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White House Down – 0 stars

June 9, 2014
0 stars, 2013, Action/Disaster
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MOVIE REVIEW: 'White House Down' is like deja vu all over again

Dreadful. The script is so bad that after yet another disaffected, psychotic right winger (Secret Service chief James Woods) tells liberal prez, cool kat Jamie Foxx that the pen is not mightier than the sword, Prez Foxx jabs a pen in his neck (a total rip-off of a Bob Dole move), and then, just to make sure we got it, actually says, “I choose the pen.” Foxx plays the role like he has a plane to catch, and Channing Tatum, as the Secret Service presidential detail wannabe who saves the day, appears to be stifling laughter on more than one occasion. The CGI is atrocious (attack helicopters maneuver around the offices of downtown DC like Mini Coopers in The Italian Job and grenade explosions that do not knock over lecterns and desks in the rooms where they occur produce fireballs visible 10 blocks away). Finally, the double-double at the end is as implausibly stupid in construction as in resolution – both villains are the only two powerful men in Washington who still use pagers. Busted!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – 0 stars

March 18, 2014
0 stars, 2012, Action/Disaster
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Cards on the table, I never read Tolkien, and I associate people who did (and do) with weirdos from high school who played Dungeons and Dragons and/or attend Renaissance festivals. I realize this is a blinkered view, but there you have it. I also watched the first two Lord of the Rings movies in the theater, fell asleep in both, woke up, and then fell asleep again (only two other films have elicited such a reaction – Gandhi and Passage to India – which suggests a weariness brought on by geography rather than production). I turned off the third Lord of the Rings DVD when the good guys enlisted very large trees and un-killable ghosts as their allies.

Since that time, my son has grown up, and he urged me to watch The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. My initial try was on a flight to LA, but after a decent setting of the scene (the dwarf king gets gold fever and a big dragon with a bigger gold fever fucks his kingdom up), the film quickly became wearying, as dispossessed dwarves arrive at the home of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), eat all his food, sing a sad song and head off on what promised to be a very long, tiresome adventure. I tried again with my son on Sunday, and we got perhaps an hour into the film when Bilbo and the dwarves run into three giants (they look like the troll in Harry Potter, but they talk about what they are going to cook and eat in silly voices just south of Jar Jar Binks). A big fight ensues.  Dwarves are tossed about like ragdolls yet never injured, and the trolls are furiously hacked but never bleed. Bilbo is captured and a Mexican standoff ensues – the dwarves have to drop their weapons or Bilbo will be ripped to pieces. The dwarves drop their weapons, and in the next scene, half are being slow-roasted over a spit and the other half are trussed up for later cooking.

That was the deal these idiots made? Spare Bilbo and in return, the giants can slow roast and eat ALL of you?

I had no intention of continuing with this unexpected adventure any further. It didn’t help that my son qualified his recommendation with ”it’s a good movie if you’re in those great lounge chairs at the Courthouse theaters and you have all the Coke and candy you want and you have nothing better to do.” Or that after that very scene, he remarked, “still about 2 hours to go.”

Lee Daniels’ The Butler – 0 stars

February 1, 2014
0 stars, 2013, Drama
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Forrest Whitaker is The Butler at the White House from Eisenhower thru Reagan. He starts service under Eisenhower (Robin Williams, who has now played two presidents in the movies). He then watches a crafty, sneaky Nixon (John Cusack) swear and sweat as Vice President and then degenerate into a  drunken heap as President. Kennedy (James Marsden) lays on the ground because his back hurts, and The Butler helps him up (too much sex, I suppose, because Kennedy had a lot of sex). LBJ (Liev Schreiber) takes a dump with the door open and harangues staff while The Butler waits attentively. Reagan (Alan Rickman) is doddering and says things like, “don’t tell Nancy.”  He also threatens to veto sanctions against South Africa, and guess who is lurking, tea pot in hand?

Indeed, The Butler manages to serve tea at the exact moment of a discussion of civil rights in the Oval Office. It is uncanny.

Almost magical.

Poor Jimmy Carter can’t catch a break. He’s not even worthy of a Bruce Boxleitner or Tom Wopat.

There is not a single iconic event in the civil rights era that does not envelop one of The Butler’s sons. He comes home a Black Panther and has the audacity to denigrate Sidney Poitier. Crazy talk.

Meanwhile, the other son dies in, choose one–

A) Vietnam

B) Vietnam

C) Vietnam

D) Vietnam

“Vietnam took my boy, and I don’t understand why we was there in the first place.”

This film really is Forrest Gump and I suppose that is what lies at the root of the whole Oscar snub nonsense. If that film deserved Oscars, so too this moronic fantasy.  It’s a solid argument.

Controversy aside, the movie sucks. Backstairs at the White House was a thousand times better.

 

Room 237 – 0 stars

September 30, 2013
0 stars, 2013, Documentary
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When I saw there was a critically acclaimed documentary about The Shining, I purposefully read nothing about it so I could come to it fresh. Well, that was a mistake, because Room 237 has very little to do with the making of Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece. Instead, it fleshes out the interpretations of the film by a bunch of lunatics. To them, The Shining is about the genocide of the American Indian, or the actual Holocaust, or it contains hundreds of subliminal sexual images, haunted demons sexually attracted to humans, feeding off of them. Or it is about impossible interior design, or the real history of the state of Colorado, or when Barry Nelson meets Jack Nicholson, the file folder at his crotch level is really a boner.

I’m sure there are other interpretations, but I turned this stupid documentary off before getting to all of them. An utter disappointment, a colossal waste of time and shit sound to boot.

You’re Next – 0 stars

August 31, 2013
0 stars, 2013, Scary
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You're Next's innovative use of a household blender
Taken on it’s own terms, You’re Next is probably a 2 star film.  The story of a family of ten, terrorized and murdered one-by-one at a secluded reunion, is effective and frightening. The mystery, however, is easily deduced, and the killings themselves, which take up most of the film, are (with the exception of an inspired murder by blender) a pedestrian lot of slayings, stabbings and bludgeoning.

The film’s terms, however, are my objection. I was drawn to it by my son, who pointed out reviews noting pitch black humor, a play on the genre, a fresh twist,  etc . . . I was hoping for Scream or Evil Dead 2, but this is just an abattoir with an occasional wry exchange.

Gangster Squad – 0 stars

August 20, 2013
0 stars, 2013, Crime/Mystery, Historical
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Dreadful in every respect. Ostensibly about an impeccably tailored group of LA police vigilantes formed to take down gangster Mickey Cohen in 1949, Gangster Squad sports a script so hackneyed it seems like a goof. The picture is a mash of The Untouchables and LA Confidential, if those films were re-written by a 13 year old boy whose sole inspiration was Rambo II.

Some gems:

“To the sarge. You’re a bull in a china shop but we’d follow you anywhere.”

***

“I’ve been with a lot of outfits but none better than you group of misfits”

“To the Gangster Squad!”

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“I signed up for this so I could tell my boy I tried to do something about it”

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“Can you remind me of the difference between us and them? Because at this point I can’t tell anymore.”

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“If I leave, Keeler dies for nothing.”

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“Tomorrow they’ll take my badge. Tonight I’m still a cop.”

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“Let’s finish it.”

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“We gotta’ take out that gun!”

“Watch this, hoss.” (six shooter beats machine gun)

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“Wanna’ dance?” (Man with gun drops it so a fistfight can occur)

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“Every man carries a badge. Mickey Cohen pledged allegiance to his own power.”

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“Jerry threatened to leave the force but he never did. I guess he couldn’t shake the call of duty that echoed in his ears.”

You simply cannot believe what you are hearing.

The squad is led by the wooden and true Josh Brolin and is rounded out by a playboy (Ryan Gosling), a cowboy (Robert Patrick), a black guy (Anthony Mackie, who uses a knife just like James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven), a Hispanic (Michael Pena, who is Patrick’s Tonto, and maybe even his son, depending on your reading of a death scene), and a geek (Giovanni Ribisi).

Not quite Costner’s gang in The Untouchables, but damn close.

All the character are awful, but Gosling is by far the worst, utilizing a Brooklyn accent on helium. The result is a really dreamy Elmer Fudd.

And Sean Penn as Cohen?

Image result for Sean Penn Mickey Cohemn

See Sean Penn in Casualties of War.

The picture also gives us Emma Stone as the Kim Basingeresque world weary ingenue?

Taylor Swift must have been unavailable.

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Ryan Gosling. “Don’t go.”

Emma Stone. “Don’t let me.”

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The plot thuds along.  Our avengers mess with Cohen, but their efforts must be expedited because Cohen is setting up a wire service which will give him control of all betting west of Chicago . . . in a week! If it becomes operational, he will be too big to take down.

But our heroes can’t find the location of this new wire service.

Perhaps they shouldn’t have blown up his trucks carrying the wire service equipment instead of following them.

No matter. Because Cohen places the wire service HQ, the jewel in his criminal crown, in the back of the nightclub that doubles as the hottest spot in LA.

The film was not well received but it is troubling that it was not roundly demolished, it is so crappy.

For example, in one scene, a thug’s overcoat (in balmy LA, mind you) catches on fire when he is backed into flames. He removes the burning coat, kills a man, and yet, in the next shot, voila!  The overcoat has returned to his body, unsinged!

The film also shows Mickey Cohen watching footage of one of his boxing matches, an Cohen explains how he held on to the championship.

The real Cohen, however, never had a championship fight (he lost to World Featherweight Champion Tommy Paul two minutes into the first round), which I suppose is nitpicking.  Yet, despite being a “championship” boxer, Cohen loses a fistfight to Brolin to close the movie, which is not nitpicking.

The following critics gave the film positive reviews: Ricardo Baca (Denver Post), Richard Roeper, Rafer Guzman (Newsday), Rex Reed (The New York Observer), John Hanlon (Big Hollywood) and Peter Debruge (Variety).

Follow the money, I say. Follow the money.

2 Guns – 0 stars

August 14, 2013
0 stars, 2013, Action/Disaster, Crime/Mystery
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Watch 2 Guns | Netflix

Bad in an instructional way, serving as an exemplar of most everything wrong with American action blockbusters today.

The film attempts to replicate the “bang bang” buddy cop repartee of Lethal Weapon fails utterly. Wahlberg and Washington bust their humps to make it work, but the dialogue is unfunny and disjointed, and the central plot device (they rob a bank that has too much money in it) is an old trope.

The story is not silly enough to be camp or cohesive enough to be plausible.  It seems to laugh at itself but it does expect you to take it somewhat seriously. Serious or campy, the action is minimal and what action there is comes off blocky and mundane.

When the exchanges between Wahlberg and Washington thud to the ground, we get warmed-over Tarantino. Bill Paxton’s turn as a CIA baddie suggests the eclectic but he is really no more than a Roger Moore-era Bond villain.

Last, there is cheap, hip anti-Americanism. DEA, CIA, U.S. Navy, all rotten to the core. Olmos is also given free reign to condescend to the gringos, and when Washington runs into trouble on the Mexican border, it’s in the form of anti-immigrant yahoos flying the Stars and Bars and insulting Muslim Americans.

Unbearably, when Wahlberg and Washington have to cross the Mexican border illegally, they do it with stoic Mexicans to the tune of some shitty, self important pop tune by Danger Mouse. You can feel the characters grow more charitable in outlook, which will help when they waste a couple of dozen bad guys later.

Thank you, Mr. Director from Iceland and Mr. Writer of Law and Order.

The Bridge – 0 stars

July 18, 2013
0 stars, 2013, TV
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Diane Kruger was a model.

then naturally Helen of Troy.

And then she was in some other stuff, including a surprising but undemanding role in Inglorious Basterds, and then she played a convincing Marie Antoinette in Farewell, My Queen.  And on the strength of this body of work, she presumably got the lead in FX’s The Bridge.  Based on the Danish/Swedish series Bron, Kruger plays a seemingly stand-offish El Paso detective, part emotionless, part awkward introvert, and she’s about to be drawn into the seemy world of Mexican drugs, American corruption, etc . . .

Strike one – the quirky character (Kruger’s detective has Asperger’s).  Isn’t Homeland‘s wacko Carrie Mathison enough?  Who is doing the hiring of our defense against domestic and foreign threats?   When Kruger is detailed to inform a husband that his wife has been found dead and bi-sected, ala’ The Black Dahlia, her extreme unfeeling and offensive behavior underscores the idiocy of the premise.  Next time, let’s send Dustin Hoffman in Rainman guise to pass on such difficult news.   What could go wrong? 

Strike two and three and infinity – if you’re going to give someone this challenging if stupid role, why Kruger? An El Paso detective? She’s a ballet dancer born in Lower Saxony, Germany.  I didn’t stay to find out, but I suppose Armin Mueller-Stahl plays her toothpick chewin’ sheriff boss (actually, it’s Ted Levine).

It’s a hard role for someone who can act, and Diane Kruger cannot really act.

Full disclosure:  I turned it off after 25 minutes, despite some decent notices.

The Bay – 0 stars

May 27, 2013
0 stars, 2012, Scary
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Image result for The Bay

The Bay had a few things in its favor going in.  Director Barry Levinson is no slouch.  The “found media” approach is appealing to me, as is evidenced by my affection for the Paranormal Activity movies. And the premise – a small Maryland town is plagued by a bacteria that cuts through it on a July 4th celebration – had promise.  Two factors, one personal to me and the other a colossally stupid decision on Levinson’s part, resulted in my turning the flick off about a third in.

I’ll take my lumps first.  I can handle slashers (if not gore porn), serial killers, unsettled ghosts, zombies . . . you name it.  But a plague of pustules and vomiting blood and boils? A very, very hard ask.  And then, there were afflicted children.  Damn, this better be good.

It wasn’t. Levinson was more interested in making an eco-horror tract than an actual scary movie.  As such, once his narrator (a witness to the July 4th disaster who is video-blogging) introduces us to the source of the plague (apparently, chicken shit being run off into the Chesapeake Bay), we learn that near everybody but our narrator dies.  At the outset!  She even points out people in the collated footage and says, “he dies” and “he doesn’t survive the day.” So, within 15 minutes, the audience knows the source of the killings and pretty much who dies.

Hell if I’m going to sit through pustules and boils on children under such circumstances.