That Awkward Moment Review
A chick flick with an all chick cast. Reports of a possible Y chromosome were greatly exaggerated.
Regular readers of my blog will know that I often times use it to bitch about my dating life and lament the difficulties encountered while wooing the fairer sex but honestly I don’t often reflect on the issues faced by single women swimming in the dating pool. This movie completely changed that for me because if the the three Manpons that are the main characters in this film are the barometer of what a hot, eligible single guy is then you girls are in a dating hell I can’t even begin to imagine, and the sad part is I suspect most of you don’t even realize it.
Image courtesy of the That Awkward Moment Official Site
I know I am still developmentally disadvantaged when it comes to being attractive to women but I could write a PhD thesis on all other things manly. I’m not talking about killing bears with a sharpened stick (gave that up years ago) and excreting testosterone through my sweat glands at the gym but rather things like comportment, civility, honor, and honesty. I know how a man should act and these guys act like horny catty jr. high school girls.
This is one of those rare films wherein the director seems to be testing the audience to see how much he can make us hate each and every character in it. The “male” characters feel like they were written by women on a lost Amazonian island who had never met a man but only had them described by a visiting cabal of lesbians and ex strippers. The female characters all have the word “doormat” branded into their foreheads and seem ready to forgive any sin as long as it is committed by a guy as hot as Zac Efron. It is a study in caricatures that would embarrass Mad Magazine and I think I can save you all a lot more reading by summing it up with one statement:
“The best part? Seeing Miles Teller (or his stuntman, but one can dream) getting hit by a car. The worst part? The entire rest of the movie.”
To be fair this is one of those films that is going to roast on the BBQ of hate fueled by my own dating bitterness but honestly I think if I were as good looking and successful with the ladies as Zac Efron I would still see this as a crap movie. I’m kind of perplexed as to whom this movie is being marketed to. Guys will hate it because the three characters have about as much to do with maleness as a hot dog eating contest has to do with balanced nutrition and women will hate it because the three main characters are so reprehensible that they should have been stuffed in a sack and dropped in the river like a bunch of unwanted kittens (except I would never in a million years hurt a kitten). They are every woman’s worst dating nightmare and 10 minutes of regret and redemption at the end of the film does not make up for the fact that you just spent the previous 84 minutes wishing this was the intro of Contagion and all of them (and the supporting characters) were destined to die a horrible twitching death.
In looking over his filmography I suppose it’s fair to say I have not be kind to Zac Efron’s career but for Heaven’s sake throw me a fricken’ bone here dude! New Years Day? The Lorax? The only thing on it that looks remotely more pleasant than replacing your contact lenses with little circles of sandpaper are a couple of episodes of Robot Chicken. I honestly believe you capable of being a decent actor. How about finding a script that can prove it?
Before I get into the meat of this review I want to make one more observation. The writer/director of this flick has not a single writing or directing credit to his name prior. How exactly did he get the studio to give him a budget? He has one producer credit for Movie 43 but that’s it. IMDB empty. I’m honestly curious. I have no directing credits but have written hundreds of reviews. Can I get a job as a writer and/or director? If all you need is this dross I can type out stream of consciousness for a couple hours and film good looking guys who need a shave getting laid in situations that porn movie directors would think too ridiculous to use.
I know the story recap is going to bug the crap out of me so I’m going to do it Speedy Gonzales style. If you really need a recap read the first 15 articles you find from Penthouse Forum but stop before you get to anything remotely good or interesting. Two sexual predators and a wimpy loser are best friends from college. Jason (Zac Efron-the Lorax, the Lucky One, New Years Eve) and Daniel (Miles Teller-Footloose, Project X, 21 and Over) are artists who design women’s book covers and go out every night looking for cheap sex. The loser Mikey (Michael B. Jordan-Fruitvale Station, Chronicle, Hard Ball) is an ER doctor who’s super hot wife Vera (Jessica Lucas-Cloverfield, She’s the Man, Evil Dead) is sleeping with another guy and wants a divorce. The three of them swear to remain single together (apparently forever. No time limit was discussed).
They go trolling for chicks and Jason meets and hooks up with Ellie (Imogen Poots-V for Vendetta, 28 Weeks Later, Fright Night). In a situation that would seem ridiculous in a French sex comedy he comes to the conclusion that she is secretly a hooker and is about to charge him for the sex and bails out. That day he finds out she works for the publisher of the book he is about to do the cover for and specifically not a hooker. He charms her with his wit and looks and they start going out, although for the sake of his oath he has to pretend they are not dating.
Meanwhile Daniel has abandoned his usual plan known as “lying to chicks to get laid” and begins hooking up with his good friend Chelsea (Mackenzie Davis-Breathe In, the F Word, Smashed) but also in the interest of their dumb oath hides the fact from the other two wastes of oxygen. She is apparently a super enabler with the self esteem of a high school cheerleader and is totally cool that he is a complete scuz.
Mikey is taking his divorce hard and tries to work things out with Vera to the point of sleeping with her again but again due to the oath can’t say anything to his compadres and therefore tells them all he is sleeping with random floozies, a statement they treat with the relish one would normally reserve for someone announcing that they had cured cancer.
At that point it’s pretty much Sex in the City with penises (maybe). Jason and Daniel treat their women with the respect of a used tissue and Mikey treats the woman who betrayed his trust and slept around on him like his queen. Jason does some romantic stuff but screws up when he fails to show up at Ellies fathers funeral in fear that she will think there is more going on than is really going on (as a note to the writer of this flesh eating virus I and any human with a soul would go to the funeral of a parent of anyone I considered a friend, much less shared DNA with. It’s moments like this that really drive home the hate nails in the coffin that is this review).
In the last 10 minutes (um, spoiler alert I guess, but if you really want to see this and be “surprised” by how it ends let me know how life is in the suck dimension) everyone reverses themselves. Daniel opts to become a committed boyfriend, Mikey decides that his life actually is better as a man slut who sleeps with a roster of women, and Jason makes himself uncomfortable for a couple hours to prove to Ellie that he can be committed or something. The fact that all three of these douches reverses themselves and ends up on opposites sides of good guy/man whore debate once again completely proves that this film has no message or meaning and invalidates any concept you might have had that there was something to be gained by having watched it.
The stars.
There is a moment where Miles Teller gets hit by a taxi cab Joe Black style that was very amusing and a much needed relief from the pressure of my impending aneurism. One star. All the women were hot (at least in the face. More on that later) and in particular I would like to invite Jessica Lucas to be my wife or at least spend the weekend chained to my radiator. One star. Umm. That’s pretty much it. If I thought the film had more value I would find stuff like “It was filmed in full Technicolor!” but obviously I am not feeling that generous. Two stars total.
The black holes.
You will hate every one of these characters, man or woman, with the passion you have for the man who killed your entire family, stole your parking space, or has torn the labels off all your mattresses. Most movies try to make at least one of the characters sympathetic in order for the audience to connect with him or her but obviously this director thinks audience connection is for amateurs. Two black holes. The “comedy” in the rom-com was stilted, hackneyed, and recycled cliches that had very little humor. 
Penis jokes aplenty (most of which make this wiener dog shirt look Shakespearean in comparison. Image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category). Two black holes. The romance in the rom-com felt like it was written by a team of 13 year old boys and 8 year old girls. A little surreal to be honest. One black hole. Because this film had three separate stories no one really felt like the real one and consequently this film had no real beginning, middle, or end. It just bumbled from situation to situation like a bulimic at a buffet with restrooms on every wall. One black hole. It’s got to be bad for me to even notice but the soundtrack and background music literally sounded like it was lifted from 90’s porn. One black hole. If you are male this film will cause your testicles to shrink and be reabsorbed into your body. One black hole. If you are female this film will reinforce every negative stereotype you have about men and in the end make you much more difficult to date, a disaster I put up there with the Hindenburg and Titanic in gravity. If there is one thing I don’t need it’s something making women harder to date. One black hole. Rated R for content and some brief male nudity is the biggest waste of film ever. Dude, dinosaurs had to die to make that film. If you are going to get an R rating because your characters talk about their dicks all day it’s OK to drop the occasional F bomb and maybe show a boob or (dare I dream it?) two. One black hole. In the end a dreary, witless waste of time desperately in need of a fast forward button. Pointless. Two black holes. Total: twelve black holes.
A grand score of 10 black holes. A crap score for a crap movie, yet not bad enough to knock the Legend of Hercules off it’s worst film of the year so far throne. Is there anything worth seeing here? No, not really unless Zac Efron really turns you on and you dream of one day seeing him planking naked penis down on a toilet with a Viagra overdoes (I seriously wish I were joking by the way). YouTube the clip of Miles Teller getting hit by the car and you literally have no reason to see this film entirely. It’s a chick flick that honestly I think chicks will hate. Date movie? Only if this is the last movie on the planet. Even then consider watching the sun set (someone once told me that’s romantic but I’m not sure I believe them) or your clock second hand tick by. Bathroom break? Your options are limitless.
Thanks for reading. I did finally see the Dallas Buyers Club and will probably write it up tomorrow. It will contrast this film in every way if only because it was watchable. Please follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have a comment on this film post them here and off topic questions or suggestions can be sent to [email protected]. Thanks and have a great day.
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.
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 75 the Way to Eden
This one made #3 on my list of all time worst episodes and for good reason: space hippies. Specifically space hippies who for some odd reason really identified with Spock and thought of him as some kind of guru. The only redeeming thing was the hippies all treating Kirk like a major dork, calling him a Herbert. I suspect since this was towards the end of the series Shattners influence over the writers and producers was greatly diminished, as in season 1 he would never had let any of that nonsense go on. Nor would he have let the romantic love interest go to any other character and in this one it is Checkov who gets the girl (sort of). Of course he gets his revenge at the end and Checkov gets nothing again (for some reason I feel a kinship towards Checkov. Did I mention I got rejected by yet another girl last night?)
I don’t know. This episode felt like a stretch all the way through. This is also a perfect example of why singing has no place in Star Trek. Normally it’s one of the main characters annoying us with his or her melodic noise hole (Uhura in the Conscious of the King, Spock in Plato’s Stepchildren, etc.), but this time it was the hippy sing along. Of course, the Star Trek singing tradition continues to haunt us in the form of Shattner doing songs with Metallica. If you have never heard him cover Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds it is something everyone needs to hear once and then never again. Google it.
Dave
P.S. the peace symbol I got from the Cheap T Shirt category .
D.
Bad Grampa Movie Review
Bad grampa, good movie.
Actually that’s not true. This should not in any way be mistake for a good film. 
Anyone who tells you it is good is lying through their teeth and is in current danger of having their pants burst into flame (image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category).
No, this film is not good. What it is is enjoyable. Like rainbow sherbert, the music of Aqua, and my dreams of conquering this entire planet Jackass is a guilty pleasure that I enjoy watching but am always going to be a little embarrassed to admit I enjoy, at least among my more sophisticated, forward thinking, and politically correct (and less fun) friends. I saw the first one in a theater with a good friend of mine and about 300 teenagers and laughed so hard my stomach ached for days. I almost chocked to death laughing at Roller Disco Truck and still get a giggle thinking about it.
I guess you have to have a certain mindset to be past your college age and still into watching guys punch each other in the balls. It helps that I skated a lot when I was younger and had a crew that was not dissimilar to the Jackass crew (minus all the girls, financial success, and cameras. Also we tended to steer clear of anything in the body waste vicinity). When I see the Jackass crew doing their thing I can identify with them and their antics. I’m not really interested in participating, but I can understand the motivation and humor behind it.
So Bad Grampa. Like I said I have an appreciation of the series that got these guys started. That being said this is not Jackass. I did find myself laughing hysterically at parts, but like a good episode of Saturday Night Live the fact that Jackass is broken up into little vignettes gives you a chance to appreciated everything about it. Honestly after a while I got fairly tired of Johnny Knoxville in his old man suit and the attempt at developing a story left me flat. But then would come a new scene (usually involving the kid) that would get me laughing my ass off all over again. The laughs were not non-stop, however, and while this film borrowed a lot from Borat honestly it didn’t borrow enough.
The hardest part of this film was trying to figure out if this was an extended Jackass skit or an actual movie. The thing Borat did was commit completely, but here you see Knoxville as an old man and then watch him vault over a railing like a professional stuntman. The whole time it felt like the camera was about to cut away to Steve O, Bam, and Wee Man laughing their ass off. I was too polished for Jackass but lacked the polish of a real film.
On the other hand, I spent most of the film experiencing a warm, nostalgic glow for the car Knoxville was driving around, an ’81 Lincoln. You see, I had the cheaper version of that car, a ’79 Thunderbird, back in college and loved it with all my heart (for those of you who no very little about actual cool cars (instead of cars that just go fast and look like sharks) Lincoln is the high end version of Ford, and they used the same basic design with more luxury features). It was the biggest 2 door Ford ever made and had the imprint and presence of a battleship. If you drive a SmartCar or Mini Cooper understand that I would take that beast against any number of your toy cars and most likely come out on top, and also that you suck. Saving money is one thing, but doing so while looking like a complete tool is another. (Sadly my beloved T-Bird got ran into a ditch and I had to cut it up with a plasma cutter in order to get rid of it. Long story, but the bottom line is I barely felt the crash and looked cool while wrecking it)
I don’t know if I even need to do a review. If you like Jackass you will probably see it and enjoy it. If you don’t you will not and would probably rather spend the evening enjoying a raucous wine and cheese party where you can discuss what Terrance Malick is going to do to follow up on his “brilliant” Tree of Life (IMO probably just film himself vomiting in a white room for two hours, except that at least would be somewhat entertaining from the Jackass perspective). Nothing I say here will probably influence you in any way.
I suppose this is what I don’t get paid for, so let’s go. The story is merely a skeleton upon which to hang all the stunts on, but there is a story so I guess I should recap it. Irving Zisman (Johnny Knoxville-Jackass, Nitro Circus, the Dukes of Hazard) is informed of his wife’s death. At her funeral his daughter shows up with his grandson Billy (Jackson Nicoll-Fun Sized, Arthur, the Fighter) to tell him that she is going back to jail and he needs to take Billy to his son-in-law in Raleigh.
That’s pretty much it. The entirety of the plot is delivered in the first 10 minutes. At that point it is just Irving and Billy bouncing from one set piece to another, screwing with locals and a tour of the American South. Rather than actually play up the bad grampa aspect of the story (Knoxville’s character vacillates between a horny old dude and just a grampa. He honestly didn’t make it bad enough. Bad Santa and Role Model did it way better) they just sort of find real people to screw with. There are some scenes that will have you rolling on the floor and others that will have you underwhelmed with “meh”.
The stars. There are some scenes that will have you losing it with laughter, especially the last skit. Three stars. If you like the Jackass scene this film will work for you. Two stars. The car ruled. One star. That kid Jackson is really funny, and I wish I had half his cojones today, much less when I was eight. One star. Overall a fun time watching. Two stars. Total: nine stars.
The black holes. If you want a story or any thing else that makes for a decent movie pass. One black hole. The whole “is it Jackass or a movie” lack of tone thing. One black hole. The Johnny Knoxville old man skit gets tired fairly quickly. I remember thinking they ran it too long in the first Jackass movie. Basically taking what should be 15 minutes and making it into a full movie. One black hole. Rated R and not a boob in sight (literally). One black hole. Total: four black holes.
A grand total of five stars, but like I said my thumbs up or down has no meaning whatsoever. You will see it if you are going to see it and if you are not all the bonbons in Dusseldorf will not motivate you to go. Date movie? Probably not, unless she is a fan of Jackass (and know that I am jealous and hate you). Bathroom break? The scene at the bar where Irving and Billy meet up with Billy’s father extends out and doesn’t do much. Hurry back though as you are a few minutes away from the best scene in the movie.
Thanks for reading. I will see something else later today, and still have Escape Plan to write up. If you enjoyed this review scroll down and check out some of my older ones (if you didn’t enjoy it why are you still reading? Go away). Feel free to comment on this film or review here, and if you have an off topic question or suggestion feel free to email me at [email protected] (I am not adverse to contributing to other blog websites). Talk to you soon.
Dave
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 78 All Our Yesterdays
This episode confused the hell out of me as a kid. First Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are in a high tech facility. Then McCoy and Spock are in an arctic wasteland with a hot girl in a fur bikini and Kirk is in merry Old England. Challenging for my young brain. The entire thing was set up as a device to allow the residents of Sarpeidon to escape the destruction of their world by running back into their worlds past. Kirk gets accused of witchcraft (instead of sleeping with the local witches) and Spock falls in love with a cave woman.
Not the best written episode IMO. I think my main issue has to due with Spock reverting to the the level of the primitive Vulcans. As a plot device this is weak (if we were to travel back in time several billion years would we all revert to primordial ooze?) but the fact is I like Spock as Spock. With the notable exception of the great episode Amok Time I really didn’t like it when they gave Spock emotions. It is not his character and really felt unnatural (in Amok Time his emotions were the result of perfectly logical events, which is why that episode works for me. Plus I love the fight scene). Time travel is a tricky beast and by the end of season 3 they had pretty much milked every time travel story they could. If the entire population of Sarpeidon had traveled back in time isn’t it remotely possible that one of the billions might have done something to change the past? Wasn’t that the point of City on the Edge of Forever? I am going to put this on the danger of accepting fan scripts. This episode was written by fan Jean Lisette Aroeste. Granted she also wrote Is There No Truth in Beauty, a better episode, but even that one was problematic. If you are so out of ideas you need to turn to fan fiction it might be time to hang it up (which they did one episode later).
(History repeats image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category)
I’ll probably knock out The Savage Curtain (ugh) tomorrow and then see a new movie tomorrow night. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Wolverine 3D Movie Review
Better than I expected.
Trailers are a problematic phenomenon in that they either give you the entirety of the film in 30 seconds or leave you wondering what the hell the movie is about. This is an issue I deal with pretty regularly and have come to grips with. The real issue I have with trailers is when I see them over and over again for weeks prior to the film I tend to show up with a preconceived notion about how good or bad the film is.
The best case scenario is one in which the movie more or less matches the quality implied by the trailer. In less optimal situations the people responsible for creating the trailers are really good at their job and like a pedophile luring small children into their vans with candy tend to make the film look way better than the actual reality of the movie going experience. Depending on degree this is the equivalent of going on a date with a hot girl only to find out she just broke up with her boyfriend and was only looking for someone to share the excruciating details of what a jerk he was for hours on end before telling you that she is going to switch to women and besides she thought you were gay anyway (no personal experience used there. I swear).
Once in a while you get the other extreme, where the people responsible for the trailer obviously never bothered to actually watch the film and have been on the hot new “Lead Paint Chip Diet” for the last 35 years. In this case the trailer manages to hang suck all over the film like a legless dog trying to mark its territory. Seeing this film is the equivalent of every porn movie ever written where a guy goes in to do something lame or horrible (root canal, fix a clogged toilet, tax audit) only to find the dentist, homeowner, or bookkeeper is a hot girl who just broke up with her boyfriend and wants to sex up the first Y chromosome she stumbles across in revenge (definitely not delving into personal experience there, damn the luck).
Not to say that the trailers for The Wolverine made the film look bad. Just that it laid the groundwork for some definite suck potential. The idea that a guy with super powers sees it as a curse and wants to lose it is about as dumb as the idea that vampires are kindly sizzle chested man/boys who sparkle in daylight. The trailers managed to inject that idea into my perception of the film with a fire hose, making me secretly dread this movie.
The movie doesn’t actually take that direct approach (again implying that the trailer makers didn’t actually see the film) and instead came through with a decent comic book style film with some pretty cool action and a ton of Hugh Jackman shirtless for those of you into men. That’s not to say this was a great or even good film, 
unless you are comparing it to X-Men Origins Wolverine in which case this movie is the deep fried bacon sushi of film (Deep Fried image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category). The film had it’s weaknesses which I will get in to shortly, but overall was an exciting, quality experience.
I will say there were a number of plot holes and logical failure that managed to clog up my enjoyment pipeline a few times. It seems Hollywood feels plot holes are like ants at a picnic; unless you go to exorbitant lengths (in other words, put some effort into your writing) you are going to get them, so let’s just add enough explosions and action to make the cake so big and appealing that the audience doesn’t mind eating a few bugs with the frosting.
This film also suffered immensely under the crushing weight of the PG-13 rating. I know that all the X-Men have gone for this rating, but the fact is Wolverine is in the comic world a brutal, bloody figure and every fight scene felt like a campfire with a wet blanket thrown over it. I’m not going to start a campaign for an R rated Marvel film (Punisher War Zone was rated R and sucked at the box office. I, however, liked it a lot as it stayed true to the character. Frank Castle isn’t the Punisher if he is not punching someone’s eyeball out) but I will say that this film would have made for a better viewing were it not for the need to cater to the freaking kiddie winks (does Hollywood really thing an R rating will keep kids from seeing this film?).
Anyway, the story (lots of spoilers incoming, so SPOILER ALERT). Logan (Hugh Jackman-the Prestige, Z-Men, Les Misérables) is living in a cave in Canada. He is haunted by the death of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen-Golden Eye, X-Men, Taken 2) and has frequent nightmares about her. He also dreams of being at Nagasaki when the bomb went off and saving the life of a young Japanese soldier Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi-the Life Aquatic, Push, the Way Back). He goes into town and mixes it up with some local color before being picked up by a hot chick super ninja Yukio (Rila Fukushima-first real acting role. Hope to see her on more). She tells him that Yoshida wants to see him and thank him before dying.
They fly to Japan where Yoshida is dying, attended by hot blond endocrinologist Viper (not her doctor name, I guess, but that’s how she’s credited. Svetlana Khodchenkova-Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Mala Moskwa, Blagoslovite Zhenshchinu) and his hot daughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto-no other film credits. She is a Japanese super model and it’s easy to see why). Yoshido tells Logan he can “gift” him with mortality and wants his healing properties for himself. Apparently you can’t just copy super powers they have to be transferred. Logan refuses and the next day Yoshido dies.
His son Shingen (Hiroyuki Sanada-the Last Samurai, Twilight Samurai, Rush Hour 3) wants control of the company but Yoshida has left it to Mariko. Logan goes to the funeral where he fights a bunch of Yakuza and rescues Mariko. They flee but are pursued by Viper, the police, the Yakuza, and some ninja guy who used to be childhood friends with Mariko (Will Yun Lee-Total Recall, Die Another Day, Electra). At that point it is a convoluted James Bond plot. Viper is a mutant and wants Logans DNA or something. Shingen wants Mariko dead so he can have the company. Honestly it bogs down pretty heavily until the big “reveal” at the end (which I managed to predict about 40 minutes into the film. Me so smrat!).
The stars.
Comic book movie. Two stars. I am a huge Wolverine fan, and love Hugh Jackman as Logan. He really nailed it again. Two stars. Action was good, especially the bullet train scene. One star. With one exception I liked all the supporting characters and their portrayal by the assorted actors, especially Yukio. Two stars. Camera work and CGI were for the most part excellent. One star. Pacing and editing were dead on. 126 minutes that felt like exactly the right amount. One star. Overall a fun time watching. Two stars. Total: twelve stars.
The black holes.
The villain Viper was the weakest character in the film by a lot. I just couldn’t buy her as anything serious at all, and she barely had the level of menace I normally feel for any hot woman (which is considerable, but not in the same way you want a villain to be menacing). One black hole. While none of the plot holes were gargantuan, they were frequent and annoying. One black hole. I had a hard time discerning the motivation for any of the characters other than Logan to do anything at all. Most of the characters were supposed to be loyal to Yoshida but changed sides so frequently I felt like I needed a score card. One black hole. For all the hot Hugh Jackman shots (he spent a lot of time with his shirt off or in a tight wife beater) there wasn’t much eye candy for the suffering straight men and lesbian women in the audience. The women spent most of the movie dressed like it was the 1800’s and exposing an ankle was enough to send men into a sex frenzy. One black hole. Of all the films I have reviewed this one probably compromised it’s action the most in order to get that precious PG-13 rating. The action felt really unfulfilling. Two black holes. Total: six black holes.
A grand total of six stars. Very good, and like I said better than I expected based on the trailers and last film. I just feel like with a little more effort this could have been a classic X-Men movie instead of just another lead up to the next blockbuster. Worth seeing, and worth spending money for a big screen. Date movie? Hugh Jackman will get any woman’s heart beating. However if your own midriff bears a stronger resemblance to a keg than a six pack you might suffer in comparison. Approach with caution. Bathroom break? Hmm. The quality of the editing doesn’t really leave a lot of dross lying around. There is a love scene in the last half that could be missed, especially given that the you somehow manage to see less of Tao Okamoto than you do when she is fully clothed. Also most of the dream sequences with Jean Grey are kind of repetitive. You could skip one pretty easily.
Thanks for reading. More to see this week. Now that I am back from all my trips I want to get caught up on all the films out there. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. If you have comments on this film or my review feel free to post them here. Off topic questions or suggestions can be sent to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
After Earth Review
Afterbirth.
Once in a great while in the reviewing world there comes a confluence similar to all the planets in our solar system lining up to destroy our home world (wouldn’t that destroy all the planets? Why are we special?) where an absolute shyte movie comes along with a name that readily lends itself to an obscene, biological, or scatological pun like this one. On these rare occasions there is much rejoicing in the secret kingdom in my head (mostly filled with robots, bacon wrapped everything, and women who don’t consistently treat me like I just made an obscene, biological, or scatological pun) and I declare a the day a personal holiday.
It is always painfully obvious when a Sci Fi movie is created by people who don’t really know much about Science Fiction (I’m looking at you, Stephanie Meyer). 
The underlying belief seems to be that if you just put in a space ship and some kind of alien creature the nerd fan boys will love it (alien image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category). Nothing could be further from the truth as Sci Fi fans are among the most opinionated and discriminating fans out there. We aren’t reality TV watching Neanderthals who happen to enjoy Star Trek. Most of us not only watch Sci Fi movies and TV shows, but read a lot of Sci Fi fiction novels, comic books, and graphic novels. This exposes us to a breadth of stories that go beyond the usual Hollywood mundane-o-trope, thus requiring something decent to intrigue us. True, cool special effects are entrancing but without some decent framework to hang them on we might as well be watching fan generated CGI action clips.
The biggest problem with this film is it is just dead boring. Do you know what is exciting in a film? If so write a letter to Will Smith and M. Night Shyamalan and tell them what it is, because they both apparently don’t have a clue. They seem to think having Will Smith yell at his son over a radio while the kid wanders around a forest surviving the exciting dangers of cold temperatures and local wildlife is exciting. Sure that worked out in the Grey but that movie had a number of cool supporting characters all dying one at a time in painful and creative ways. It also had Liam Neeson as the main protagonist, not a teenage squeaky voiced kid supported by Will Smith pretending to be the Terminator. The lack of a true antagonist made the plot seem more like watching a dull episode of Survivor Man, and the dysfunctional relationship between the father and son was as sleepy as an episode of Jerry Springer where the entire ensemble dosed Ambien. The kid just doesn’t have the acting chops to carry a film like this solo in my opinion. I should feel guilty for disparaging Jaden Smith’s acting ability, but that kid is 15 years old and richer than I will ever be (at age 15 I was still dumpster diving for aluminum cans for pocket money. He doesn’t need my good opinion to find happyness (haw!)).
A big personal problem I have with this movie is it is another Science Fiction film that treats science like a wad of toilet paper after a particularly messy bout of explosive diarrhea (there’s the scatological joke. All I need now is an obscene one to complete my trifecta). This might get a little boring for those of you without an inclination towards science details, so if you don’t like science skip ahead a couple paragraphs (and savor the irony next time you power up your iPhone).
First of all, asteroids travel through space in very predictable patterns. Furthermore, the are eminently detectable through basic means such as radar. There is no such a thing as an “asteroid storm” that can be triggered by whatever propulsion system you are using (gravametric something, I guess). Also, I’m sure 2,000 kilometers sounds like a huge distance to someone with no idea what they are doing in space, but that is pretty much right on top of something and if you were traveling that close to any large concentration of asteroids (storm or otherwise) I’d say fire your navigator. Also, meteors are relatively common in space. Odds are your high tech ship should have some kind of defense against them.
The writers also seem to think that traveling to Earth from another inhabitable planet is like driving to the 7-11. When we get to Earth it seems that all signs of human civilization can be overgrown by nature’s beauty and all the creatures can evolve into slightly different human killers in about 1,000 years. Sorry that’s not how it works. The planet is a pristine wilderness with no sign of human habitation at all. Also, why abandon it at all if the only issue is some killer baboons? There was something about needing fluid in you lungs in order to breath (???) but that all seems workable. Also somehow over 1,000 years the Earths climate had changed so that it is a beautiful temporate world during the day but cools down to far below zero at night (complete with snow and frost. I guess 1,000 years is plenty of time for the flora and fauna to adapt to that) but there are thermal vents and hot lava all over the place to help Kitai not freeze (where was this taking place, Hawaii?)
Final thing before I get into the story is if you have ever wanted to know what Dianetics is about but like me swore to never again read another L. Ron Hubbard book after grinding through Battlefield Earth (five of the worst books I have ever read) then this film has you covered. There is a lot of talk about fear and how it is only a creation of the imagination. I don’t know if Will Smith is a Scientologist but I think he might gain some fans from that church.
Sigh. The movie. It starts off with an annoying monolog by Jaden Smith (The Karate Kid, the Day the Earth Stood Still, the Pursuit of Happyness) about how Earth was destroyed by humanity (how, exactly?) forcing us all to abandon the planet (all 5+ billion? No one at all opted to try to make it on Earth?) and the creation of the Rangers in order to find homes for everyone. Once out in the universe humans are attacked by aliens called Ursa’s who look a little like a giant human centipede made out of Gollums and who can smell the pheromones created by fear. The Rangers discover that if they can completely control fear the are literally invisible to the aliens (does that sound a little weird to anyone else? The aliens literally cannot see a human that is not experiencing fear. How then does it not constantly runing into rocks and the like? Is it smelling the fear of the tree it just didn’t smash into? It is implied that their fear sense is genetically created in order to hunt down humans, but if that is the case why fear? What happens if a human is asleep? Do they just walk by? Instead of fear pheromones why not tune your sense of smell to detect…humans?).
Anyway, Jadens character Kitai Raige is in the Ranger academy and just got rejected for advancement for…some reason? The writers of this film obviously feel that plot details are for amateurs. His father Cypher Raige (Will Smith-I, Robot, Men in Black, Wild Wild West) is a general in the Rangers (and also somehow the most awesome human in the history of the universe. His name alone should tell you that) and the guy who invented the no fear thing (called Ghosting). His relationship with his son could be described as frosty, if the relationship between two robots on a car assembly line could be called warm. His wife Faia (Sophie Okonedo-Ace Ventura: When Nature Call, Aeon Flux, Hotel Rwanda) wants them to bond better and suggests taking Kitai on a trip with him to…somewhere? Some other planet I guess. They climb aboard a giant metal stingray and fly off.
There is an Ursa in a Dr. Suess pod in the hold. The ship’s propulsion system triggers an asteroid storm (just typing that makes me want to scrape my fingernails off) and the ship has to FTL somewhere quick. Naturally instead of heading to it’s point of origin it chooses Earth, a Class One Quarantine World where it has the most boring crash landing ever (seriously, you couldn’t even give us a cool crash? That’s another thing The Grey had that this one lacks. Having your protagonist wake up after a crash is dead boring). Somehow Cypher managed to survive being sucked out a hull breach with only two broken legs. Kitai survives fine, while the entire rest of the crew dies horribly.
Naturally the distress beacon was on the tail of the ship, 100km away along with the Ursa. Kitai is sent off with some breathing liquid and a spear (you know, it’s too bad that with all their advanced technology this futuristic society couldn’t come up with some kind of hand held device that projected small metal bits at high velocity. I’m no scientist but I bet something like that could potentially be very damaging to biological creatures. Thank God Kitai had all the best technology of the Roman Empire at his disposal) to recover it. At that point the boredom, which had been trucking along at about a 4.7, ramps up to 11. You know he’s not going to die, so realistically all you are seeing is some kid tramp through a national park. Sure, he gets attacked by some baboons, and picked up by a giant vulture as baby vulture food but helps it out against some kind of giant ocelots (by the way, the vulture later saves his life by building a nest around him and lying on it to keep him warm. Can someone explain how that makes sense?). Turns out Kitai is haunted by the death of his sister. Eventually he makes it to the tail section and has to discover the secret of Ghosting in order to fight the Ursa.
The stars.
I don’t know. I am a fan of Will Smith but there was nothing of the Will Smith I like in this film. No humor or cleverness at all, and nothing to illustrate his acting range. He spent most of the movie looking and acting like an angry wax bust of himself. The special effects weren’t that awesome. The alien looked like someone threw clay at a wall and painted it grey. Nothing you haven’t seen in 100 other alien films. All the other creatures like slight variations of existing Earth creatures. Kind of lazy IMO. I think the only thing I really like was the spear Kitai carried around could morph into all sorts of different weapons. That was kind of cool. One star. The ship was kind of cool looking if you like fish. One star. I suppose I can throw in another one just for the fact that they tried to make a Sci Fi movie and it has been a kind of slow lately in that genre. One star. Total: three stars.
The black holes.
OMG boring. Two black holes. Jaden Smith started the movie with some kind of ill defined accent that faded in and out and ground on my nerves. One black hole. Treating science the way a dingo treats a baby. Two black holes. Dialog from Hell. One black hole. Putting all the character pressure on a kid who doesn’t seem to be able to carry the acting. Also his character was wimpy and hard to identify with. At no point did I remotely care if he lived or died. One black hole. A lot of the film was taken up with preachy monologs, or flashbacks of no purpose. One black hole. Starting the film with an annoying monolog and then never using it again (monologs to establish plot points is a lazy scriptwriters tool). One black hole. As predictable as saying a red stop light will eventually turn green. One black hole. I find the whole “Sci Fi as interpreted by non-Sci Fi people” thing more than a little insulting. One black hole. Total: eleven black holes.
A grand total of eight black holes. It galls me to rip into a Sci Fi movie like this as I want to see more of them being made but we need to keep our standards up. The whole piece appears to be an ego project for Will Smith to showcase himself and his son as super awesome and as such is a waste of time for most of us. How much time do you really want to spend watching video of your coworkers 8 year old kid in a 3rd grade production of Food and Nutrition, the Musical? That’s pretty much what this feels like. I was more than a little shocked to learn this film only ran 100 minutes. Seemed like a lot more than that. Worth seeing at all? Maybe if you have a fantasy about seeing Will Smith with a flattop and/or are a Scientologist. Date movie? Only if being painfully bored turns her on somehow. Bathroom break? From five minutes after the crash until Kitai finds the tail section and the Ursa it is one long bathroom break.
Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter if you could @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this film or my review can be posted below. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Peeples Movie Review
Feeble.
Whenever there is a huge whale of a movie debut like Ironman 3 it tends to scare all the smaller fish out of the proverbial pond, leaving all us hardworking reviewers with next to nothing to feed on except the occasional minnow like Peeples (or, as it should have been called, Meet the Parents with Black People). Odds are on a regular week this one would have slipped my notice entirely but as it is one of the few things I can jump on I guess I am stuck with it (if you think this is stretching wait until you see what I have lined up for tomorrow).
So this movie was kind of lame. I am actually a big fan of Craig Robinson from the Office and hoped this was going to work. 
However this Little Engine that Could was fueled entirely by mangled cliche’s and a weird new uncanny valley of situations ridiculous enough to be annoying but not ridiculous enough to actually be funny (Little Train image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirts category). I don’t want to jump down too hard on this film mainly because it appears to be the directors first debut and I hate squishing potential. After all, when I first started excreting waste I did it willy nilly and needed to wear a diaper all the time and in the last couple years have almost completely shifted to using a toilet. Life is an evolutionary process and we are all better today than we were yesterday.
Potential aside, the director has written a couple of movies that don’t exactly imply a future Scorsese (one about a roller rink, one about drums) but you never know.
I won’t say this movie was entirely without merit. Like I said I enjoy Craig Robinson and he had his funny moments in this film, as did David Alan Grier and Malcolm Barrett. The entire cast did a decent job with the acting. Dialog wasn’t horrible. The chemistry between Craig and David was actually quite fun up until the last 10 minutes. The problem is the good elements fail to outweigh the bad.
This is one of those special films that had I been wearing a foam dome full of Nøgne Ø Dark Horizon (Norways finest 16% beer) I probably would have been laughing my ass off and enjoyed it a lot. Once you disconnect the higher brain functions your stem is fully capable of forgetting how every joke you are seeing has been done elsewhere ad infinitum. Once again I am cursed with a brain (or so I think. If I am way stupider than I believe myself to be let me thank all of you for not bursting my fantasy bubble).
The story. It can easily be summed up with two questions:
1. Have you seen Meet the Parents?
2. Can you mentally substitute black actors for all the white ones is that movie?
If you can answer yes to both feel free to skip ahead four paragraphs to the stars and black holes. For those of you who cannot it tells the story of Wade Walker (Craig Robinson-the Office, Hot Tub Time Machine, Pineapple Express) and his super hot girlfriend Grace Peeples (Kerry Washington-Django Unchained, Last King of Scotland, Ray) (by the way, we can thank Kevin James for the whole super hot girl/fat loser guy Hollywood relationship dynamic. I still want to transfer to the dimension where that is a reality). She is a successful lawyer and he sings urine songs at children’s parties. She is headed back to her home of Sag Harbor for the annual Moby Dick Day (Sag Harber is apparently the town mentioned several times in the book Moby Dick. As this movie progresses you can expect the dick jokes to reappear when you least expect it like an embarrassing rash. Also, did you know that Herman Melville’s grandfather took part in the Boston Tea Party? History is cool) with her family, whom Wade has yet to meet in spite of the fact that he has been seeing her for over a year and lives with her. Apparently he is so codependant that he can’t handle a weekend without his significant other and after whining about it with his younger brother Chris (Malcolm Barett-the Hurt Locker, Better Off Ted, My Best Friend’s Girl) he decides to do the old drop by.
By the way, if you thought Wade’s urine singing sounded like a lame career, Chris’s job apparently is to pretend to be a doctor and fix broken dolls at a doll hospital. I have a hard time seeing a positive ROI for whoever opened that business in NYC. It was at that moment that I finally nailed down exactly what kind of humor I was going to be subjected to for the next 85 minutes or so. Odds are I could have bunked out at that moment and still written this review with little loss to you, my beloved reader. Damn my integrity.
Anyway, Wade gets up to Sag Harbor. He arrives at the Peeples house only to be sexually assaulted by the family dog (and have his wallet stolen. I guess it was a dog rape/robbery. Not sure who actually finds that funny). He meets Grace’s parents and in particular meets her father Virgil (David Alan Grier-In Living Color, the Woodsman, Stuart Little). He is a federal judge and takes an immediate dislike to Wade. Wade is more welcomed by the rest of her family of cliche’s: her alcoholic drug addicted mother Daphne (S. Epatha Merkerson-Terminator 2 (I thought she looked familiar), Lackawanna Blues, Black Snake Moan), her secretly lesbian sister Gloria (Kali Hawk-Bridesmaids, Get Him To the Greek, Couples Retreat), the sisters “friend” Meg (Kimrie Lewis-Davis-State of Play, the American Dream, Berman & Berman), and her kleptomaniac brother Simon (Tyler James William-Everybody Hates Chris, Let it Shine, Sesame Street).
At that point just go with whatever lame misunderstanding could arise from those circumstances you imagine and odds are it happened. Wade lost his wallet so the father thinks he is a bum. Simon steals something and Wade gets blamed. Gloria gets him accidentally stoned on muchrooms and the father thinks he is a stoner. Everything gets misinterpreted by everyone to make Wade look like a loser (or as much as a loser as a guy who sings pee songs for children can).
The stars:
Like I said, I enjoyed the chemistry between Wade and Virgil. One star. Most of the acting was decent for what the actors were given. One star. The two sisters were both heart breakers (damn that PG-13 rating). One star. Total: three stars.
The black holes:
If cliche’s were an alternative fuel source this movie could have just solved the oil crisis. One black hole. While things were amusing, there was nothing really laugh out loud funny. Most of the humor were that kind of funny you get from political jokes. Intellectually humorous without actually being stimulating. One black hole. Pacing was slow. This film felt a lot longer than 95 minutes. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
A straight zero. Typically this means a move you can leave or take, and I think that an apt description. This film is not really worth the cost of a movie ticket but if you are bored at home one evening and have a ready supply of alcohol you should be able to enjoy it. Date movie? Sure, why not. There is some romance and the last few minutes should leave your date believing that love can overcome any obstacle so go for it. No studly dudes to make you look like a putz. Bathroom break? The list is extensive. I’d say the scene on the beach is probably the least valuable. Anything of interest that happens there turns into a running gag that gets beaten into the ground about 8,000 times.
Meh. Not much of a review. The bland movies are always the most boring to write up. Keep an eye out for something interesting tomorrow. I am going to give into the indy film tank and see if I can either catch a lobster or come out covered in leeches. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or my review feel free to post them here. Off topic questions or suggestions can be sent to [email protected]. Have a great day.
Dave
Side Effects Review
One side effect was me being surprised how good it was.
Yes I’m back from one of the busiest and tiring weeks of my life. I started off Wednesday of last week driving to Burbank for the Grand Slam Star Trek show (it was decent and I met a lot of really cool fans, but at the end of the show when I added up everything I just didn’t make a ton of money and it was a huge headache. I’m putting a big question mark on going back next year). I got back Monday morning and then flew out Tuesday for a trade show in Vegas where I looked at a bunch of new T-shirts and had to keep seeing one of the two men on my permanent hate lists (I tend to be very forgiving and it takes a lot to make my permanent list. There are only two; one guy who cheats regularly at Warhammer (DIAF jackass) and one who cheated me out of an astronomical sum of money. The money guy was the one I had to keep seeing).
By the way before people start telling me how much fun I should be having spending a couple days in Las Vegas let me tell you that I am not really a Vegas guy. I don’t drink, I am too smart to gamble (and since I don’t drink I don’t enjoy free drinks while losing money), and I am too moral (and cheap) to hire the services of sex professionals. With all those off the table ask yourself what else is there to do in Vegas? I live in the Bay Area so generally food is better (and less expensive. When did food in Vegas get to be super spendy?) at home, I find most live theater boring, and for the most part the people are either really fake or the absolute dregs of humanity injected into an environment that encourages low brow activity. 
I know, I am dead boring and most of you would know how to have a blast in Vegas (usually doing stuff that seem to end with things that rhyme with “comet” and “luke”. Explain the appeal of drinking yourself into a coma. Dog Beers image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category) but I spent most of my free time watching Seinfeld reruns and wishing the hotel would enter the 21st century and have WiFi for my iPad (Luxor, suck it up and get with the times you 4 sided die. The Motel 6 I stayed at in Kettleman City two weeks ago had WiFi).
So, bored as hell I opted to see a movie and wound up in Side Effects (in a really crap theater. Vegas seems to hate anything that isn’t gambling. This theater looked, smelt, and felt like they should be showing classic X rated films to a bunch of guys in raincoats). Having seen Contagion I expected it to be the same sensationalist dry pap that writer Scott Burns seems to enjoy but was really pleasantly surprised. Instead of a pseudo documentary about the evils of psychotropic drugs, their side effects, and the pharmaceutical industries secret plan to keep the population safely medicated it was something else entirely. This film has some awesome twists so I am not going to go too deep into the story but trust me when I say it’s not what it appears on the surface.
Incidentally I am going to give the Side Effects marketing team a D- for selling this film. The trailers made it look exactly like the Contagion-esque documentary I wanted to avoid and thus really disinclined me to seeing it. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I would have had to wait 40 more minutes to see the new Die Hard I never would have watched it. Fail deluxe.
Like I said I really don’t want to throw out any spoilers so I am going to give this story the most tertiary treatment possible. Emily Talor (Mara Rooney-the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Social Network, Nightmare on Elm Street) plays the wife of insider trading prisoner Martin (Channing Tatum-21 Jump Street, the Vow, Magic Mike). He gets out of prison and finds his wife to be suffering from extreme depression. They go to a psychiatrist (Jude Law-Cold Mountain, Sherlock Holmes, Enemy at the Gates) who puts her on a series of psychotropic drugs.
Honestly I don’t want to get into it any more than that. The drugs have some unexpected side effects (oh, I see what they did there. Clever). Emily’s former psychiatrist (Catherine Zeta-Jones-Rock of Ages, Playing for Keeps, Entrapment. By the way, she was looking amazing in this film) surfaces to give some history. The plot goes in directions I didn’t expect in all the best ways.
The stars. Given the fact that most films seem to think audiences don’t want anything less predictable than riding on a merry-go-round for two hours I loved this film for the fact that the story honestly surprised me. Two stars. Excellent acting all around. Normally I have a jealousy driven hatred of Hollywood pretty boys like Channing Tatum (anyone know what kind of name Channing is? Is it possible his parents thought he would be some kind of amazing psychic medium but forgot an L on his birth certificate?) and Jude Law but in this film I thought they were both very appropriate and great. One star. Great dialog. One star. Mara Roomey and Catherine Zeta-Jones make up for some very pleasant scenes to look at. One star. At first the pacing felt slow but as the movie progressed I realized it was 100% correct for the story and by the end really appreciated it. One star. The story made sense and progressed in a logical, plot hole free manner. One star. Surprisingly fun and easy to enjoy. One star. Total: seven stars.
The black holes. Not much, really. Given the experience of watching Mara in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I was expecting a lot more nudity but there was actually very little. I don’t know why they bothered with an R rating. The movie felt like PG-13. One black hole for unrealized potential I guess.
A grand total of six stars and a recommendation that you see it if you enjoy movies that engage more of your brain than the stem. Worth your time. Nothing on here demands that you see it on a big screen so you could easily NetFlix it but if you want to encourage quality film making drop a few bucks and see it in the theater. Date movie? Sort of. Nothing here to really get her motor started but she should enjoy it a great deal. On the other hand Channing Tatum does take off his shirt and Jude Law spends the whole movie talking with his dumb sexy British accent so if you feel you might suffer badly in comparison try to find a Kevin James marathon somewhere. Bathroom break? I am going to recommend you hold it for this one. The story has a very cool construction feel to it and if you miss the wrong scene you could end up not getting everything. If you really have to go I’d say your best bet is any scene involving Jude’s step son.
Thanks for reading. I have a lot of catching up to do, and have an idea for something new coming up using my completely defunct art degree. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu for updates on new posts and other thoughts. If you have a comment on this review or the movie itself please feel free to post it at the bottom of this article (if you don’t see a comment section click here). Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to me [email protected]. Thanks again and have a great day.
Dave
Bullet to the Head Review
And one for Jenny and the wimp.
Bonus points for anyone who knows where I got this one (search frantically). Anyway, this is going to be a bad month for aging action stars as the films by Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Pacino have all tanked horribly. As a fan of all three of these guys I am worried that Hollywood will pretty much pass on them in favor of younger, more androgynous action stars. While it is true that the old should make way for the new the problem is the new crop of action stars (with the possible exception of Jason Statham, but really he is in a weird category all by himself) are to a man so blasé and formulaic it’s like they are being cloned from the blandest handsome man ever and are truly forgettable.
I’m not kidding about this. When you are asked to name an action star the names that leap into mind are Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Eastwood, Willis, Cruise, and Gibson. 10 years from now are you really going to think of Gosling, Cooper, Worthington, or Lebeouf? There’s nothing distinctive about these guys (well, if being a whiny bitch is distinctive than Lebeouf has found his niche). This is actually the downside of actors trying to avoid getting typecast. If your talent is in action then it is OK to be an action star.
Anyway, Bullet to the Head. An enjoyable B movie. My issue is I really wanted it to be more. It is directed by Walter Hill who’s filmography reads like parts of my all time favorite movie list. 
Aliens, the Warriors, Deadwood (the HBO show. See it if you haven’t), Red Heat, Last Man Standing, and Demon Knight. Of course he also did Alien 3, Alien vrs. Predator, and Prometheus (many people love that movie but I have certain reservations. Caution Alien image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category), so he does not have the Midas touch. However, with all that film history I was hoping to see a true diamond in the rough. Some effort was made to create a Crescent City crime noir film (complete with private eye-style voice over monolog) but in the end the story is both extremely simple and lacking in a lot of motivation.
I will say that Stallone is still looking rock hard in this, as he did in Expendables 2. He’s definitely aged, but it has turned into that really cool “carved from a hunk of driftwood” Eastwood look that is even more bad ass. In the contest to see who’s aging best I think he’s got it over Arnold.
The story. Sylvester Stallone plays James Bonomo, hit man with a modest sense of honor (no women or kids. Why is it a lot of actors are willing to play the sociopath only to a certain level? More on that when I review Stand Up Guys). He and his partner (Jon Seda-12 Monkeys, Primal Fear, Bad Boys II) take out some guy. While waiting at a crowded bar to get paid mercenary Keegan (Jason Momoa-Stargate: Atlantis, Conan the Barbarian, Game of Thrones) kills his partner and tries to kill Bonomo. Afterwards he feels more or less indifferent about his ex partner but decides to avenge him because the guy never caused him any problem(?).
Before I go on I’d like to say that the low level of motivation is endemic to this movie. At no time are we given a reason why the head bad guy wants to kill Bonono rather than just pay him, what his reason is for hiring mercenaries and contract killers for some kind of real estate scheme when lawyers and lobbyist probably would have done it, why Keegan is even willing to work for him, or why the cop that teams up with Bonono even gives half a damn about the death of some known scumbag in a city 966 miles and several states away from his jurisdiction (this was the one point that really ground on me. Don’t the DC police have murders to deal with that they can actually prosecute? I doubt they have the budget to buy a cop a bus ticket to go to New Orleans). This lack of motivation really tends to disconnect the audience from the story.
Anyway, Washington DC cop Taylor Kwan (Sung Kang-Fast Five, Live Free or Die Hard, Ninja Assassin (never saw this movie, but for the record Sang is Korean not Japanese)) comes to New Orleans to investigate the first guy killed (there’s some back story about the guy being an ex WDCPD cop, but really there are a lot of ex cops out there). In the morgue he sees Bonono’s partner and uses his intuition to connect the two. He and Bonono meet up and after Bonono rescues him and has his hot tattoo artist daughter ((Sarah Shahi-Life (good show IMO), Old School, Fairly Legal) patch a bullet wound they team up to find the main guy .
At that point the story kind of just grinds itself out. They use a mix of cop techniques (i.e. calling the police department and having them track down guys) and criminal techniques (beating the hell out of guys for information) to track down the main bad guys. Kwan makes the decision that letting Stallone run around killing guys is an acceptable compromise in order to capturing this mysterious bigger bad guy neither of them have ever seen or heard of (another story disconnect for me. Don’t police swear some kind of oath to uphold the law and protect people, even criminals (and especially criminals tied to a chair?)). The crawl up the chain and get to the guy below the main guy Marcus Baptiste (Christain Slater. Good to see him working again. I’ve always like him. True Romance, 3000 Miles to Graceland, Pump Up the Volume) and through him get to the big bad guy Morel (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje-G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra, Lost, the Bourne Identity).
Anyway, stuff blows up. The hot daughter is kidnapped. Keegan does a bunch of stuff that makes little to no sense. He and Bonono have an axe duel. The end.
The stars. Stallone movie. One star. While the acting wasn’t much to write home about, this role suited Stallone’s personal style extremely well. His character was pretty cool. One star. The action was fun even if it smacked of over the top at times. One star. Normally I would black hole a movie for having the main character do a voice over monolog, but in this one it kind of worked (especially if you think of it as a noir homage). One black hole. I actually liked Kang as a supporting star, and it’s refreshing to see more Asians get roles normally reserved for Caucasian or African Americans. One star. I fell in love with Sarah Shahi when I watched Life and she is even hotter in this one. One star. In spite of the story limitations and all the other issues associated with a B movie this one was fun to watch. One star. Total: seven stars.
The black holes. The lack of character motivation was a continuous annoyance. It was like having a five year old kid kicking the back of the seat the whole time. Even now I can’t figure out what the hell everyone was trying to do. One black hole. The lack of motivation contributed to the story being extremely simple and non-challenging. One black hole. The whole thing with a cop letting a murderer (who has committed murders right in front of the cop) run around to kill more people was also very distracting. One black hole. The R rating felt really unnecessary. There was nudity but it was almost all side boob, and the action wasn’t particularity bloody or even that violent. If it weren’t for a gross autopsy scene I’d say this film could have easily toned down the language and gotten a PG-13 rating, and rated R for language is like eating ice cubes when you are really hungry. One black hole. Total: three stars.
Not great, but not unworthy of being watched. I’d say entertaining but not a whole lot more. See it in a theater if you feel a hankering for popcorn or on NetFlix if you want to drink beer (this film will rock with a couple of beers in you). Date movie? Probably not. Definitely a guys film. Bathroom break? There is a scene towards the end where Kang uses the daughters computer to look at a flash drive. It’s already been established that the evidence on the flash drive will destroy Morel so it’s beating a dead horse, and since they end up doing nothing with it anyway it’s a worthless scene. Short scene so go quickly.
Thanks for reading. I will be reviewing Stand Up Guys later today or tomorrow morning and want to see Side Effects or Identity Thief so check back soon. I’m leaving Wednesday for the Grand Slam, a decent Star Trek show in Burbank. If you are going stop by and say hi. Just ask for Dave the t-shirt guy. If things are slow I will be very happy to discuss movies with you (plus the girl working my booth is drop dead gorgeous. No joke). Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this movie or my review feel free to post them at the bottom of this post (or click here if you don’t see a comment section). Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
