MovieOx

In order to include points of view other than my own (not that there’s any value in opinions that aren’t mine, just being random) and to avoid actually having to see it for myself; I’ve queried an anonymous Army serviceman who recently saw the film.  Don’t worry, he’s not in signal corps so there will be no Dungeons and Dragons nor Warcraft references.

Why did you decide to see The Watch?
-> I was on my way to Georgia from NYC and stopped in Richmond, VA to see a movie for a few hours. The only movies playing were spiderman and the watch. Spiderman was playing in 30 minutes; the watch was playing in 5 minutes. I opted out for time over quality it seems.

How would you describe the plot?
-> Ben Stiller is the lead and plays an uppity, impotent douchebag who spends more time community organizing than bangin is hot wife. Jonah Hill plays a psychopath (curious?) and Vince Vaughn plays Vince Vaughn as you have seen him in every movie with Vince Vaughn. They toss in the only black (half) English comedian I have ever seen in my life just for shits and gigs… and then a fucking alien with R. Lee Ermy

Who, if anyone, deserves to die for their contribution to this film?
-> Ben Stiller

Would you say this film is better or worse than Bret Ratner’s immortal
Rush Hour II?
-> I would rather watch Rush Hour II every day in hell on repeat than go through that movie again.

Would it be accurate to say The Watch made you sad ‘in the pants’?
-> More like an angry sad.

How long after viewing the watch did you suffer erectile dysfunction?
-> The effects this movie had on my sex life were staggering

If James Holmes had shot up a theater of people attending this film, would he be a lock for the Nobel Peace prize for mercy killings?
-> Too soon or not soon enough? He wouldn’t get Nobel, but he would definitely snag Presidential Medal of Freedom

What, if anything, did the vietnam war have to do with this film?
->The movie attempted the strategy of attrition devised by General Westmoreland in order to kill the time of the maximum amount of movie goers.

Could Mel Gibson have saved this film?
->easily

What is the atomic # of zinc?
->30

You’re Big Gay Al and you pretty much get to rape whomever you want in the prison that has been your home for the last 5 years.  The whole (male) cast of the watch is in your shower. Who feels the pain 1st and why?
->I would save Ben Stiller till the end because I would not want to have him crying for the entire time after I rape him first..I would take the english guy…..he’s got a pretty mouth…

Compare and contrast this film to an average DMV experience.
->no comment

And finally, do you think you’ll kill again?

-> any new Batman’s coming out anytime soon?

 

 Well, there you have it folks.  Avoid the watch.  And don’t complain about my favoritism of the Army over other branches.  I’ll talk to a navy guy once the rest stop bathroom revokes my restraining order and I’m sure I’ll run into some Air Force and Marine guys at pilates.

…

Yeah, you can all eat shit.  I’m not seeing this.

Before I begin, peace be upon those poor people who got shot at a midnight showing in Aurora, CO.  May they find the clearing at the end of the path.

And, more cynically, I’d like to point out if more people carried weapons 12 people wouldn’t be dead.  The asshole who started shooting up the theater would have been aced and we’d be reading about the idiot stupid enough to pull a gun on a crowd of Americans.  Maybe that seems counter intuitive, but people should be more afraid of other people.  Guns will help.

Anyway, I’ve seen Dark Knight Rises and you haven’t.  If you’re a sequential art (comic book) aficionado, DKR is a combination of Knightfall and Frank Miller’s classic Dark Knight Returns.  The former is a storyline launched in 94 when DC realized it had been putting out just terrible work for years and decided to kill off its major characters to shake things up.  This resulted in Superman getting to fight Doomsday and Batman being introduced to Bane.  In the comic, Bane is a South American terrorist who was born and raised inside a prison.  He wears a luchador mask and pumps himself up on a potent and extremely fast acting steroid called venom.  If that sounds retarded, it’s because it is.  Knightfall was a fucktarded story.  Dark Knight Returns is a much more awesome story set after Batman has long retired, in his 50’s.  And he ends up getting so angry at how shitty the city has become that he dusts off the old cape.  How does a near senior citizen fight criminals hand to hand?  Well, he’s not as nice as he used to be.  He uses weapons, filthy tricks, and extreme violence.  Basically, he’s not fucking around.  One of his antagonists is the Mutant leader.  Leader of an extremely physical and violent gang (the mutants); he and Batman engage in some seriously intense combat. 

The primary antagonist of the new movie is Bane but he’s really mostly the mutant leader.  He’s a combination of the two characters but much more mutant leader than Bane.  Which is a good thing.  And Tom Hardy brings an impressive physicality to the role.

If you’ll recall where we last left our hero, he’d taken the rap for the murders Two-Face committed and for Harvey Dent’s death (see what I did there?).  DKR takes place 8 years later as Gotham is relatively calm and nobody has seen Batman since.  Nobody has seen Bruce Wayne either, he’s become a recluse.  It seems like nothing is wrong.  Which as anyone who plays Resident Evil knows is time to look over your shoulder for the monster.

I don’t think anyone’s ever going to top TDK’sJoker; but this film’s Bane cannot be ignored.  Gone is the luchador mask.  He’s kind of like a MMA Darth Vader.  You’ll see.   While not “topping” the Joker; Bane is easily a more serious problem.  He’s bringing the French Revolution on steroids.  He’s bringing Occupy Wall-Street with balls.

Nolan rounds out the scene with around 20 other characters, some from the comic, some new.  The best new addition, besides Bane, is Ann Hathaway as Catwoman.  Ann can pull off pure athletic better than I would have thought.  Her fighting prowess is quite believable.  And she gives us an understated, aspiring nihilist take on Catwoman that’s by far the most interesting version of a usually stupid character.

Some quick notes on flaws:  There’s alot of shit in this movie.  Alot of new characters, sometimes it takes away from the moment.  Sometimes the fighting feels too smooth.  Still not quite sure how I feel about the ending.  But that’s it.

See the movie.  It won’t make you forget Heath, but Bane is pretty good in his own right.  His introduction scene is almost as cool as Joker’s bank heist.  And Nolan throws a few curve balls at you and they’re solid pitches.  But take a gun, theaters are dangerous.

Oliver Stone has just crossed the line from secret fucktard to official practitioner of fucktardery.

He was still seen, in certain brainless circles, as a compelling storyteller.  Even after Wall St 2: The Quickening, Alexander, World Trade Center, W (if you like any of these movies you may enjoy my upcoming devotional literature release: Go Fuck Yourself) he’s still seen as a name in directing.  Savages ought to end that.

Before I verbally knock the cock off the man, let me take a moment to put my views on him in perspective.  Oliver Stone is an important voice in documentary media.  He’s done a couple documentaries on Fidel Castro and Latin America.  None of these were particularly good; but what is important is the man can get access to anyone.  He’s talked with Colombian revolutionaries, Ahmadinejad, the PLO, Hugo Chavez, Castro, really everyone.  Even when I knock his dick off for his shit skill at fiction; I respect the fact that somebody is actually in these places talking to these people in an effort to understand the context of their actions.  I can’t really say he’s doing a shitty job, as much as I’d like to, because very few in the media take the sort of personal risk he does so nobody else is really doing what he is.  When his documentary series The Untold History of America airs; I’ll watch it.  I might, and probably will, hate and disagree with it.  But I’ll listen to anyone who gets shot at to make a film.

But, overall, I think he’s a nutcase who can’t be trusted to work with fiction anymore.  He likes to make films about actual events and just make shit up.  Yes, I’m talking about JFK.  If you’re telling a story that people lived through, you need to adhere a little closer to reality.  Stone admitted to changing events to suit his movie.  He sees no issue with it.  I do.  It’s fucking lazy.  You either have a fictional story, or you don’t.  If people see your fictional story and are given the impression that its actually 100% true; you’re an asshole and a bad writer. 

And he often has no clue what parts of history are actually compelling.  Depicting Alexander the Great’s homosexual relationships was not near as groundbreaking as Oliver obviously thought it was.  Everyone knows Alexander boned Hephaestion.  We didn’t need to spend 3 hours going “oh my god he was gay!”.  I’m pretty sure the movie would have been better served by a sex scene than 3+ hours of man on man droopy eyed romance.  People are interested in the man because he conquered the known world at 20something.  Who and why he fucked are details, not plot points. 

Basically, Oliver is a nutcase who has difficulty not doing stupid, insane things with history.  So he should stick to documentaries where what happens can be the narrative.  He can’t provide one of his own without going off the retard end.

Anyway, Savages sucks.  Here’s what must have happened:  “Ok Oliver, after a year of principle filming we’ve got 100 or so hours of footage of these 3 kids fucking and about 10 minutes of Benicio Del Toro walking around with a mullet.”  “Ok, shoot Selma Hayak rolling around in an expensive bed for about a week and I think we got this!”  A drug war between an American Zeta-type gang and the Mexican cartel with a bunch of sex ought to have been exciting at some point.  But at no point was it.  And it has the same ending as Wayne’s World.  Where you get to pick from among several endings. 

The supposed plot is that 2 friends from very different backgrounds start a weed business and also bone the same girl.  They are good at their job (one is a business science hippy and the other is an ex-marine or something) and attract the notice (and war!) of the Mexican cartel.  Kidnappings and violence ensue.  Yet at no time was anything on screen worth watching.  I suppose some of the girls might like the fleeting shots of man ass, but you should probably see Magic Mike instead.

Stay away from fiction, Oliver you fucktard.

Just a note: If you saw Sam Rami’s Spiderman, you’ve already seen this movie.  But not as stylishly done.

There’s nothing really new in this new offering.  Sony is just hemorrhaging money and the only part of the conglomerate actually cash flowing is the Spiderman franchise.  So they’ll keep making these until Samsung prepares their finishing move.

But, if you’re a fan of the 1st Spiderman movie; you’ll still love this one.  It’s like the 1st trilogy was a set of very expensive focus groups to refine what works on screen and what doesn’t concerning the web-crawler.  And some lessons have been learned.  Such as: Venom will never be a big screen bad guy.  The living costume just isn’t that visually impressive.  Classic villains are the way to go.

And Wardo from the social network and Emily Stone are more charismatic than old Toby and whatsherface.  Stone is particularly charming.  And Wardo is just funnier than Toby. So this Spiderman is funnier.  And Dennis Leary is Stones dad.  Which is always cool.

And there’s little moments of unexpected heart in the film.

So really, yes its a retread, yes there’s nothing original.  But it’s all done with flair.  It’s worth watching.  Probably a better overall movie than Avengers.  Not that it’s quite as fun as Hulk Smash; but well worth seeing.

On my last TV rant I maintained that Newsweek did enough to get one more viewing from me.  And they used it.  That second episode was the dumbest thing I watched on TV yesterday that wasn’t True Blood.  I’m past being concerned the show has a decided political slant or that the retro-active fictionalization of real events is lazy or that I might be biased against a drama centered around journalism (because I hate the institution).  The show, in the space of one episode, became too stupid for my consideration.  It’s not the show’s political bent, its lazy design, or that journalism is inherently stupid.  The dialogue of its 2nd episode was worthy of Full House.  If I were HBO I’d be embarrassed I greenlit this crap.

And keeping with HBO, how stupid is True Blood?  And how retarded am I to keep watching it?  It’s first season began as a truly unique take on the supernatural and its uses in symbolism (and in this case the show should be viewed separate from the books.  the 1st season of the show was an actual achievement; the books are were and are still crap).  And sported some very attractive nude females, some of whom are Oscar winners.  But it quickly went stupid.  Much like Alan Ball’s other show.  Why am I still watching?  Well, there’s still nudity.  And Bill and Eric are still slightly interesting characters.  So I’ll continue to chronicle this thing from its promising beginning to whenever the ass machine it has become emits its final wet fart.  But you should ignore this pile of shit.  Save yourself.

HBO is singularly lacking a quality Sunday show.  I’m hoping post-Jimmy Boardwalk Empire doesn’t let me down.  And if not, AMC’s Breaking Bad will get me over my breakup.

It’s really too bad Luck was decidedly unlucky.  That could have been a solid show.  I like the idea of Milich and Mann teaming up again.  HBO needs to keep these guys working.  The give good TV.

Looking at HBO’s upcoming new shows, I’m underwhelmed.  Here’s hoping that Dark Tower adaptation doesn’t suck complete ass.  And that they don’t fuck up American Gods.  And enough with Sorkin.  He’s proven to be a movie writer.  His TV efforts are more of the CBS calibre.

The New York Times maintains there’s only one joke in Ted.  That may be, I suppose the film is a long rif on a stuffed bear with an adult personality.  But at the end of the movie you still aren’t sick of the joke.

Ted‘s pretty fucking funny.

I’m not going to waste much time explaining the movie or why its good.  A boy wishes upon a star for his bear to come to life so he’ll have a friend.  And so it does.  Years later when the boy is a 35 year old south Boston asshat, so is the bear.  And that’s plot.

But the asshats will make you laugh so hard you risk injury.

Family Guy fans will appreciate the Seth McFarlane’s style from back when it was a funny show.

Ted’s funny, filthy, you’ll laugh a lot, go see it.

I’m a sucker for Shakespere’s tragedies.  His other stuff not so much.  I don’t think his comedies translate as well into modern day as his tragedies.  The Taming of the Shrew has been made into a shit ton of movies (some of the distinct assinine variety), some of them good.

But his tragedies, man o man.  You don’t need to adapt them.  You can use the origional language and let them roll.  My favorite film version Shakespere is Baz Lurman’s Romeo and Juliet.  If you haven’t see it, its the one with DiCaprio and Danes.  The language is exactly from the ancient play and the setting is modern day.  When the cast referrs to swords they talking about guns (a sword 9mm is a stand in for a beretta and a broadsword for a sub-machine gun).  So sword was transformed into slang for gun and several items like that.  And its this type of cool throughout the movie that places it slightly ahead of Branagh’s Hamlet. Really, the only issue I had was I didn’t think Danes was hot enough to be Juliet.  Don’t get me wrong, she’s a looker, but she doesn’t look quite hot enough for Paris and Romeo to fight to the death over her grave.  Although that scene doesn’t happen in the movie so there you go.

Anyway (fuck I can go off subject) it used to be my favorite film version.  Ralph Fiennes has just knocked Baz off the top of the mountain.  His Coriolanus is wall to wall intensity.  The play, since its noticeably less well known than our star crossed lovers or the batshit Danish prince, tells of a real (or at least a real legend) general from Rome’s pre empire days.  Coriolanus, as he was known after taking the city Corioli, was successful general who defeated the invading Volscians.  He was made consul, later banished, and still later made common cause with the Volscians and invaded Rome.

The film imagines this in modern day.  The nation in question is still Rome and the language is still the original iambic pentameter; but the appearance is modern.  As the film begins a mob of Roman poor are protesting grain prices and denouncing Coriolanus for placing the city under martial law.  The general, a patrician and no lover of the common people, emerges from behind a line of police shields and fearing nothing walks straight up to the crowd and harangues it into submission.  Ralph Fiennes is fairly terrifying as he portrays this general.  I wouldn’t fuck with him.

The leader of the Volscians is played by Gerrard Butler, who’s not really a slouch in the physical intimidation department either.

Rome in this film looks like a war-torn Balkan city (indeed it was shot in Coatia).  The fighting takes place in a very Sarajevo like urban combat theater.  Fiennes skillfully maneuvers the modern combat in a manner that suits the 400 year old language.  And he manages to keep it quite intense.  Near the end of the skirmish the Romans and Volscians are down to knives and it’s smashing good fun.

And like most of Shakespere’s tragedies, its frightenly easy to take the language and situation and slip it into modern day.  One enterprising reviewer said he half expected to see signs saying ‘Occupy Rome’. 

Anyway, the story is of an exploited patriot who has no other means of making his way in the world than through violence and what he does when he finds out he was a puppet.  Fiennes is at his most intense (if you thought he was scary as Voldemort, you may need to re evaluate).  Brian Cox is great (as always) as a sympathetic senator.  Coriolanus’s wife and mother are played by Vanessa Redgrave and Jessca Chastain.  Both are good.  I wish Jessica Chastain had more lines; she is truly gifted.

This probably isn’t for gen-pop but if you like 2 of the 3 in parenthesis (Shakespeare, Guns, Knives) you’ll enjoy it.

It sure became cool to rip on Pixar all the sudden…

But lucky for you folks; I don’t have the slightest idea how to join the madding crowd.  Despite what you might read on every movie column except for a Brave woman at Slate; Brave is actually a great movie.

I’m not sure if there’s another studio that approaches the story of a film with more respect than Pixar.  I know people go gaga over the digital animation (and they’re fairly uncontested as the world leader there) but, as always, I’m in it for the story.  And Pixar rarely disappoints. 

I didn’t love Finding Nemo, but I have to respect the tale.  It played with a number of ‘adventure’ and ‘voyage’ tropes and did so very intelligently.  I didn’t love Up either.  I found the story of the protagonist haunting and I very much enjoyed the talking dogs; but I wish the old man had been given something more interesting to do.  And I wish the bad guy had been more thought out.  And I didn’t really like Toy Story 3.  I thought they did basically the same story in Toy Story 2 and did it better.  And I didn’t like Cars 2: Larry the Cable Guy.  But even in the films I didn’t really like; it was apparent that Pixar respected the story and audience enough to go all out.  There’s never that lame George Lucas excuse for laziness,”it’s just a kids movie”. 

I went nuts for The Incredibles.  It was apparent that Pixar knows what’s quality and what’s not and borrowed almost all that was quality and classic from comic books and wrote a love note to it.  They also have my gratitude for the best telling of 7 samurai besides the original (A Bug’s Life).  It was clear that they understood what made that story cool.  Ratatouille cut to the heart of the artist and the critic and why they do what they do.  Wall-E maintained that we are never without hope and that there is heroism ingrained within us and what we build.

Oh, and to date I have enjoyed the shit out of every single short they’ve had. 

Anyway, Brave is not my favorite or the best Pixar offering so far.  But, it is absolutely the funniest.  I laughed my ass off unabashedly for at least two thirds of the run time. 

The basic plot is that there’s a fantasy Scottish kingdom where it’s tradition of the royal house that its heir choose a mate from one of the other 3 clans.  This time around the fiery red-headed princess  would rather not be betrothed.  She goes to a number of lengths to assure she’s not forced into marriage (she’s kind of a drama queen about it, but riding her clydesdale through the woods does look fun as shit, I wouldn’t want to grow up either).  Her mother has attempted to prepare her for marriage and queenship; but she more resembles her warrior father. 

One of her attempts to convince her mother to change her mind has disasterous consequences.  Soon marriage becomes the last thing on her mind as she must find a way to save her mother, family, and kingdom. 

Her 3 little brothers have no lines at all in the movie.  But they are undoubtedly the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.  Her father (Billy Connoly) is funny as hell as well.  Also, the other clans, their leaders, their respective suitors, and the general Scottish Highland parliamentary procedure are just too much.  You will laugh your ass off.

And though I deem it a secondary consideration; the animation is masterful.  Meirda (our princess)’s hair is almost its own character.  And who would have thought the eye could be the scariest part of a bear. 

And Pixar clearly understands what’s cool and hilarious about Celtic culture.  They know why people still go to the Highland Games and still throw the caber.  Also, Pixar has apparently instituted kilt Fridays. 

Don’t read any more reviews, see the movie.  You won’t be disappointed.