especially the trolls and the eagles), the lighting effects are from hell (take a close look at the candles when you see them), and the battle scenes play out like a really good video game. If I could go back in time I might tell Mr. Jackson that maybe a huge epic film like this is not the time to experiment with new film techniques. I know all this is supposed to be for 3D but I am not a 3D fan and a couple years from now when I am looking at this film on my non-3D TV it will suffer for it.
I’m not going to waste a lot of time on the story. You all should know it. Bilbo gets shanghaied by Gandalf and the dwarves to steal back gold from Smaug in the lonely mountain. They all get captured by trolls who are tricked into turning into stone. They have a run in with Radagast (?) who tells them about an evil necromancer (??) who is resurrecting the the dead, including the Witch-king of Angmar (???). They are being chased by Thorins old orc enemy Azog the Defiler (???? For the record, according to Tolkien Azog was slain by Dain at the Battle of Azanulbizar years before this story took place, and it was his son Bolg who fought at the Battle of the Five Armies. This was changed to give us a tangible enemy to focus our soft brains on I guess). They get captured by the Goblin King in the Misty Mountains and Bilbo finds the Ring. They all escape and fly off on giant eagles. The movie ends (at pretty much the ending of chapter 7 from the book. Pad much?).
The stars. The riddle scene between Bilbo and Gollum was really, really well done. Two stars. The acting was exceptional from the characters that had any kind of development. One star. Andy Serkis was brilliant again (if you don’t know who Andy Serkis is, shame on you). One star. For all my issues, it’s still a Tolkien movie. One star. The only CGI that didn’t make me want to fix the film with a set of crayons was the Goblin King (either that or we meet him so far into the movie that by then my eyes had gotten used to it). One star. Two of my favorite character will always be Gandalf and Gollum, and both were used to great effect here. Two stars. I know I am being kind because I am a fanboy, but I will have to give two more stars for it being generally entertaining as long as you can stay awake. Total: nine stars.
The black holes (each one of these feels like a kidney stone made of burning coal, BTW). Padded. Pad pad pad pad pad pad pad. One black hole. For all the padding, the story felt really shortened and underdeveloped. One black hole. No real character development or interaction to speak of. One black hole. Twisting the story in order to give it a bigger meaning and darker overtone (completely unnecessary). One black hole. Lack of a real tone. Trying to combine slapstick with LOTR seriousness. One black hole. The fact that the dwarves never looked like dwarves, even when surrounded by elves. One black hole. Shoving in Azog for no reason. One black hole. In a lesser movie I would give a separate black hole for forcing in each of Galadriel, Saruman, Sauron, Frodo, and the Witch-King in order to forcibly remind us where this movie comes from, but here I will just do one. One black hole. The movie more or less ended at what felt like halfway through Act 2. One black hole. Special effects and CGI that weirdly reminded me of the Never Ending Story (1984). One black hole. You feel every one of the 169 minutes, with lots of worthless boring scenes that afford you the time to reflect on how lame all of this is compared to the LOTR. One black hole. Total: eleven black holes.
If you had told me two years ago that when I reviewed the Hobbit I would end up giving it a total of two black holes I would have laughed in your face. I’m baffled as to how much they could have missed the mark given the source material. 
I am going to do a separate blog on this, but the parallels between this series and Star Wars is pretty astounding (Old Republic logo courtesy of the Star Wars T shirt category). A talented director (or his supporting staff) creates an epic three part series that draws in millions of fans from accross the globe and then, given an unlimited budget opts to make a prequel series that spends more time highlighting the advancements in technology than story and is rife with either flat (Anakin) or annoying (Radagast=Jar Jar IMO) characters, all of which more or less ruins the franchise. Should you see it? Absolutely. It is a Tolkien movie and definitely is a must see for any nerd. That really isn’t the question. The question is will you want to see it a second time. I saw each of the LOTR movies at least twice in the theater (the Two Towers is saw three times I think) both in regular and IMAX, bought the movies when they came out in DVD, and the bought them all again when the super deluxe extended versions came out. I feel no need to see this one again. In fact, on some levels I am kind of dreading the next two movies now. It’s kind of like taking a college class on a subject you are REALLY interested in but the professor is the most boring teacher in the history of education and has a giant, gross mole on his face that you can’t help but stare at.
Date movie? Yes if she is a fan, hell no if not. She will fall asleep, I promise you. Bathroom break? Your don’t want to miss the riddle scene. Pretty much anywhere in the first 45 minutes (this slow movie takes it’s time ramping up to a snails pace) works. There are a couple camping scenes in the last half, and the scene where the dwarves are walking out of Rivendale (cough cough) could be missed.
Thanks for reading, and my apologies for harshing your buzz if you were looking forward to this. This honestly has been the most painful review to write I have done to date. I really wanted to like this film, but Peter Jackson appears to have been drinking from the same Kool Aid that George Lucas quaffs, and I’m not here to lie to you. Post your comments on this film or my review here (please, if you can convince me I am wrong and this film is actually more than the messy afterbirth of the LOTR I will thank you). Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu, and if you have off topic suggestion or questions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Playing for Keeps Review
Odds are you can take it or leave it.
It has been my unfortunate realization as I do these reviews that while there is a definite spectrum of movie quality from so brilliant it might burn out your retinas (Argo) to so dumb it’s like stepping in a bear trap while a troupe of clowns beats you with rubber hoses (Resident Evil), but the sad fact is that spectrum follows a bell curve and the vast majority of films lands right on the hump of mediocrity. It just makes doing reviews something of a grind, since the incredibly brilliant and amazingly stupid movies are always the most fun to write up.
Playing for Keeps not only is in the mediocre zone, but it hits the mean exactly and pretty much is the exact average. The weird thing is I don’t know if it should be on the curve. If it weren’t for some PG-13 language and relatively big Hollywood hitters (Jessica Biel, Dennis Quaid, Uma Thurman) I would have said this was a made for TV movie. The sets are tertiary at best (a house, a soccer field, , a park, a restaurant, and another house to be exact), the camera work and editing competent in that workaday manner that plagues most TV, and the story as blandly predictable and heart-lukewarmingly sort of gratifying as anything you would see on Lifetime.
I did manage to find some entertainment by mentally playing with the perspective. You see, all stories are relative and depend on who you are hearing it from. About 1/3 of the way into this film not only had I figured out exactly how it was going to end but pretty much every scene that was going to have to happen, so I mentally shifted the story about a retired, out of work professional soccer player coming to Virginia to reconnect with his son and romantically swoop his ex wife off her feet before her marriage to another man to the story of a washed out, deadbeat absentee father coming to town to break up the marriage of his ex wife and a decent guy in order to drag her and her son into the same dysfunctional maelstrom that ruined the family the last time around while banging every soccer mom in the state. I predict this is exactly the story the jilted ex fiance will be telling everyone and to be honest he wouldn’t necessarily be incorrect.
(This perspective game, by the way, is what lets me sometimes watch the Return of the Jedi and see it as the downfall of a dedicated public servant (who’s last act in the prequel was the kindly rescue of a horrifically burned and dismembered young man left to die a horrible death by a monk from a creepy order that believes all forms of emotion are bad and set him up in a very complicated and probably expensive exoskeleton/life support suit to keep him alive for decades) who has created a system of law and order wherein most citizens live safe, comfortable lives at the hands of a bunch of disgruntled hippies, malcontents, and walking teddy bears, and the corruption of Darth Vader by the light side of the force. It all depends on which side of the room the camera is on. Empire logo courtesy of the Star Wars tshirt category)
Anyway, the story. George (Gerard Butler-300, How to Train Your Dragon, RocknRolla) is an ex-professional soccer player who has pretty much ruined his former marriage in some ill defined way. He has moved to Virginia to reconnect with his son Lewis (Noah Lomax-Safe Haven, Mad Love, the Walking Dead (awesome!)) and his ex wife Stacie (Jessica Biel-Total Recall, Hitchcock, New Years Eve) who is engaged to be married with her fiance (whom she has been dating for over three years while George was absent) Matt (James Tubber-Mr. Poppers Penguins, Girl Fight, Revenge). His son is on a soccer team that sucks and George opts to start coaching it. There is a really stunted Bad News Bears sub plot that actually had potential but went nowhere. George meets Carl (Dennis Quaid-What to Expect When You’re Expecting, G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra, Footloose), a psychotic control freak. George also meets a bevy of the most ridiculously hot soccer moms in the history of football and proceeds to bang most of them. I don’t know why I have been wasting my time with trying to build a business and be a decent human being when all I needed to do was develop a Scottish accent and coach a 3rd grade soccer team to hook up with hot women. Why does it seem like most of the advice I have gotten in life has been lies?
Honestly, do I really need to go any further into this story? If you have half a brain you know exactly how it will go. George reconnects with his son and develops his relationship with him. Stacie discovers her feelings for George remain. Poor Matt learns an important lesson on what it means to be both a man-friend and a eunuch. George is faced with a huge life changing decision between his career and his family. The end.
The stars. If it’s remotely possible I care less about soccer than I do about baseball, but like baseball movies I kind of like soccer movies. I guess it’s just sports movies that work for me. One star. For all the bland tripe they were fed as a script all the actors did as good a job as was possible. One star. All the women were incredibly easy on the eyes in all circumstances. I’m moving to Virginia I guess. One star. The story was blandly pleasant, like being out of coffee on a cold day and just drinking hot water. If this had been a made for TV movie it would have been perfect in the feel good category. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes. This film couldn’t have been more predictably if instead of previews before the film they had just showed us the entire film. One black hole. This film had almost nothing in the way of emotional ups or downs, and not much of an arc to be honest. You kind of dive into the story with nothing to set it up and then motor through it in second gear. One black hole. Bland as the blandiest white paint upon a smooth wall of epic blandness. One black hole. A big part of the story seems to be that there are fabulous jobs available in the world of soccer sports casting (Americans don’t generally care about soccer). One black hole. The whole “George is a washed out bum here to ruin a good family” fantasy plot I had playing in my head is not that far from the actual story, and kind of drains a lot of the sympathy you have for him as a character. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
I’m going to use my old “irksome but not black hole worthy” category to take a moment to talk about facial hair. There must be a new clause in movie contracts (probably called the Stratham clause for obvious reasons) that certain male actors insist on that requires that they maintain the same rugged level of scruffy facial hair for the entirety of the film. Gerald Butler is exactly the same level of unshaven throughout the movie. Now, for all you female and pre-adolecent readers out there let me disabuse the illusion that this is even remotely possible. Butlers facial hair looked about a week past a shave. Here’s the thing: in the course of what looked like several weeks if not months of movie times he would have either at some point had to have shaved or let it all grow in to a full on Wookie beard. There is no way to maintain the exact same level of unshaven for months without extremely careful grooming. Sorry but these things annoy me.
Anyway, a grand total of one black hole. Like most mediocre movies there is nothing here to drag you into the theater but once inside there is nothing pushing you out. Should you see it? I’ve said “meh” before and I’ll say it again right now. If you are desperate for something to keep your brain cells alive this will do it, but if you are looking to get them actually firing it won’t. Date movie? Absolutely. If you are dating a woman who is extremely mainstream and you aren’t sure how she will react to something with a pulse this could be the perfect movie. Bathroom break? Once again a movie that you can pretty much relieve yourself anywhere and not miss anything, mainly because odds are you have already played out the entire movie in your head. I’d say the scene where George goes to the arcade and plays air hockey against Stacie and Lewis is particularly miss-able.
Thanks for reading. Still super slammed at work but I will try to see something else soon. I also have an idea for a couple of funny blog rants that I might crank out. Follow me on Twiiter @Nerdkungfu. If you have any comments on this movie or my review feel free to post them here. If you have questions or suggestions on other topics feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Life of Pi Review
I actually saw this movie last week but have just now (Saturday night at 6:44pm, if any of you want a little insight into what my social life is like) found the time to write it up. To be honest, I have been less than motivated to write this one. Not because it was bad. Quite the contrary. When I see a bad movie I am way more motivated to write it up, like a tiger spotting a gazelle walking with a limp. Nothing but fresh meat. Plus the act of tearing a bad movie several new orifices has a wonderful purging effect, leaving me fresh as a daisy for the next film (sort of. I still have the taste of Jack and Jill in my mouth and that was over a year ago. There isn’t enough ginger in the world to clear your palette from really, really bad sushi).
No, the reason I have been less that motivated to write up this film is it actually was really good and I enjoyed it a lot, but it didn’t tickle my nerd nerve. How many ways can you find to say how beautiful an exquisite painting of a flower is? Sure, you could stand there for hours admiring it but in the end it is a picture of a flower. If I had enjoyed a science fiction or comic book movie I would have had it half written by the time I got home. This is a beautiful movie about a tiger on a lifeboat. Honestly, there isn’t much more I can say besides you should all go see it.
Sigh. I guess I don’t get paid for 250 word reviews (who is paying me for these again? Oh, yeah. No one). Before I go any deeper into it I must say no, I did not read the book. That seems to be the question everyone I tell I saw this flick is programmed to ask. Does that diminish my enjoyment of the film? Maybe. I won’t know until I read it. I have heard from people who have both read the book and watched the movie that the movie is less gory yet manages to retain the main message and a lot of the feel. I will say that it is very apparent that this film was based on a book, if only because this level of sophistication and creative fancifulness has long been missing from the hacks who currently write in Hollywood.
This is the story of Pi, a young Indian who gets trapped on a lifeboat with a tiger (tiger image from the Hangover courtesy of the Movie T Shirt catagory). The story is told as a flashback (suspiciously similar to Titanic, but I’ll let it slide) by adult Pi (Irrfan Khan-Slumdog Millionaire, the Amazing Spider Man, the Darjeeling Limited). It starts out with young Pi (Gautam Belur-first movie credit) growing up in a zoo and learning about how tigers are not friendly. There is a cute vignette about how he got his name. Then he is teenage Pi (Suraj Sharma-also first movie credit). His family is going to sell the zoo animals overseas and immigrate to Canada. While traveling with the animals the boat sinks (by the way, if you have any fears of being on a boat that is sinking this movie will do nothing to help you with that. I do and it creeped me the hell out). Pi ends up on a life raft with a zebra with a broken leg, a baboon, a jackel, and a tiger. In short order the ride is reduced to Pi and the tiger.
At that point it is just the story of Pi struggling to survive both the elements and the fact that there is a tiger in the boat with him. There are some really great moments as he figures out ways of keeping the tiger fed without being eaten himself, and clever ways he keeps himself from going stir crazy. There are some fanciful parts as well, such as star visions and a strange island. I’m not going to get too far into it as there are some cool twists and undercurrents and any spoilers would be a real disservice to a great film.
The stars. For a movie set on a life raft this film had depth that is missing from the vast majority of other films. Somehow the scope of the set managed to seem bigger than it really was, and the interaction between the tiger and Pi much more engaging than most films with two or more human actors. Two stars. A complex story masquerading as simple that managed to draw you in and still surprise you. One star. The film manages to connect you to the protagonist amazingly well. You are really rooting for him and hoping he survives. One star. You also get to like the tiger a great deal. One star. Overall a very high quality cinema experience. Three stars. Total: eight stars.
The black holes. Not a lot, really. It drags a little towards the middle, and you definitely know you have been in a 127 minute movie. I guess that’s about it. One black hole total.
A grand total of seven stars. Yet another great film that had me entranced without a single gun fight or explosion. I must be finally maturing. Should you see it? Yes. Yes you should. Even if this is not your style you will not at all regret the time. Date movie? An emphatic yes. If you take your girl to see this and Wreck it Ralph and she doesn’t sleep with you lose the number because it isn’t going to happen. Bathroom break? Unfortunately all the best chances to use the rest room are in the first 30 minutes or so. I’d say use the bathroom when the family first starts out on the boat and then hold it for the rest of the movie.
Thanks for reading. I don’t know if I have time to see something tomorrow but if I don’t I’ll try to go out on Monday. My life seems to get busier each month. At some point it will either slow down again or I will hit critical mass. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have a comment on this movie or my review post it here please. Any off topic question or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Thanks again and have a great day.
Dave
Rise of the Guardians review
Fun but kind of soulless.
Yes, I’m back on the reviews and will try to keep up on them. Things on the commercial site are busier than ever and I’m kind of going nuts on it, but I think I finally have things back under control. By the way, if you didn’t read my last post about my friend burning his ass with a hot pocket I highly recommend it. I’m still laughing.
So, Rise of the Guardians. Honestly I think this movie is just a little too polished and perfect. 
It’s like if Data from the Next Generation were to write a kids movie script (Data image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirt category). He would reference every known source for kids movies, examine every film and treatise available, and ultimate come out with a script that had all the right elements and was technically perfect but ultimately lacking in heart and soul.
This movie was technically perfect. Classic kids references, some humor, and plenty of bright images to entertain the wee tots. However, while I sat in the theater doing my usual “creepy single guy at a childrens film” thing I noticed that a lot of the kids were not really laughing or enthralled in the film. A good kids film should entertain children while having enough adult jokes and references to keep the parents from falling asleep. Wreck it Ralph is a perfect example of this. Honestly I think this one landed too heavily on the adult side of things. The characters and plots were too complex, and the villain was honestly scary. I think the producers wanted to do something more like Coraline but managed to miss the adult wonder of it. This film felt more like it was written for teenagers than kids or adults, except I really doubt teenagers would go see it.
I really went to see this film because it has grossly underperformed in the box office for what a holiday kids film is supposed to do this time of the year and I wanted to see if it was a train wreck. I really think the failure to lock onto the real demographic for kids is the big problem. I also see this as an study of hubris. Calling any film “the Rise of” basically says “We the studio are going to spontaneously create a franchise and you mouth breathing unwashed masses will attach yourself to it because we say you will.” The title says the producers were so confident of this films success that they have already written the next four sequels, and I honestly believe that the one thing that unites the unwashed masses is a resistance to being told what to like. It’s subtle, but I think when at the box office most of the people on line do not want to get sucked into a franchise they know nothing about. Title failure IMO.
On the other hand, this film is one of the more visually stunning films I have seen. I liked that aspect because it really shows what good, well applied CGI is capable of. The images and art direction is great. I will also give massive props for the very creative re imagining of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Sand Man, and the Easter Bunny. If this isn’t what the real classic character are like in a perfect world they would be. Santa is a brusk, Russian, sword wielding Czar, the Tooth Fairy a hyper type A fairy assisted by thousands of tiny mini fairies, the Sand Man a whimsical silent fat kind soul, and the Easter Bunny (my personal favorite) a 6’5″ Aussie jackrabbit with boomerangs. Jack Frost (the protagonist) is a white haired hipster prankster with the power of winter.
Of course, all great comic-like movies rest on the strength of the villain, and in this case they pulled it off with Pitch Black, the Boogieman. I say pulled it off because while he was perfectly executed he was entirely formulaic in his style, plan, and personality. This is really where the soullessness comes in. He is like the perfect villain grown in a medical lab, with just the right element of sinister yet weirdly appealing and human. I can’t put my finger on what it is about this film that seems too polished, but I think a lot of it resides in Pitch.
The story. Jack Frost is an independent sprite who wanders around causing kids to have fun in winter. He was created by the Man in the Moon, some kind of ill defined god or king. Jack gets drafted into the Guardians, a team of mythical fairy tale creatures who’s vague job is to protect the children of the world. Their relative strength resides in how many children believe in them (anyone ever read Hogfather by Terry Pratchet? If so this story will seem suspiciously familiar) and since no one really believes in Jack Frost he is the one with the least solidity. Pitch Black is bitter because no one believes in the Boogieman any more and so sets on a course of taking over the Sand Mans dreams to instil nightmares into the children while at the same time convincing the kids that the others don’t exist, thus draining their power (this was a little vague, by the way. At the beginning of the film no one believed in Jack Frost yet he had all kinds of winter related super power, but as the others lost believers they all were drained or diminished. Also the loss of belief happened with all the gradual pacing of flipping off a light switch).
Anyway, at that point it is the classic struggle of good verses evil. We get to see some great visuals (I especially liked the Easter Bunny’s kingdom) and Pitch does what villains usually do. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but really there is nothing in here that would really surprise you.
With kids movies I don’t do the stars/black holes. I usually judge them by how well the kids in the audience seemed to be responding. By that basis I think I’m going to have to deem this film not so great. Kids were not laughing or going nuts. There were long stretches of dialog and expository flashbacks that I think a kid would find downright boring. Pitch Black was honestly scary (the film got a well deserved PG rating) and there was even one death (sort of) scene. I honestly think this film tried way to hard to appeal to everyone and ultimately didn’t really appeal to anyone. Jack Frost was in there to appeal to the teenage girls (geez, they even got Chris Pine to do the voice), there were cute walking Easter Eggs for the little kids, and a fairly complex story involving torturing kids in their dreams for the adults. Trying too hard IMO.
Worth seeing? If you like animated movies then sure. The visuals alone make it worth the time. However, if you are only going to see one animated film this season I think Wreck It Ralph is way better. Take your kids to see it? Sure, if you are desperate, but I think Ralph again is better. Date movie? Yes. Not as good as Ralph, but good nonetheless. Bathroom break? Weirdly enough this is one film where I think the action scenes are the more disposable. The best visuals and character development are in the non action films, and when the fighting starts it tends to get kind of muddied up.
Thanks for reading, and look for my Life of Pi review tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or my review of it feel free to post them here. If you have off topic questions or suggestions email them to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
A funny story and warning about Hot Pockets
Yes, I know. I’m supposed to be writing movie reviews, and have a couple lined up to do. However, while it might seem to you gentle readers that I write most of these by rolling my face back and forth over the keyboard while high on horse tranquilizers, the fact is they each take a couple hours to write and this time of the year I don’t have ten minutes to burn. I’ll try to get one done later today but am super slammed right now.
As a quick alternative, I think it fair to say that to a man and woman I have the most amazing friends on the planet. They are smart, interesting, and above all funny. Case in point; I woke up this morning to a series of texts that had me laughing hysterically for about half an hour straight. I’m lucky to have survived the drive to work. For your edification here is the text series:
6:49 am my friend: “I accidentally sat on a hot pocket last night. It went off like a plasma grenade. Hurt for hours.”
7:35 am me: “Wow. Sorry but I just laughed my ass off. Sympathy for your pain. Plus the tragic loss of your hot pocket.”
My friend: “It hurt like hell. The cheese blew all over my legs and burned like napalm.”
“Right through my jean shorts too. Not to mention I was forced to eat my remaining pack of ramen so I’m f***ed for the zombie apocalypse.” (zombie apocalypse image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category)
Me: “Sorry but nothing you are saying is slowing me down on the laughing.”
Friend: “There’s a hot pocket with your name out there somewhere and you won’t be laughing when you’re having to explain the permanent bald spots on your legs from the burns.”
“I look like a disabled oil rig worker.”
Me: “Now there’s a sobering thought.”
Friend: “Someone get a cap on that second hot pocket or it’ll go up too!”
Me: “You should sue hot pockets. If nothing else the headlines would be awesome.”
So in addition to illustrating what kind of insensitive jerk I really am, I think this story can serve as a warning for the real danger of Hot Pocket sitting related accidents, or HPSRA. Spread the word!
Dave
Red Dawn Review
Red Dumb.
I can’t say this film wasn’t competently made. If it were an original film I would probably have a lot of positive things to say about it. It is exciting and chock full of hot young kids. I could definitely find some black holes in it, but as a stand alone film it was kind of fun.
The problem I am having is it is a poor remake of a movie that wasn’t that great to begin with. The original Red Dawn was at best jingoistic masturbation material for uber patriotic gun nuts. Back in the glory days of 1984 Russian invasion was a legitimate concern and most of America was ready to prove their loyalty by watching this film. This new incarnation is pretty much exactly the same, but the fear of invasion by North Korea (Population 24,589,122. California alone has 37,691,912 and supposedly the Koreans take over the entire West Coast) is laughable. Sure, they wrote in some uber weapon but given there are 9 guns in the US for every 10 citizens that means California alone has 30 armed citizens for every one of North Korea’s 1,106,000 soldiers. This is the same problem faced by writers of Superman stories; he is so powerful that no villains ever measure up.
What’s funny is the original story was supposed to be China invading, which is something I would more readily believe. However, given that a massive amount of movie revenue comes from China and there is no way the censor there would approve a film showing Chinese soldiers being gunned down by the Acne Brigade, they made the financially sound yet intellectually stupid decision to go with the Koreans (with some help from the Russians).
No, it’s not the rediculousness of the invading country that has me bothered in this remake. It’s the fact that they softened the hell out of this film in the ongoing campaign to cat-ify (feel free to substitute any synonym for “cat” that you think might work in that last sentence) our population. As I walked out of the theater I thought back to the 1984 film and realized the one thing they did brilliantly was show the degeneration of typical American kids into savage, brutal freedom fighters. In that movie they count coup, execute prisoners, and in time become almost animals in their thirst for Russian blood. There is a particularly brutal scene where one of their own team is forced to swallow a tracking device and the local psychopath executes him without a moments hesitation. In the end they are more or less slaughtered to the last man while letting a couple escape.
Nope. None of that here. There are a few red shirts who die, but for the most part with a little really dumb training sequences these kids are ready to not only beat the hell out of more than their weight in professional soldiers but do it while holding the moral high ground. SPOILER ALERT: the transponder being swallowed is replaced by one implanted via a knife or something and once they figure it out the guy they implanted it into is just left behind to make his last stand. There is no brutal scene with any kind of moral grey zone, and at the end of the movie instead of showing the harsh last stand of the guerrilla fighters the Wolverines turn into some kind of super force equipped with Mad Max style cars that attack the North Koreans at will and destroy all in their path. There was one scene where one of the fighters had his own collaborator father in his sites which could have been brilliant, but instead they do nothing.
During the course of all the remake reviews I have done I have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds. There is the reboot where they take the original idea, rewrite it with interesting new concepts, and in the end come out with something that actually enhances, adds to, or exceeds the original. Dredd is the best recent example of this rarity. The other type is where they take the original script, modernize it a little, soften things up to keep from bruising the delicate psyches and sensibilities of the fragile audience, cast whoever the latest teen heart throb is to play main character, and ultimate do nothing but waste a lot of time and oxygen. Footloose is the penultimate example of this dross, and Red Dawn is another.
The story. Sigh. Just go rent Red Dawn and watch it while completely encased in muslin and bubble wrap. It’s pretty much Red Dawn Lite. The kids are prettier, less of them die, and they don’t turn into psychopathic killers. The North Koreans don’t managed to ambush and slaughter them with Hind helicopters. Instead of a rescued American pilot to give them guidance they have a team of Marines sent in to make contact with them. Oh, that reminds me. Instead of having them portrayed as struggling to survive while hurting the enemy as much as possible let’s give them a MacGuffin that will save all of America once they capture it. I have railed against this before but I have to say again: sometimes it’s OK to have a story that doesn’t hinge on saving the entirety of the universe.
The stars. Overall fairly exciting and fun, if you don’t want to think about it too much. If you have never seen the original you might quite enjoy it. Two stars. Chris Helmsworth was pretty good. I think he is actually a decent actor. One star. Some of the action wasn’t over the top. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes. Remaking a mediocre movie and taking out all the elements that actually made it intriguing. One black hole. These kids go from high school losers to the A Team in like two minutes of half assed training. One black hole. I am so sick of MacGuffin based movie plots. One black hole. 
I know this is totally petty, but with the exception of the Kalashnikovs carried by pretty much everyone all the weapons and vehicles were clearly American. At one point one of the guys asks to borrow one of the other guys SAW (as in M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, a support weapon used by the American army and Marine Corps. AK-47 image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category). One black hole. In an effort to pay tribute to the Hollywood God of Stereotypes it is the black guy who has to sacrifice himself for the greater good of the team. One black hole. With the exception of Chris Helmsworth, his brother, and the black guy I swear I couldn’t tell any of the other characters apart. They were to a man and woman good looking young white people who looked and sounded exactly the same in spite of having some different back stories. Also, a good friend of mine from Washington was quick to point out that no one up there looks as good as those people did. It was like a big Ambercrombie and Fitch ad with guns. One black hole. Speaking of back stories, they inserted a few sub plots that really went no where, like the appearance of Russian Spetnatz and so on. One black hole. And finally, one more big black hole for basing a movie on a laughable premise and avoiding the only good premise in the pursuit of a buck. Total: eight black holes.
A total of four black holes. Meh. Worth seeing? I suppose if you don’t want to see anything of real value and are OK with remakes. The action is fun and if you are of a super patriotic bent you will probably need to change your pants after having all your violent pro-America fantasies shown on the screen. Honestly, you won’t feel like you wasted your time or money. You just won’t have gained much from it. Date movie? Hell no. Bathroom break? The whole training montage felt like a big fat waste of time, but that is pretty early in the film. Any of the non shooting scenes can be missed, but if I were to pick a scene I would go with the one where the three man American team is meeting with the Wolverines. I honestly think the last part of the movie would be better if you didn’t know what the magical device they are going for is.
Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter for the one Tweet a day I am averaging @NerdKungFu. If you have comments on this review or the movie please post them here, and if you have any off topic suggestions or questions feel free to email me at [email protected]. I just saw the Life of Pi and will review it tomorrow. As a preview, I have to say it is pretty amazing. Also, some good friends of mine (and die hard Star Trek fans BTW) are trying to get some money together for a sci fi film project. If you are feeling generous please visit their KickStart Campaign and do what you can. I promise that if they get the film done I will watch and review it for you. Thank you all for your support, and I hope you had a great Thanksgiving!
Dave
Head Nerd
