MovieOx

Channing Tatum is a talented mother fucker.  Yeah, I said it.  The former stripper (stage name Chan Crawford) has some chops.  He was easily convincing as a military/intelligence contractor/thug in Haywire, he’s apparently proven he can dance other than exotically (Step Up?), played a role I thought was waaay too somber for him to pull off (The Eagle), and now he shows up with some comedy skill.  (The only gripe I have with him was his facial hair in The Eagle, but that’s really on the production side for not making him cut it off and it didn’t really matter because the film ended up sucking for the most part)  It’s a toss up between him and Jonah Hill on who’s funnier in 21 Jumpstreet.

I suppose a tie goes to Jonah because he wrote the thing, but it’s a closer call than you’d think.

I’m not going to get too much into the plot of the movie, bumbling cops get assigned to an undercover outfit because they look youngish, and they need to place people in local high schools.  The film is delightfully aware that its an 80’s retread and takes full opportunity to make fun of itself and of all of you.

There are various cameos and small roles(I could have done without the Johnny Depp one, it went about 5 minutes too long) of varying degrees of success.  The best goes to Ellie Kemper as her portrayal of an Ap (you’ll get it if you see it) Chemistry teacher who wants to ride Channing.  

And Jonah Hill is still funny as hell.

Also, the designer drug in the movie is just about the most hilarious drug ever imagined.  There are several documented stages of the drug that increase in hilarity exponentially. 

See this, you’ll laugh your ass off.

I’ve always wanted to see Princess of Mars made into a movie.  But Disney got ahold of the rights.  Damnit.

First, let me say what’s good about the film.  The cast is awesome.  Everyone is perfectly cast, and if a few other things were different this could have been the epic to end all epics.  Taylor Kitsch is easily believable as a confederate cavalryman turned prospector.  Lynn Collins is great as the princess.  And the two are clearly made to wear loincloths.  For the most part, I even thought they nailed the look (though they should have looked at Alan Moore’s take in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 2 because they still got owned).  But sadly, having the correct cast and look (almost) makes John Carter even more of a tragedy.

Now, I’m pretty sure critics don’t even watch the movies because nobody (film drew poor reviews for the most part) who panned the thing mentioned anything except that it cost too much to make.  So you have my permission not to read them.  What was really wrong with the movie was its cuddliness.  The latest iteration of Conan had this same problem.  One should not try to make a cuddly film from harsh source material.  John Carter was not a nice person.  He was a broken, evil man.  His adventures on Mars redeemed his spirit but he was a conqueror, not a hero.  He was Caesar not Jesus.

This could have been a terrifying, inspiring, sprawling epic.  The 4 armed, warrior like Tharks (correctly realized) could beat the shit out of the smurfs from Avatar.  But neither Disney, nor Andy Stanton (director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E) have the stomach to create characters that aren’t friendly or a movie without a clear good and bad.

I thought this movie was going to nail it at first, when the film starts on earth a Federal Cavalry Captain is trying to force John Carter to join up to fight Apache.  But John Carter is such a hard boiled prick, they can’t get him to budge.  They imprison him, he escapes.  Repeatedly.  But once on Mars (I’m not going to cover how that happens, read a book) everything is cuddly and the good guys are identifiable by their non aggressive colors, and boring.  A scene where John Carter employs his superior strength (Earth’s gravity is stronger so on Mars John Carter is about 10 times stronger than everyone else) to murder around 1,000 Tharks in pitched battle should have been exciting.  But it was not.  It was boring, because nothing was at stake, nobody was seriously convinced the cuddly aliens could actually hurt him.

The movie isn’t terrible, its just tragic to finally have a John Carter film and have it be this.

Most people don’t really remember how big a phenomenon The Blair Witch Project was.  I say “don’t remember” but I really mean actively suppress.  This is because a disturbingly large number of you idiots thought the footage was real.  I had arguments with at least a dozen people (and not anyone especially retarded, I’d call most of them average to above average as far as intelligence, though that’s still not saying much).  You bring up the film today and the same idiots who thought it was real take a vocal shit on it.

Then you have another large section of the population that was supremely upset the film didn’t show “the witch”.  Basically the same people who didn’t like the supremely under rated Contact because you didn’t get to see the alien.  Venture Bros has a pretty good explanation of why that’s just a stupid opinion.

But I’m getting off track, I think found footage movies can be especially powerful.  One can spend millions on a production that, using special effects and complicated film techniques, place the viewer in the heart of action.  But somehow, grainy handheld camera footage seems more real and gives the viewer a sense (though he knows better in his heart) the action has really happened.  And just to be clear, I’m talking about fiction that is made to appear as if someone recorded an actual event and the recording was later “found”.  The film version of the literary style of Dracula or War of the Worlds.  Which is nothing new.  People have been making these films since they’ve been making films.

But with the evolution of digital effects, found footage has reached a new level.  Cloverfield is one such example (Oh and just a reminder: you same assholes bitch when you don’t get to see the monster and you bitch when you do; pick one).  Digital effects can be rendered to easily look photoreal on the lower quality found footage.  So, we can do some interesting things with these movies (jets fighting Godzilla or Cthulhu or whatever that was supposed to be in Cloverfield).

Chronicle is a story about 3 high school kids that discover SOMETHING underground that changes them.  They slowly start to develop telekinetic skills and their whole world changes.  And there are consequences.

The plot film device is centered around the character Andrew.  He is troubled teenager who is viciously abused by his father and begins to film his life as a sort of self defense mechanism.  His cousin, Matt, is a bit of a douche who is from a kinder side of the family who is given to applying quotes of great philosophers inappropriately.  Matt is friendly to Andrew but is attempting to climb the cursus honorum that is high school popularity and distances himself from Andrew in public.  Steve, our 3^rd hero, is an gifted athlete, honors student, and a lock for class president.  He’s the type of kid everyone would like to hate, but he’s just too damn kind hearted.

Anyway, the meat of the story begins when the 3 kids are all at a rave (Steve rocking, Matt trying to rock, Andrew filming then becoming a victim of drunken bullying).  Steve and Matt discover the SOMETHING underground (it was making nifty noises), and rescue Andrew from his post bullied depression because Andrew has his camera and they want to film it.

The SOMETHING has an adverse (or beneficial depending on how you look at it) reaction to the camera and the 3 kids barely get back to the surface alive.  Over time they slowly realize they can move things with their minds.  And they’re getting stronger.

Each of the 3’s very different backgrounds and personalities come into play as they try to cope with their newfound ability.

The film does an excellent job of extrapolating what kind of things somebody could do with telekinesis as well as how they might play on the main characters’ respective psychologies.  The filmmakers do high school pain and awkwardness and deepish philosophical questions equally well.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this film.  Well worth seeing in the theater.

If you’ve ever wanted to sit and contemplate Michael Fassbender’s cock for about 5 minutes, this is your movie.

Shame (by director Steve McQueen) reunites Fassbender’s cock with his director from Hunger and co stars the dude who somehow made it through the WW2 pacific theater with long hair and no lice (HBO’s lame Pacific) and Gordon Gekko’s ugly daughter, and several dozen nudity friendly actresses.

Fassbender plays a transplanted (in his youth) Irishman living in New York who is addicted to sex.  (We can get into whether or not that’s even a real condition or not at a later date, personally I just think some people like to bone more than others and no preference qualifies as unhealthy)  He’s got his professional life together (except for the porn on his work computer, that seems like a rookie mistake) and uses his adequate compensation to indulge his hobby, which is fucking.  I use that word deliberately, he can’t get it up to make love, and in order to achieve full bone there has to be an element of sleaze for him.  He doesn’t distinguish between cybersex, prostitutes, spanking it in the office john, dating, or the random hookup.  To him they may as well be slightly different flavors of salsa.  And he likes salsa.  At one point in the film he expresses confusion as to why people even get married in “this day and age”.  He sees that as unnecessarily limiting.

But, when his sister (daughter Gekko, Carry Mulligan who actually turns in a solid performance, all joking aside) crashes at his place unannounced, his perfect world is marred.  She’s just as freaky as he is but it manifests itself slightly differently.  While he disdains attachment, she craves it to an obscene degree.  She meets Fassbender’s (lameass from Pacific) boss and seduces him that night.  And they hook up in Fassbender’s place.  He can barely handle her presence in his life, having to hear her screw sends him over the edge.

But really the story is about Fassbender, the tragedy isn’t his sex life (that’s pretty awesome) the tragedy is he is unable to make or see the point in connection to another human (beyond boning); it even seems to revolt him.

This film is beautifully shot.  It’s about sex (or at least the motivation for it), and there’s a fair amount of bonery, but somehow its not gratuitous.  The story is told in images.  Dialogue occurs but it often has nothing to do with the actual narrative, which is almost entirely visual.

This is a solid film, but its not for the sexually squeamish.

Beautiful people, dressed fashionably, beating the living shit out of each other, in exotic locations.  And that’s pretty much the movie.

Seriously, do you need anything else?  I grudgingly noticed a plot.  Actually that’s not fair.  Steven Soderbergh lays out a pretty nice spy story.  I say nice because it makes sense, its not overly complex (in the sense that it doesn’t interfere with the visceral feel of the action), it flows quickly, and makes sense.

However, the reason the asses are in the seats is the action.  And rightly so.  The action is this movie is BRUTAL.  When I say people beat the shit out of each other, in some cases I’m being literal.  Gina Carano (best known for getting her shit tossed by the cyborg in Strikeforce…also I suppose her Maxim spread raised some eyebrows [she is grade A meat]) is an independent intelligence contractor who is betrayed by the men who hired here (the US government…  Or is it?).  And she is framed for a murder in Spain and has to knock the fuck out of a bunch of people in order to clear her name.

Aside from Carano (who, all kidding aside, is a legit action star in this role, also she’s sporting a 10 point ass which never hurts) the film sees a great performance by Channing Tatum (no, I’m actually serious).  And supporting the two pieces of meat are Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Bill Paxton, and Antonio Bandaras.  Yeah.

Think your basic mission impossible plot with ¾ of the dialogue removed, no special gadgets, no wire fighting, and no cgi.  Then crank up the raw violence by a power of 10.

Note: at least one rather brutal fight is pretty hot.  You will become aroused.  But unlike me you’ll probably hate yourself.  And you ought to, you sick bastard.

Anyway, this one’s pretty good.  You need to see it.  And see it with a good sound system so you can hear all the organs bursting and bones breaking.  And the grunting.

So Mission Impossible has a 4^th installment.  And it’s directed by Brad Bird!!  This is in keeping with tradition on the franchise of having a completely new and proven director for each separate film.  Maybe they’ll finally let Brad do his San Francisco earthquake movie.  He’s put in his time.

Anyway, somebody’s framed Ethan Hunt (Tommy Cruise of Legend fame) for something (for like the 3^rd time, weird) and he has a team of disavowed agents and must fix whatever it is (must have missed it) before the Russians (?) destroy the world.

Ok, so let’s not pay too much attention to the plot.  There are good guys and bad guys and they’re all hot and they’re going to fight in expensive clothing for your viewing pleasure.  That’s really all you need to know.

Jeremy Renner plays a totally pointless character who is in the movie for no reason.  Still like him though, he’s underutilized in less serious roles.

And there’s a couple of hot chicks (one good and one bad) who fight each other (yes!).

And Simon Pegg reprising his role from Star Trek, wait that can’t be right…

Anyway, there is one freakishly cool part where Tommy has to climb the world’s tallest building (in Dubai).  Some really good shots there that make the ballsack retract a little.

Keep your eyes peeled for the guy who headlined the original Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.  He’s a bad guy.  Well, I’m pretty sure he’s a bad guy.  Whatever.

Anyway, this is a fun light nothing with some great camera work and decent special effects.  You just won’t remember much of it when it’s over.  Which may be for the best.

All in all, worth a look in the theater.  Your ballsack really will contract.