Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 71 The Mark of Gideon
You know as I get into each episode in depth I’m coming to realize how much misogyny was flowing off the screen. I can saw that TNG forward Star Trek was a major contributor to gender equality and women’s liberation, but in TOS it seems every non crewman female is a liar or has some secret agenda.
When you think about it the villains in Star Trek can be broken into two types. The first is the overtly evil and powerful ones. 
These are inevitably male and include Khan, Apollo, Gary Mitchell, Bele, Colonel Green, Parmen, Proconsul Claudius Marcus, and Commander Kor (Bele image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirt category). The second is the sneak, subversive villain and those almost all are female. Janice Lester, Mira, Deela, Dr. Miranda Jones, Kara, and Leila Kalomi are good examples of this. They are also the villains most likely to change allegiance once faced with the sexual magnetism of Kirk.
The only exceptions I can think of are Mudd, who is a sneaky, conniving man (and also the only male Trek character to wear an earring) and Elaan of Troyius. In both cases the antagonist seems to have exhibited the strength or deviousness normally reserved for the opposite gender (of course Elaan was essentially sold into marriage in what today might be seen as human trafficking).
I don’t know what point I am really making. This episode bugged me. The population of the planet lives for centuries and suffers from massive overpopulation. Have they never heard of condoms? How about if they can build a replica of the Enterprise can’t they use that ship to find other worlds to colonize? This is one of those situations where you have a hard time imagining a technologically advanced society not being able to come up with a solution. I know there were religious and medical considerations mentioned, but if you are packed ass to elbow with billions of other people I think in time that might erode your belief that birth control is a bad thing.
Not a top show and fairly typical of the half assed writing that season 3 seemed to suffer from. Still better than some but not one that I would seek out and specifically watch unless I were watching the whole series sequencially.
Dave
The Wolf of Wall Street Review
Proof positive that there can be too much of a good thing.
Honestly I was going to skip this one but from what I have hear and read needed to see it to maintain my credibility as a reviewer (haw!). Based on the trailers alone it looked to have three things in the top 1/3rd of the Wikipedia sized list of my personal pet peeves: disgusting and ostentatious displays of wealth, guys who get rich by doing no real work, and bad people who fail to get their what they deserve. But imagine my surprise when the thing that bugged me the most was that this opus went three freaking hours!
Don’t get me wrong. This movie is an excellent candidate for my best movie of the year. Martin Scorsese is a true genius and each scene lovingly crafted with flair and edge. Leonardo Di Caprio hasn’t been better IMO and is making up for ground lost on The Great Gatsby. It’s just that once we have established that all of the characters are degenerate, self indulgent, drug addicted scumbags do we really need to see that point reinforced 400 times? 
Trust me, if you have seen one cocaine and hooker party you have pretty much seen them all. It’s not like the next orgy scene was going to reveal another facet of Leonardo’s character that until then had gone unremarked. I have a deep love of pumpkin pie but if I had to eat it continuously for 180 minutes my enjoyment of the experience might pale a little.
Cocaine Fiends image comes courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category.
Plus all the other things I expected to bug me about this film did indeed bug me like a peanut butter and cockroach sandwich. Di Caprio’s character spends money like water and talks about all the poor people (like me) who don’t have moral flexibility it takes to rip people off like we are some kind of idiots. He and his friends get rich by building nothing, doing nothing, and taking drugs and sleazy sex on a daily basis. There is a comeuppance of sorts, but it is so flaccid and uneventful in terms of a life lesson that it might not have even been included.
Scorsese has a love of the criminal lifestyle that translates into no real repercussions for any of his criminal characters. Henry Hill might bitch about being an ordinary schnook, but at least he wasn’t rotting in prison. This movie is extremely similar to Goodfellas, but that is more of an endorsement than a criticism. I love that movies. Scorsese also seems to have some kind of bromance or appreciation of Leonardo Di Caprio. Shutter Island, the Aviator, the Departed, Gangs of New York; if Leonardo didn’t knock it out of the park every time I would say seeing him in a Scorsese film is getting tired. Fortunately he did indeed kill it this time.
SPOILER ALERT In the end the thing that is so off putting for me is the whole moral ambiguity. Leonardo has described this film as “a documentary of a scumbag” and indeed it is. However, it really fails to point out any potential issues with living the scumbag lifestyle. If you are hoping to raise your children to be good people and not do drugs, con money out of people, cheat on their spouses, hire prostitutes on a regular basis, hit women, drive while under the influence, abduct their children, bribe public officials, rat out on their friends, pay cops to beat people up, and encourage everyone else around them to do the same don’t let them see this film. All this behavior would be acceptable in a movie character who pays for his sins but by the end of the film he does three years in Club Fed and gets out still rich and getting richer teaching other people how to be scumbags. Meanwhile the honest hard working FBI agent he mocked about riding home on a stinking subway is shown riding home on a stinking subway. The injustice irks me.
The story is of real life hustler Jordan Belfort (Leonardo Di Caprio-Titanic, Inception, Shutter Island) as he climbs up from being a lower class child through the trenches of Wall Street to become a massive millionaire and douchebag. The film is told in a very Goodfellas style with Jordan breaking in periodically with an expository monolog rather than action or dialog to run the story along (for the record, frequent readers will recall me bitching about monologs in films in the past. However it works extremely well in this film. Scorsese uses it as a tool, not a lazy replacement for some writing or filming). He gets on board with a big company but on his first day as a licensed broker the stock market falls apart and he is laid off. He hires on with a small Long Island firm that specializes in penny stock and shortly realizes that the commissions for penny stocks is tremendously higher than Blue Chips (look at me talking like I know what the hell a stock even is).
He meets Donny Azoff (Jonah Hill-21 Jump Street, Moneyball, This is the End), a local nebbish and hires him to form his own firm in an old auto mechanics garage. He hires a bunch of his old cronies to work with him (Jon Favreau-Iron Man, Swingers, Cowboys and Aliens)(Jon Bernthal-the Walking Dead, Snitch, The Ghost)(P.J.Byrne-Evan Almighty, Horrible Bosses, Final Destination 5)(Kenneth Choi-Red Dawn, the Terminal, Walk the Talk). He trains them to be high pressure sales people and they start pulling in big bucks.
At that part the fun starts up and goes to extremes that would offend Caligula. The next hour and a half is like watching Animal House with more money and less behavior governors. Meanwhile Belforts company catches the eye of easily fooled SEC officials and a not so easy to fool FBI agent Agent Denham (Kyle Chandler-Argo, Friday Night Lights, Zero Dark Thirty). He has a meeting with Belfort where Belfort proves what a top notch ass he is.
At that point the film more or less becomes a funnier Leaving Las Vegas. Belfort does every stupid move possible to wreck his life. SPOILER ALERT His wife Naomi (and my dream wife. She has the looks that could launch 1,000 very horny ships. Margot Robbie-Pan Am, About Time, Neighbors) ends up leaving him. He wrecks his car and then turns around and rats out the very friends who stood by him and actively tried to help him. In the end he does some very soft, short time and becomes a minor celebrity.
The stars.
I know I say a lot of movies have good acting, but the acting in this film was truly exceptional. Leonardo Di Caprio nailed it, as did all the other actors. I especially want to give props to Jonah Hill. That kid can act. Three stars. Direction was flawless. Each scene was like a visual, audio, and mental diamond of perfect clarity. A gem, in other words. Two stars. Martin Scorsese really, really knows how to build characters and get the audience involved with them. One star. All the exceptional camera work you would expect from one of his films. One star. OMG is Margot beautiful, and she and about 100 other women in this film get naked a lot. This film might have gone 180 minutes but it seems like half of that was with hot naked women on the screen. Thank you for understanding that if you are going to get an R rating anyway you might as well bury the needle. Two stars. Based on a true story. One star. Overall a tremendously worthwhile experience. Three stars. Total: thirteen stars.
The black holes.
I know I will end up with another hot coal shoved up my bottom when I get to movie reviewer hell (or they’ll just force me to watch Jack and Jill again. I think I’d prefer the hot coal) for even suggestion Martin Scorsese do anything different, but honestly he could have use his editing pruning shears more often. This film really could have had 30-45 minutes trimmed without losing any of its force or power. This is what Executive Producers are supposed to be for, but no one would say anything to Mr. Scorsese. One black hole. I personally wanted to see Belfort rot in prison and write this memoir from a cell. The life of excess without repercussions were not only a horrible life lesson but lessened the impact of all the bad behavior. A crime in a film has much more impact if you know the character committing it is seriously risking his life and/or freedom, and once it is established that all Belfort was getting was a slap on the wrist all the tension built up over 150 minutes of film kind of drained away. One black hole. I got used to it fairly soon but Leonardo was rocking a Long Island wise guy accent that kind of ground on me. It was the only part of the film that felt fake. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
A grand total of 10 stars, a very good score for me. This is definitely in my top three for the year and might take overall (I’m working on my end of year recap and ranking). Should you see it? Yes, absolutely. The visuals do not demand a theater but to support good films you should go. Date movie? Honestly no. Too many naked hookers, dysfunctional relationships, and STDs to make a girl feel comfortable getting naked with you. Take her to see something a little more innocuous. Bathroom break? This is an important one as you will need it by the end of the three hours (plus some kind of dopey extended trailer for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Is it really necessary to run your 12 minute segment in addition to all the other trailers, popcorn ads, and interminable turn of your cell phone notices on top of a three hour movie?). Unfortunately there aren’t any scenes readily dismissible. I suppose the sex scene towards the end of the movie after Belfort is busted is probably your best bet. Margot keeps all her clothes on for this one (damn the luck) and the result is reiterated over the next ten minutes. Hurry back though.
Thanks for reading. I just have one more 2013 movie to see (Grudge Match. I thought I would round out 2013 on a low note) and then I will do my top and bottom movies. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this film or my review can be left her while off topic suggestions or questions can be emailed to [email protected]. Have a great night. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Review
Pleasantly innocuous.
I mean that subtitle as both a compliment and a criticism. If you are looking for a pleasant feel good movie about a weird introvert who finds love and a life with the thin veneer of sophistication so you can at least look like you see movies with slightly more depth than Parker you need look no further. If you don’t mind someone touching your suspension of disbelief in what might be considered an inappropriate manner than you will most likely enjoy this film and go home with a farm fuzzy feeling and snuggle up with your sweetie with a warm cup of cocoa.
If, on the other hand, you are like me and sleep every night in a cold, lonely bed by yourself under the harsh prison lighting of reality and were hoping for a little more artistic integrity in your story and some kind of meaning behind the meaning than you might go home disappointed. By the way, I really can’t make my next couple points without some serious spoilers, so if you want to see this movie and not hate me (any more than any of you already do, especially if you are women apparently) then skip down to the recommendation paragraph and find out where I found the most appropriate place to use the restroom. For the rest of you SPOILER ALERT!
The main point of the story this movie comes from is Walter Mitty is a boring dude who lives a fantastic fantasy life in his imagination. While they showed some of that in the first 30 minutes (Walter leaps into a burning building to save the life of a dog, has a superhero-esque battle with his jerk boss, etc) once they got into the meat of the story that whole point was dropped entirely.
The thing is, all the adventures Walter were having felt exactly like one of his fantasies. If this film had wanted to maintain its depth and integrity it would have ended with Walter snapping out of a particularly long zone out back in NYC just unpacking the film for the last cover of Life Magazine. It was the weirdest feeling for me. As the movie was spooling down I found myself at the same time sincerely hoping for and dreading that ending. I had connected with Walter and wanted to see him advance as a human but the ridiculous nature of his coincidence riddled adventures left me knowing that if they turned out to be anything other than a fantasy I would be disappointed. 
As the credits started rolling with Walter fully transformed from nebbish fantasy guy into super stud action star I knew that an opportunity had been missed to create a great film in favor of creating something that people would enjoy (Clark Kent to Superman image courtesy of the Comic Book T-Shirt category).
I would be willing to bet they filmed the artistic integrity ending, showed it to whatever crowd of sheeple they could round up at the local Waffle House, and scrambled to edit it when everyone said they didn’t like how it ended. It’s just that all the elements of a massive fantasy were there; the bizarre shark attack, the use of his one great skill in life (skateboarding. More on that later), the missing his guy by about 100 feet when the volcano (oh, yeah. A volcano) goes off, the guy who bails him out in LA is some dude he spoke to on the phone a couple times at eHarmony, everyone seems to speak English, the rampant deus ex machina, etc. The film seemed to be headed straight for a massive twist but at the last minute opted to stay on the path to Mundania.
Oh, well. They can’t all be Johnny Handsome, right? The story is of Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller-Zoolander, Tropic Thunder, The Watch), a Negative Asset Manager at Life Magazine (but that I mean he manages film negatives). He frequently zones out into a fantasy world where he does amazing things and/or rescues dogs, only to snap back to his reality. He is very attracted to his coworker Cheryl (Kristin Wiig-Bridesmaids, Paul, Despicable Me) but has never spoken to her. Life is about to be closed down and Walter had some bad encounters with interim boss and all around jerk Ted Hendricks (Adam Scott-Parks & Rec, the Aviator, Step Brothers), who plans on laying off most of the staff.
Down in the negative vault Walter receives that last roll of film ever from acclaimed photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn-Colors, Milk, 21 Grams) with a gift wallet and a note that slide 25 is his best one ever and worthy of being on the cover of the very last Life Magazine. However the slide is missing. Ted wants the slide and so Walter starts looking for Sean, first by talking to Cheryl as she does something having to do with photographers (? Not sure what that was for). He finds out that he was last in Greenland and one of the photos includes a picture of a fishing trawler, so Walter jumps on a plane.
At that point it’s pretty much Joe Verses the Volcano except with Walter instead of Joe and, you know, no human sacrifices. There is a volcano involved. Walter climbs aboard a helicopter with a drunk pilot, jumps into the sea, gets attacked by a shark, skateboards down a long hill, barely survives a volcano, and goes on other wacky adventures. The coincidences pile up like casualties in No Mans Land in WWI lending the entire film another layer of surreality. He finally catches up with Sean only to discover he was close to the truth all the time.
The stars.
Walter Mitty was a compelling character and well played by Ben Stiller. Two stars. If depth were not the goal of this film it was very well executed. One star. Some really good film work, with great locations all over Iceland and Greenland. One star. Most of the rest of the cast was great as well. One star. Paced very well for 114 minute movie. One star. In general not a waste of time. One star. Total: seven stars.
The black holes.
That whole real or not issue left the movie feeling totally unresolved. Either it was all a fantasy or it was pretty much pandering. It was set up to disappoint me either way, so I guess one black hole that I don’t feel really good about. This next one is petty but I know too much about skateboarding to let it go; a fairly complete misunderstanding of the difference between longboards and short boards and their relative application. You CAN kickflip a longboard. You just really don’t want to. One black hole. Total: two black holes.
So five stars. Decent, but I honestly hoped it would have more meat on the bone if you know what I mean. Again, if you aren’t looking for City of Lost Children I’m sure you will enjoy watching it. In spite of some of the great location footage I don’t see any compelling reason to see it on a big screen. At home on your TV should be fine via the legal media distribution channel of your choice. Date movie? Yes. Good romance, Walter is a dork that you will probably compare favorable to, and a warm feeling for her to carry home. Bathroom break? The scene where Walter gets fired and goes to Cheryls house is a good element but not critical. Feel free to skip it but come back fast.
Thanks for reading. I will try to go see Grudge Match later tonight and that will wrap up my 2013 movie docket. After that I will do my best, worst, and funny mentions lists. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or my review please leave them here, and if you have off topic suggestions or questions email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 72 That Which Survives
Lessons can be learned from this episode about not trusting beautiful women who want to touch you for no apparent reason. Of course, I think I would be willing to risk death if a beautiful woman wanted to touch me for any reason up to and including felonious assault so I don’t know if that lesson sank home. However, if you were of a misogynistic nature you would be right at home with this episode and would probably have been a red shirt who survived, unlike poor Wyatt, D’Amato, and Watkins.
Ironically Sulu managed to survive his death touch indicating he might have some immunity to her powers. Given that George Takei is more or less immune to all the female blandishments I guess it makes sense (for the record I am a huge George Takei fan. You should friend him on Facebook. Also if you haven’t had the chance listen to him on the Howard Stern Show. He is awesome). For those of us into women our sex drive could literally be the death of us.
I think this episode used some cool low tech filming techniques to not only show up the three of the hotty (played by the stunning Lee Meriwether (Catwoman from the TV Batman series)) but the two dimensional line transporter was pretty cool too. They didn’t have the massive special effects resources we enjoy today but they did what they could.
By the way I just spent a lot of time looking at Losira images. Good God was she hot. I did a post about why Star Trek women were so stunning a while ago. Lee definitely was on there. Love her costume too (that’s a hint if any hot women are interested in stalking me at the next Star Trek convention in Las Vegas). Not sure if why the felt the need to cover her belly button though. Seems like an odd issue to have. I don’t have any Star Trek t-shirts with Lee on them, but this image is a perfect example of why Star Trek was such a force in the advancement of women’s liberation (It’s OK if McCoy treats these women as objects. You see they were androids and therefore technically were objects. It’s mixed messaged I grew up with like these that made me the well balanced individual you see before you now.)
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 73 the Lights of Zetar
This was one of the episodes that literally freaked me out at age six. When they get on board Memory Alpha and that crewman has the weird face and is speaking like she is gargling gravel I was truly frightened. This one and Devil in the Dark did a number on me.
In reflecting on this episode it suddenly occurred to me that Scotty is literally the kiss of death for women in this series. He is the only red shirt to consistently survive yet every time he gets close to a girl something horrible happens to her. In this case Mira managed to survive but still it was pretty awful. When you think about it he was acquitted of murdering all those women in Wolf in the Fold but maybe he just found a dopey alien patsy to dump his crimes off on. Sure the alien more or less confessed but perhaps it was Scotty who had the ability to compel aliens to do his bidding and secretly he really is a serial killer (Loved and Lost image from the funny t shirt category).
That’s one episode that was never really addressed in any Star Trek; humans being the uber powerful aliens on a planet with some evil power that terrifies the locals. What if human halitosis caused alien flesh to dissolve, or dead skin cells flaked off implanted in alien soil speed grew up into super soldiers ready to do whatever random red shirts bidding. Sure, the idea of technology and social progress changing primitive societies was explored in A Piece of the Action, A Private Little War, Bread and Circuses, and Patterns of Force, but what if humans just had some intrinsic power that would be terrifying to behold? Considerable argument could be made that Kirk exuded some pheromone that makes alien women take their clothes off.
Anyway, this episode was weird but not really of massive social or personal impact (aside from giving me a lifelong distrust of disco lighting). It was the originator of Memory Alpha, the top Star Trek Wiki and one that I personally refer to often. Of course, given our current social situation when we do a giant star base for all knowledge it will probably be called Google Alpha.
Dave
American Hustle Review
Reports of Amy Adams being nude are grossly exaggerated.
She is definitely wearing revealing outfits and shows enough cleavage to lose a Mini Cooper in (I hereby name her Queen of the Side Boob), but the overriding reason convincing me to see this film over any of the other ones was completely incorrect. All my bad feelings with regard to the 70’s had nothing to mitigate them.
Well, aside from a well crafted and acted film. The cast is extremely talented, the filming definitely had that greasy “I wish I could take a shower” 70’s feeling to it, and the story was refreshingly complex in a way that forced me to engage with the screen but not just complex for complexities sake (cough cough the Counselor cough cough). The story comes from the Abscam sting that the FBI did back then and the complexity stems from that bizarre case. In general a well executed film with some really good acting.
Is it Oscar material, however? In a different year absolutely not, but since Hollywood seems to have been kicked in the head at the beginning of 2013 and has produced the biggest crop of dross in decades probably. The movie is not without its issues and for the sin of making me look at 138 minutes of hair and clothes that I hate (with the exception of Queen Side Boob) I will detail them.
First off, were the story were not based (somewhat) on real events I would say it was long, unfocused, and wanders back and forth like a drunk meandering down a street of bars looking for a drink after last call before passing out behind some garbage cans (in a lesser film I would have said dying in a pool of his own vomit. See, I’m being fair). A certain amount of leeway is given due to the real nature of the source material, but there were a number of points where I found myself wishing for a fast forward button. SPOILER ALERT Also the big hustle that the movie seemed gearing up for from the beginning turned out to be something the main character cooked up in the last 20 minutes to save his own ass. The film seemed to be leading to some huge Usual Suspects-esque scam and really it all turned out to be the guy taking advantage of a minor mistake made by the FBI.
Second, in an effort to be more like Goodfellas the film has a voice over monolog (something that actually generally annoys me. In film show me don’t tell me. I’m not listening to a book on tape). However in this case it is two different monologs done by Christian Bale and Amy Adams, switching back and forth without warning. The net effect is similar to listening to a couple on the Jerry Springer show start talking in their rational voice about how they each want to sleep with the others mother before the inevitable meltdown and all hell breaks loose. Just when you have forgotten it and are into the story the two of them break in again to jerk you out of your seat.
Thirdly, the original scam that Christian Bale’s character was running seemed so lame and ass backwards that it made the first 1/3rd of the movie seem super fake. Who pays some random guy $5,000 for a loan with no guarantees of any kind (adjusted for inflation that $5 grand is worth today $17,873.39)? I know hustlers are supposed to go after stupid people but there is stupid and then there is dumber than a sack of hammers stupid, and once someone on the screen shows themselves to have their heads so far up their own ass they can smell their breakfast you stop connecting with people. No one wants to see baby seals getting clubbed. This was the only real plot hole in the film and it wasn’t huge, but at the time it sat weird with me like swallowing a golf ball.
Finally, while I appreciate the physical dedication Christian Bale puts into his roles (if you want to see what I’m talking about watch the Machinist) I didn’t need to see shot after shot of his gross pot belly and chest hair. Once the fact that he was out of shape was established let him put a shirt on. (Anorexia image courtesy of the cheap t shirt section and for extra irony is available in up to 7XL)
All that being said this movie is pretty good. It has all the elements that I wish Hollywood would use as a template for future films. Just not the right flavor for me, like a delicious salad made with tons of tomatoes (I don’t like tomatoes), or the super hot girl everyone is horny for but I am not because I used the bathroom after her and she bombed it.
Dammit, I just had my WordPress bomb out and lost about 700 words. I’m going to rush the story recap if you don’t mind. It is the story of hustler Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and his mistress Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) and the scams they got into with the FBI. They start off ripping off morons with the dumbest scam ever (seriously Pull My Finger has more credibility) but get caught by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). They agree to help him round up other white collar crimes, starting with New Jersey Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), who is trying to line up funding for the rebuild of Atlantic City. They create a fake Arab Sheik and manage to suck in a bunch of Congressmen and a Senator. They almost get in with the real mafia represented by Robert Di Niro but duck that bullet. Scams are scammed, and in the end you feel like justice was never really done.
The stars.
The cast was amazing and the acting brilliant. Really worth seeing for that if nothing else. Three stars. The story was nicely complicated and managed to engage my brain. Two stars. I managed to care about all the characters on one level or another. This is the sign of a good director. Two stars. While Amy Adams never got naked she sure showed a lot of skin and between her and hottie J-Law (haw!) there was enough eye candy on the screen to almost make up for all the man gut we had to look at. One star. Filming style and sound track (i.e. none for a while and then a great classic rock song) really captured the 70’s feel and was in it’s own way brilliant (I wonder how Christian Bale got along with the DP?). One star. A good movie and worthy of my time. Two stars. Total: eleven stars.
The black holes.
The pacing seemed ploddish and I was feeling every one of those 138 minutes. It honestly could have ended at any time past the 100 minute mark and I would not have been surprised or disappointed. One black hole. If rampant overuse of monologues were one of the signs if the Apocalypse I would advise you to make your peace with God. One black hole. Man gut a gogo. One black hole. That one stupid plot hole kind of spoiled the first 30 minutes. It was just on the bad side of annoying. Not paint drinkingly bad, but maybe vinegar? One black hole. Total: four black holes.
So a grand total of seven stars. Good movie, worth seeing. Just not my cup of tea. For the record normally I would ding a movie like this for making me look at the clothing and hair equivalent of a sucking chest wound but since this film is at least on the short list for some kind of 2013 award I thought I should keep my personal bias out of it. If someone does a more suckstastic 70’s movie I will come down twice as hard. The 70’s sucked. Anyway, see it if you are so inclined. Date movie? Maybe. I don’t know. There was romance but nothing in this film will warm her heart. In fact you end up feeling kind of bad about how it ends. I’d say see it with your snotty Oscar Night watching friends. Bathroom break? The scene of Richie at home is pretty disposable IMO. His mom and fiance appear out of the ether for five minutes and then vanish into the night like a mysterious Spanish gentleman leaving love notes and a rose on your pillow.
Thanks for reading. More to see soon (Grudge Match, you’re on deck). I hope your New Year finds you happy and hale. I sincerely wish all my readers the best in 2014, if only because you are individuals of rare and discriminating taste and therefore need to prosper. If you want to join an even more rarefied strata of society follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this film or my review can be left here, while off topics and questions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon, and have a great Holiday.
Dave
P.S. Normally I just crank out my best of the year right away but this year I am going to pretend to be a real reviewer and see as many of the films that actually came out in 2013 (rather than just the ones I happened to see) so need a few days to catch up. Look for it in a week or so.
Saving Mr. Banks Review
Ever wonder just how amazing Walt Disney was? Well now Disney is here to show you!
It is fair to say I see more than the average amount of movies and that after a while they all tend to blur together like cats in a tree shredder 
(I joke, I joke. I really do love cats. The finest moment image, by the way, is one my my favorite new shirts recently added to the funny t-shirt collection. Awesome). However, it is a bad sign when I saw this movie the night before last yet when I sat down to write this literally had to look up what movies were playing in order to jog my memory as to what movie I had seen.
Not to say this movie is bad. Like most Disney movies it is extremely competent and accomplishes its goals of tugging your heartstrings and showing how cool and likable the founder of their company was. However, every move on the screen seems clearly calculated to accomplish these goals and in the end the cliche and almost robotic nature of the film greatly lessened the impact. I definitely felt emotions at times but at the end of the film I could almost hear the flushing sound as my brain evaluated the experience and determined that the memory was not worthy of taking up too many brain cells. Fun, interesting, and well executed but at the end of the day eminently forgettable.
I think the forgettable nature of the film is exacerbated by the fact that there is no climax to this film. It glosses over Act One with a simple expository scene, lands comfortably in Act Two like a sea lion flopping on the beach, and proceeds to wallow there for the entirety of the film. The movie ended at what seemed the appropriate moment but the story advanced at a plodding pace, grinding forward inexorably towards the end we already knew was coming and counting on the talents of the cast to keep the audience engaged.
That being said the talent of the cast was considerable. I am a big fan of Tom Hanks and he inhabited his role like he planned to retire there. Emma Thompson was brilliant as P.L. Travers and the rest of the cast nailed down their roles admirably. Directory John Lee Hancock did the Blind Side, but on the other hand he did Snow White and the Huntsman so I can’t tell if the good parts of this film stem from his direction or if the strength of the cast carried the entire film.
The story is of writer P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson-Brave, Love Actually, Nanny McPhee) being cajoled into selling her rights to Mary Poppins to Walt Disney (Tom Hanks-Saving Private Ryan, Forest Gump, Big). Honestly that’s the story in a nutshell. Mrs. Travers doesn’t want to see her beloved Mary Poppins get turned into a farcical cartoon and is withholding the rights until she is comfortable with the script. Meanwhile a second story is being told through flashbacks about her as a young girl in Australia with her father (Colin Farrell-Total Recall, In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths). He has a drinking problem but dotes on his daughter. Mrs. Travers keeps flashing back to her childhood and it becomes apparently pretty quickly that the book was written about her experience as a child with a nanny.
Walt hooks her up with a talented writer (Bradley Whitford-Cabin in the Woods, Scent of a Woman, Billy Madison) and two songwriters (B.J. Novak-the Office, Inglorious Basterds, Knocked Up (he was in that? I don’t remember him there) and Jason Schartzeman-Rushmore, I Heart Huckabees, Fantastic Mr. Fox). She universally dumps on everything they hope to create and is in all ways a real pain to work with. Walt does whatever he can to make her sweet but to little avail.
Meanwhile she develops a friendship with her driver Ralph (Paul Giamatti-Saving Private Ryan, Private Parts, Rock of Ages) while the story of her childhood advances to the inevitable conclusion, the death of her father (as an aside, talk about plucking low hanging fruit. Getting an emotional response from people by showing the death of a little girl’s father is akin to watching me get rejected by introducing me to a girl I like. This part felt pretty heavy handed). Mrs. Travers finally has enough and flies home to England, only to have Walt Disney show up at her door . They finally make a connection and she signs over the rights. The film then ends in the most exciting way possible, watching Mrs. Travers and the entire cast in a theater watching their movie. The end.
I’m not saying this film should have ended with a car chase and an explosion (although that might have been nice. How about Mrs. Travers turns out to be a Terminator sent back in time by Skynet to kill Walt Disney? Talk about blowing a few brain fuses in the audience) but I was definitely feeling the lack of a true denouement. The whole thing kind of rolled along the tracks and into the station right on time. Oh well.
The stars.
Like I said, you can’t really do much better for a cast. Everyone was dead on, especially Tom Hanks. Three stars. The story was interesting, and if reasonably accurate I know feel like I have a better understanding of cinema icon Walt Disney. Now instead of seeing Disney as a soulless media conglomerate bent on world domination I see them as a soulless media conglomerate bent on world domination founded by a really nice guy. One star. The early 60’s doesn’t suffer from the burning personal hatred that the Summer of Love receives from me and I thought as a period piece it was extremely well executed. Plus I love all the cars. One star. The filming in particular helped capture the times, so I will award another for the camera work. One star. In general worthy of my time and money. Two stars. Total: eight stars.
The black hole.
Like I said before, the lack of an ending leaves you nodding your head and saying “Yep, that was a movie and it’s over now”. One black hole. Pacing was sluggish and were I less engaged in the story downright boring. Again, car chases are not required but something mid movie to liven things up would have gone well appreciated given that this film runs a whopping 125 minutes. One black hole. Total: two black holes.
So a grand total of six stars. Like I said, not bad. You won’t feel like you wasted your time. If you are a fan of Disneyland or any of the Disney movies you will probably get a lot out of it. Oh, yeah, I guess fans of Mary Poppins should go. Never saw the movie myself. Too much singing and dancing makes me want to punch people. However this film was pretty much made to watch on your home screen so feel free to skip the theater experience and just use the media streaming option of your choice. Date movie? Maybe, but honestly this film really feels more like the film you take your mom to see. By the way Mom if you are reading this you should go see this movie. Bathroom break? Pretty much any of the script writing scenes that do not directly involve Walt Disney are mostly development filler. Towards the end there is another scene where Mrs. Travers is chilling back in England waiting for the premier that could be missed too.
Thanks for reading. I was going to go see Grudge Match tonight and spew all over it (looks horrible) but then my best friend told me that American Hustle features Amy Adams nude so I’ve had to reevaluate my priorities. I only hope that is enough to overcome my intense dislike of the ’70s. Look for my review tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @nerdkungfu, and if you feel the need to express yourself with regards to this film or my review feel free to do so here. Just don’t mention fake Louis Vuitton bags, which is what 90% of the comments I get do. If you have an off topic question (6’5″, 235lbs SWM) or suggestion feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you tomorrow. Happy New Year!
Dave
47 Ronin in 3D Review
Everyone seemed to hate this movie. I don’t know. I kind of liked it.
This movie got a miserable 12% on Rotten Tomatoes and a quick scan of other reviewers have it listed as out of genre, boring, unfocused, and underwhelming. In reading the reviews I can see a lot of the things other reviewers have taken issue with, but the fact is as a fan of fantasy films, sword and sorcery, and samurai culture I found myself reasonably entertained. I think I vote more with the audience, who gave it 63%. (47 Ronin image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt collection incidentally)
That’s not to say this film was great or even really good. It tanked horribly and if you aren’t t total nerd you might find a lot of it completely wrong. I think it fair to say if a studio sinks $150 million into a production having them come out with just plain mediocre is tantamount to a crime. Since I kind of skipped right past my annoying detailed analysis in the last review let’s dive into the reasons why I think this movie is floundering.
First off, while the writer has a couple decent credits (Wanted, a lot of the Fast and Furious franchise) he has no real history in a period piece, nor in a film with more import than fast cars are cool and you can’t fight fate. I don’t even want to drop the entirely in his lap. It looks like the studio decided they wanted a film with significance otherwise missing from their lineup and then hired the guy who wrote Tokyo Drift to develop it. This is like deciding you want to throw a fancy dinner party and bringing on the fry cook from the local McDonalds to prepare your food. I’m sure the fries would be delicious but you can’t really blame him when the filet mignon doesn’t really garner mass praise from your guests.
Secondly, this movie makes the cardinal sin of straddling the fantasy/reality fence and ends up with a fence post stuck in its ass. Magic works well in the Lord of the Rings (a movie that clearly “inspired” this production BTW) mainly because Middle Earth is a land of magic and fantasy, with elves, dwarves, trolls, etc. 47 Ronin is sent in feudal Japan and calls back to that fact all the time, but once your brain gets set into reality mode a witch casts a spell or magical bird monks show up. Shifting gears back and forth too often hurts the brains of the audience. Would you really want to see an episode of Sons of Anarchy end by Jackson casting a spell on a rival gang? No, that would be completely out of place. This is especially aggravated by the complete lack of explanation of what the magic is about and who is doing what. If you are going to have magic in a period piece you need to at least attempt to ground it in some kind of established and universally understood lore (voodoo, pact with Satan, eye of newt, etc.). The sad part is the magic added absolutely nothing to the film and really only served to justify the 3D and keep the CGI drones employed.
Before I go into my third point let me preface it by saying I don’t hate Keanu Reeves. He has been responsible for a number of films I have enjoyed a great deal (Matrix, Speed, Devil’s Advocate). However I will say he tends to have a fairly wooden delivery and when he is matched up with a cast comprised entirely of stoic Bushido samurai the film stops looking less like a movie and more like an Animatronic historical reproduction in a new ride at Disneyland. The audience needs a character to identify with and it is far easier to identify with someone showing strong emotion. This was a truly missed opportunity, in that had they cast someone who was the completely contrasting mien emotionally it not only would have given us a protagonist to identify with provide a great context to better understand and appreciate the samurai. This was done very well in The Last Samurai I think, and could have been done well here.
Finally, a lot of people say it was slow and boring but I honestly think the pacing was perfect for showing the culture behind the story. I thought there was plenty of action and as a cultural exploration not a bad experience. I didn’t have a problem with it.
There was one thing the movie did well but that many other people might not have liked is they didn’t “Hollywood” up the ending. I don’t want to spoil it but I kept waiting for the plot to suddenly swerve off the path it was traveling and land in the great unwashed trailer park that is most movie denouements. Unfortunately there is a reason cheesy endings work in mainstream film and the box office return on this movie might be an indication. This bodes ill for future artistic integrity.
Anyway, the story. Kai (Keanu Reeves) is a half breed found by local Japanese lord Asano (Min Tanaka-Return, No Beginning, No End, Kyoto Story) and is raised in relative kindness along with the lord’s daughter Mika (Kô Shibasaki-One Missed Call, Go, Crying Out Love in the Center of the World). He is disliked by all the samurai including Oishi (Hiroyuki Sanada-the Wolverine, Rush Hour 3, the Twilight Samurai) the lord’s right hand man. They all think he is a demon. Their land is beset by a magical beast that Kai helps kill. The creature was summoned by a witch (Rinko Kikuchi-Pacific Rim, the Brothers Bloom (Boom Boom!), the Sky Crawlers) who was working for Lord Asano’s rivel Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano-Battleship, Thor, Ichi the Killer).
Asano is hosting a tournament for the Shogun (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa-Planet of the Apes, Pearl Harbor, Mortal Kombat) but the witch casts a spell on Asano’s champion. Kai takes his place against a giant in armor but after he loses the Shogun realizes he is not a samurai and shames Asano. That night the witch casts another spell on Asano, making him attack Kira and shaming him further. The Shogun orders Asano to commit seppuku, leaving Miko to marry Kira and Oishi and the rest of the samurai as ronin.
Eventually Oishi finds Kai as a slave and rescues him. He collects the rest of the ronin and they cook up a plot to take revenge on Kiru. They need weapons and so Kai takes him to the demon/birdman/monks who raised him. Battles are fought, Kai fights the illegitimate love child of Falkor the Luckdragon and Cthulu, and the Shogun shows the world what a dick he is.
The stars.
I thought it a decent movie that kept me at least engaged. One star. The costumes and culture were spot on as far as my ignorant ass knows. One star. Sword fights are always cool. One star. Samurai are also very cool, and they managed to avoid the pitfall of including ninjas in this one. One star. The girl who plays Mika is super hot if you like gorgeous Japanese girls (which I do). One star. Massive props for giving us the ending the story needed, not the one that most American audiences would have wanted. Three stars. Total: eight stars.
The black holes.
There was a lot of stuff that this film didn’t need and detracted from the story. Magic, dragons, mystical birdman monks. One black hole. The whole unresolved fantasy/reality question, which was exacerbated by film techniques more appropriate for sci fi in my opinion. One black hole. Wooden acting all around, some intentional and some accidental. One black hole. No explanation or understanding was given for the super giant samurai working for Lord Kira. Was he mystical? A demon? A big dude who never took off his armor? A big woman who never took off her armor? For some reason that was really bugging me. I wanted to know more. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
A grand total of four stars, which for me is the upper end of the mediocre range. Worth seeing? If you like fantasy movies and/or are into feudal Japan sure. It won’t be a waste of your time. For the rest of you meh. You can take it or leave it. If you are a Keanu Reeves fan maybe, but with the beard he had you don’t even realize it’s him most of the time. However if you are going to see it try to see it on a big screen. 3D wasn’t awesome but did add some. Date movie? Probably not. If she is not into the culture this might put her to sleep. What little romance there was was stunted at best. Nothing here that will really flip the average girls switch.
By the way, if you are a regular reader and look for the whole date movie or not part of my reviews know two things: 1) this is based on my understanding of the average girl and in no way could be considered specific to the individual you are dating and 2) my own success rate in the world of dating is on par with the success rate of dried spaghetti being used to break down a concrete wall. It would be safe to assume that my actual understanding of the average girl is pretty limited (based more on what I read or see in movies than anything else) so take my advice for what it is worth.
Anyway, bathroom break. Nothing jumps out at me but if I were to pick a scene the one where the witch is trying to force feed Mika with her tentacle hair doesn’t do much of anything.
Thanks for reading. Lots to see right now and I want to get more done in time for my end of the year review so tomorrow might be a two movie day. Now that Xmas is done I have time to get caught up. Follow me on Twitter if you dare @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this film or my review can be left here and suggestions or off topic questions should be sent to [email protected]. Have a great day and I will talk to you soon.
Dave
Anchorman 2: the Legend Continues Review
3/4 of a great movie.
I admit it right up front I never saw the first Anchorman. At the time I wasn’t doing reviews and honestly movies set in the 70’s give me a queasy feeling. Actually most period movies set in times when I was alive kind of bug me for some reason. One of my therapists once told me I have a fairly extreme case of narcissism (in case you couldn’t tell by reading this blog) and one of the symptoms is I tend to be trapped in the moment emotionally. There is no past or future only the everlasting now. This tends to make me not be very nostalgic and fairly dismissive of past eras (it also makes me suck at forward planning, but plans are for suckers). My opinion of the decades that I have been alive can be summed up as follows:
60’s = Smelly hippies.
70’s = Bad hair. Bad clothing. Bad music. Bad porn. Everyone smoked.
80’s = High School Hell, the Musical. More bad hair. Leg warmers. Dolphin shorts. Mostly bad music (with some really great music). Fear of dying of AIDS.
90’s = Grunge. Beavis and Butthead. Trial of the Century. Massive apathy.
00’s = Reality TV. My mom meets the internet. Paris Hilton. The lost decade. Hanging chads. Fear of dying in a terrorist attack.
10’s = Still in progress, but the prognosis is not great.
Bottom line doing a period film set anytime between 1959 and now is a sure path to me missing the film from a massive fear that I will be reminded of how much American culture sucks. I skipped the first film but have heard so much about it I decided I needed to see the sequel. Is it fair to judge a sequel without having seen the first one? To that question I answer with an emphatic maybe. On the one hand I never fell in love with the characters and could very easily be missing a bunch of the jokes; on the other hand all movies should stand on their own merits. Nothing I pay $12.50 for should have a prerequisite.
(As an aside, I’d like to offer a marketing tip to team at Paramount Pictures: if you are going to release a sequel to a film it might just behoove you to have the original available on NetFlix in the months prior. I seriously was looking to watch it but there’s no way I was going to buy it on DvD, have no interest in Hulu, and Amazon Prime can officially bite me. Had I been on the fence about seeing this film watching the first might well have pushed me over to the watch it side.)
Anyway, Anchorman 2. Very very funny for the most part, although the whole thing took a left turn in the last 20 minutes down a dark alley and got mugged and violated by the Ridiculous Fairy. I’ve seen this before in Will Ferrell movies; he has a comedy gem and is writing gold but in the last 1/3rd of the film he feels the pressure of the building comedy crescendo and ramps the story up to the next level, bursting through the stratosphere and leaving the audience desperately scrambling for oxygen.
I have no clever insights or amusing anecdotes sparked by this film, so let’s just get into the story itself shall we? Ron Burgandy (Will Ferrell-Zoolander, Megamind, Casa di mi Padre) and his now wife Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate-Married With Children, Up All Night, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead) are now in NYC as TV newscasters. 
They get called upstairs by head anchorman Mack Tanner (Harrison Ford-Star Wars, Indiana Jones, 42 Kiss a Wookie image courtesy of the Star Wars T Shirt category), who promotes Veronica while at the same time firing Ron. This leads to natural conflict as Ron can’t let his ego go and leaves Veronica with is young son Walter (Judah Nelson-Portlandia, Adopting Terror, Major Crimes).
He ends up back in San Diego MC’ing the show at Seaworld (one of the funniest scenes IMO) when he is approached by Freddy Sharp (Dylan Baker-The Cell, Spiderman 2 and 3, Trick or Treat), a news producer for the newly formed all news network GNN. Ron signs on and they goes on a quest to find his old news crew and bring them back. He finds insane sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner-Thank you for Smoking, Get Smart, the Office) selling “Chicken of the Cave” at a fast food place, reporter Brian Fontana (Paul Rudd-Role Models, I Love You Man, the 40 Year Old Virgin) making a great living as a cat photographer, and psychotic introvert weatherman Brick Tamlan (Steve Carell-the Office, the 40 Year Old Virgin, Crazy, Stupid Love) at his own funeral. They each have a great piece of the collection montage and then go into a slow motion RV crash that had me holding my sides laughing.
Once in NY Ron gets the 2am time slot and has a bad run in with head anchorman Jack Lime (Dames Marsden-X-Men, Superman Returns, Enchanted). They bet on who gets the highest ratings that day. Ron and his crew work to put together a show and come up with all pro-America, dogs, and sports bloopers. He wins the bet and is skyrocketed to the top of the network. Meanwhile Ron is having trouble with his estranged wife and his relationship with his son.
At that point the story starts to unravel. Will Ferrell gets trapped in the “Wouldn’t it be funny if…” loop and ends up going blind, bottle feeding a baby shark, and gets into a massive melee with every news organization of the 80’s. While each one of them had their funny moments the story, which until then had felt fairly cohesive, devolved into a bunch of SNL skits.
The stars.
Honestly very funny. There were a few moments when I felt pain from laughing so hard. Two stars. There isn’t a single actor in this film that I haven’t been a fan of at some point in the past. Even the bit characters had talent pouring out of them like a lot of stuff pouring out of something in a comical euphemism (I honestly drew a blank right there. I guess I can’t be brilliant every night). Two stars. The woman playing Linda Jackson (Meagan Good-Brick (ugh. Not my favorite movie for personal reasons), Think Like a Man, Stomp the Yard) was making me really wish I wasn’t so inept in the dating world, if you catch my drift. One star. I was also very impressed by Christina Applegate. Why hasn’t she done more since Married With Children? One star. I will give a bonus star for RV wreck and another one for the Chicken of the Cave scene. Two stars. Total: eight stars.
The black holes.
The movie got pretty stupid by the denouement in my opinion. One black hole. A lot of the film hinged on the audience having seen the first film and that is a mistake in most sequels. One black hole. I think that’s about it. Two black holes.
A grand total of six stars. A funny, fun movie. However nothing on here really demands a big screen (the RV wreck maybe but that’s it) so feel free to wait for the alternate media outlet of your choice. This film kind of screams “Quiet movie night with your significant other on the couch” (guess it’s a good thing I saw it in a theater then) so do it that way. Date movie? Sure. Nothing really off putting in here, none of these guys are super studs (maybe James Marsden, but his screen time is limited and his character is a d-bag) so you won’t suffer in comparison, and if you play your cards right you might be able to get her laughing so hard her clothes fall off (another case for movie night on the couch). Let me know how you managed to pull that off. Bathroom break? Honestly the final battle scene (yes, battle scene) could be totally missed (unless you have a burning passion for satire at the expense of 80’s news broadcasting) but that is kind of towards the end. The bottle feeding baby shark scene was pretty much entirely to give Ron a line later on in the film so I’d say that is your best bet.
Thanks for reading. I also saw 47 Ronin recently and will write that up soon. Follow me on Twitter (or don’t. Most people don’t so join the crowd) @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this film or my review can be left here and off topic questions or suggestions can be sent to [email protected]. I hope your Holidays are going super good, and in case I blow off the next few days have a Happy New Year (Is 2013 over yet?).
Dave
The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug in 3D
The Desolation of Tolkien
I have been watching a lot of Supernatural lately. I thought it would bug me and have avoided it to date but have discovered it actually quite fun. I think the main thing that kept me from watching was the fact that “I’d like to buy a vowel” McG is listed as executive producer and I’d rather support a new Black Plague before his film career (for lack of a better term). However it turns out you cannot do as much damage to your audiences upper brain functions as a TV executive producer then as the director of a really crappy movie. (Smaug image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category)
If you haven’t watched the Winchester brothers solve their paranormal Ghostbusters-esque mysteries than you should know about half the time the villain turns out to be the angry spirit of a long dead human. This spirit usually died in violence or deep emotional distress, although occasionally it is some kind of betrayal or failure to uphold a principle that has angered it. I honestly think that in the world of Supernatural these Hobbit movies would motivate the ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien to rise up from the grave and gruesomely murder everyone involved with the production and distribution, right down to the ushers at the theaters.
The Lord of the Rings movies were a true hommage to the spirit and story of the series. Peter Jackson took the rather dense and florid prose and crafted a wondrous tribute that cut out all the dross and left us with a glorious experience. In the Hobbit it appears he took all that dross and cultivated it in a fermentation tank, growing it to massive proportions and rancidity. He then took his product and injected it into a fairly light children’s dungeon crawl, bloating it to elephantine size and mobility. Bottom line, like trying to wear a condom as a stocking there just isn’t enough material to cover the subject. Tolkien never intended the Hobbit to be as critical and important as any of his other books and in truth seemed to want it to just be fun.
(Note-if any of you blowhards want to tell me that a lot of what is in this movie came from the Silmarillion let me remind you that TOLKIEN DID NOT WRITE THE SILMARILLION! After his death his son collected all his notes and composed them into another money grab. By the way, if you are looking for a challenge try actually read the Silmarillion. It is some of the worst writing ever and if you manage to finish it be sure to stop by the mens room of your local Greyhound station to collect your prize as the Most Boring Person of the Year)
That being said it is a distinct improvement over the first Hobbit. It is more cohesive, has (some) improved character development, and none of the CGI looked like animated Colorforms glued to the inside of the camera lens. However, where this film is a distinct improvement is not in what it has, but rather in what it has not. Let me illustrate:
No singing.
I guess Peter took a moment to actually watch his first film and realized that the dwarfs singing was not going to win any Grammys or start a new musical revolution. Perhaps he heard the gestalt consciousness of humanity screaming in pain as he subjected us to his slow motion eardrum assault.
No Aragorn.
This film wears the characters and situations of the LOTR films like a teenager pasting his pubes to his face in order to simulate facial hair so he can get into a nightclub. I suspect the producers have had many serous meetings over the fact that the title of these films does not actually have the words “lord”, “of”, or “rings” in it (fortunately the word “the” is covered) and based on the assumption that we are all complete inbred idiots feel the need to constantly remind us of the fact that this movie comes from the same source material. This is done with the grace and subtlety of a car battery electroshock treatment to the testicles and gets increasingly annoying as the series progresses. Rumor has it that Viggo Mortensen was approached with some flimsy pretext for including him in this story but wisely decided that was just stupid. Would that Orlando Bloom had made the same decision.
No Gollum.
See above, but I could easily see them shooting a scene where Gollum leaves the Misty Mountains in despair searching for his precious. You know, in case we forgot that he later throws Bilbo under the bus with Sauron.
No mismatched voices.
Remember how in the last film the Goblin King sounded suspiciously like an Oxford professor rather than an actual goblin? I don’t know about you but that voice really took me out of the movie. In this film the voice of Smaug sounds as completely evil and bad ass as you could ever hope to have happen. Props to Bernard Cumberbatch on that.
Less Radagast.
It’s ironic that Radagast’s color is brown, as he is the literal turd in the punchbowl of this series. Like George Lucas with Jar Jar Binks Peter Jackson finally listened to the audience and opted to keep his presence to a minimum, although again like Lucas he still opted to crowbar a cameo in as a big F you to the audience for not falling in love with this animal excrement sodden countenance.
Less Azog the Defiler.
I guess the producers decided since they already had one ginormous super villain with a cool, evil cultured voice in Smaug they didn’t need to keep shoving a character who had no actual part in the book back in our faces. Like Radagast he makes an appearance but then hands off chasing of the dwarves to one of his hench-orcs. For the record most of the villains the dwarves encountered in the book were just rolls on the Wandering Monster Table, but again I guess our soft brains would never accept a goblin army just showing up at the end of the story to steal gold without some connecting master villain. Also this way they can have the battle include a mighty duel where Thorin is almost killed but manages to vanquish Azog (SPOILER ALERT (maybe) note-in what will undoubtedly be a black hole in the next movie when they redo the end of The Return of the King with Thorin as Aragorn, Thorin is mortally wounded at the Battle of Five Armies and dies. Anything else will infuriate me).
So that is what didn’t annoy me. However, experienced readers of my blog will know that I revel in pointing out what sucks, so let’s talk about the things this movie did that made me dream of a better day when film audiences can electroshock writers and directors with the touch of a button in the armrest of the theater seat. This include pretty much everything bad the first movie did that I didn’t mention before plus some. Here are some specifics:
First off, the forcing in of every single character and reference from the LOTR has reached a saturation point, where the references start to crystallize and collect on the bottom of the beaker. Legolas has no business in this film. Gloin never mentioned his son Gimli. The necromancer was a minor subplot and by the way WAS NEVER SAURON. On that same note they brought in Galadriel to do the evil rising opening monolog like this is part of another world encompassing dastardly plot, not chapters 8-15 of a 153 page kids book. For that matter, the forcing of gravitas into what is essentially a pretty light story didn’t do much more than distract from the plot.
All of the characters seem to suffer from some kind of super good sportsmanship brain aneurism where they have the ability to totally overwhelm their opponents at any moment but instead opt to use their secondary talents or abilities. It’s like bringing both a gun and a knife to a gun fight and then choosing to use the a rag ball on the end of a rope you grabbed from a homeless person. Smaug suffered from this the most. He had about 10,000 chances to incinerate both Bilbo or the dwarves but only opted to use his fire when there was a handy wall for them to hide behind. The rest of the time he opted to chase them or be readily distracted by other dwarves. If you read the book (a question that I think could be put fairly to Peter Jackson) you will recall that Biblo stayed invisible the whole time he was talking to Smaug in a wise choice to not be flambeed, but here he thinks the best move is to stand in the open for his dialogue with the fire breathing dragon. Fortunately his stupidity is matched by Smaug, who opts to just talk with him for a while.
I know why they did this, by the way. They wrote themselves into a hole in the LOTR by making anyone wearing the Ring transport into a weird black and white alternate universe where you for some reason you cannot hear normal sound but hear strong wind and/or the screams of the damned. Again, the people making this film don’t think we are smart enough to understand that the Ring gains in power as Sauron does, and was therefore a much more difficult and dangerous thing to wear in the later books but fairly innocuous in this one. This is where movie scripts fall apart IMO. When protagonist and antagonist start doing things that are clearly stupid like not use their inviso-ring or burn a thief to a cinder at the first opportunity then we the audience stop connecting to them, thus forcing us out of the story. No one wants to identify with a character who is flat out dumb, and when the main villain shows how stupid he is the tension bleeds away.
Anyway, another thing that bugged the hell out of me was the battle between the dwarves and Smaug. If you recall the book the dwarves more or less spent the entire time around the Lonely Mountain skulking outside while sending in Bilbo to five finger some gold. There’s no way we can have that in this epic so the obvious answer is to have an battle resembling the illigitamate offspring of a Scooby Doo episode mated with The Three Stooges in Orbit (that’s Curly-Joe Three Stooges BTW) with the delivery doctor being the prop guy from the Three Musketeers. How long do you think it takes to craft several dozen hi explosive grenades from raw material? According to Peter Jackson about 30 seconds. It also takes about 30 seconds to fire up smelting furnaces that haven’t been used in decades and pour a giant gold statue of a dwarf that sublimes directly into liquid somehow (I guess the dwarfs also MacGuvyered up a small nuclear reactor while making the grenades) to spew molten gold all over Smaug.
This fight scene is actually insulting on a couple of levels, not just the one that is a punch in the balls to a true Tolkien fan. You see, it is established fairly early on in the film that Bilbo and all the dwarfs are effectively immortal (SPOILER ALERT again, sort of. In the book in addition to Thorin both Fili and Kili die in the final battle. I’m curious to see if that holds true) and that point is reinforced about 1 minute into this battle with the very first of many highly improbable narrow escape, making the whole episode a mutual masturbation session between the CGI guys and the DP. It becomes a huge waste of time and all we are looking for is what trick the writers will have come up with for the final escape. I honestly got bored.
However, each of these movies has to end with some kind of epic battle and Tolkien was not kind enough to write in yet another one in chapter 12 (I guess he didn’t realize his intro book was due to be made into 11 hours of film. How lacking in foresight) so they had to crowbar in something.
I could go on but I’m already at over 2K words and have been finding writing this almost as much of a grind as watching it. I’m going to skip the story recap. Read chapters 6-12 in the book. Should take you less time than the 161 minutes this film runs. Spiders. Elves. Dwarves. Bear-man. Wizard. Orcs. Dragon. Movie call backs. Blue balls ending.
The stars.
I will say that Smaug, up until his worthless battle against the dwarves, was in all ways truly bad ass. Great CGI (assuming you like brown and gold), and his voice and dialog exceptional. Two stars. The scene between him and Bilbo was the best in the film (when you think about it, the scene between Biblo and Gollum in the last film was the best as well. It almost makes you think that when they stick to the actual story they get the best results…). One star. Casting was in all ways good, although that might be a carry over from the last film. Still, one star. As bitter as I am about this whole series I am still a huge Tolkien fan and love being back in Middle Earth. One star. The barrel chase scene was kind of fun, even if it had way too much Orlando Bloom for no reason. One star. The spiders were kind of cool, although if you stuffer from arachnophobia you might want to take a long bathroom break. One star. I normally don’t give stars for movies that just suck less than the previous one, but this one was a distinct improvement over the first one. Also no singing was huge. One star. Total: nine stars.
The black holes.
Oh, where to begin? Forcing in every single reference and character from the LOTR series (guess what? The Nasgul show up for some reason) into this film like a drug mule getting paid by the ounce for as many heroin filled condoms shoved into his assorted orifices. Two black holes. SPOILER ALERT a bonus black hole for making the Necromancer turn out to be none other than…Sauron! Yes, he makes his appearance almost in the flesh for…some reason? It’s things like that that make me wish he had won at the end of The Return of the King. One black hole. Apparently the sexed up inbred lowbrow apes that we the audiences are cannot see a film without a hot chick and some kind of romance so they invented a girl elf who falls in love with…a dwarf. Yes, it’s that sad. Not only does that not stem from anything Tolkien wrote but goes against every bit of common lore associated with dwarves and elves ever in the myth and history of this world or any alternate world you want to name. Also completely unnecessary. Two black holes for being extra insulting. Remember the Black Arrow of Bard the Bowman? How it was his lucky arrow that he had inherited from his father and never failed him? Now Black Arrows are magical ballista bolts that at one point were crafted at will. I don’t know why this bugs me so much but it does. One black arrow, I mean hole. While there was less of Radagast he was still there and a turd in the bowl doesn’t have to be big in order to ruin the punch. One black hole. The fight scene at the end between Smaug and the dwarves was dumb, dopey, and totally worthless. One black hole. Pacing was kind of awful. The dwarves head into Mirkwood and in the course of about 1 minute go from well equipped and put together to Tom Hanks in the second half of Castaway. In the book there were weeks of travel and a slow degredation. One black hole. The grenades were annoying, and WTF was the golden statue deal? Was it liquid that was held in place by the “magic” of the dwarves or was it solid that somehow had 100,000 pounds of white phosphorus hidden inside? Why were the dwarves crafting a giant gold bomb statue anyway? One black hole. The 3D did nothing except lighten my wallet a little more. One black hole. Trying to make the story of the Hobbit into something way more important that it ever was. One black hole. Continuing to stretch this story in a blatant attempt to get more money from us. Say what you will about Harry Potter or Twilight going two parts but at least they were both based on full length novels. One black hole. And finally SPOILER ALERT in another case of massive cinema blue balls the epic battle of Smaug destroying Laketown (or Dale) that I was more or less hoping for ever since the last film failed miserably never happened. The film ends with Smaug in flight towards Laketown. Remember how in Star Wars one of the main reasons we all kept going was to finally see Darth Vader in all his glory and all we got was a 30 second scene where he utters one line and one word and then throws a Force temper tantrum? This is on par with that, and on par with Peter Jackson channeling the energy of whatever demon possessed Lucas. For this alone go screw yourself Jackson. Two black holes. Total: fifteen black hole.
So a final total of six black holes. This has been literally my most painful review to write to date. I really, really want to like these movies. I love the LOTR movies and all Tolkiens books. I actually saw this over a week ago and have been grinding through this. My motivation to finish is at an all time low. Should you see it? I say with utmost grudgingness yes. If you are a fan of the series you will need to see this, if only to see how bad it is. However, I feel exactly like I did the first Hobbit; now that I have seen it I feel no need to ever see it again. The LOTR movies I rewatch with compulsive regularity but this one has no replay value. I find myself resenting the brain cells dedicated to remembering it. See it if you are a fan and then move on. Date movie? Only if she is really into Tolkien and hobbits (if she is only into hobbits I hate to break it to you but you have a whole slew of other problems on deck). Bathroom break? Most of the scenes in Laketown before the dwarves head to the Lonely Mountain are totally expendable in spite of Stephen Fry’s best efforts.
Ugh. I need to see something to wash the taste of that one out. I’ll go see Anchorman tonight. Thanks for reading, and thanks for being patient with me on this. I know it has been a while. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you agree or disagree with me feel free to post a comment here, and if you have an off topic question or suggestion feel free to email me at [email protected]. Have a great night.
Dave
