Brick Mansions Review
Let’s think of another kind of house made out of bricks.
It seems like every time I see another Luc Besson film I go off on a “what the hell happened to this guy” diatribe so I will skip it this time around. I think I am done wondering what happened to his talent and instead am wondering if he ever had any talent. I think it entirely possible his particular brand of bad movie making skills hit at the exact right time when that style of crap was considered in vogue. Either that or he spent most of his life making his few good films and has been coasting ever since (I am not discounting the possibility of some kind of serious brain injury, however).
As a fan of the Fast and Furious series I feel bad dumping on Paul Walkers last film. I know he liked working on it and I wish he had come out with something better but honestly this film is junk. It’s everything bad in modern action films plus somehow Luc keeps using his time machine to travel back to 2004 when parkour was still considered cool. I saw District B13 (I think it was called Barrio 13) in 2007 and enjoyed it but even then it seemed dated. Seeing it done again in English watered down to PG-13 with the same dude but about 100 times hokier did not make for a good movie experience.
The last few Luc Besson projects I have seen have convinced me he actually has no understanding of American culture and really should stick to doing French films. He looks at the problems in our country and proceeds to think “Wouldn’t it be cool/terrible if they did this?” and proceeds to set up his film based on that without considering the fact that it could never actually happen. Sorry, Luc, but mafia murderers in witness protection do not live lavish lifestyles in Normandy on the US dime (and get away with murder), the CIA does not have carte blanche to run rampant through France, 10 year old girls cannot life 300 pound manhole covers, US politicians are not so devoid of morals that they think dropping a neutron bomb in downtown Detroit is the fast track to urban gentrification, and the ability to jump fences and climb walls does not translate into the ability to dodge several thousand bullets shot at your main characters.
Let me expound a little on that last one and a phenomenon I have seen in certain foreign directors before. You see, whether you are for guns or against them growing up in America you learn to respect firearms. To understand their destructive power you either need to fire off a few thousand rounds or be in constant danger of having them fired at you. Foreign directors from countries where guns are much more controlled I have noticed tend to treat guns as something a few martial arts tricks can easily get around. Being an expert in parkour does not give you the ability to dodge bullets constantly.
This is all the the detriment of the film of course. The measure of a hero is in the strength of his adversaries. Every time the two main guys jump, flip, and kick another 20 well armed thugs into PG-13 friendly unconsciousness the tension of the film drains another few gallons. The best movie characters are ones who could die at any moment from any of the bad guys and take a beating just doing it. Just compare John McClane (from the first movie of course) to any modern action hero where they mow down dozens of bad guys who seem to feel the need to actually aim is purely for squares and you will see what I mean (in fact, compare John McClane from the first Die Hard to John McClane from A Good Day To Die Hard and you will understand). The weaker the villains the weaker the hero, and the villains in this film are weak.
For that matter the main villain, Tremaine, was woefully ill used. I can honestly say I liked RZA in this role far better than any film he has done to date (especially the Man with the Iron Fists) and had his character been better written I would have like him a lot. The problem is his character kept shifting back and forth from violent street thug, Robin Hood, business man, gangster poet, and sociopath. The shifts would happen rapidly and always at the exact moment to best propel the ridiculous plot.
This film is not exactly a model for positive racial relations either. The good guys are all white, the gangsters are all assorted minorities (mostly black), and the few white criminals are all more blue collar brainy types. However, Luc has never been one for steering clear of racial stereotypes (Taken-white girl kidnapped by Albanians to be sold as a sex slave to Arabs, the Professional had 0.0 non white characters, and we don’t even want to get started on his treatment of the Mangalores in the Fifth Element). The real question is is this a purposeful statement about the future socio economic status of race relations in run down American cities or is he just being a lazy writer. I bet you can guess which way my opinion leans.
For all that it is better than the last few movies he has done. I didn’t feel the need to punch someone on the way out after I did when I saw the Family, and I didn’t have to find my motivation to keep my higher brain functions operating like I did after 3 Days to Kill. The fast pace of the story kept it from being boring and if you had a sudden bout of amnesia and forgot the last 12 years you would probably think all the parkour pretty neat. 
David Belle is an amazing parkour stunt man and does most of it himself. (Stunts image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)
Anyway, let’s get this story over with, shall we? It is Detroit in the near future and the crime ridden tenement (block? building? neighborhood? How much of Detroit is a bad Escape from New York knockoff?) known as Brick Mansions has had a giant wall erected around it to keep the criminals feeding on each other and the hapless poor that live there (that’s the American spirit! Although since the residents of Brick Mansions seem to go in and out of the gates with impunity what was this supposed to do exactly? Other than give criminals the perfect place to hide out). Lino (I thought his name was Leito? Oh, that was the last time Luc made this movie. David Belle-District B13, the Family, Babylon A.D.) is a local parkour vigilante who has stolen a ton of some white powder that may or may not be drugs (isn’t PG-13 fun?) and is flushing it down the toilet for some reason (I guess he wants to clean up the street? Not a lot of explaining going on in this film). Local gangster K2 (Gouchy Boy-Maximum Conviction, Cosmopolis, Max Payne) shows up with cartoonish S&M sidekick Rayzah (Ayisha Issa-Warm Bodies, the Immortals, L’appât) and about 100 more stereotypes to get it back. Lino run, jumps, and kicks his way to freedom.
The head gangster Tremaine (RZA-the Man with the Iron Fists, Pacific Rim, Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai) is annoyed at his underlings losing his powder so they decide to kidnap Lino’s ex girlfriend Lola (Catalina Denis-Le Mac, Corsair, Go Fast) in a diner in broad daylight outside of this DMZ. Lino breaks in to rescue her in another exciting chase scene where for some reason a Browning .50 cal manages to specifically NOT turn a Mustang into a small pile of scrap metal and bloody meat (remember what I said about Luc not really respecting or understanding guns). He manages to get her to the Detroit PD checkpoint where he is betrayed by local cops on Tremaine’s payroll. Tremaine takes Lola away for some reason (? Sex slave? Someone to listen to his megalomaniacal rants? Some form of motivation for the characters might be in order) and Lino kills the corrupt cop.
Meanwhile undercover cop Damian (Paul Walker-the whole Fast and Furious series, Pawn Shop Chronicles, Takers) busts a local drug dealer in a high speed chase. The next day he is called into the mayors office and told that a neutron bomb capable of killing several square blocks of city being transported through Detroit was captured by local Brick Mansion gansters and has a special case that will activated the bomb in 12 hours if anyone unauthorized opens the case (WTF Luc??? That’s your plot device???) and he needs to sneak into the hood and deactivate it. In order to do so he needs the help of Lino (Detroit PD must take a pretty soft view of cop killers).
Damian is thrown in a moving van with Lino as a fellow prisoner and they manage to take over the van by throwing the two officers driving it out onto the freeway at speed (I’m sure they were fine). Lino smells Damian out as a cop and they fight. Lino leaves Damian to be killed by some locals but naturally Damian escapes and convinces Lino to help him (those cops who where were thrown out of a moving vehicle will no doubt be happy to know their sacrifice in the name of maintaining the whole Damian criminal facade was completely unnecessary).
At that point Damian and Lino jump, kick, punch, and flip their way through uncounted hordes of gun wielding thugs (how does any business make enough money to have a couple of hundred dudes lying around playing Xbox instead of actually producing something?). Rayzah does some kinky BDSM stuff with Lola in order to do nothing for the story (PG-13 BDSM, BTW). Tremaine has figured out that the bomb is counting down and straps it to an old missile they happened to have lying around.
Damian and Lino shoot the missile launcher (something that the mayor and his buddies are immediately aware of. How, exactly?) and the two get to the bomb to input the deactivation code. SPOILER ALERT It turns out that the mayor of Detroit actually needed the neutron bomb to go off in order to murder a few hundred thousand people so he could develop some kind of downtown shopping center. Talk about extreme real estate. The code that they gave Damian to deactivate the bomb is actually the code to activate it and in a truly stupid twist is also the zip code for Brick Mansions.
Let’s talk about how dumb this is. OK, assuming the mayor of Detroit has access to weapons of mass destruction and the the lack of morals to use it on his constituents why the hell would they use the zip code for the area they are trying to destroy as the activation key? Does he have some kind of dark sense of humor and is willing to risk his entire plot to have a laugh at all the people he is about to murder? For that matter what kind of bomb needs to be activated by a keypad on the bomb itself? No one has ever heard of remote detonation? The military is in the habit of building bombs that require someone literally committing suicide in order to set it off? Also are they really in the habit of storing bombs in cases that activate when the bomb when the case is opened? OK, now let’s assume his plan worked and the bomb went off. Does he not think there would be about 100,000 FBI, CIA, and DHS agents investigating every aspect of an event like that? Not to mention about 100,000,000 internet conspiracy trolls. And then the land goes to a development company that he happens to own. Nothing suspicious there. Is that how property is transferred in the USA? Kill the residents and then build a mall on it? Also neutron bombs kill people with radiation so I guess you will have a ton of money on power bills as everything will have a natural glow. Is the bomb set to stop its blast radius at exactly the Brick Mansions wall? Also do you really think people are going to be happy working and shopping on the mass grave of hundreds of thousands of people? Hell, we don’t even build on Native American graveyards. Did none of you ever see Pet Cemetery?
Sorry for that tangent but in a business where I am inundated with stupid evil plans and plot devices that one truly stood out as the stupidest. It’s also the most unnecessary. There are any number of other plot devices that could have worked without making my brain swell up inside my skull. The story ends up with another really dumb hokey ending.
The stars:
If you are into parkour this movie will work for you. Let me know how your MySpace page is doing, and watch out for that new company called Facebook. One star. I will have to give one for Paul Walker. I am sorry things went down for him like it did. One star. Catalina Denis is stunning, and for some reason her wholesome Americana diner uniform looked a lot like what a stripper Catholic school girl would wear. One star. If mindless action, car chases, and wildly inaccurate gunfire is your thing welcome to heaven. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes:
The whole plot couldn’t be stupider if it had been about the Garbage Pail Kids conquering the world. I’m not kidding when I say it was insultingly dumb. Two black holes. A bonus black hole for using the zip code as the suicide bomb activation code. One black hole. Every time Damian and Lino managed to defeat another 20 guys with guns without firing a shot themselves your interest in the film evaporates even more. If there is no chance of them being killed who cares? One black hole. This film fell into a PG-13 sinkhole and never climbed back out. One black hole. As hot as Ayisha Issa is her character was truly laughable. I’m pretty sure Luc put her in because he wanted something to jerk off to. One black hole. Racial stereotypes up the arse. One black hole. Tremaine’s inability to pick a character and stick with it. One black hole. Luc’s complete lack of understanding of American culture is both humerus and insulting. We don’t make a lot of films about how much France sucks in French and open it in Paris (no we do it in English and open it here in the good old USA. God Bless America!). One black hole. Total: nine black holes.
Total of 5 black holes. A pretty poor score but like I said one of the best I have given a Luc project in a while. Worth seeing at all? Maybe if you dream of the day a group of parkour ninjas takes over the world. Maybe if you are a Paul Walker fan (in that case go see any of the F&F movies IMO). Maybe if you went to the movies drunk as hell and wandered into the wrong theater by accident. Other than that not really. Date movie? Nope. Bathroom break? Well, if you are really into the story (I almost typed that sentence without bursting into laughter) I’d say the best point would be the BDSM scene between Lola and Rayzah. It is way less fun and sexy as it sounds and does nothing but make you laugh at her character even more.
Thanks for reading. I saw the Other Woman last night and will try to write it up later today. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. You can post comments on this film or my review here (although lately I am buried in spam so if I mass delete your note I apologize) and off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Thanks for reading and have a great day.
“The Infamous Dave” Inman
Transcendence Movie Review
Ironically one antonym for transcendence is failure.
Transcendence is one of the most difficult movies for a fan of hard core science fiction (and good film in general) to watch and review. It has all the best possible elements for a successful movie: interesting concept, talented cast, and a fat CGI budget. However, like a computer made of the best possible components but assembled using string, duct tape, and chewing gum the whole thing falls apart when you try to power it up.
The concept of artificial intelligence becoming self aware and trying to kill or enslave us as a sci fi trope is so old it almost predates the War of the Newts. It ultimately is the basis of the Terminator, War Games, Tron, the Matrix, West World, Blade Runner, and to a lesser extant 2001. If you actually read some books it shows up on a regular basis and does so because it is an intriguing concept and one that appeals to nerds like me. Also since it has long been my dream to one day be downloaded into a computer and live forever as an evil computer program you can imagine my disappointment when a film takes something so rich in fodder and proceeds to grow corpse flowers with it.
Where did this film fall apart? First of all, in a film chock full of talented actors the director had them all play out like computers themselves. Say what you will about Johnny Depp (like this is his fourth box office bomb in a row) but he is an actor who can convey emotions. However they pretty much had him do nothing but act like an Animatronic version of himself. His voice had absolutely zero inflection and his face never changed expression once, even when he was still human and informed of his imminent death. Morgan Freeman is another one who can deliver a powerful performance and get the audience to engage on an emotional level but when he witnesses the death of a dozen people he worked for years with he treats it with the angst normally reserved for opening a bathroom door and getting the faintest whiff of the last users two hour old fart. The supporting actors were all pretty much cardboard cutouts too. The only emotional portrayal by anyone was from Depps wife Evelyn but it was pretty clearly forced and the contrast to all the cardboard cutouts surrounding her made it even more garish. You can literally feel your interest drain away with every scene involving dialog or exposition.
The trailers sure made this film seem like there was going to be some kind of action but it was perfunctory at best. Nothing drains the tension from a scene like learning that shooting people and blowing stuff up does absolutely nothing when nanobots will repair any damage done in a few minutes. Why not have the actors run around and hit each other with teddy bears? It’s effectively the same.
Then there is the thinking part of the film. I am generally a fan of movies that make you think and this one had some interesting core concepts, such as the morality of self aware computers and forcing conformity on humans. However the film sat on the fence about being an action drama or an thinking film and like most movies that do so ended up with a fence post up its ass. There was very little debate actually going on and most of it boiled down to a few minutes at the beginning of “AI is evil” and “AI is good”. There was some moral struggling going on for one of the supporting characters as he jumps from one side to the other but really he just shifted gears at the exact moment the plot needed him to join the resistance, not from any evolutionary character arc.
And for every possible interesting concept there was the injection of flat out stupidity and painful suspension of disbelief. Hollywood should have learned from Independence Day that using a computer virus to pull the power on your enemies is farcical and boring. I guess having used an old sci fi concept the director felt he had license to cram as many sci fi movie ideas as possible with the cleanliness and oily smoothness of feeding a length of rebar into a meat grinder. By the end of the movie there were audience members laughing and I broke from my normal “scary loner” mien to ask a very pretty girl what she thought and she more or less felt the story was ham handed and lame (actually I was more intrigued at what a hot girl was doing by herself at a 10:15 showing in Jack London Square. Most of the loners that late look like Bond villain henchmen. I fit right in).
Then finally the pacing. 119 minutes and I spent most of them pushing my right foot into the floor in subconscious hope of finding the accelerator for the plot. Honestly the main plot (man downloads himself into a computer, turns into an evil AI, and tries to take over the planet) was established in the trailers. In traditional story telling Act 2 is where conflict arises and the drama is the protagonists working to overcome them. Having an evil computer work towards building an empire in a direction we all know he is going in does nothing for the drama. This film suffered from not actually having a protagonist per se but the “good” guys (some hippy anti-technology Burning Man escapees, an FBI guy, and Morgan Freeman) would only stick their heads up like prairie dogs once in a while to establish their presence for the denouement but honestly you spent half the movie trying to figure out if they were good or bad anyway. The plot, like the acting, was as flat and uninteresting as possible. It was like getting on the Merry Go Round and being stuck on one of the fixed (non up and down) horses.
The story. Will Castor (Johnny Depp-the Lone Ranger, Dark Shadows, Pirates of the Caribbean) is some kind of spacy computer genius who lives with his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall-the Prestige, Iron Man 3, the Town). He goes to lecture some computer geeks on advances in AI and gets shot by some anti technology nuts. Meanwhile the nuts attack a bunch of other computer labs and manage to kill off the entire team working with fellow researcher Joseph Tagger (Morgan Freeman-Oblivion, Now You See Me, the Lego Movie), a fact that really bums him out for like 10 minutes.
Turns out the bullet was radioactive and Will is going to die in a few weeks. Evelyn recruits another friend Max Waters (Paul Bettany-Priest, the Avengers, Blood) to hook him up to a computer and download his personality. They succeed but Max suddenly decides that AI Will is evil. He runs off to drink and gets kidnapped by the anti-tech people headed by Bree (Kate Mara-127 Hours, Shooter, Deadfall). They lock him in a cage and convince him that AIs are bad (something he more or less just decided on his own I thought?).
Evelyn uses millions of dollars Will pulled by high speed stock trading (oh, topical) to take over a crummy small town and turn it into a crummy small town with a massive solar powered data center. Will starts researching nanotechnology and figures out how to fix humans and coincidentally turn them into networked slaves. Fortunately all it takes is some copper netting to interrupt the network. The radicals are joined by the FBI guy and Morgan Freeman to attack. Stuff gets blown up and instantly fixed. Y2K finally happens (yes, they actually called it Y2K to the laughter of the audience) and the whole world sort of falls apart or something.
The stars:
Bold in concept. One star. Some great visuals, especially if you are turned on by the Apple Store. One star. Some attempt was made at an intellectual, topical story. One star. Ugh. I don’t want to bury this one in the rain of black holes I am about to unleash but that is all I can really think of. I guess I liked that a lot of it was set in East Bay, where I live? One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes:
A movie about artificial intelligence that had all the actors playing their roles like they were reprising the IRAC computer from Wonder Woman (try to out-nerd reference me, I dare you). One very ironic black hole. For all it’s pretension with regards to being a thinking film a lot of the stuff in here was pretty stupid. I bet you didn’t know brain probes could be installed by a computer guy with a power drill in an abandoned warehouse. One black hole. On the same note I’m going to hit this film for the base concept of Y2K, the use of that reference, and the implication that the worst part about it was no more power or internet rather than all of American devolving into anarchy and cannibalism in about three days. One black hole. There were implications that the question of machine intelligence and its morality were going to be addressed at some point but in fact the question was left to fester on it’s own like a roadkill possum on a hot day. One black hole. It’s clear the director really only wanted to film Rebecca Hall talking to a video screen of Johnny Depp and all the action and scenes that required a moving camera were done under protest with all the fiery heat of a bowl of soup left out overnight. One black hole. No protagonist to speak of, no antagonist, and no reason to care if anyone in the movie lived or died. A good film will get you to connect to at least one character. One black hole. Very predictable, and guilty of trying to pull in every sci fi reference possible without using any of them to add to the film. One black hole. Dull. Dull dull dull dull boring. Pacing from the slowest level of hell. One black hole. The film didn’t really end so much as sputter to a closing like a balloon leaking air. One black hole. Total: nine black holes.
So five black holes, putting this firmly in the bad film zone (although not in the brain aneurysm inducing zone. For that we need Michael Bay). Worth seeing at all? Sure, if you have long dreamed of what the love child of Skynet and Max Headroom would look like. It’s not awful on the Jack and Jill level. You won’t hate yourself any more after seeing it than you did before. Wait for Netflix. I feel bad pounding yet another spike in Johnny Depps career as I kind of like him, but really he has only himself to blame. He should take a few years off and come back as a drug addict or alcoholic like in Leaving Las Vegas. 
Date movie? Meh. Unless she loves computers (or is turned on by computer geeks. Pick up line joke comes from the cheap t shirt category) there is a lot in here a girl might find creepy (like Will taking over the body of another man in order to sex up Evelyn). I’d say pass. Bathroom break? Pretty much anywhere you like, although there is a scene where Evelyn is eating dinner with “Will” that is particularly worthless. It has already been established that she is having doubts about his humanity. Do we need to drag it out for another 10 minutes?
Thanks for reading. More to see soon (yes, I will see Heaven is Real but honestly I have my concerns). Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Feel free to post comments here on this film or my review and email me at [email protected] if you have off topic questions or suggestions. Have a great night. Talk to you soon.
Dave Inman
Draft Day Review
Dodgy.
Yes, I know. It’s been over a week since my last post but contrary to popular belief writing these reviews is not my full time job (although in truth I wish it was. The t shirt business is a lot of hard work). I spent most of the last week either at Wondercon or preparing for it (plus about 15 hours tearing along the dotted line known as the 5 freeway).
I’m back however and feeling the need to express myself with regards to film. I saw this film before I left and have had a lot of time to think about it. I have said before that while I have little to no interest in watching sports of any kind I love sports movies. I honestly find football and baseball painfully boring but a film about a plucky down-on-it’s luck team coming back and trouncing their hated rivals puts a big smile on my face (with the obvious exception of the Mighty Ducks, of course).
However, with this film I discovered that my interest level in the intricacies of managing a team from behind a desk is even lower than watching the sport in question (or watching paint dry). In the military it is said that good generals study tactics while great generals study logistics but when it comes to military film entertainment I would choose to see a film about guys fighting a major battle, not struggling to process the requisition paperwork to get canned beef to the front line. When the most exciting scenes include ducking into a supply closet for a private meeting and following the main characters mother onto a football practice field for a memorial service you can forgive me if I keep spamming the “excite me now” button.
I’m also going to bitch about the marketing for this film. I have seen this trailer several dozen times over the last few months and it tries very hard to convince you that the film is about a football super genius who has a secret plan that is going to save his beloved team and make him out to be a star. That sort of thing is very cool. However what we have hear is a hapless and modestly lost fellow who spends most of the movie bumbling around like a cat in a tumble dryer, dealing with situation after situation and more or less coming to his happy ending through dumb luck. There seems to be some kind of attempt at implying it was all some amazing plan but that part is lost in the Leaving Las Vegas approach to dealing with life that the main guy seems to have.
This film looks and feels like someone has finally realized his long term dream of doing an NFL movie in support of his favorite team. As someone who only knows what draft day is from watching the League I had no idea what most of the movie was about and even less interest in learning. The intricacies of NFL team politics seems like a lot to stake a major film on and in my mind the guys who actually would know or care about them would want to see a football film with actual football in it. The rest of us should (and based on the box office returns did) get bored pretty quick. The film may or may not have intended to be just a character study of Sonny Weaver Jr. but so much of the focus was on the team, the negotiations, the politics, and the personalities of literally dozens of minor yet fully developed characters who appear on the screen without a nonce of exposition to explain who they are or why we should give a crap about them only to have them vanish into the ether like a fart on a windy night that the study gets lost completely.
(A perfect example of this “character from nowhere” phenomenon is someone tells Sonny that some guy (don’t expect me to remember all the names) just trashed his office and I’m like “Wait, who is this guy? Why would he be pissed? Why should I care? Why isn’t Sonny having him escorted out in an arm lock?” only to find out that he is the current quarterback and due to be replaced if Sonny drafts some other dude we haven’t even seen yet. In my experience the more “W” questions an audience comes up with the “W”eaker the script).
And finally, the wipes. Did you ever see the episode of the Simpsons where Homer and Lisa are making a video and Homer insist on using a star wipe for every scene change? Well remember that when you see this movie. Someone gave Ivan Reitman some new wipes where he starts off with a guy on the phone, they split screen to the other guy, and the first guy walks through other guys scene. It would have been impressive as hell in 1993 but now it makes the movie look very much like a student film and is more than a little distracting. If you see this you will know what I mean.
All that being said this film does not totally suck. Ivan Reitman does know a thing or two about editing and story telling and the cast was literally as talented as you could possibly get (as long as you are a fan of Waterworld and the Postman, that is). Lots of good camera work and scenes shot from around the country giving fans of almost any team a chance to see their stadium and possible a player or two. However, all the good aspects of the film only manage to highlight how blase and pointless the story ultimately is.
The story is of Sonny Weaver Jr. (Kevin Costner-3 Days to Kill, 3000 Miles to Graceland (ha ha ha I totally forgot he was in that stinker), Dances with Wolves. By the way, did you know they did a Field of Dreams 2? It’s a short, but still…), general manager of the Cleveland Browns on Draft Day. He starts his day finding out from his secret girlfriend Ali (Jennifer Garner-Juno, Dallas Buyers Club, Daredevil) that she is pregnant (you know, I’m not a woman but unless I was a totally unbalanced psychotic I might have considered waiting 24 hours on what is the biggest day of Sonny’s life before telling him). His team sucks and everyone hates him so he needs to do something impressive or his boss whatshisface (sorry but it’s been eight days since I saw this and this is one of those films where IMDB lists every one of the literally dozens of characters completely out of order so unless it’s a very distinct character I’m going to be skipping on a lot of IDs).
Sonny is getting calls from guys who want to play for him including Vonte Mack (Chadwick Boseman-42, the Kill Hole, All My Children), who needs to be drafted early to pay for his nephews or something. Sonny gets a trade with some other team for first pick which gives him a chance at Bo Callahan (Josh Pence-Battleship, Gangster Squad, the Social Network), the hottest quarterback. Some people are happy with it and some pissed off. The story kind of goes from one convoluted scene after another and since I’m already at 1200 words for a movie I saw a week ago I’m going to say it ends with all the loose ends tied up except for the big one of did Sonny plan this whole thing around or did he just get incredibly lucky?
The stars:
Cast was all around great. Way more talented than the story deserved. Two stars. If you are writing your doctoral thesis on NFL draft politics this film could be quite informative. One star. I do like a film that is willing to travel to get some shots rather than shoot the whole thing within six blocks of that old studio apartment I had in downtown LA. One star. Pacing, editing, and camera work were talented. One star. Total: five stars.
The black holes:
Boring. I can honestly say that Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land had me more interested back in 4th grade and all the football insider references made it effectively inaccessible to someone who just wants to see a sports movie. One black hole. So many personalities coming in and fading out it was nigh impossible to pay attention to the actual main characters. One black hole. The convoluted nature of the trades and politics will hurt your brain and leave you wondering what the hell just happened. One black hole. The whole question of “Was Sonny Weaver Jr. some kind of mad genius with a diabolical plan or just a lucky dope?” bugged me for about six of the fifteen hours I spent driving this last weekend. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
So one star total, pretty much the very definition of a mundane film in my opinion. Worth seeing? Sure, if you are a huge Browns or football fan. If you are more intrigued by the real draft day than actually watching football you can enjoy it but if not pass. Nothing in this film needs to be seen on a big screen so feel free to Netflix it. Date movie? A big fat nope. You will be bored, and she will be bored and hate you for dragging her to this sports BS and punish you by making you watch the next three testicle shriveling chick flicks to come down the pike. Choose your battles my friend. Bathroom break? Pretty much anywhere you like but the scene with Sonny’s mother marching out onto the field to do a memorial for her dead husband is especially worthless. 
Also, why the hell was Sonny’s ex wife there? (loved and lost image courtesy of the Funny t shirt category) Also again unless his mother were a complete psychopath another event that she might have considered waiting 24 hours for.
Thanks for reading. I’m going to get back into it and hopefully caught up soon on the latest films. I’ll go see Transcendence tonight and write it up tomorrow. I have some hope for that film (of course, hope can be the cruelest poison). Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this film or review can be left here and off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave Inman
I’m off to Wondercon
My apologies for not posting anything recently but things are super busy. I did see Draft Day the other night and have some funny thoughts on it but I am scrambling to pack shirts for the amazing Wondercon in Anaheim, California. If you are going to be there stop by our booth (1541) and say hi (or at least talk to some of the girls I hired to work the booth).
When I get back I’m going to throw myself into blogging big time, at least until the next big show creeps up on me. I have about 8 hours of driving to do today and that’s the easy part. 
Tons of movies to see coming up so look for more reviews shortly, plus my fascinating recap of all the Star Trek episodes, like this gem Space Seed. I pulled this shirt from our Star Trek t shirt collection and plan to wear it at the show. I just wish I had more time for cosplay as I have a couple of really good ideas.
Seriously if you are a reader and are going to be at Wondercon stop by. I would love to speak with you and find out if what I am writing is hitting anyone or if I am tilting at windmills. Have a great week and speak to you soon.
Dave
Captain America: the Winter Soldier Review
Pretty frickin’ awesome.
It cannot be said that either DC or Marvel is batting 1000 when it comes to movies but I have to say for the most part Marvel does way better than DC. Sure, they have had their Hulks, Wolverine Origins, Howard the Ducks, Ghost Riders, Daredevils, and Electras but for the most part when they set out to do a cinema exxxxxxxtravaganza they pull it off and it has only gotten better since Disney took over (thanks Disney. You are still evil but I appreciate your movies). DC, on the other hand, is still struggling to do anything more than mediocre with any comic book that doesn’t have “Bat” in the title (and even the last Batman kind of sucked. Plus let us never forget or forgive Batnipples). If you lower things down the the base level and compare worst to worst Electra was better than Catwoman, Ghost Rider was better than Green Lantern, Daredevil was better than Jonah Hex, and the collective sum of all the evils released by Pandora that plague mankind is better than Batman and Robin (Haw. Mythology humor. Every day I get better and better).
Of course my Review-y sense tingles whenever I see the trailers for Guardians of the Galaxy. I want my comic book movies to be taken seriously by the studio, not turned into a laugh-a-minute circus. Hooked on a Feeling by Blue Swede is not a song designed to make you take anything seriously. Time will tell.
All that aside I thought Captain America: the Winter Soldier was freaking awesome. It had almost all the elements needed for a fun, exciting movie: a story with drama, great action, great special effects, appealing characters, excellent camera work and editing, a guy with a shield, and S.H.I.E.L.D. They stayed true to the Captain America from Civil War in that he believes in the true freedom of America rather than the compromises we seem to be making every day (Retro Capt. image courtesy of the Marvel Comic t shirt category).
Of course the true strength of a comic book movie comes from the villain rather than the hero and in this the Winter Soldier excels. He is truly bad ass and strong enough to kick the hell out of Captain America but not so over the top that they have to come up with a magic bullet to kill him. In this regard Captain America is probably one of the best super heroes in that he is powerful but not so powerful that you have to have him fighting a god like Thor or Superman. When villains and heroes are on the level that a human could at least compete with them through luck or skill than they become much more interesting and engaging. I would be a grease stain on the sole of General Zod’s boot but against Scarecrow I could get lucky if I held my breath. It wouldn’t feel like a total waste of effort to try to run him over in my ’79 Thunderbird.
Naturally it wouldn’t be one of my reviews if I didn’t find something to bitch about. I can’t really talk about this without dropping some spoilers so skip ahead to the last couple paragraphs if that bothers you. SPOILER ALERT! The part that bugged the hell out of me is how freaking stupid the bad guys plan is. How exactly does a successful, rational human being working in politics decide the thing to do is follow the plan of a captured Nazi scientist to control the world through what can only be described as Nazi tactics? A scientist who wants everyone who is part of his secret plan to swear fealty to Hydra and whisper Hail Hydra in each others ear? And his plan is to launch three flying death fortresses that will kill 20,000,000 people based on an algorithm developed by that scientist around his own already proven murky sense of morality? The one who used to work for the most evil regime in history and who looks and sounds like he heats his house in the winter by throwing babies in the furnace? Who wants to recreate an organization that was so evil and dangerous that they had to form a special task force just to stop them? That guy?
Also how about that guy having his consciousness transferred into a computer made of reel to reel machines circa 1976? My iPhone has about 10000 times the computing power.
They just can’t let go of the scope issues. Instead of making this about a power struggle inside S.H.I.E.L.D. it has to be about Hydra somehow infiltrating the organization created to fight against them and then coming up with a really dumb and expensive plan to kill millions. How about a S.H.I.E.L.D. plan to read every email, text, and listen to every phone call in order to restrict our freedoms? Or is that hitting too close to home? I don’t know. I just found the whole base concept stupid. An analogy I thought of while headed home last night is that a movie is like a submarine, navigating the Sea of Disbelief. A good plot cruises long on the surface, enjoying the sun and fresh air. Every time you do something that makes the audience say “huh?” you dive another hundred feet under the water, causing the hull to strain as all the pressure of disbelief gets stronger and stronger. Some movies creak and groan, some movies spring leaks, and some are totally crushed like a beer can against a frat boys forehead.
This movie wasn’t on the crushed side but I could definitely hear the hull plates groaning. The story starts off with Captain America (Chris Evans-What’s Your Number?, the Avengers, Scott Pilgrim versus the World) running laps with his African American side kick (are we not as a nation over that yet?) Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie-Real Steel, Hurt Locker, Pain and Gain). He gets picked up by Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson-Her, The Prestige, We Bought a Zoo) in a Corvette and goes off on a mission to save a SHIELD ship from pirates. If you saw the opening scene from the Expendables you have seen this segment, except Captain America gets into an extended fight against the main pirate.
They rescue a bunch of hostages including SHIELD Agent Sitwell (Maximiliano Hernández-Warrior, Thor, the Avengers). Black Widow reveals she has a secret mission to recover data from the computer, a fact that pisses off Captain America. Back in the USA Nick Fury (Samual L. Jackson-Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, the Incredibles) tells him to suck it up and then shows the Captain a secret project to launch three giant flying death stars who’s job is to assassinate enemies from the air using sophisticated targeting. Captain Americas belief in the American way makes him very unhappy with that.
On the drive home Nick is attacked by a ton of guys and barely manages to escape. He shows up wounded to Captain America’s apartment and tells the Capt that SHIELD is compromised. He gives Steve a USB drive right before he gets shot by an assassin. The assassin is the mythical Winter Solder and kicks 7 kinds of crap out of Captain America every time they meet.
Fury dies and the Captain goes to SHIELD headquarters. He is double crossed and has to flee. He hooks up with Black Widow and together they try to figure out who is behind the whole thing. Guys get shot, Winter Solder kicks more crap out of Captain America, giant flying aircraft carriers shoot at stuff, and bad guys never learn to try to shoot at Captain America’s legs under his shield. A master plan to control the world is revealed and Capt has to stop it with help from Black Widow, Falcon, and the woman of my dreams Colby Smoulders. Some old faces from the last movie surface to screw with Steve’s head.
The stars:
Great comic book movie. Two stars. Now that I’m used to him being Captain America I really liked Chris Evans in this film. The rest of the cast nailed it too. One star. Great action, especially for PG-13. They kind of pushed the envelope and didn’t shy away from collateral casualties. One star. The Winter Soldier was freaking awesome. One star. My future wife Colby Smoulders was in this one and looking super hot. Somebody let her know she is destined to marry me. One star. Awesome CGI and special effects. One star. The back story of the Winter Soldier and Captain America was great and almost made up for the stupidity of the rest of the evil plot. One black hole. Robert Redford resurfaced and rocked it. One star. Overall super fun and exciting to watch. Three stars. Total: twelves stars.
The black holes:
Not a lot, but the one I have is pretty big. The whole Hydra/SHIELD/flying death star evil plot was like the finest 40 year old oak fermented wine, only substitute stupidity for wine. Sorry but it really pulled me out of the theater into the back ally where it gave my suspension of disbelief a sound thrashing. Two black holes. The 40 year old reel to reel computer housing the downloaded intellect of a human was super dumb too. It really felt like Disney was clearing out an old props warehouse and decided to get one more run out of the props from War Games before selling them off for scrap. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
A grand total of nine stars. Very fun and well worth your time. Date movie? Sure if she likes comic book movies and super heroes. Otherwise take her to see the Grand Budapest Hotel. Bathroom break? The film runs a whopping 136 minutes so odds are you will need it. There’s a scene towards the last 1/3rd where Captain America is on a bridge looking wistful and trying to sort out the morality of something that is pretty disposable. Most of the non-action scenes that don’t involve Nick Fury don’t contribute much to the movie so honestly any time you see Steve and Black Widow not blowing stuff up is a great time.
Thanks for reading. Fun movie to see and review. Most other films took the wise road and opted to not go head to head with this juggernaut so not a lot to see. I think I’m going to see Cesar Chavez on Sunday with a person I am very interested in (more optimistic souls might call it a third date but I am just going to try to enjoy the day) so look for that review soon. I have a big tournament coming up and am going to spend a lot of time this next week painting some new figures. I’ll try to get some stuff written this week (probably more Star Trek). Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu and post comments on this film or review here. Off topic questions or suggestions can be sent to [email protected]. Have a great weekend and enjoy this film. Talk to you soon.
Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 47 the Immunity Syndrome
This is another one that is at the same time great and stupid. I liked it a lot because it showed the bonds of friendship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy as well as showed Mr. Spock at his logical best. However, the solution they came up with is dumb. Spock mentions antibodies and that makes Kirk think of antimatter? Why not antitrust? Or antiserum? One thing that always bugs me about TOS episodes is how often they rely on random coincidences on words from a language spoken on one part of one tiny planet in the universe (Yangs=Yankees, Son=Sun, etc).
Also Spocks data makes Kirk think of creating an antimatter bomb and dropping in on the nucleus of the giant space amoeba? Excuse me but how is that different from carpet bombing the nucleus with photon torpedoes? If I had the ability to create an antimatter bomb that would be the third thing I tried after phasers and photon torpedoes failed, not the last thing after sending my best friend to his death. If you are going to get sucked into a giant space amoeba anyway why not rush in while you still have power and drop every weapon you have that’s stronger than a fart inside the creature? 
Hell I’d be beaming red shirts out armed with phasers set on overload if nothing else (sorry, but you signed up for Starfleet and put on a red shirt. You knew what you were getting into. Red shirt image courtesy of the Star Trek t shirt category).
Also, if the space amoeba was capable of destroying the universe once it divided what happened to the thousands of other amoebas that it must have spawned from? Shouldn’t this one be the first of a huge wave of giant space amoebas?
However, take all that out of the equation and you have a pretty good episode. Not great but very decent in my opinion.
Dave
Noah Movie Review
Ever wonder what the most holy document in Western Culture would look like as cheesy action movie? Wonder no more!
Religious themed movies are a bit of a conundrum for me. An astute regular reader might have noticed that I tend to be pretty forthcoming with my opinion on bad or good movies. Normally when the movie subject is giant robots fighting each other or chicks coming to terms with stuff the danger of that opinion offending someone is reasonably minimal. However religion and politics are two areas where just having an opinion will automatically alienate half of your potential readers. For this reason I did not review Son of God even though I saw it.
This problem was binding me up as I sat in the theater for Noah. However, as questions kept coming to mind like “Hmm. I don’t remember the Biblical story of Noah having giant rock lava monsters who helped him build his ark” or “Pre-flood Biblical people had magical metal nuggets that could start a fire, do a pregnancy test, or be used to build shoulder launched RPGs? I did not know that” I slowly came to realize that this film was not a religious movie at all but instead a creature that I have hunted down and slaughtered dozens of times before; a horrible sci fi adaptation of a novel.
Yes, it’s our old friend the bad Hollywood version of an otherwise innocent story. Like Hercules, the Golden Compass, Daredevil, the Cat in the Hat, and Ghost Rider this is another story that should have either been treated with the respect it’s fans demand or just left alone. And like most bad adaptations it’s a craptastic movie.
I can say that without fear of repercussions because if I were a hard core Christian I think I would find this movie to be on the border of sacrilege and heresy. Every lame element that Hollywood smears over every film has been forced onto this story: giant CGI monsters, magic, bad romantic sub plot, a villain who is evil for evils sake, gargantuan plot holes, and historical continuity errors. I think it a sign of massive ego and arrogance that Darren Aronfsky and Russell Crowe requested a private audience with the Pope based on the fact that they made this bad science fiction movie. Honestly I think Will Smith has about as much right to do so for making thinly veiled Scientology movie After Earth. It has about as much to do with the Bible.
This film is another example of the brilliance of Hollywood film marketing departments. I have seen the trailer for this at least 20 times and never once caught wind of giant rock monsters, glowing radioactive power stones, or magical beans. It’s clear that some talented director of marketing sniffed out the elements of this film that truly sucked and opted to leave them on the cutting room floor when it came time to create the trailer. By the way, if you check out the Noah official site you will not see a single rock monster image. Smart. Would that Darren had consulted them sooner.
The other thing that is weird about this film is like most design by committee Hollywood BS it sits firmly on the fence in fear of offending one side or another. Is this a Bible movie or not? If it is I think it fair to to call God God instead of the very PC and gutless “Creator”. During the tale of creation as told by Noah to his sons they more or less screwed up the timing and instead of showing God creating life as we know it it shows a montage of sped up evolution. Is this Creationism? Is this intelligent design? Is it true evolution? It’s like they are trying to alienate both the religious and non religious audience members.
Plus a lot of the stuff they added made no sense. So Noah and his wife find a drug they give to all the animals that let’s them sleep for nine months straight (or at least as long as it takes made up character Ila to go from barely pregnant to giving birth. At the bare minimum it should have been 40 days and 40 nights, right?) but somehow they don’t need food or water while asleep? Is it true stasis? It shows all the animals breathing while asleep so they are processing something? Is this a miracle? If so why do they need the herb? Also if so why did no one on the Ark remark upon it? What the hell was that glowing explosive metal? Where did an ancient army get stainless steel armor and weapons that would have made a 12th century army proud?
You see, the issues of feeding thousands of animals, having the carnivores not eat every herbivore as soon as they get off the boat, genetic degradation from massive inbreeding, and the ability of a boat to house millions of tons of animal flesh are endemic to the story of Noah and need to be explained by the hand of God in order to work but by making changes to solve some of them but not all of them you only make them more obvious. Add in all the historical continuity issues and the fact that the main character Noah spends the entire film being a class one dick to everyone around him and you end up with a film buried under it’s own problems.
Oh, while this movie might have been inspired by the Bible it was also “inspired” by about 10 movies including the Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, and the Dark Crystal. Original thought is not this films catch phrase. I find this odd since until now I would have said Darren Aronofsky was one of a few really creative writer/directors.
The story, I guess. Did you ever read the story of Noah from the Bible? If so try to forget it as it will have very little bearing on your comprehension of this film. That being said there are a few spoilers coming. It starts off with humanity being broken up into two groups; the evil descendants of Cain and the good descendants of Seth. However the Seth guys are literally killed down to one man and his son. The man is killed by a king named Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone-Sexy Beast, Hugo, Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull) and his son, Noah, escapes. Noah grows up and has a family with Naameh (Jennifer Connelly-Hulk, Requiem for a Dream, Winters Tale) and his sons.
(Wait a minute. If Noah is the last descendant of Seth and all the descendants of Cain are evil where did he find Naameh? Did he convert her over to Seth-ism?)
Anyway, Noah has a dream where he sees massive flooding and death. His dream needs interpreting so he takes his family to see his grandfather Methuselah (? Anthony Hopkins-the Silence of the Lambs, Beowolf, Meet Joe Black). On the way to see Methuselah Noah and his family get captured by giant rock monsters (looking suspiciously Ent-like in my opinion) who decide to let the family die of dehydration in a canyon. One of the rock monsters (if only they were Monsters of Rock. Haw!) decides to help them…for some reason. They get to the mountain where Methuselah lives.
Once there Methuselah and Noah figure out the “the Creator” (I’m going to keep putting that in quotes to drive home how lame and sackless it is) plans to destroy the world because the Cain-ites are evil and have corrupted the planet. Noah decides he needs to build an Ark. Methuselah give him a magic bean from the Garden of Eden (?) that Noah plants and overnight grows into a huge forest, giving him the wood he needs. The rock monsters, as servants of “the Creator”, decide to help him.
Skip forward a few years and the ark is nearly built. Noah’s sons are grown up (mostly). The oldest, Shem (Douglas Booth-Worried About the Boy, LOL, Romeo and Juliet), is kind of a kiss ass but has a girlfriend in Ila (Emma Watson-Harry Potter, This is the End, the Perks of Being a Wallflower) who is barren. His next oldest son Ham (Logan Lerman-Percy Jackson, 3:10 to Yuma, Perks of Being a Wallflower) is a horny teenage boy who kind of resents the fact that Shem has a hot girlfriend and he is stuck with the old manual override (if you know what I mean). His youngest son is Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll-no other credits), who is pretty much a non-entity as far as the movie goes. The ark is huge (and honestly kind of what I would imagine the ark would look like. I’ll give good credit to the art director).
Anyway, Tubal-Cain shows up with an army drafted off the field from the Battle of Hastings and demands…something of Noah? Fealty? He tells Noah that if and when the flood comes he will be on that ark. Noah says no way and scares him off with the rock monsters.
(I’d like to bitch about this scene for a second. This was the pivotal scene in that trailer I mentioned before. Tubal-Cain says “I have men at my back and you defy me” and Noah replies “I’m not alone” in a very prophetic tone of voice. The trailer cut out at that point and very, VERY strongly implied that somehow the hand of God (or “the Creator”) intervened to help Noah but in the movie the rock monsters just stand up and scare the men away. I am savoring the irony of me complaining about not enough deus ex machina in a film but if that isn’t bait and switch I don’t know what is.)
Meanwhile Ham has the very legitimate concern about how is he ever going to have kids on a boat with him mother and the barren girlfriend of his brother. Noah sets out to procure wives for him and Japheth (Wive-R-Us? Or was he just going to hypnotize two ladies with the gravelly sound of his voice? By the way if there is a place called Wives-R-Us someone let me know. Thanks) but when he gets to Tubal-Cain’s encampment he finds every sin possible. He goes back to the arc and tells his family that the human race needs to die out so good luck with all those teenage hormones Ham and Japheth.
Ham is a little bent out of shape and runs off to find his own wife. At the encampment he falls into a mass grave and meets a cute girl named Na’el (Madison Davenport-Over the Hedge, the Possession, Horton Hears a Who) (By the way, a pit full of rotting corpses seems about as reasonable a place to meet women as anywhere else I’ve tried and with the exception of the girl I’m going to go out with this upcoming weekend better than online dating). The rain starts and it’s a race to get back to the ark before Tubal-Cain and his army arrive. Na’el steps on a bear trap (invented in the 18th century for those who care). Noah runs up to save Ham and leaves Na’el to literally be trampled to death by the crowd.
At the ark the rock monsters re-enact the scene where the Ents attack Isengard from the Two Towers except now they are on the defense and loose. Tubal-Cain brought some homemade RPGs and is blowing them up. The massive flooding arrives to wipe off all the humans although Tubal-Cain manages to stow away on the Ark (what Bible passage was that, exactly?). He hides among the sleeping animals and eats more than a few of them (Noah and his family are vegetarian. Didn’t you know that?).
Meanwhile Ila is pregnant (oh, yeah. Methuselah healed her. Which passage was that one?) and Noah, after consulting with “the Creator”, says that if it is a girl he will kill the baby to keep the human race from breeding. Tubal-Cain heals and turns Ham’s horny head away from Noah. Nine months later he attacks Noah while Ila gives birth to twin girls. Noah fights him off with help from Ham and at the last minute his love prevents him from killing the babies. Naameth realizes that with the birth of twin girls the ratio is now right and her two other sons can now marry their nieces (ewww).
Some other crap happens and Ham leaves the family to wander alone leaving Japheth behind to impregnate both of his nieces (double ewww).
The stars:
CGI and special effects were decent. One star. The director told Russell Crowe to be an intense, abusive a hole and he ran with it. One star. The rest of the acting was really good. One star. If you forget the source material and treat this as a cheesy Lord of the Rings knock off it can be fun. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes:
Were I a religious man I would find this movie sacrilegious as hell. Even were I not I find movies that claim to be adapted from literature but then twist in into some bad “re-imagined” Hollywood effluvia insulting. Two black holes. The sci fi elements they added to the story really compounded this issue. Rocket Propelled Grenades? One black hole. Massive plot holes. How did all those animals sleep for nine months with no food or water? You can’t say “miracle” without throwing us some sign of an actual miracle happening. One black hole. Noah’s character was a total bastard to his family. It’s tough to identify with a guy who is in all ways every stereotype of an abusive father. 
He even turns into an alcoholic at the end in order to more cater to his trope (Beer Magnet image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category). One black hole. Plans for future incest with girls who are infants is never a good story element. One black hole. Rock monsters. One black hole. 138 minutes is a really long time to spend looking at Russell Crowe looking like a homeless leather mug maker from a Renaissance Faire. One black hole. Total: eight black holes.
A grand total of four black holes. Kind of crappy. Should you see it? Probably not. If you are religious you will feel insulted and if not you will feel, well, kind of insulted. I know a lot of people are going to see it because it’s a religious film and they feel some obligation but at the end of the film as I walked out the fairly large crowd seemed really subdued, like they didn’t know how to process what just happened. They all kind of look liked they had just had a medical exam that may or may not have had the doctor touching them in a weird way and were all trying to figure out if they should say something or not. Date movie? No, for all the reasons I just gave plus the whole “baby murder/incest” thing might not be well received by your date. Bathroom break? The whole scene with Ham meeting Na’el among the rotting corpses does absolutely nothing since she is destined to be left to die by Noah in ten minutes anyway. Perfect time IMO.
Thanks for reading. Nothing on deck until tomorrow so I might just do a couple Star Trek retrospectives. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu and like us on FB. Feel free to post comments here with regards to this movie or my review. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave Inman
Bad Words Review
Funny, clever, and full of bad words.
I have not to date been a fan of Jason Bateman. Sure I loved Arrested Development but he was the least interesting character on there, and since then every time I see him he is in a movie that seems to think someone eating excrement is the epitome of humor and cleverness (I’m literally talking literally BTW). I heard Identity Thief was decent but I still had the sour aftertaste of Horrible Bosses and the Change-Up causing me to dry heave and managed to miss it.
So I was not exactly chomping at the bit to see this one. I did listen to a great interview with Jason on the Howard Stern Show and he managed to warm me up to the base concept of the film. I rolled into a late showing with my mind relatively open and the thoughts “How bad could it be? It’s not like he’s co-starring with Ryan Reynolds again.”
89 minutes later I rolled out having laughed my way through most of it. Not only was it funny without devolving to the lowest strata of humor it was actually clever and well written. You really get to connect with the two main characters in spite of the fact that one of them is painfully repulsive. I went on a date this last weekend (with a human female!) and as part of our very pleasant conversation the girl told me about the six elements of a play according to Aristotle. They are plot, character, theme, language, rhythm, and spectacle. I think these could be translated in modern movies to story, character, tone, dialog, pacing, and cinematography. Any movie that nails two of these six is on track to be a winner and both Aristotle and I seem to agree that plot and character are the most important (yeah, Ari and I are going to grab a beer later). It’s tragic how few movies try to achieve more than even one of these and how many manage to not hit even one. This one managed to hit 5 of the six and even the cinematography was decent.
(Note-if you are a regular reader and are reeling in shock at the twin ideas of me using a classical literature reference and having a date with a girl you are no more stunned than I. I’m still waiting for the Earth to reverse the direction of it’s spin. Shakespeare image courtesy of the funny t shirt category)
Once in a while this “job” affords me moments of deep satisfaction and this is one of them. If you recall when I reviewed the medical waste of a film Jack and Jill one of the few stars that movie earned was for the Indian kid who played Jack’s adopted son. 
I thought Rohan Chand was cute, funny, and talented and at the time said I hoped his first movie roll being the cinema equivalent of a sucking chest wound would not inhibit his future career. I was gratified to see him resurface as the other main character in this project and he nailed it. If that kid doesn’t Macaulay Culkin it he is going to be a big name in future film. I just hope they don’t turn him into the go to guy for every movie that needs a token Indian character.
The story is about a grown man named Guy Trilby (Jason Bateman-Arrested Development, Identify Thief, Horrible Bosses) who uses a loophole in the rules to enter a spelling bee for kids. He is aided by internet journalist Jenny Widgen (Kathryn Hahn-We’re the Millers, the Secret Life of Walter Mitty, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) and they bully their way into the qualifying match. He more or less has a photographic memory and crushes the competition. He is also a complete ass hat and verbally abuses everyone around him.
On the plane ride to the national finals he meets Chaitanya Chopra (Rohan Chand-Jack and Jill, Lone Survivor, Homeland), another competitor. Chaitanya annoys him and Guy tells him to shut up in a very inappropriate and borderline racist manner. The next day he is told by the spelling bee officiator (Allison Janney-Finding Nemo, Juno, American Beauty) that he is not welcome and is only going to embarrass himself. She puts him up in a storage closet at the hotel.
At that point it is just a series of really funny set pieces where Guy screws up his competitor while offending people. He is heartless and has no remorse regarding ruining the dreams of young kids. The officiator (under pressure from assorted parents) tries to cheat him out of the running. 
Guy has a very dysfunctional relationship with Jenny. He develops a weird friendship with Chaitanya (who’s own dad is kind of a dick). Eventually he is confronted by the main spelling bee guy Dr. Bowman (Philip Baker Hall-Bruce Almighty, the Insider, 50/50) who more or less calls him a lifelong loser.
I don’t want to delve in too deep in the story as it is really good. Sufficed to say I was very pleased with the direction the plot took and it where the story ended up.
The stars:
Guy is an awesome character that you can’t help but like and root for in spite of the fact that he is a total dick. One star. All the rest of the cast was all very agreeable characters and well portrayed. One star. Rohan Chand was perfect as the kid competitor. One star. Story was great and not at all what I expected. One star. The dialog was brilliant, especially for Guy. His insults would peel paint. One star. A rated R movie that functioned well as rated R. They didn’t just throw stuff in the qualify as rated R to suckle off the Hangover teat. One star. In a weird way one of the more believable stories I have seen in a while. One star. Really, really funny. Two stars. In the end a great time watching. Two stars. Total: eleven stars.
The black holes:
It honestly felt short. The ending kind of ran up on you and resolved itself a little fast IMO. At 89 minutes I don’t think anyone would have objected to another 10 minutes. One black hole. If you are the type who is bothered by kids listening to profanity or being injected into other wildly inappropriate situations prepare to have your ears bleed. A couple of the scenes with Rohan you almost expect the police raid the set. One black hole. Total: two black holes.
A grand total of nine stars and my rousing recommendation that you see it. One of the best comedies I have seen in a couple years. I am now a Jason Bateman fan and will go back and see some of the films I missed. Should you see it? Yes. Yes you should. Date movie? If your date has a good sense of humor absolutely. If not or you are not sure don’t take the chance. This film is potentially very polarizing. Either she will love it or hate it and hate you through association. Bathroom break? Hmm. Good question. The film is short and most of the scenes are really funny. I think if I really needed to go I would choose the scene where Jenny hooks up with her FBI ex boyfriend at a bar in order to get some background info on Guy. Nothing critical happens and any of the scenes without Guy in it are less interesting.
Thanks for reading. I am going to go see Noah tonight and will consider writing it up tomorrow. I tend to steer clear of the religious stuff but from what I can see this movie has very little to do with the Bible. I’ll probably do it but am kind of dreading it. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu and like us on Facebook up at the top. If you have a comment on this film or my review post it here, and if you have an off topic question or suggestion feel free to email me at [email protected] (especially if you want to advertize on the blog and/or can get me free movie tickets or advanced screenings. Money for popcorn and tickets doesn’t grow on trees you know (unless it’s paper money)). Talk to you soon.
Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 48 A Private Little War
Some Star Trek episodes are more subtle than others. This is not one of those. This episode was so clearly an allegory about Vietnam that they might as well called the villagers the Viet Cong and the Klingons the Chinese (although in truth the Viet Cong was getting a lot more help from the Russians than the Chinese).
This episode was also an example of the thin veil of racism that Star Trek labored under in spite of Gene Roddenberry’s best intentions. It really, really wasn’t his intension but when writing and casting this episode it just made sense to the producers that the villagers be Asian and the friendly Hill People be white. In this day and age such a thing would probably not go by unremarked but back in 1968 it seemed so obvious that no one even questioned it.
All that aside this is a great episode for one simple reason: mugato. Yes, the furry poisoned fanged spike backed white super gorilla. Awesome. It also showed more accurately what alien exploration is probably going to be like. You see, for every intelligent creature you might encounter out there there are probably millions of dangerous animals who would think nothing of tearing your face off. If aliens had landed on Earth a few hundred years ago tried running around North America odds are they would get chomped on by a grizzly or bitten by a rattlesnake long before running into a Native American tribe. If you want to see what I’m talking about check out the book Expendable by James Alan Gardener. In it the guys who hit dirt assume every creature in sight wants to kill them and for the most part they are correct.
Dave
Episode image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirt category, BTW.
Sabotage Review
I don’t say sabotage. I say sabataage.
For every job there is a specific tool. You wouldn’t use a scalpel to cut a path through a rain forest and you wouldn’t use garden shears to give yourself a haircut (at least, I don’t anymore). If there were a tool perfect for use in this movie it would be Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I’m not saying he doesn’t do well in other roles, although the comedy movie he did recently in the Last Stand did not serve him at all. However it appears director David Ayer (End of Watch, Training Day, the Fast and the Furious) took a hard look at Arnold’s careers and realized his best roles had a minimum of comedy to them (except for maybe Kindergarten Cop) and he is best when he is deadly serious. He then collected a very talented cast of equally bad asses, employed more than the Hollywood minimum 88 IQ when writing the script, and mixed in some great action scenes and camera technique and like a casserole made of good leftovers came up with an extremely palatable meal.
So yes I enjoyed it and couldn’t be happier. I am a fan of Arnold the Actor (Arnold the Governor is another story, but we can put that behind us) and want to see his career flourish. Like the tool used for it’s correct function when he is given a role that suites his style he is really good. David Ayers managed to keep a lot of the things that make Arnold Arnold; muscles, a workout scene at the gym, machismo, giant cigars. However he cut out all the crap that has attached itself to Arnold like muck in a rain gutter: cheesy one liners, “comedy” sidekicks, the need to be super human at all times. The film took a nose dive into that bad campyness in the denouement but managed to pull out before impacting the deck. Overall a fun movie with more complexity than one would expect based on any other movie he has done since True Lies.
Not to say the film is flawless. The complexity of the plot and motivations of the individual characters gets downright murky at times, and the pacing shifts from 33 to 45 in the last 15 minutes. Even I, with my stupendously massive brain (and modesty) found my head being scratched and the word “huh?” escaping my lips upon occasion. (As an aside in the world of dating you would be surprised how unimpressive a high IQ is to most women. Not that I’m bitter). For the most part however I found the story tight and the characters appealing. What more could one ask for?
The story is of John “Breacher” Wharton (Arnold Schwartzenegger-Terminator, Total Recall, Conan the Barbarian) and his elite special operations team of the DEA. His team is comprised of James “Monster” Murray (Sam Worthington-Avatar, Wrath of the Titans, the Debt), Joe “Grinder” Phillips (Joe Mangeniello-Spider-Man, Magic Mike, What to Expect when You’re Expecting), Eddie “Neck” Jordan (Josh Holloway-Paranoia, Battle of the Year, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol), Julius “Sugar” Edmonds (Terrence Howard-Iron Man, Prisoners, Red Tails), Tom “Pyro” Roberts (Max Martini-Pacific Rim, Captain Phillips, Saving Private Ryan), Bryce “Tripod” McNeely (Kevin Vance-End of Watch), “Smoke” Jennings (Mark Schlegel), and Lizzy Murray (I guess only the dudes get ma
cho nicknames like they are Medal of Honor avatars played by 13 year old boys. Mireille Enos-World War Z, the Killing, Gangster Squad. MOH logo courtesy of the Video Game T Shirt category).
They raid the house of a drug cartel and during the raid as a group steal $10 million and flush it down the toilet (literally). However when they get down to the sewer the money is all gone. They are all investigated for the theft (somehow the FBI could tell there was $10 mil missing off the monstrous pile of money that got set on fire) and are on suspension. Eventually the investigation is dropped and they get together only to find that none of them trust each other.
At that point someone starts killing them off one by one. The movie basically turns into a game of Clue with guns. Police investigator Caroline (Olivia Williams-the Sixth Sense, Rus
hmore, the Postman) is looking into it while dealing with testosterone charged troublesome personalities. Clues are uncovered, houses are raided, and the surprise twist is revealed (I actually saw it coming but never forget that stupendously massive brain). In the last 15 minutes the movie takes a slight detour into cheesy action movie ending but then gets back on track.
The stars:
I love the idea of an action movie with more story than just “the bad guy killed my family/stole my money (or top secret list of US spies)/is a drug dealer/wants to blow something up because he is some kind of unspecified terrorist/kidnapped my girlfriend. One star. Arnold Schwarzenegger will always get a star even in the worst film for me (well, maybe not Batman and Robin or Junior), and this film suited him very well without catering to the crappy “Schwarzeneggerisms” that drag down a lot of his films. Two stars. The rest of the cast really nailed it and made us care about them collectively. One star. Olivia Williams was exceptionally good, and super hot. Some women can really pull off short hair. One star. Great action sequences. If you liked the action from Training Day and End of Watch you will love it. One star. A little bit of nudity goes a long way, especially when most of the screen is filled with macho white trash dudes. One star. In general a fun movie. One star. Total: eight stars.
The black holes:
The story was complicated and not in the clever way of “Oh, that totally makes sense” as the credits role. One black hole. The motivations for any of the characters to do almost any of the things they do is tertiary at best. I don’t want to spoil this film but a lot of it boiled down to “These characters are crazy and willing to throw their lives away because…they are crazy.” Very weak. One black hole. As much as I liked most of the characters the idea that this bunch of red neck militia mercenaries and drug addicts are part of an elite law enforcement unit was kind of laughable. One black hole. The weird shift of tone in the last 15 minutes only to shift back had all the spoor of the director caving in to either some studio executives or Arnold himself. It felt really out of place. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
A grand total of four stars. That’s in the good zone for me but just barely (mediocre is 2 black holes to about 3 stars). Definitely worth seeing but set your expectations realistically. I think this movie will not do well at the box office due to lack of audience focus to be honest. It’s too much a shoot ’em up for the people who like complicated stories and too convoluted for those who just like to see people shooting each other. Date movie? Nope. Bathroom break? Any of the scenes between Olivia and Arnold where they are not with anyone else could be missed pretty easily.
Thanks for reading. I have Bad Words lined up for tonight and am really looking forward to it. I haven’t had a lot of luck with Jason Bateman films in the past but after hearing his interview on Howard Stern I have to give it a fair shake. It sounds pretty hilarious. I might not write it up until Sunday as all the planets seemed to have aligned themselves and I have a second date tomorrow afternoon. Wish me luck. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have a comment on this film or my review please leave it here and if you have an off topic question or suggestion email it to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
