2012 Recap: the 10 Worst Films of 2012
To those of you new to my blog and my style, I should tell you that I have been looking forward to this post for a while. Seeing all the movies and writing reviews is fun about half the time; the other half the time it is like riding an exercise bike while chewing on broken glass with cinderblocks tied to your feet. There is a lot of crap that comes out of Hollywood, and as I see it the bad movies owe me something for the time and money I wasted watching them. This is where I get some payback, and I enjoy every word of it.
This portion of the review process I like to think of as akin to clubbing baby seals, except that the seals in this case all made the conscious decision to suck and are not at all cute and helpless. Clubbing seals is a horrific crime, whereas clubbing these films could be seen as a public service. If a film doesn’t want to get clubbed it should make an effort to be at least competently made.
In reviewing this list and my top ten I can honestly say 2012 was kind of mediocre. There were no obvious stand outs in both amazing and horrible. The bell curve of movies has gotten taller, with more films hovering around the bland middle like a bunch of artists around the snack table at the worlds most boring gallery opening.
10. Won’t Back Down-The presence of dream woman Maggie Gyllenhaal and the acting of Violla Davis kept this one from dropping any further than number 10, but the time I spent trying to map out the blood vessels in the inside of my eyelids means this film earned its place here. Remember when “drama” meant that there was some kind of opposition the protagonists had to overcome? Apparently the director of this film doesn’t.
9. Joyful Noise-The dialog from this movie could be used to strip paint. If there is one thing that is worse than a trite, worthless story in a movie it’s a movie broken down into a dozen trite, worthless stories that all chew through the script like the worlds stupidest and most relentless termite infestation. Also, can Hollywood stop trying to convince us that there are massive rewards for being the worlds best choir, acapella singer, dancer, or karaoke performer? If you want to see the logical conclusion of that concept check out the Dance Dance Revolution post-apocalypse movie.
8. This Means War-As a guy who has a hard time dating women because I can’t be enough of a “bad boy” (apparently. If more women knew about my secret plan to conquer the world I think I might be seen as a little sexier) and who sees his female friends only date the biggest selection of abusive losers the human race has ever seen, this film made me laugh by basing a romance on all the worst decisions two men and a woman could ever make. The action was like a kid playing with his action figures, and if you weren’t at all creeped out by the fact that the two main guys should have about a dozen stalker restraining orders each than you must have a few of your own. I took particular pleasure in trashing this film mainly because it was directed by McG, the oil tanker spill of film making.
7. Rock of Ages-You might have noticed when I was bitching about Joyful Noise I didn’t say anything about the music and that’s because the music was actually pretty good. In this film the music is will make you want to burst your own eardrums (with a 12 gauge). Combine that with a story that only compares favorable to reading a phone book aloud and acting that (with some exceptions) ran as if the entire cast had been fasting for weeks and the only thing to eat was the scenery. Tom Cruise was entertaining, and a couple other characters were funny, but not enough to make up for the pain of listening to actors sing mashups of songs I wish had never been made in the first place. (Vitruvian Guitar Man image courtesy of the Vintage T Shirt category)
6. Girl in Progress-When I was compiling my list of films from last year I came across this one and for the life of me couldn’t remember seeing it. This is weird in that I have that special kind of memory that lets me remember scenes and the main story of almost every movie I have ever seen. I can only assume my subconsious repressed this one in order to protect me from more emotional damage. Once I read my review a lot of it came back to me, specifically how awful it was. Nothing in this film is at all appealing, and by the end you are hoping to see one or more of the actors and the director in the parking lot so you can run them over with your car. Also, if you feel like your life lacks creepiness for some reason this is the film for you.
5. One for the Money-This film progresses like a 15 year old kid trying to learn how to drive stick by himself. All jumpy starts, stops, and the smell of your transmission on fire. The script overall reads like it was a byproduct of someone testing out the “million monkeys on a million typewriters” theory. I think this is a good example of why you should never let your star be an Executive Producer unless he or she has a proven track record of well produced films.
4. Battleship-In addition to being a qualified candidate for the Stupidest Movie Concept ever, this movie could also be used as evidence in a court case for the crime of assault on Science (in any country except Italy). The problem I really had with this garbage scow of a film wasn’t so much that it sucked but that if done right it could have actually been decent. I even wrote a follow up blog post about how this film could have been made to not suck. Finally, I hate it when the fate of humanity boils down to a fist fight. MacGuffin plots suck.
3. Red Tails-Yes, I admit that tearing into George Lucas films is one of the few actual joys I have in my life, but how can I not love it when he makes it so damned easy? This thing was clunky and awkward, like a car with two flats, a radiator leak, three bad pistons, and a tank that was filled with Mad Dog instead of gasoline. However, I can’t discount the possibility that this is all some kind of mad genius retroactive marketing campaign. Do any of you think Lucas made this film purposefully horrible in hopes of making Episodes 1, 2, and 3 less craptacular in comparison? If so I say kudos to you George. Job well done.
2. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2-Yes, when I wrote the review I did say it was the best of the Twilight series (I still refuse to call it a saga). However, that is like saying losing one limb in a tree shredder is better than going in head first. Not a lot of originality putting this in my top 2, but I have to go with what I feel. Also, in addition to being an execrable story acted out by wooden marionettes and enhanced with Shrinky-dink quality CGI, this film worries me for the future of America. If millions of teenage girls think this is quality entertainment then in my retirement home I will be watching the return of Teletubbies for adults.
1. Wrath of the Titans-The only thing worse than a bad movie is a bad sequel to a bad movie, and this one scores the bullseye. The two stars I gave it were more or less pity stars, whereas the 14 black holes were each fairly earned. An action film has to really work at it to make me not care at all for any of the characters, and this film succeeds mightily! Honestly, watching this film compares fairly well to watching someone play God of War in his underwear while you suffer from the worst hangover in alcohol history.
Well, that’s my list of shame. Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support in 2012. I plan to see Zero Dark Thirty tomorrow night and review it Saturday. Tomorrow I plan to go through the rest of the movies from last year and just give joke awards to the ones that jump out at me. Feel free to comment here on my list or any of these films, but bear in mind that I can only include films that I actually saw last year. If it didn’t waste two hours of my life I don’t feel the need to dump on it. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to me at [email protected]. Alternatively you join the extremely few who follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Independence Day 2?
Hollywood tries to milk a cow that really never had much milk.
I have long railed against the endless proliferation of remakes and worthless sequels that Hollywood seems intent on spewing forth from every orifice. Some sequels are nice continuations or reimaginings of a good story, and often times will enhance or improve upon the first film. Terminator 2 for example. Some sequels are completely unneccessary blood ticks leeching onto an otherwise great film like a tapeworm that lives in your wallet. Boondock Saints 2. Some rare sequels are a dramatic game changer that takes a bad movie and makes the franchise awesome. Star Trek the Wrath of Khan is the penultimate example of this miracle.
However, occasionally we get the other rarity, a sequel to a really bad movie that looks like it is only going to suck more. I liken this to spending months getting rid of your warts only to have a brand new family of them surface just when you thought you were safe. I think the recent Wrath of the Titans is probably one of the best examples of this unpleasant phenomenon.
Thus we come to the horrible sounding sequel to Independence Day. While I am a fan of alien invasion films (Alien image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category) this one is to science fiction what Justin Beiber is to rock and roll. In spite of what everyone who knows nothing about science fiction thinks it is truly awful, and only a star studded cast and decent special effects saved it. To anyone who thinks it was good I offer the following challenge: aside from watching the White House get blown up try to recall any detail regarding the story or plot (I can recall it because I am cursed with a memory that remembers every plot I have ever seen but can’t recall anything I have read in a text book). The more you can remember the better the movie, right?
So we come to the looming possibility of Independence Day 2, most likely sans Will Smith (in spite of his poor choice of scripts I actually like him as an actor). What could this possible add to the story? And before you answer that understand that director Roland Emmerich has never had much interest in doing great stories or anything that is not a special effects exxxxxxxxxtravaganza (in addition to the original Independence Day his filmography includes the Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla 1998, and 2012. Science just called and wants to put a hit out on this guy). Odds are it will be a simple rehashing in hopes of culling 60% of the $811 million that the original made. Most likely it will have some great special effects, some early 20’s heartthrobs (Chris Helmsworth, I can here the call now), 3D to give me a headache, a story that makes one wish for the complexity of See Dick and Jane, and an abuse of science that is akin to childhood molestation.
So what does this mean? For any of you with a brain nothing, since odds are you will skip this travesty. For me it is like my doctor predicting an impending bout of irritable bowel syndrome triggered by massive diarrhia and causing projectile vomiting, and then giving me a release date. Being a reviewer is not always fun in the sun, let me tell you.
Anyway, I need to get back and do my worst 10 of 2012. Nora just saw Flight and is going to review it later. I hope you liked her review. She has a different style than I do (generally less analogies in the form of body function descriptions) but I enjoy it. Talk to you soon.
Dave
2012 Recap: Top 10 movies of the year
So another year has gone by and this week I have had the chance to reflect on what I have seen and how it all shakes out. Last year I got kind of in depth but this year I am going to keep it fairly simple with three posts: a best 10, a worst 10, and a general prize posts for things like “Movie Most Likely to Make Me Want to Club Baby Seals”.
Before I go on I’d like to mention my cousin Nora has expressed an interest in posting some of her own movie reviews. She also has some dating advice that is probably even more valuable than my own haphazard collection of misinformation and ill informed theories, mainly due to the fact that she is not only a girl but is several orders of magnitude more successful in the dating world than I am. She also grew up with my other cousin who is something of a chick magnet (no bitter jealousy here, I swear) so she has seen it all.
Bear in mind that these lists and my awards are strictly movies that I actually saw last year, so spare me your “Why isn’t Jiro Dreams of Sushi on this list?” emails and comments. Last year I watched and reviewed 94 movies, which is a lot in anyone’s book (although the year before I did 110, so I must be slacking some). In retrospect as I look over the scores I gave out I realize I have been overly generous. Does Men in Black 3 really rate even 1 star? It looks like I tend to be nicer to sci fi and other nerd movies.
In compiling my list I have used my scores as a guideline, but not an absolute. Some movies are just better than others in spite of the stars or black holes I was able to find in the film. so, without further ado, here is my list of the 10 best films of 2012.
10. End of Watch-Ironically not a lot of people I know saw this film. A found footage film based on the daily lives of two LAPD officers. What made this movie work for me was the amazing intensity the film brought to the screen. Not like a horror movie but instead a consistent level of seat arm gripping. Don’t expect to feel good at the end of this one.
9. the Dictator-I’ll admit I am a Sasha Baron Cohen fan and this film might not be as good as Borat, but I laughed my ass off. I think a lot of people might not have been happy with the exact subject matter, and I think it hilarious when his movies get accused of antisemitism, but if you can unlock your sense of humor I think it’s a great film.
8. the Grey-another movie that manages to break out of the norm and thrill you without car chases and an idiotic master plan to destroy all of Nebraska or something. I love the fact that the director didn’t compromise his vision by pushing out a happy ending like an impacted bowel movement. I don’t know if this is a good example of excellent acting or just really good casting, but Liam Neeson nailed this one. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a sequel here.
7. Moonrise Kingdom-next time I use the word “whimsical” in a review one of you do me the favor of driving over to my place and smothering me with a pillow. That being said, this movie is in all ways cute and fun. Sort of “Stand By Me” meets “Peewee’s Big Adventure“. Also the cast is really impressive. (Stand By Me image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category)
6. the Raid Redemption-when you see as many movies as I do it sometimes feel like you are chained in front of a guy with a fire hose and the hose is shooting out mediocrity. That is more true in the action genre than any other, if only because even movies that try to avoid cliche’s still get hit with the fact that action films in themselves are cliche. The Raid Redemption is one of the few I have seen that really made the whole action thing work without reminding me of every other action film I have seen, starting with Die Hard.
5. Looper-Sci fi is like fine wine to me, and honestly I think I like sci fi better in the dystopic near future of Bladerunner than the fabulous far future of Star Trek. Not only that, but this movie managed to use time travel as a plot device without running into the usual movie time travel paradox: how did the writer get his head so far up his own rectum (I’m talking to you, J.J. Abrams). There are holes but for the most part they were forgivable, leaving us with a great story, excellent performances, and an awesome ending.
4. Dredd-This is one people might disagree with me on. It’s not amazing in the traditional sense of movies like Citizen Kane or the Godfather, but in a very real sense I appreciate it for having a vision of what they wanted to do and executing it perfectly. They wanted to do a Dredd movie that truly derived from the comic book and have it remain exciting and cool. They absolutely succeeded. While I found it highly derivative of the Raid I think the sci fi element more than made up for it. Besides, taking inspiration from another good movie sounds more like a smart move than just lack of imagination. It’s movies that rip off bad movies that end up sucking (cough cough Red Dawn cough cough).
3. Wreck it Ralph-as a kids movie I didn’t give this one a score but if I had it would have ranked up there very high. An excellent kids movie that even adults will really enjoy. All I can say about this film is of all the movies I saw last year this was the only one I saw a second time.
2. the Life of Pi-on paper this film shouldn’t even be in my top ten, but in the viewing you realize how extremely well done and beautiful this movie is. Great story, awesome acting, and a cool subtle darkness that appeals to the side of me that likes grim movies. Well worth watching IMO.
1. Argo-this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone who read the review I wrote. Phenomenal story, awesome action, and a pacing that somehow managed to make a walk through an outdoor bazaar as exciting as the chase sequence from the Italian Job. It’s place as my Number 1 is cemented not only because it rated 12 stars but because I couldn’t find a single black hole to give it, a singular event indeed. I see this movie as not only a triumph of direction, but also of editing. As close to flawless as a movie can get in my (less than) humble opinion.
That’s my list. Feel free to disagree and post your own opinions in the comments here. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. If you have any off topic suggestions or questions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Thank you all for reading, and for all your support last year. 2013 is going to rock!
Dave
P.S. Nora just texted me that she is going to write a review for This is 40. Thank god. That movie looked like a good excuse to jump off a bridge, and now I don’t have to go see it.
Jack Reacher Review
Tom Cruise reaches out to show the audience how amazingly awesome he is.
Before I get into this review, I have to tell you why I am doing this particular movie. It came out as I was incredibly busy with work and I was prepared to let it slip through the cracks like so many other movies that just don’t really catch my eye for being what I perceive as blasé. However, I learned (thanks to a brow beating phone conversation) that my dear mother is a huge Lee Child fan and has read every Jack Reacher novel to date. 
She saw the movie (first movie I think she has seen in a theater since Gone With the Wind) and was outraged at what she thought was the ridiculous portrayal of her beloved character. She handed unto me a request (some other people might call it a directive) that I see the film at my earliest convenience and write a review for it (my mother, by the way, is my biggest fan and does sometimes read my blog, a fact that occasionally causes me to awaken in the middle of the night with night terrors).
So I saw the film. Was it any good? Sort of yes and sort of no. If all you want is some action and a slightly more complex story than the usual folderol than yes, it is good. It has action, (some) story, and more action. However, this script definitely stood too long in front of the cliche machine gun and has been riddle with them to the point that the cliches ooze from every pore and orifice. Every thing in this film is taken to such an extreme that is becomes almost laughable; Jack Reacher is SOOO amazingly awesome and the villain is SOOO ridiculously evil that the film disconnects from reality and transforms itself into a cartoon.
From what I know about the Lee Child Jack Reacher character it is indeed laughable to cast Tom Cruise in the role. Jack Reacher is supposed to be 6’5″, 250lbs with blond hair and blue eyes. Tom Cruise is (reportably) somewhere between 5’6″ and 5’9″ (based on the fact that he seems to be at eye level with costar Rosamund Pike I am inclined to go with the 5’6″ reports), dark hair, and if he weighs more that 150lbs I will eat one of the thousands of nerd t shirts I have in the room with me. As a guy who really is 6’5″ and 250lbs I find this almost insulting.
The other thing that is going on here is you can almost hear Tom Cruise pleasuring himself to this movie. His character is the most awesome thing since the invention of fire and the whole movie looks like a vehicle to show the universe that there is no one greater in the history of humanity. I don’t know. Maybe Jack Reacher is written in the books as a combination of James Bond, Bruce Lee, John McClane, and the Six Million Dollar Man, but if not this thing reeks of self gratification vanity project (If I am wrong and Jack Reacher can single handedly best five guys in a fight and is one of the top sniper marksmen in the world than I owe you an apology, Tom).
The weirdest thing for me is the director, Christopher McQuarrie, also did one of my all time favorite movies the Usual Suspects. It is a cool, complicated, and twisted story with perfect pacing and an awesome cast. I can sort of see an attempt at that level of complexity in the first half of this film but eventually what was a good, complex story devolved into a regular action shooter and that stuff at the beginning that seemed so cool early on devolved into a lot of unnecessary plot complication.
The movie starts off with a sniper in a parking garage randomly shooting five people in a clear attempt to shock the audience. He is caught in like 15 seconds of police work by Detective Emerson (David Oyelowo (the Help, Last King of Scottland, Rise of the Planet of the Apes) of the local (now that I think of it, I have no idea what city this was supposed to be taking place it) police department. The shooter turns out to be a trained Army sniper named Barr (Joseph Sikora-Safe, Shutter Island, Boardwalk Empire). He tells them to find Jack Reacher, who has been out of touch for years. Jack shows up like a conjured fairy and gets hired by Barr’s attorney Helen (Rosamund Pike-Surrogates, Die Another Day, Pride and Prejudice) as investegator in spite of the fact that he thinks Barr is guilty.
At that point the story boils down to a by-the-numbers whodunnit. Jack uncovers a conspiracy somehow involving city construction contracts. A pretty girl (Alexia Fast-Helen, Repeaters, Fido (!!! AWESOME. If you haven’t seen this movie you suck. One of the great zombie films IMO) gets him into a fight with the local color and later gets him into more trouble. The most laughable evil yet at the same time non-threatening villain ever (in my opinion) shows up to do evil stuff. The villain (Werner Herzog-Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn, Encounters at the End of the World) starts off with some incredibly complex plan to execute his evil but at the end of the film has all the complexity of a boss monster in Resident Evil. Robert Duvall surfaces like a submarine to play an ex-Marine Corps sniper for some reason. The denouement was pretty much lifted from Tango and Cash (if you have seen how bad that film is you understand how that was not a compliment). Cars get chased, guys get shot, and at the end Jack Reacher is so amazing that he literally hurts your eyes to gaze upon his countenance.
The stars. If fun action is what you are going for this movie has what you need. One star. There were a couple of really good car chases that were quite enjoyable (although a 70 Chevelle SS should be able to shred an Audi on it’s front grill like a soggy cornflake. American muscle car >>>> any Euro lamo-mobile in all ways that matter). One star. A series stab at something more complex than normal. One star. Overall not a total waste of time and money. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes. Jack Reacher is so ridiculously awesome at everything (I’m sure even his flatulence has deadly combat potential while still attracting the ladies) that you spend half the movie wondering if this is really some kind of Police Story style spoof. One black hole. If the main character shreds every obstacle with the strength of his mighty masculinity in the course of the movie every aspect of the action and story loses all gravitas and turns into a grind, which is what happened here. One black hole. Only through the magic of camera angles and highly selective supporting actor casting can Tom Cruise even be considered worthy of this role, not to mention capable of contesting with one other human (much less five) in a brawl. One black hole. The story had so much complex potential at the beginning but by the end ended with a stupid brawl in the mud. It also drank deeply from the cliche punch. I’d like to say “It’s no the Usual Suspects” but I think that would just have too much irony even for me. One black hole. The villain was given to us as the most evil man since they cloned Hitler, but very little of his back story was given to allow us to see what he was about. It essentially boiled down to “He’s evil because he has an evil eye and we tell you so. Also he ate his own fingers.” One black hole. Grand total: five black holes.
A grand total of one black hole. Meh. Worth watching if it comes on TV and your remote is out of reach. Nothing on here really needs a big screen so feel free to watch it from the comfort of your couch. Date movie? Probably not. Nothing in here for the ladies except for a bare chested Tom Cruise, and you will suffer greatly in comparison. Bathroom break? Nothing really stands out as being more worthless than the rest of the film. I’d say the scene with Reacher and Helen in the hotel room doesn’t add much, but if you are only here to see Tom Cruise shirtless don’t skip out on this.
Thanks again for reading. More this weekend, plus I have to do my 2012 recap. I think this year I am just going to do my top and bottom 10 in two different posts. Last year I went all complex and at the end of it felt like I might have just wasted a bunch of time. Feel free to comment on this film or my review here. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Djanjo Unchained Review
A good/bad film you might just love/hate.
I saw this the other night and did enjoy it. However, I am truly a Tarantino fan boy and have a deep appreciation of his particular style of good/bad movie making. He writes intriguing characters and situations better than anyone else, and then delivers them without any excess dross to gum up the movie experience. However, he has a deep appreciation of camp that, for someone who thinks camp is a sign of bad movie making, can really hurt the film for the wrong person.
The good news is that, camp aside every part of this film is more or less flawlessly executed. The acting is all around brilliant, the story very interesting (think good comic book origin story without the super powers), and the camera work perfect. In all ways an extremely good example of what filming should be about.
Of course, if I am going to review this film I should address the elephant in the room, the prolific use of the dreaded “N” word. I will say it was used with great frequency. It first it was off putting, then it started to sound a lot like a three year old learning a dirty word and yelling out incessantly, but by the end of the movie I started to see what (I believe) Tarantino was going for with this. You see, this movie more than anything else tries to show the cruelty and dehumanization of the slave trade in the Antebellum South (albeit in a remarkably cartoonish, over the top style. Something of Quentin’s signature, I guess). If you feel you have not felt enough guilt in your life for being Caucasian this film will help you with that. The point is the N word is used with such frequency and in such a workaday manner that it really help illustrate how ingrained and natural the racism really was (and some might say, still is). The characters in this film used it the ease and natural cadence as one today would use the word man or woman, and that successfully drove the racism point home with all the subtlety of a machete used for brain surgery.
It wouldn’t be one of my reviews if I didn’t find something to bitch about, and fortunately there is stuff for me to latch on to. The plot Django and Dr. Schultz cook up by the end of the film to buy Django’s wife out of slavery is needlessly complicated and outright stupid. The whole time they were crafting this elaborate ruse I was thinking “Couldn’t they have just ridden up to the house and offered a large sum of money?” That’s pretty much what I would have done. A lot of time is spent setting things up, which in a lesser movie I would have called plodding and slow paced. Also, while I really liked the Dr. Schultz and Calvin Candie characters, I felt the Django character was really simple and two dimensional. He spend most of the film as a moving plot point with guns. No real depth to him.
Spoilers coming up, so if you want to avoid them skip ahead five paragraphs.
The story is of young Django (Jamie Foxx-Miami Vice, Law Abiding Citizen, Horrible Bosses. I couldn’t find an image of Jamie Foxx as Detective Tubbs, but this great image comes courtesy of the TV Show T Shirt category), a slave in the South two years prior to the Civil War. He is on a coffle traveling somewhere under the control of two with trash morons when they come across the wagon of Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz-Inglorious Basterds, Water for Elephants, Carnage), a wandering dentist and bounty hunter. Schultz wants Django to help him identify three bounties. He frees Django and the rest of the coffle (with the first of many rated R bloodbaths) and sets off after the guys.
Schultz determines that Django has a talent for bounty hunting and offers him a job helping out for the winter, after which he will help to find Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington-Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Last King of Scotland, Ray, and hopefully one day staring as the bride at my future wedding. What a heartbreaker). After a colorful montage of bounty hunting scenes they hare off to find Broomhilda. In short order they determine that she has been bought by Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio-Titanic, Inception, Shutter Island), one of the wealthiest landowners in Mississippi. He is not by nature written as a cruel man (relative to the others around him) and is in his own way a very intriguing character, although some of his actions during the film really put me off my feed.
At this point IMO the story falls off the rails for a while. Rather than ride up to the Candie Manor and offer $1,000 for a slave Candie paid $300 for they develop this amazing long and complicated plot to trick Candie out of her. I swear it made the Usual Suspects look like Legally Blonde. They are posing as investors in some kind of slave fight arena (think a more horrible version of dog fighting, if that is possible) and want to spend a ton of money buying one of Candie’s best fighters. Somehow they are going to get Broomhilda for tuppence during the course of this facade.
This plot is ruined by Candies clever head house slave Steven (played brilliantly by Samuel L Jackson-Pulp Fiction, the Incredibles, Jackie Brown. We won’t talk about his Mace Windu years) and instead of getting her for the $1,000 they could probably have gotten going they spend $12,000 on her. At that point the deal falls apart mainly due to Schultz being unable to shake Candie’s hand and the whole movie ends in a huge bloodbath.
The stars. Good film in almost all regards. One black hole. A film that for the first time in a long time takes on something more complicated than the usual dross. One star. All the stars were brilliant, and their characters really intriguing. Three stars. Dialog was spot on. One star. Nice message delivered to America. One star. All around fun movie. Two stars. Total: nine stars.
The black holes. Needlessly complicated end plot. One black hole. Run time seemed long at 165 minutes. A stronger hand on the editing would have tightened things up a lot I think. One black hole. Total: two black holes.
By the way, I spotted what I think is a huge technical error but Tarantino is such an accomplished filmmaker I can only assume he did it on purpose. In one of the gunfights towards the end all the guys stop shooting and you can here a brass casing bounce off the ground like you do in pretty much 100% of all modern gun fights. The thing is they were all using revolvers, which don’t eject brass. I supposed an argument could be made that it was a repeating rifle, but that wasn’t really developed until 1860 and this film took place in 1858. Either Tarantino is having a laugh at it, or he should fire his Foley editor. (This last passage is conclusive proof that I am a nerd, BTW)
A total of seven stars, and a big thumbs up from me. I’d put this move on the same level as Inglorious Basterds, but not as good as Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs. Definitely worth seeing, and if you want to have fun see it like I did in a theater that was literally 99% liberal white people and watch them squirm at all the racial abuse going on the screen. Date movie? Probably not. Violent and gory, and there is a dog mauling scene that will ruin canines for you for life. Bathroom break? The best part IMO is the long ride they all take out to Candieland. I’d say from the moment Schultz joins Candie on the buggy you have a good 3-4 minutes of not a lot happening.
Thanks for reading. Look for my review of Jack Reacher tomorrow. I need time to figure out a clever enough subtitle for such an epically mediocre movie. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Feel free to post comments here on this movie or my review. Off topic questions or suggestions can be sent to [email protected]. Happy New Year, and I’ll talk to you soon.
Dave
P.S. Look for my 2012 movie recap coming soon. Still looking for a clever name for my awards. So far all I have is “Nerdies” and I think that blows. Any suggestions will be seriously considered.
Les Misérables Review
I need to get a note from my doctor excusing me from writing this review.
This is the worst kind of review for me to write, if only because it is so out of my realm of experience that I might as well throw a dictionary into a tree shredder and publish whatever comes out the other end. It’s like asking a nuclear physicist to perform brain surgery; he or she may be highly intelligent and well trained in their own field of expertize but at the end of the task all you are left is a big gooey mess and a souvenir skull.
I also hate writing these because they always end up showing the world what an uncultured oaf I secretly am. I am sure I will get a lot of feedback similar to what I got for my review of Tree of Life when I called it a disjointed mass of editing room scraps masquerading as pretentious self indulgent pseudo art (I still stand by that, incidentally. If any of you are screaming Tree of Life fans let me tell you that Terrence Malick masturbated all over your face and you not only didn’t realize it but thanked him for it).
The problem stems from the fact that I am not really a fan of theater. If I am going to sit for two or more hours watching a story why would I not want to go see something with production values and all the bad bits edited out? It seems to me the only reason you would want to see something performed live is because you are hoping to see someone really screw up (kind of like how all Nascar fans secretly hope to see someone killed in a horrible car crash right in front of them). I know they are supposed to be a cornerstone of our culture (well, upper class culture) but unless your kid is in the show I don’t see a real reason to attend (and there is the proof of my cultural oafishness. Feel free to start hate spamming me now, so I can get right on ignoring you. Lincoln image courtesy of the Funny T-Shirt category).
Not to say that this movie is a play. It is a full grown film, with high production values and multiple takes for each scene. It is in fact very pretty and generally well produced. However, I never fell in love with the story as a play and have very little interest in seeing an entire script sung out loud. I don’t mind a musical when the periodic songs are used to enhance the story (Dr. Horrible, for example. I love that show). But this movie has every line of more than three words padded out into a complete musical number to the point I felt like I was drowning in lyrics and struggling for the faintest breath of expository dialog. The phrase “too much of a good thing” plays out well at this point.
The real victim of all the musical numbers is the film pacing. In a normal movie, establishing that the innkeeper and his wife are crooks would be accomplished with a couple of quick pickpocketing or ripping off scenes. Instead we are given an extended duet that keeps showing them doing the same thing over and over again in order to keep the screen moving long enough for the song to play out. It doesn’t help that most of the songs were variations on three basic songs, and if I have to listen to that Red and Black song one more time my head will literally explode.
There were parts I enjoyed, and I won’t be all black holes. I just feel like had there been a little more discrimination in the song selection and a willingness to space them out with dialog the movie would have moved a lot better and made each song have much more impact and relevance. Having Javert sing about his reasons for suicide lost a lot of meaning after listening to everyone else sing about every bowel movement and raincloud that passed overhead.
One last personal note before I get into the meat of the film. One of the actual reasons I had for seeing this film is I have had a long time love of Anne Hathaway (in spite of One Day but recently greatly enhanced by her portrayal of Sylina Kyle in the Dark Knight Rises). If you are reading this Anne I’d like to take you to dinner at the best taco truck you have ever tasted. However, in this film she is purposely made to look as ugly as possible and then dies about 40 minutes in. I totally felt ripped off, especially given that she is featured in about 80% of the screen time for all the trailers. I suppose if I had been more familiar with the story I would not have been so surprised (or bitter) but there it is.
Anyway, the story. Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman-X-Men, Real Steel, Rise of the Guardians) is a man convicted of stealing a loaf of bread and spends 19 years at hard labor. He is paroled but due to his status is destitute and starving. Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe-L.A. Confidential, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind) is on him from the moment he is released. A priest gives him the means he needs to reinvent himself and he skips on parole and takes on the identity of a well-to-do businessman. Years later Javert comes to his office and sort of recognizes him. Meanwhile single mother Fantine (Anne Hathaway-the Devil Wears Prada, the Dark Knight Rises, One Day) is fired from Valjeans factory for something (?) and has to become a prostitute in order to keep her young daughter alive. Her daughter Cosette (Isabella Allen when young, Amanda Seyfried as a teenager) lives with two horrible innkeepers. Fantine is discovered by Valjean who realizes he is responsible for her downfall. She dies of something (?) and Valjean vows to take care of Cosette. However, Javert is after him so he has to escape to the other side of Paris (can someone please tell me why he didn’t just leave town the first time he got away from Javert?) and change his name again. Skip ahead again and the two of them live together in Paris while the post Revolution revolts are going on. A young revolutionary named Marius (Eddie Redmayne-Black Death, the Other Boleyn Girl, My Week with Marilyn) sees her and they fall in love.
You know, when I was watching the film I was having to pay so much attention to the singing I failed to realized what a convoluted mess the story really is. Tolkien would struggle to follow this. Anyway, the minor revolution happens. Guys die. More singing surfaces. Marius and Valjean go swimming in raw sewage with open bullet wounds (sepsis, anyone?). Javert fails in his duty and jumps off a bridge. For the most part the movie lives up to it’s name as almost everyone in it ends up dead or unhappy in some way or another.
The stars. Very pretty movie, with lots of cool images. One star. Excellent work on the costumes and period pieces. One star. There were a couple songs that actually struck my cold, flinty heart (Marius singing about his dead friends at the end in particular). One star. From what I could discern through the fog of music I actually like most of the characters, Javert and Valjean in particular. One star. Good acting all around, if you can be said to be acting when what you are really doing is physically emoting while singing. One star. In the A for effort category I will say I was impressed by all the actors being able to sing, and for the director insisting on each song being sung in scene and not recorded post production. Russell Crowe was the weakest of the singers but even he managed to pull it off. While not my cup of tea, I have an appreciation for the work put in there. Plus I sing like a dying cow. Two stars. Grand total: seven stars.
The black holes. I’m not hitting them for the fact that it was a musical. I will hit them however for the insistence of using music in many scenes that could have been accomplished via dialog or even camera work in a matter of seconds. One black hole. This is probably the end result of adopting a play to a movie while trying to keep the play feel, but the pacing was glacier-like. The film runs 157 minutes and you will feel every one of them, mostly in your ass. One black hole. They did that period thing that bugs the hell out of me with the accents. The film is set in France, but every character has an American accent except for a few minor ones who for some inexplicably reason are British (including one ragamuffin who sounded Cockney). Of course, they insist on calling everyone Monsieur or Mademoiselle, and when they do so have a flawless French accent. Just pick one and roll with it IMO. One black hole. I feel like featuring Anne Hathaway so prominently in the trailers only to have her shuffle off the mortal coil 1/4 of the way into the film is just false advertizing. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
A grand total of three stars. However, my scoring is truly irrelevant. I’m not going to bother to recommend or unrecommended this film as I know you have all already decided if you are going to see it or not. If you lack a Y chromosome or are a fan of musical theater you probably have already seen it or plan to see it soon, and if you are not you probably won’t bother. Date movie? Abso-freaking-lutely. If sitting through this epic with a girl doesn’t get you laid you might as well become a monk because you are the least attractive man on the planet (on a side note, does anyone know of any good monasteries that are taking applications? I ask from a purely hypothetical point of view, and not at all because I saw this movie with a girl and didn’t get any). Bathroom break? The weird thing about this film is you kind of really have to pay attention to the singing in order to know what is going on, so I’d say try to hold it. However, if you need an exact point to relieve yourself any time they start singing the “Red and Black” song is pretty good. It goes on forever, is repeated ad nauseum, is towards the last 1/3rd of the film, and doesn’t really tell you much.
Thanks for reading. If you have comments on this film or my review of it feel free to post them here (even “Dave you are an idiot” comments will get approved as long as you don’t cuss). If you have off topic questions or suggestions (or happen to be Anne Hathaway taking me up on my taco truck offer) you can email me at [email protected]. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu (I really only post my reviews and the occasional new t-shirt there). Talk to you soon.
Dave
Killing Them Softly Review
Boring me majorly.
This is a film I saw a week ago but have not had the time to write up. Saying the Holidays are busy for me is like saying Red Tails is a bad movie. The actual words fail to encompass exactly how busy I am (or how bad Red Tails was). Sufficed to say things have been nuts but now I should have time to get caught up on reviews.
I am a Brad Pitt fan, and have been ever since I saw Fight Club mainly because there was nothing else on that day and walked out of the theater with the thundering realization that I had just accidentally seen my all time favorite film (I Beat Tyler Durden courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category). Inglorious Basterds was amazing, and I even got to like Meet Joe Black, although not for the story. In spite of the fact that Brad was originally sold to us as a pretty boy I have gotten to like him, and will take a serious look at any movie he opts to do.
All that being said, while he did an admirable job with the mediocre part he was handed there was nothing he could do to save this film from being a total snooze-fest. Watching this film is like staring out the window in detention in school where even the actions of two pigeons on a ledge seem fascinating because you are so painfully bored. It runs 97 minutes but felt like 197.
Like most mediocre to bad films the real sin the director committed was a failure to commit strongly enough in any single direction. At the same time this film tries to be an action film, character study, and drama while completely lacking in action, character development, or drama. Something like 75 of the 97 minutes is of two men sitting in a parked car talking about what they should do and why (different cars and different men, but almost the same scene every time). The main thing this repetitive shooting does is highlight how rote and mundane a lot of the camera work is. There is only so much shot-counter shot you can do in a film until it starts to feel like the editor is running off a metronome.
The other thing this film really lacks is a point. The whole thing seemed pitched as a character realization, either for the Brad Pitt character or the other main guy (Scoot McNairy-Argo, Monster, In Search of a Midnight Kiss). However, at the end nothing is realized and everyone is either worse off or exactly the same. There is some kind of sub plot involving James Gandolfini (the Sophranos, the Last Castle, In the Loop (<–great movie, BTW)) and his alcohol problem that just vanishing into the mist like a badly created sub plot. There might be some kind of important message about how fragile the organized crime illegal gambling economy is and how all it takes is one idiot to ruin it, but I failed to see the importance of that.
The story. Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn-Killer Elite, the Dark Knight Rises, Tresspass) are small time criminals and drug addicts who get hired (after the longest interview process in employment history) by a small kingpin (Vincent Curatola-the Sophranos, Monk, the Good Wife) to rob a local illegal poker game run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta-Goodfellas, Hannibal, Smoking Aces). (By the way, the casting director really phoned it in on this one. He or she was told this was a mafia film and called the first five guys cast typed into it (I guess Joe Pesci had other things to do)). Robbing a mafia game normally would get them all killed badly, but since Trattman was known for robbing his own game they all figured he would get the blame for it.
They rob the game, and that is pretty much the last interesting thing that happens in the entire film. The rest of it is Jackie (Brad Pitt), the mafia enforcer, being called in to find the guys and kill them. This might sounds good, but most of his search seems to involve sitting around talking about what it’s like to be a hit man or something. He hires his old frind Mickey (Gandolfini) to kill the guy who cooked the deal up but Mickey is more interested in drinking, hiring hookers, and bellyaching about his life to anyone in proximity. For some reason we are given extensive lectures on the economics of organized crime and criminal committee decision making, kind of in the same way that a lump of grass takes an extensive tour of a cows massive digestive system. There are a number of action-ish scenes that in a normal film would have been pretty cool but in this one it has all the excitement of a corpse twitching after death. I am going to use the old “I don’t want to drop any spoilers” excuse to end this story description, but the truth is just recalling it is triggering my narcolepsy.
The stars. Brad Pitt was decent even given the garbage role he was handed. One star. While the film was painfully boring the director made the merciful and wise decision to make it relatively short. One star. I don’t know where Mickey is finding his hookers, but the one that is shown is heartbreakingly hot (no nudity, however). One star (I’m kind of reaching here). Three stars total.
Boring. Boring boring boring boring boring boring dull. Two black holes. The ending felt worthless and rushed, like they suddenly all realized how dull the movie was and just wanted to end it so they could move on with their lives. One black hole. Not a single sympathetic character in the bunch, and no real protagonist. Even the main guy sucks for being so stupid. You kind of end up hating them all equally. One black hole. Mundane camera work and pulseless action. One black hole. A movie with all the pretension of having a point without actually having a point. One black hole. This is one of the very rare occasions that I can say I walked out of the theater with the definitive feeling that I had wasted my time and money. One black hole. Total: six black holes.
A total of three black holes. Worth seeing at all? Meh. If your choices are watching this or watching two pigeons on a ledge outside your window than sure. Not worth time in the theater in my opinion. See it at home. Date movie? Probably not. You will burn all your credit choosing a dude movie and then look lame when she passes out from boredom. Bathroom break? Pretty much anywhere. If you want to pick a specific scene I’d say the one where Russell and Frankie are smoking crack together. Even more nothing happens, and the only relevant plot point is restated by Brad Pitt five minutes later.
Thanks for reading, and sorry I had to start off with something dull like this. Some interesting stuff coming out this week. I will try to see something good soon. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or my review feel free to post them here. If you have any off topic questions or suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
How does Superman cut his hair?
Yes, I’m back and should have time once more to write all the wonderful reviews and theories that you, my beloved readers, have come to expect and adore. In fact I have one on deck that I am writing in a bit. However, yesterday I drove home from LA which is six hours of nothing but time to think. Sometimes I come up with something brilliant and other times I come up with questions like this one.
Think about it. Superman is effectively indestructible. Wouldn’t his hair destroy any scissors you tried to use it on? My best friend told me he was a comic once where Superman reflected his heat vision off a mirror to cut it. This is all well and good, but the thing is mirrors reflect lasers, not heat vision. He doesn’t have laser eyes. All that would happen is the mirror would just get super hot.
Let’s say that this were even true. First of all have you ever tried to cut your own hair in a mirror? I sometimes trim my eyebrows and let me tell you I am in severe danger of giving myself an accidental lobotomy every time. What happens if a fly buzzes by real fast and for just a second you track it with your eyes while styling your hair. Isn’t Superman in serious danger of giving himself an unintentional no-hawk?
For that matter, no one ever notices that Supermans hair length is the exact same as Clark Kent, and they get their hair cut at exactly the same time? How dumb is Lois Lane? If male pattern baldness runs in the -el family keeping his secret identity intact may prove problematic.
Sorry, I know. Completely irrelevant tangent. This is what keeps me up at night and awake on late night Christmas drives. Superman logo courtesy of the Superman T Shirt category. I will be working on a film review shortly. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Hobbit Review
Ever feel like there is just not enough padding and filler in your life? Looks like Peter Jackson heard you!
This is another review I had to take a full day to think about before writing up. I saw it at midnight on Thursday/Friday night with a bunch of other fanboys (some of whom clapped at the end of it. Can someone please explain this phenomenon to me? You clap to show an appreciation to the performers or presenters of something. Do these idiots really think the producers of the movie are in the theater with us, or perhaps the ushers fill out reports to the studios as to how loud the clapping really was? If not than this is clearly an pretentious attempt to show the world exactly what kind of a douchy fanboy you really are).
By the way, if you are reading this review and have never read the Hobbit I don’t know what the heck you are doing here, but I am going to be pretty generous with the spoilers in a minute so be warned. I am assuming you all know the story at least half as well as I do.
I generally consider it a warning sign when a movie’s actors and producers really overmarket the film prior to release, and it looks like once again I am right. The week leading up to this release you couldn’t flip a channel without seeing one of them on some interview or talk show.
I’ve decided I need to look at this from three different perspectives; fan of the movie series, fan of the novels, and non fan who stumbled into the theater with no previous LOTR experience. Honestly, while this movie is very pretty it kind of lags from all three perspectives.
As a fan of the movies it really isn’t much when compared to any of the three LOTR films. The story is bloated and convoluted while at the same time feeling truncated, the characters grossly underdeveloped (especially when compared to the Fellowship characters), and the movie attempts to maintain the very serious tone of the three main movies while at the same time add in a ton of Three Stooges-esque slaptstick comedy. The forcing of every LOTR character and reference into this film is done with all the subtlety of using a croquet mallet to insert a catheter. They crammed in Frodo at the beginning as part of the prologue and I guess I was OK with that. It didn’t strike me as too glaring out of place and maybe there actually are Elijah Wood fans out there (and if you do exist please stay away from me and my family). When I saw Elrond I thought “Sure, he was in the Hobbit. Looks like a good move”. Then when the shoved in Lady Galadriel I thought “OK, I suppose if they are going to have one of the main Elves why not have the other one? Odds are they brought her in to add a little femininity to what is otherwise a massive sausage-fest”. But then they force fed us Saruman FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER and discuss the danger of Sauron (who got no reference in the book whatsoever) while discussing a Morgol-blade they captured from the Witch-King of Angmar (no joke. I wish I was joking) and at that point I decided I and the rest of the audience was being pandered to. I just wish I knew what brand of baby powder Peter Jackson was using when he changed all our diapers for us.
While we are on the subject of pandering and treating the audience like we are all brain injury victims, I also want to rail on the presentation of Saruman in this film. I guess they decided we are all to stupid to understand the corruptive nature of time and evil and so presented Saruman as evil and despicable as possible. It’s like watching Chancellor Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith act exactly like a Sith Lord and wondering just how stupid every other character (who are all actively looking for a Sith Lord) in the film really is. If Elrond, Galadriel, and Gandalf (collectively acknowledged as the wisest beings in Middle Earth) couldn’t figure out that he warranted watching by is behavior at the meeting they all deserve to be crushed by Mordor for being moronic.
The last area where this movie lags behind the other three is in characters. In the LOTR series each of the Fellowship and supporting characters is a cool individual with a distinct personality that resonates well with the others. Aragorn, Gandalf, Legoalas, Gimli, and each of the hobbits is distinctive and intriging. Even Boromir was really cool, and supporting characters like Faramir added a ton to the story. In this movie the cast consists of Gandalf, Biblo, a fatter Aragorn (Thorin Oakenshield, if you want specifics), the dwarf with the white beard, the fat dwarf, and the other 10 dwarves who devolve into a faceless mass rapidly. Half of them look like they were rejected by the casting director of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for being too goofy and cartoony, and the other half look like humans. The cool thing about Gimli is he looked every inch a dwarf. In this film the dwarves look like a healthy mix of SAG extras and homeless people picked up off Hollywood Blvd. There is nothing about character here at all for any of them. Even Thorin is a 2 dimensional photocopy of Aragorn, and when you see them as a group they look exactly like a group of full sized humans.
As a fan of the book I am slightly more pleased, but only slightly. They attempted to keep the more fanciful tone for parts, and in general kept to the story. However, they surgically grafted on a ton of parts from the Silmarillion and another ton of parts they flat out made up and closed all the sutures with a mix of used dental floss and old yo-yo strings. Remember how in the book the dwarfs were more or less wandering through Middle Earth and dealing with whatever random trolls, goblins, and giant spiders they happened across (kind of like a driving trip across West Texas)? The book is a single adventure. If it were an RPG game it would be termed a “dungeon crawl”. Travel to the Lonely Mountain, steal as much gold as you can carry, and ride off into the sunset to spend it all on good wine and bad women. There are no portents of the ultimate doom of Middle Earth. Not so here, however. I guess the film producers decided our soft brains would never accept a motivation for our main characters as simple and morally grey as just getting rich. Instead we are fed a massive undercurrent of conspiracies, evil powers manipulating things from afar, and portents of incoming doom that is totally at odds with the lighthearted nature of the book. As I have said many times before, it’s OK for a movie to not rest on the ultimate fate of the world.
Where the movie suffers the most, however, is from the perspective of a guy off the street who is not really a massive fan of anything and only wants to see decent film. For this hapless individual the movie is a huge, slogging, incoherent mess. The pacing movies like a giant amoeba crawling across the ground, getting around objects with occasional bursts of speed as it squeezes though a narrow passage but in general progressing with turtle-esque velocity. There are a ton of irrelevant scenes to pad out the script run time, including a massive block dedicated to the completely annoying Radagast the Brown as he spends 10 agonizing minutes (from the audience perspective) nursing a sick hedgehog back to life (God I wish I was joking). There are flashbacks within flashbacks (the only one which would have been really cool was the attack of Smaug. Would have been cool had they actually shown Smaug. It was pretty much just stuff burning and glimpses of giant clawed feet and wings. Thanks for wasting my time on something that was covered in the book by three lines of expository dialog). Also, if there is one thing that sucked about the books that they managed to avoid in LOTR trilogy it was the insuferable singing. I defy you to find any reader of the books who has read even most of the lines of those songs. As soon as you see the indented italic passages that is any sane readers cue to skip to the next real paragraph. In the main movies they touched on it only briefly, with elves singing in the background. Here it is the perfect excuse to kill another five minutes of screen time and some audience brain cells.
However, the thing that surprised the hell out of me was the fact that the CGI and special effects appear to have taken a serious downgrade since the last movie. I know this magical 48 frame deal that Peter Jackson is so bent out of shape about is somehow supposed to enhance the visuals, but in fact the movie looks a lot worse. The monsters all look more cartoonish (especially the trolls and the eagles), the lighting effects are from hell (take a close look at the candles when you see them), and the battle scenes play out like a really good video game. If I could go back in time I might tell Mr. Jackson that maybe a huge epic film like this is not the time to experiment with new film techniques. I know all this is supposed to be for 3D but I am not a 3D fan and a couple years from now when I am looking at this film on my non-3D TV it will suffer for it.
I’m not going to waste a lot of time on the story. You all should know it. Bilbo gets shanghaied by Gandalf and the dwarves to steal back gold from Smaug in the lonely mountain. They all get captured by trolls who are tricked into turning into stone. They have a run in with Radagast (?) who tells them about an evil necromancer (??) who is resurrecting the the dead, including the Witch-king of Angmar (???). They are being chased by Thorins old orc enemy Azog the Defiler (???? For the record, according to Tolkien Azog was slain by Dain at the Battle of Azanulbizar years before this story took place, and it was his son Bolg who fought at the Battle of the Five Armies. This was changed to give us a tangible enemy to focus our soft brains on I guess). They get captured by the Goblin King in the Misty Mountains and Bilbo finds the Ring. They all escape and fly off on giant eagles. The movie ends (at pretty much the ending of chapter 7 from the book. Pad much?).
The stars. The riddle scene between Bilbo and Gollum was really, really well done. Two stars. The acting was exceptional from the characters that had any kind of development. One star. Andy Serkis was brilliant again (if you don’t know who Andy Serkis is, shame on you). One star. For all my issues, it’s still a Tolkien movie. One star. The only CGI that didn’t make me want to fix the film with a set of crayons was the Goblin King (either that or we meet him so far into the movie that by then my eyes had gotten used to it). One star. Two of my favorite character will always be Gandalf and Gollum, and both were used to great effect here. Two stars. I know I am being kind because I am a fanboy, but I will have to give two more stars for it being generally entertaining as long as you can stay awake. Total: nine stars.
The black holes (each one of these feels like a kidney stone made of burning coal, BTW). Padded. Pad pad pad pad pad pad pad. One black hole. For all the padding, the story felt really shortened and underdeveloped. One black hole. No real character development or interaction to speak of. One black hole. Twisting the story in order to give it a bigger meaning and darker overtone (completely unnecessary). One black hole. Lack of a real tone. Trying to combine slapstick with LOTR seriousness. One black hole. The fact that the dwarves never looked like dwarves, even when surrounded by elves. One black hole. Shoving in Azog for no reason. One black hole. In a lesser movie I would give a separate black hole for forcing in each of Galadriel, Saruman, Sauron, Frodo, and the Witch-King in order to forcibly remind us where this movie comes from, but here I will just do one. One black hole. The movie more or less ended at what felt like halfway through Act 2. One black hole. Special effects and CGI that weirdly reminded me of the Never Ending Story (1984). One black hole. You feel every one of the 169 minutes, with lots of worthless boring scenes that afford you the time to reflect on how lame all of this is compared to the LOTR. One black hole. Total: eleven black holes.
If you had told me two years ago that when I reviewed the Hobbit I would end up giving it a total of two black holes I would have laughed in your face. I’m baffled as to how much they could have missed the mark given the source material. 
I am going to do a separate blog on this, but the parallels between this series and Star Wars is pretty astounding (Old Republic logo courtesy of the Star Wars T shirt category). A talented director (or his supporting staff) creates an epic three part series that draws in millions of fans from accross the globe and then, given an unlimited budget opts to make a prequel series that spends more time highlighting the advancements in technology than story and is rife with either flat (Anakin) or annoying (Radagast=Jar Jar IMO) characters, all of which more or less ruins the franchise. Should you see it? Absolutely. It is a Tolkien movie and definitely is a must see for any nerd. That really isn’t the question. The question is will you want to see it a second time. I saw each of the LOTR movies at least twice in the theater (the Two Towers is saw three times I think) both in regular and IMAX, bought the movies when they came out in DVD, and the bought them all again when the super deluxe extended versions came out. I feel no need to see this one again. In fact, on some levels I am kind of dreading the next two movies now. It’s kind of like taking a college class on a subject you are REALLY interested in but the professor is the most boring teacher in the history of education and has a giant, gross mole on his face that you can’t help but stare at.
Date movie? Yes if she is a fan, hell no if not. She will fall asleep, I promise you. Bathroom break? Your don’t want to miss the riddle scene. Pretty much anywhere in the first 45 minutes (this slow movie takes it’s time ramping up to a snails pace) works. There are a couple camping scenes in the last half, and the scene where the dwarves are walking out of Rivendale (cough cough) could be missed.
Thanks for reading, and my apologies for harshing your buzz if you were looking forward to this. This honestly has been the most painful review to write I have done to date. I really wanted to like this film, but Peter Jackson appears to have been drinking from the same Kool Aid that George Lucas quaffs, and I’m not here to lie to you. Post your comments on this film or my review here (please, if you can convince me I am wrong and this film is actually more than the messy afterbirth of the LOTR I will thank you). Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu, and if you have off topic suggestion or questions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Playing for Keeps Review
Odds are you can take it or leave it.
It has been my unfortunate realization as I do these reviews that while there is a definite spectrum of movie quality from so brilliant it might burn out your retinas (Argo) to so dumb it’s like stepping in a bear trap while a troupe of clowns beats you with rubber hoses (Resident Evil), but the sad fact is that spectrum follows a bell curve and the vast majority of films lands right on the hump of mediocrity. It just makes doing reviews something of a grind, since the incredibly brilliant and amazingly stupid movies are always the most fun to write up.
Playing for Keeps not only is in the mediocre zone, but it hits the mean exactly and pretty much is the exact average. The weird thing is I don’t know if it should be on the curve. If it weren’t for some PG-13 language and relatively big Hollywood hitters (Jessica Biel, Dennis Quaid, Uma Thurman) I would have said this was a made for TV movie. The sets are tertiary at best (a house, a soccer field, , a park, a restaurant, and another house to be exact), the camera work and editing competent in that workaday manner that plagues most TV, and the story as blandly predictable and heart-lukewarmingly sort of gratifying as anything you would see on Lifetime.
I did manage to find some entertainment by mentally playing with the perspective. You see, all stories are relative and depend on who you are hearing it from. About 1/3 of the way into this film not only had I figured out exactly how it was going to end but pretty much every scene that was going to have to happen, so I mentally shifted the story about a retired, out of work professional soccer player coming to Virginia to reconnect with his son and romantically swoop his ex wife off her feet before her marriage to another man to the story of a washed out, deadbeat absentee father coming to town to break up the marriage of his ex wife and a decent guy in order to drag her and her son into the same dysfunctional maelstrom that ruined the family the last time around while banging every soccer mom in the state. I predict this is exactly the story the jilted ex fiance will be telling everyone and to be honest he wouldn’t necessarily be incorrect.
(This perspective game, by the way, is what lets me sometimes watch the Return of the Jedi and see it as the downfall of a dedicated public servant (who’s last act in the prequel was the kindly rescue of a horrifically burned and dismembered young man left to die a horrible death by a monk from a creepy order that believes all forms of emotion are bad and set him up in a very complicated and probably expensive exoskeleton/life support suit to keep him alive for decades) who has created a system of law and order wherein most citizens live safe, comfortable lives at the hands of a bunch of disgruntled hippies, malcontents, and walking teddy bears, and the corruption of Darth Vader by the light side of the force. It all depends on which side of the room the camera is on. Empire logo courtesy of the Star Wars tshirt category)
Anyway, the story. George (Gerard Butler-300, How to Train Your Dragon, RocknRolla) is an ex-professional soccer player who has pretty much ruined his former marriage in some ill defined way. He has moved to Virginia to reconnect with his son Lewis (Noah Lomax-Safe Haven, Mad Love, the Walking Dead (awesome!)) and his ex wife Stacie (Jessica Biel-Total Recall, Hitchcock, New Years Eve) who is engaged to be married with her fiance (whom she has been dating for over three years while George was absent) Matt (James Tubber-Mr. Poppers Penguins, Girl Fight, Revenge). His son is on a soccer team that sucks and George opts to start coaching it. There is a really stunted Bad News Bears sub plot that actually had potential but went nowhere. George meets Carl (Dennis Quaid-What to Expect When You’re Expecting, G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra, Footloose), a psychotic control freak. George also meets a bevy of the most ridiculously hot soccer moms in the history of football and proceeds to bang most of them. I don’t know why I have been wasting my time with trying to build a business and be a decent human being when all I needed to do was develop a Scottish accent and coach a 3rd grade soccer team to hook up with hot women. Why does it seem like most of the advice I have gotten in life has been lies?
Honestly, do I really need to go any further into this story? If you have half a brain you know exactly how it will go. George reconnects with his son and develops his relationship with him. Stacie discovers her feelings for George remain. Poor Matt learns an important lesson on what it means to be both a man-friend and a eunuch. George is faced with a huge life changing decision between his career and his family. The end.
The stars. If it’s remotely possible I care less about soccer than I do about baseball, but like baseball movies I kind of like soccer movies. I guess it’s just sports movies that work for me. One star. For all the bland tripe they were fed as a script all the actors did as good a job as was possible. One star. All the women were incredibly easy on the eyes in all circumstances. I’m moving to Virginia I guess. One star. The story was blandly pleasant, like being out of coffee on a cold day and just drinking hot water. If this had been a made for TV movie it would have been perfect in the feel good category. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes. This film couldn’t have been more predictably if instead of previews before the film they had just showed us the entire film. One black hole. This film had almost nothing in the way of emotional ups or downs, and not much of an arc to be honest. You kind of dive into the story with nothing to set it up and then motor through it in second gear. One black hole. Bland as the blandiest white paint upon a smooth wall of epic blandness. One black hole. A big part of the story seems to be that there are fabulous jobs available in the world of soccer sports casting (Americans don’t generally care about soccer). One black hole. The whole “George is a washed out bum here to ruin a good family” fantasy plot I had playing in my head is not that far from the actual story, and kind of drains a lot of the sympathy you have for him as a character. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
I’m going to use my old “irksome but not black hole worthy” category to take a moment to talk about facial hair. There must be a new clause in movie contracts (probably called the Stratham clause for obvious reasons) that certain male actors insist on that requires that they maintain the same rugged level of scruffy facial hair for the entirety of the film. Gerald Butler is exactly the same level of unshaven throughout the movie. Now, for all you female and pre-adolecent readers out there let me disabuse the illusion that this is even remotely possible. Butlers facial hair looked about a week past a shave. Here’s the thing: in the course of what looked like several weeks if not months of movie times he would have either at some point had to have shaved or let it all grow in to a full on Wookie beard. There is no way to maintain the exact same level of unshaven for months without extremely careful grooming. Sorry but these things annoy me.
Anyway, a grand total of one black hole. Like most mediocre movies there is nothing here to drag you into the theater but once inside there is nothing pushing you out. Should you see it? I’ve said “meh” before and I’ll say it again right now. If you are desperate for something to keep your brain cells alive this will do it, but if you are looking to get them actually firing it won’t. Date movie? Absolutely. If you are dating a woman who is extremely mainstream and you aren’t sure how she will react to something with a pulse this could be the perfect movie. Bathroom break? Once again a movie that you can pretty much relieve yourself anywhere and not miss anything, mainly because odds are you have already played out the entire movie in your head. I’d say the scene where George goes to the arcade and plays air hockey against Stacie and Lewis is particularly miss-able.
Thanks for reading. Still super slammed at work but I will try to see something else soon. I also have an idea for a couple of funny blog rants that I might crank out. Follow me on Twiiter @Nerdkungfu. If you have any comments on this movie or my review feel free to post them here. If you have questions or suggestions on other topics feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
