The Gambler Review Part 1
Monologs a go go!
dialogue – [dahy–uh-lawg, -log] noun 1. conversation between two or more persons.
This is one of those special reviews for me where I, the cinema equivalent of a six year old prescribing sugar pills to her teddy bear while playing doctor, get to tell so called professional filmmakers who have dedicated their lives to perfecting their art how to make films. The funny thing is the director, Rupert Wyatt, actually directed Rise of the Planet of the Apes (a personal favorite).
You don’t have to be a genius to ken that I found issues with the Gambler. First off the entire movie serves as a vehicle for every single character to deliver long, pithy, analogy ridden, repetitive, boring monologs when telling their life story, discussing philosophy, or answering the question would you like fries with that? Each character in turn is either rambling on or playing the sounding board for the ramblings of someone else. The 111 run time could have been about 45 minutes if the writers had ever studied their Shakespeare (“Brevity is the Soul of Wit”).
The other Moviemaking 101 lesson that these guys seem to forgotten is the idea that at least one of the characters in a film needs to be remotely likeable by the audience. The main character played by Marky Mark I wanted to see die a horrible lingering death and he and his love interest had a lot of chemistry in that I wished they had both been dropped into a vat of acid. 
The closest thing to a likable character was Jonathon Goodman but since he was only on screen for about 20 minutes (and mostly naked for 18 of those 20 minutes. Weird. I just found out he played Mr. Prenderghast in ParaNorman. This poster I pulled from the zombie t-shirts) there is no way he could have saved this film.
(continued)
Next
The Gambler Review Part 2
Let me expound upon this esoteric concept known as a protagonist. You see in order for an audience to enjoy a movie they need to connect to a character. This is usually the main one but sometimes can be a supporting character. Generally this identifiable character is a good guy who people like, although some great films can be about a bad guy who people sympathize with or who goes through some kind of a change (known to we film professionals as a “character arc”). Once in a while it is a really bad guy but he is that special kind of bad that is actually very cool, or that we hate but like to see bad stuff happen to. Typically when we identify with this character we imagine ourselves in his or her shoes and kind of wish we could be that cool.
Without this connection we honestly don’t care about the characters and therefore don’t give a crap about the drama they are experiencing. The main character of this film, Jim Bennett, is a turd of the highest order. A spoiled little rich kid who has a talent for writing he refuses to use for some idealistic reason. He is a professor who ends up sleeping with one of his students while owing gangsters hundreds of thousands of dollars. He has three major problems: diarrhea of the mouth, a crippling gambling addiction, and is fricking stupid.
That is really why I couldn’t identify with him in the end. Like all rich 1st world people he has the solution to his problems handed to him over and over again and yet keeps on doing the stupidest thing possible (image courtesy of our many novelty t shirts). His mother gives him $260,000 to pay off his gambling debts and he blows it all in Vegas. Someone else lends him the dough and he gambles it again. You can’t put yourself in the shoes of a character you don’t respect and I don’t respect characters who keep sticking their fingers in light sockets while being rich little bastards.
(continued)
Next
Previous
The Gambler Part 3
That actually could have been a decent plot point if they had played up the gambling addiction and his struggle against it (i.e. Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas) but they barely touched upon it and the main character more or less tells us (in yet another monolog) that gambling addiction doesn’t really exist (or that he doesn’t have it). Instead of describing that character arc where he hits his rock bottom and recovers from his problem he keeps on trucking and in the end solves his massive gambling problems by…gambling some more. He gains nothing, learns nothing, and ends the film in almost exactly the same position leaving the audience with nothing.
None of the rest of the characters were anything to write home about except for Mr. Goodman. 
The black and Asian gangsters were paper dolls cut from the Big Book of Stereotypes (image from the funny t shirt category), the blond girlfriend was a two dimensional nobody who seemed to lack the motivation to keep on breathing much less be interested in her professor, and the mother was another Real Housewife stereotype with angst. The funny thing is each one had the bare bones of a back story that could have been honed into a decent sub plot but were only touched upon in one or two scene and then left to rot after distracting you away from the main boring story.
(continued)
Next
Previous
The Gambler Part 4
The plot is a rich douchbag with a gambling problem (Mark Wahlberg) owes a ton of money to a Korean gangster. He borrows more money from a loan shark (Michael Kenneth Williams. 
He was in the Road and Robocop. Image courtesy of the movie t shirt collection) in order to lose even more. A waitress at the casino is actually the guys student (Brie Larson) in his literature class and according to Professor Bennett a genius of writing. Most of Bennetts classes are him bitching to his students about what untalented losers they all are and how writing at less then a genius level is a waste of time. Everyone within a 300 mile radius tries to bail Bennett out by giving or lending him money but he keeps on gambling it away. He gets another one of his students (Anthony Kelly) to throw a basketball game to pay off his loan shark and make a ton of money. In the end he still owes a ton to the Korean gangster (Alvin Ing) and Johnathon Goodman and bets it all on black on a roulette table like an ass.
1.5 of 5 Bleh
So what did you think Dave? Honestly pass. If you are a huge Marky Mark fan you might enjoy seeing him in sunglasses but otherwise this is not a lot to hook you in. Rated R for language, some bizarre artistic drowning flashbacks a la Terrance Malick, and the tension of watching a character you hate throw his life away one card at a time. It is a character movie without any character. Maybe wait for NetFlix and see it on a Sunday morning while hung over. 1.5 of 5 phasers.
the Infamous Dave Inman
Previous
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 4 the Naked Time
Another great episode if only for George Takei running around with a fencing foil. Of course that cool character element would later be ruined like finding out your favorite childhood stuffed toy was given to you by a serial killer when JJ Abrams opted to insert it into his movie Star Trek the…Star Trek? What the hell do we call that movie anyway? You know, the 2009 Star Wars movie they made but misspelled Wars.
Anyway, this episode was great as it illustrated a real danger of space exploration and that is alien microbes. This would later be explored further in Miri although honestly they seemed content to ignore it on a regular basis. 
Even Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were kept in quarantine after their moon landing. In this one Spock and Tormolen had cool biohazard suits (image courtesy of the Iron Man t shirt category. It was the closest thing I could find).
I also enjoyed this show as it introduced a cool semi recurring character Ensign Riley. He would later play a pivotal role in the Conscious of the King and was kind of a neat character. I wish they had done more with him. Of course any red shirt besides Scotty who survived more than one episode was the red shirt equivalent of Methuselah so kudos to him and his survival instinct. He even survived poisoning. Too bad he couldn’t survive the writers. However he was particularly cool as the crazy Irishman in this episode.
the Infamous Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 5 the Enemy Within
This was never what I would consider a good episode in that the base concept that a transporter accident could split a human in to two distinct people based on an arbitrary psychology split is ridiculous. Good and evil Kirk? How about the Kirk who believes professional wrestling is real and the Kirk who thinks it’s fake? As far as a personality trait can influence the physics of a transporter it’s equally valid.
Being the curious monkey that I am this accident makes me wonder a lot about transporters (image courtesy of the Curious George t shirts). Trek canon states that the transportee is dematerialized in the transporter and rematerialized at the other end but with this yellow powder glitch it kind of implies that the transportee is actually horrible killed on one end and a new clone is created on the other. How else could them make an exact replica unless it’s building one from scratch using the recorded pattern? Isn’t that exactly how replicators work? If so doesn’t this mean that every time you get in a transporter you are killed and a new one of you is created? Also in the Day of the Dove they talked about the Klingon transport patterns being trapped in the transporter computer so theoretically if you hooked your transporter to your replicator couldn’t you replicate yourself thousands of times? Seems like an easy way to take over the Enterprise or even any planet. Just mass clone yourself armed to the teeth and march to victory.
the Infamous Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 6 Mudd’s Women
Star Trek was great about a lot of things including race relations, nuclear weapons, war, and the future of technology but the one area where it seriously lagged was in gender equality. The show dripped misogamy like a Sparklets jug shot with a shotgun drips water and no episode was as bad as Mudd’s Women (although Turnabout Intruder was a close second. Ironically both episodes written by Gene Roddenberry. Take from that what you will). Essentially the story is of women willingly selling themselves into chattel and using drugs to enhance their appeal in only the most superficial and sexist ways possible in order to attract men who’s only quality is being rich.
I suppose an argument could be made that the minors on Rigel XII saw past the girls hideous appearance once it became obvious what good cooks and house cleaners they were (another step forward for women’s liberation!) but I noticed Kirk never managed to see past the ugly to the inner beauty. This episode preceded the City on the Edge of Forever so even the argument that he was pining away for Edith Keeler holds no merit.
I am in almost all ways proud to be a Star Trek TOS fan but when faced with the women being treated more or less like short skirted door mats in every episode I do have to give props to the Next Generation. They were infinitely better in this one area. I’m pretty sure it was never Roddenberry’s intention to be so sexist but that the behavior was so ingrained that he just assumed it was normal. 
It makes me wonder what things do we consider just normal today that will look lame and ridiculous in 2054. (Whenever I talk about sexism in Star Trek I feel compelled to pull an image from one of the Wonder Woman t shirts to balance it out. Not sure if that works but I do what I can)
the Infamous Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 7 What Are Little Girls Made Of
This is another one that flies under my personal radar but when I see it I love it. If I ever had the guts to shave my head I would totally do a Ruk costume for a convention. I definitely have the size. However it will always be Sherry Jackson in the x-costume that I remember most fondly. It pretty much introduced me to the concept of side boob.
That being said the story was great and I loved seeing Lurch in a different role. Ted Cassidy was great as a character actor and actually you would benefit from reading his Wikipedia article. He was a very interesting person and had a cool life. He was also very intelligent. 
I think the coolest part of Ruk was seeing bald Lurch as he could look when angry. A pissed off 6’9″ Frankenstein-ish monster is not something you want to deal with. (classic image courtesy of the Horror Movie t-shirts)
This was kind of a ground breaking episode as it set the tone for every machine intelligence episode that followed. The whole question of the Doctor’s humanity from Voyager can be seen as started here. The morality of the concept was better explored in the Ultimate Computer but the actual sentience was first looked at here. Once again Star Trek breaks new technological ground that we are dealing with today.
the Infamous Dave Inman
The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies Review Part 1
“Best of the Series.”
Best of the series is a term that is bandied around a lot these days usually as an excuse for a film that is slightly less repugnant than the rest of the Hollywood effluent that typically flows into our sight holes. 
Revenge of the Sith was the best of the Star Wars prequel series but as a stand alone movie it is dried excrement on the end of a stick which is also made of dried excrement. The last Twilight movie was like receiving a full lobotomy with a power sander but was modestly more watchable than the rest. Only in the golden world of comparison can some films be considered decent if only like the first meal of actual food regardless of quality after a month of eating rotten horse meat, tree bark, and gravel. (R2 image courtesy of the Star Wars t-shirts category)
This was not always the case. The Empire Strikes Back is generally considered the best of the Star Wars series but is a great movie by itself and the other two are either good or watchable (Ewoks aside). The Godfather 2 is one of the great films of the 20th century but Godfather 1 was awesome as well. Somewhere there is a parallel universe wherein creating a film franchise does not mean watering the individual films down to the level of transparency. The best of a series should be a wondrous film experience even for someone who did not see the other films, did not read the books, or is not a ravaging fan boy.
(continued)
Next
The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies Review Part 2
So the Hobbit. Like I said, the best of the series. Better in action, story, plot cohesion, and character development than any of the other two. However the question I had to ask myself was “If I had never read the Hobbit nor seen the first two film would this film stand up” and the answer is an emphatic no. It is not a good film. The other question I asked myself was “If I had seen the first two films but had never read the book would I have enjoyed this film?” That is a more interesting question. I would at least be familiar with the events leading up and relatively familiar with Biblo, Thorin, and Gandalf but honestly there is no reason to give two farts about the other 12 dwarves, the elf love interest, Legolas, Bard the Bowman, or the rest. In my opinion there is nothing here drawing you in to this series. 
There is more pull in any three back to back episodes of Game of Thrones (image courtesy of the Game of Thrones t shirt category).
But, as a fan who as read the book there was some really cool stuff here. The scene where Dain Ironfoot shows up to confront the elves and men of Laketown was out of the book and really cool. The battles were kind of cool (although really visually confusion. For some reason they opted to put all the Goblins and trolls into full body steel armor in order to fight Dwarves in…full body steel armor. I blame Michael Bay for the grey on grey fight aesthetic). This film stuck to the original story more than the others and as such ended up being…the best of the series. I wonder if there are any lessons to take home from that?
(continued)
Next
Previous
