MovieOx

Yeah, I didn’t see this.  Or read the books.  But I do, on occasion, get head from the homeless and/or adventurous during winter months at my local public library’s well appointed men’s restroom.  I find there’s less harassment than at your typical highway rest stop or KU game. 

So earlier today, while in the very spacious handicapable stall, I realized the dude polishing my knob wasn’t even homeless.  I’d recognize those sleeve tattoos and complete lack of muscle mass anywhere…  It was David Beckham!  We got to talking about life and whatnot and it turns out the last movie he saw was Twilight.  If that’s not an erection killer I don’t know what is, so I asked him about the latest film:

Why, in the name of Christ the Redeemer, did you see this film?

Hoards of underage girls longing for a dead guy. Pretty sure I fit the bill for real life.

How do you live with yourself?

Easy, my two cats.

Please, as concisely as possible, describe the plot.  Be sure to include details from previous stories if they’re plot centric as most people of substance have avoided this horse shit faux goth franchise.

Everyman-type girl with first world problems moves in with her dad, eye-fucks a kid with great hair. Later on he saves her from a car, she then finds out he’s a vampire, but only sparkles in the sunlight. 3 fucking books later and the bitch gets knocked up and turns into a sparkler. The baby sparkler causes a war due to a misunderstanding.

Ok, I’ll ask: Topless wolf dude or prude British vamp?

Prude Bristish Vamp on the grounds of quality hair. Volume on that level requires a lot of attention. I respect that.

A firefighter stood on the middle rung of a ladder, spraying water on a burning house. He then climbed up 6 rungs before the heat of the flames caused him to come down 10 rungs. After some minutes he was able to climb 18 rungs to the very top of the ladder. How many rungs did the ladder have?

The ladder has two 17 year olds.

(29 rungs.  And honestly, if he’d gotten this right how’d I trick him into this stall?)

Why did they have to wait until the last book to fuck (assuming they did)?

They had to wait because Edward was old fashioned and wanted to wait till they were married. Sadly, the sex scene isn’t as good as On The Road.

Are there other girls besides Kristin Stewart even in this movie?

Yes, anna kendrick. She blows Kristin Stewart out of the water in looks and acting ability.

(I know who’s getting cyber stalked tonight)

Would you rather watch this movie again or get punched in the dick?

Am I alone with my cats watching? If so, watch it again.

(Dick punch it is)

Do the prude vampire and the topless wolf kid ever fight?

They engage in high school hallway shoving matches but on a super natural level. So, not really.

What’s more retarded Twilight or Underworld?

Twilight. You can at least deploy extra amounts of drugs and enjoy Underworld.

Which fundies are right; the ones that say Jesus hates Twilight or the ones that say Twilight is about Jesus?

Jesus hates twilight, because he also hates fags..and twilight has copious amounts of them.

(Ironic given what was almost on your face before you started yapping, but let’s move on)

What kind of drugs were you on when you saw this film?

Uppers and downers. Uppers for the teenage girls, downers to cope with the fact I was watching twilight.

FMK: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, Jacob Black.  Go.

Fuck Bella
Marry Edward (again his hair..)
Kill Jacob black for wasting my time with a pointless plot.

Do you think you saw this film because of your history with the seedy alternative lifestyle sport of soccer?

 I’m sure it’s lead to my effeminate ways thus leading me on a path to two cats drugs and twilight.

Why do people think your wife Victoria is hot?

Because I’m fucking David Beckham.  It’s like a contact high.

And there you have it folks, some things just suck and shouldn’t be watched or referred to ever.

Ok, everyone knows Usama Bin Laden is dead.  Some navy dudes shot him in and around his face.  Is anyone curious what happened between the day when some morons flew planes into skyscrapers for Black Jesus (mohamed) and the day when another moron got capped?  Apparently so because tons of folks bought the book and the movie’s currently #1 at the box office.  Also, I hope the G got some cash for putting it out there that some employees were in trouble for leaking classified material.  Great marketing.

But anyway, Zero Dark Thirty is kind of a cliffs notes of the hunting and killing of UBL (CIA term of endearment for dead face beardy).  The tale is told in moments, ostensibly the handful of exciting moments over the 10 year hunt.  A CIA noob (Jessica Chastain) becomes a veteran having done nothing but hunt UBL. 

If you’re expressly familiar with all the reportable incidents from the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for UBL (unfortunately I am) you might be rather bored by the film.  It’s not over the top.  It’s not dramatized.  (I assume it’s lightly dramatized to be slightly more exciting than actually working in intelligence, but the tone of the film is one of anti-drama)  The story telling is deliberately asymmetrical to suggest reality; but the choice works for the film.  Even if you’re dramatizing history, it is best to appear you aren’t unless your name is Quentin Tarantino (he’s 1 for 2 on quality and pissed off all of Russia and the nation of Islam with Inglorious Basterds[1] and Django Unchained[2] respectively).  The tone is respectful to recent feelings and events and doesn’t try to play anything up or down.

There’s a vague suggestion America is pussy-assed for its reaction to its own torture program (true), but other than that there’s very little political message.  Torture itself is portrayed as a pain in the ass.  The man hours people put in to extracting information from the unwilling are daunting.  But then without human confirmation of theories the intelligence community is deprived of the sureity politicians require for action.  Paradox and all that.

But, I don’t give a fuck about torture (these whining assed terrorists should try to join the band at Florida A&M).  So those scenes just suggested to me how shitty of a job it is to get information from people who don’t want to give it.  I actually feel better if somebody from the CIA is beating the fuck out of a terrorist suspect somewhere that isn’t cleaned very often.  THAT’S WHAT THEY’RE HERE FOR. 

Anyway, I’m not sure what classified info was given up to make this film.  I knew 90% of what was in the film already.  I guess there was a super secret chopper they used, but it’d be really hard to reverse engineer one from its 18 minutes of screen time.  I’ll not get in to the whole plot, but you probably know most of it.  What you don’t know is how the assault on UBL’s compound went down.  Looked fairly nerve wracking.  Andy from Parks and Rec is good Navy Seal.  They should have cast Ron Swanson as something. 

What a rambling, incoherent review this is.  Anyway, the film is decent and smacks of reality.  It’s worth a watch.  I’d see it before Django.

I will begin, as I often do, with an aside to establish context: I am a Huge Quentin Tarantino fan.  I can watch Jackie Brown all day, Kill Bill may be the best kung fu movie ever, and Inglorious Basterds requires no further words from me.  I even liked Death Proof. 

Now, comes the predictable negative statement for which the context was required: Django Unchained isn’t really that good.  I suspect that Tarantino wanted, in his heart, to make a John Brown biopic.  But that would put him into the uncharted territory of making a ‘real’ movie instead of being the unquestioned champion of modern pulp.  His decisions would be examined against a much rougher lens than they have previously been and we’d see for good or ill if he has the dialogue chops to dance with the greats. 

For whatever reason, he has elected to address slavery (which he has been wanting to make a film about for his whole career) sideways through a ‘western’.  The basic plot: A former dentist turned bounty hunter (slight nod to Doc Holiday who was a dentist before he became famous for shooting people) purchases a slave named Django (Jamie Fox) because he needs information the slave has.  He’s hunting men who used to be employed at the plantation Django was just sold from.  The bounty hunter (Christof Waltz) offers Django his freedom for joining his operation.  Waltz also agrees to help locate and rescue Django’s wife who is a slave somewhere unknown. 

Also, I’ve heard talk that a German being anti-slavery at that time isn’t accurate, which you ought not to repeat lest you reveal your complete ignorance: Prussia (later Germany) was a land of religious and cultural tolerance due to government policy first instituted by Frederick the Great.  Much later when Germany institutionalized rasicism it was by the machinations of Adolf Hitler who was Austrian and imported that region’s historical lack of tolerance.  In fact the reason there were so many Jews in Germany for Hitler to kill was the historical enlightenment and tolerance of Germans and their previous administrations.  So shut up.

I don’t have a problem with the acting.  Everyone does a fine job.  If Django takes to gunplay a little quickly, well the movie was already long.  Kudos go to Waltz and to Leo Dicaprio.  Leo plays a slaver whose business is slave combat to the death and wagering on said combat.  He simply needs to play a bad guy more often.  Samuel L Jackson is fan-fucking-tastic as the head house negro for Leo.  He’s the film’s true villain.  I enjoy that the film hinges on 2 handshakes and that the story punishes Waltz for attempting to take the lead on an issue where Django ought to control the play.  An analogy for well meaning white folk trying to fix problems that black Americans can only fix themselves.  I don’t mind that Tarantino attempts to address a serious issue with a pulp film.  He tries and succeeds in making the idea of race based judgements seem silly.

But, this was a movie.  A rated R movie.  And I was pretty fucking bored most of the time.  The gunfights weren’t exciting.  The violence wasn’t exciting.  If Samuel L Jackson and Leo weren’t just amazing, the scenes at their plantation (a bunch of the movie) would have been unwatchable.  There was just too much screen time spent boring the shit out of me.  I think a rough half hour of film was spent winking at the previous Django film (OMG did you see the Franco Nero cameo?).  Buddy, you’ve got the R rating, revel in it.  Give me something.  Too much talky, too many winks, not enough punch, and really not enough movie.  If there’s not enough movie in 2 hours and 45 fucking minutes, you need to redux.

Granted, this is still waaaaaaay better than Expendables, but still; either make a real movie about slavery or a real pulp western that addresses slavery.  Nobody is served by this walk the middle path bullshit.

This can be a renter, there’s no reason to spend money to see in the theater.

Everyone saw Lord of the Rings.  Yes, even you, you poser.  As such, nobody needs any explanation about who Bilbo is or who Gandalf is or any other horseshit like that.  This column assumes a working knowledge of the best selling books ever that weren’t the bible and/or movies that the entire English speaking world has seen.

Anyway, The Hobbit is a story that took place 60 years before Lord of the Rings which results in the hobbits being accidental custodians of the Ring of Power.  Whether it’s really wise to try and stretch 1.3 movies worth of content into 3 films is debatable, but here we go.

Bilbo Baggins, being a descendant of the Tooks (the only cool hobbits ever) is essentially shanghaied from his pastoral existence to be a scout (hobbits are supposed to be nimble and able to move silently even though the films insist on showing them fall on their asses every time anything happens) for some dwarves (the dudes with facial hair) trying to enact a sequel to The Once and Future King.  (even I thought that was a ponderous reference) Their kingdom was destroyed and treasure stolen by a giant dragon and they plan a madcap quest to take it back.  But the kingdom is very far away on the other side of several action packed set pieces.

This next is applicable to those who have read the book:

The eagles still don’t talk, lame.  Radagast the Brown: I hated you almost immediately but you inexplicably won me over, well done.  The Great Goblin is seriously overworked trying to provide menace, comic relief, and macguffin services all in one scene, ruination of a very gross evil looking fucker.  I don’t recall ‘the pale orc’ from the story, but I don’t mind the character addition.  Thorin is pretty cool.  Gandalf is not as cool as he has been.  Martin Freeman rocks as Bilbo.  Waaaaay too much ‘oh gosh this is scary’ closeups on the dwarves and hobbit.  Showing the White Counsel vs Necromancer activity that was happening in the periphery of the story instead of keeping what Gandalf gets up to ominous and shadowy has worked so far.

Conclusion:  I’d have made this 2 movies instead of 3.  The story has probably been stretched a tad bit too thin.  The mele action is still good.  Overall solid and scratches the itch of wanting to see more middle earth on screem.  But Fellowship of the Ring it’s not.  It’s probably worth seeing in the theater, especially if you want to experience the new frame rate or whatever they use.  I did not see it in 3D because 3D is a pointless waste of effort.

Decent movie, but it suffers from lack of content

When I bought my ticket for this film, the nice (though, it turns out, stupid) lady at the box office tried to talk me out of it.  In fact most people I know, except for one heavily medicated individual, were down on this movie.  After sitting through the film, I have concluded 2 things:

1) Drugs work & 2) People are stupid.

The film is adapted from a 70’s crime novel called Cogan’s Trade.  I read it some time ago during my ‘hard boiled’ phase.  The novel is interesting in that it takes no sides on who might be the hero or villain.  There’s just varying levels of competency and luck that decide who lives and dies. 

Anyway, the basic plot is a card game is robbed which disrupts the local criminal economy since illegal gambling is ‘protected’ by supposedly omnicient crime lords and nobody will operate if they think they’ll get robbed.  So the mob brings in an enforcer to find/kill the robbers and restore the local criminal economy.

What the film does that I found ingenious is while updating the story to the year 2008; they turned the Payback like story into an alegory to the current financial crisis.  The criminal economy breaks down because of a lack of regulation and the powers that be are hesitant to take the steps to strengthen it because they are unsure how popular they will be. 

It’s more intricate than that, but the enforcer knows what needs to be done and spends most of his time convincing the pussies in charge what to do (there’s more of a corporate feel to the mob these days than in times of yore).

Brad Pitt plays a less cuddly version of Rusty from Ocean’s 11.  He doesn’t do anything you haven’t seen him do before; but that’s really what the part calls for.  It would have been easy to over do it.  And he delivers one of the best pro America rants ever.  (Whether or not it was pro America probably rests on one’s personal preferences as to what they want in life; but even if it horrifies you it clearly packs a punch)

James Gandolfini is absolutely hilarious.  One quote,”Your anus is not a God-damn national monument!”

So, box office lady, shut up.

Easily worth seeing in the theater.

First, I’m a James Bond fan.  I’ve seen all of them.  I don’t care for Roger Moore’s bond, though I liked some of the movies he did.  Sean Connery I can take or leave as Bond, George and Timmy are medium.  I am a huge fan of Pierce Brosnan as Bond.  Goldeneye was my favorite Bond (and is still the best 1st person shooter ever).  Too bad most of the films they made for Brosnan sucked asshole.

Daniel Craig is an inspired choice for Bond.  He’s some sort of combination between Connery’s obvious physicality and Brosnan’s suavity.  Casino Royale (directed by Goldeneye‘s Martin Campbell) brutalized its way to my favorite Bond movie.  It was almost like, let’s make everyone remember why all this shit is cool in the 1st place.  And it was fantastic yet grounded in reality.  (everything in a movie, no matter how ridiculous, must be grounded in reality; you choose what rules to change and stop there otherwise it just comes across as lazy.  Well, to smart people it comes across as lazy)

Quantam of Solace started like a freight train, but it was derailed by a few choices about the ending.  They made the mistake of having the final confrontation between Bond and Greene(the bad guy) a physical one.  The dude was a mental bad guy.  He was utterly unconvincing as a physical danger.  And he wasn’t supposed to be one; they just got to the end and couldn’t figure out anything better.  And the ending took too long; it took away from the ‘cold’ post ending because everyone was exhausted.

Skyfall suffers from some of the same issues.  It started like a bat out of hell.  And it has solid character introductions: adding the male M (with his red leather door most will recognize), Moneypenny, and Q back to the cast.  It’s overall function is to show how the Casino Royale Bond transitioned to the Goldfinger Bond since we started back before he was 00rated.  And Javier Bardem is an inspired choice to play a turned agent.  And his gay routine was hilarious.  But it was a rehash of the 006 plot from a better movie.  And there’s some intrigue, but no mystery and the final action piece is just boring.  If you’re going to have a shootout in a field; you need to bring your A-game.  Ox has seen a lot of fucking shootouts in fucking fields silhouetted by fucking fire.  And he has seen it done better.  Many times over the last 20 years.  And where the fuck was Mr. White and the continuity we spent the last 2 movies building?  Maybe he’ll be back.  But I was disappointed.

What did I like?  Moneypenny is hot as hell and they have a more liberated take on her.  Which is nice.  Q is perfect.  The new M is dourly appropriate.  Also the first 2/3 of the movie is fairly exciting.  But the end is just kind of stupid.  You gotta bring more to the table.  This is Bond.

What they need for the next one is to stop rebooting and reintroducing.  Everyone knows who’s who and that Jimmy is a fucking orphan spy smooth badass.  Let’s focus on creating a cool problem with an exciting and intellectually stimulating resolution and stop all this fucking character development.  Its the 23rd fucking film.  The characters are developed.

Anyhow, its not terrible.  But top 10-15 (of Bond films) is probably the best I can rate it.

I guess Tron was too complex…

I crack myself up, but seriously:  This movie is a solid ok.  If you have kids, are tired of thinking too much, or ever played in an arcade; you should probably check this out.

The film imagines video game characters as electronic versions of the Toy Story toys.  They’ve got a job to do, though their personalities may not always fit their skill set and game placement.  Though you’ve experienced the ‘what you want to do’ vs ‘what has to be done’ morality tale countless times; this is a moderately stylish version.

I always imagined the arcade games as being worlds unto themselves and that the screen was merely a window.  I was always curious what was happening beyond my view.  This movie had the potential to tap that kind of wonder.  And it does, to a point.  But then it forgets what it was doing and tries to focus on being a morality tale.

What you have here is more style than substance.  I enjoyed the old game in-jokes and I even accept the Donkey Kong wants to be Link from Zelda story.  But the thing didn’t realize its potential.  The comic themes were inconsistent and the priority of the story was in constant flux.  However, the film did come up with some charming characters (especially the little candy girl glitch) but ultimately needed to do them the respect of shaping a better story for them.

No need to see it in the theater, not as good as your average Pixar (but better than Toy Story 3 and Cars 2) but better than Ice Age and the like. 

Oh and 2 notes: on the short cartoon to open the movie, Disney, you assholes, everyone knows you can animate.  That’s not the point of a fucking short.  That story was asinine.  What the fuck did you buy Pixar for if you won’t take a lead from them.  Content is King.  And second note:  3D is shitty and pointless.  Nobody buys 3D TV’s because it’s shitty and pointless.  Just stop.

I don’t throw around the word remarkable very much.  But here it is; Cloud Atlas is a remarkable film.

If you watch an ad for it, you’ll have literally no idea what it’s actually about.  Let me see if I can do better:

There are 6 distinct stories told with different styles and set in different times.

The first is an adventure told in the form of journal entries.  During the California gold rush, an American notary falls ill in the Pacific islands and befriends a skilled doctor and a Moriori tribesman.  One of the two men he befriends seeks to kill him.

The second is a collection of letters a composer sends to his former lover from Cambridge starting in 1931.  The 2 men have parted ways since school as the other is a physicist.  The Composer is helping an elderly “great” composer with his work while amused by the naivety of an American in a seafaring story he is reading.  He is also writing his own composition which involves 6 distinct solos overlapping each other.  However the old composer has ideas of his own.

The third is set in 1975 and begins when a young journalist is caught in an elevator with an elderly physicist.  The old man hints he may have a story for her but is murdered shortly after their conversation.  The journalist finds a set of letters from the 1930’s among his effects.

The fourth is set in 2012, as Timothy Cavendish, a publisher, flees the henchmen of a criminal who has penned a tell-all book, he picks up a story about a reporter investigating a nuclear plant in the 70’s.

The fifth is set very far in the future in Neo Seoul, which looks to be a floating city on an ocean that was once Asia.  A slave clone called Sonmi-451, who works/lives/sleeps at a fast food restaurant, accidentally sees part of an old video called “The Terrible Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish”.  After which she cannot sleep…

And the sixth is set even further in the future in a post-apocalyptic world where the year is “104 winters after the fall”.  A tribe, who worships a peaceful goddess named Sonmi, lives and farms on the island of Hawaii while trying to avoid raiders from the other islands.  One day a woman arrives in a mechanical ship asking for a guide to the top of the mountain…

But all these stories are the same story.  The characters, with one exception, are reincarnations of previous characters.  The mantle of office (a person who is reincarnated isn’t the same person as previous incarnations, duh, good and evil [or in this case humanity and authority, which aren’t as easily pigeon holed] are choices which must be made and remade constantly) is a birthmark.  And what may seem evil in one age may echo through time and save humanity in the future.  It is simply impossible to tell until the race has been run.

This is a beautiful, haunting, and remarkable film.

Rian Johnson is a talent to watch.

I’d never heard of him.  I’ve since looked him up and Looper is only his 3rd film and his 1st of any kind of size.  Didn’t stop the writer/director from relentlessly blowing my mind.

Quick plot rundown:  Around the 2040’s, after apparently continuing to become socialist, America has finally reached socialist equilibrium (wherein only criminals have any money).  Technology is increasing at breakneck speed, 10% of the population has brain mutations and apparently in the 2070’s somebody invents time travel.  We know this because people start coming back.  Apparently time travel tech was made horrifically illegal almost immediately; but in certain cases the risk was worth it.  You see, human tracking technology has become so onerous in the future that it’s almost impossible to commit murder.  There’s no way to dispose of the body without being found out.  So organized crime starts sending people back in time to get killed.  Then there’s no body and no way to prove anyone died. 

The way they work this system is rather clever.  A mob representative (for the location’s particular mob, I assume there are competing interests but folks from the future are rather closed mouthed about specifics.  They just like to drop tantalizing hints) was sent back in time to secure a beach head to operate (Jeff Daniels).  He recruits talent (doesn’t take much) to go stand in appointed secluded spots at appointed times to immediately murder hooded men who appear at these times and places via travel from the future.  It’s an easy gig.  Tied up person wearing a hood materializes, dude (they are the titular loopers; I’ll explain later) lights him up with a shotgun, disposes of the body and keeps the money sent back with him.  These loopers will one day be called upon to kill their future selves, as part of their contract.  This is called closing the loop.  One day the dude they shoot will have a BUNCH more money than usual strapped to him and it’s actually the dude from 30some years in the future.  So the looper kills himself and lives large on powerball for the next 3 decades until the mob shows up to send him back and close the loop.

One day, Joe (a looper, young version played by Joseph Gordon Livett) is faced with killing himself.  Except there’s some kind of mafia shakeup in the future and his old self (Bruce Willis) is ready for him and escapes.  Joe will be murdered if he can’t close his loop so he chases after Old Joe.  For reasons best discovered by watching the film; Old Joe has come back in time to murder 3 children.  Why?  That’s what the movie is about.  Fucking go see it.

First, this film is visually masterful.  Rian does something with close facial expressions I haven’t seen before.  He conveys very complex emotions without any dialogue.  And he delivers probably the best montage any movie has ever had.  It summarizes Old Joe’s life up to the travel back in time, and is just fantastic.  I don’t even remember if it had any music; it was a journey of images and facial expressions.  Second, the sci-fi is solid and brutal.  There’re no paradoxes in this movie.  If something changes in the past the effects are immediate and usually brutal/horrifying.  Third, all the actors (shout outs to Emily Blunt and the kid who plays her son) are on their game.  You don’t watch this film so much as get swept up in it.  And finally, it has a horrible beauty about it. 

I don’t know who Rian Johnson is or were he came from; but I will take a look at anything else he does for the rest of his career.  This may unseat Argo; seriously considering it.