tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28943824125295557682024-03-14T08:06:47.204-07:00Movie Reviews I Monkeys I Vampires - Stupid Blue PlanetOperating Since October 2012. Updating DailyBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.comBlogger737125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-24171221117888202202018-08-23T15:08:00.003-07:002018-08-23T15:08:55.958-07:00So where have I been...again?So for anyone who cares, a couple months back I made a big deal about coming back to blogging and movie reviews, and then I seemingly dropped back off the mat again. No, I didn't kill myself and set up a time released post with an online suicide note, I just got laid off and kinda depressed. Anyway, in the meantime, I started a new podcast called Head Cannon. You can find it at <a href="http://headcannonpodcast.blogspot.com/">http://headcannonpodcast.blogspot.com</a> and on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/head-cannon/id1415389366?mt=2">Itunes</a>.<br />
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It's a movie review podcast dedicated to weird and obscure cult movies, where I watch and discuss a movie I've never seen, then pitch out a 10 part multimedia franchise inspired by the film, including: Sequels, Prequels, Spin-offs, Crossovers, Gritty Re-boots, TV Adaptations, Videogames, Merchandise, Porn Parodies, and Drinking Games.<br />
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The first 5 regular episodes are up, plus a special request episode. If you would like to email the show and possibly request a movie for me to review and expand upon, you can send it to headcannonpodcast@gmail.com. Also, if you listen to the podcast through itunes and enjoy it, please consider subscribing, rating, reviewing, and so forth.<br />
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That's Headcannon with two n's in the middle and an n at the end, like the military instrument, not the media based thing that would have made sense if another podcast hadn't already taken the name. The extra n is for not clever enough to justify having to explain it.<br />
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The links to the first episodes are below:<br />
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Episode #1: <a href="http://headcannonpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/07/head-cannon-episode-001-wild-beasts.html">Wild Beasts (1982)</a><br />
Episode #2: <a href="http://headcannonpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/07/head-cannon-episode-002-invisible-maniac.html">The Invisible Maniac (1990)</a><br />
Episode #3: <a href="http://headcannonpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/08/head-cannon-episode-003-funny-man.html">Funny Man (1994)</a><br />
Special Request Episode #1: <a href="http://headcannonpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/08/head-cannon-special-request-episode-1.html">Corridors Of Blood (1958)</a><br />
Episode #4: <a href="http://headcannonpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/08/head-cannon-episode-004-tourist-trap.html">Tourist Trap (1979)</a><br />
Episode #5: <a href="http://headcannonpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/08/head-cannon-episode-005-big-shots.html">Big Shots (1987)</a><br />
<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-33666410544666443482018-06-18T11:19:00.000-07:002018-06-18T11:19:18.839-07:00Gremlin (2017) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Last week I found a movie online called The Jurassic Games, and right after I watched it, I instantly declared it my favorite movie of 2018 so far. Obviously, it</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">’s only been a few days since then, so that’s still the case, and I liked it so much that I decided to look up the writer/director Ryan Bellgardt and check out some of his earlier work. Turns out he has two other features credited to him on IMDB, one from 2013 called Army Of Frankensteins, which I actually picked up a few years ago and just never got around to watching, and another from last year called Gremlin. Just by virtue of the insane title and the fact that it’s Bellgardt’s first movie, I probably should have started with Army of Frankensteins, but I thought it would be interesting to watch his evolution as a writer and director in reverse order, so I started with Gremlin instead, and if anything, it only makes me more excited to see what else this guy is capable of. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">On the subject of titles, it</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">’s already pretty ballsy to name your modern horror movie about a diminutive killer monster so closely to one of the most beloved horror/comedies of all time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some people who come across Gremlin might just dismiss it out of hand based solely on the presumption. The movie doesn’t try to ape the 80’s classic or its far superior 90’s sequel in any way, instead opting for a fairly dark and effecting supernatural thriller that’s surprisingly down to Earth apart from its one clearly out there central conceit. It’s about a family already struggling with personal tragedy and festering dysfunction beset by a mysterious paranormal force that threatens to break the family bonds that were already bending, gradually escalating hardship upon hardship in ways they can’t hope to escape from and can only barely understand. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">If that premise sounds eerily familiar to you, its because in the broadest strokes, it deals with a lot of the same themes as the new critically acclaimed horror film Hereditary, which I hated so much that it compelled me to return to online movie reviews after a several year hiatus, just so I could warn people about how bad it is. At the risk of sounding like a troll at this point in the middle of my Gremlin review no less, I was able to indulge in a bit of schadenfreude as I saw the parallels play out in Gremlin and actually be executed so well in contrast to how terribly these same themes were tackled in the so-called scariest film since The Exorcist. As far as I can tell, Gremlin received none of the fanfare or mainstream critical buzz of Ari Aster’s new film, and if I can in some small part remedy that past wrong, I’m happy to do so. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I don’t just bring up Hereditary because of the broad strokes either. There are clear structural similarities that I am sure are entirely coincidental, but nonetheless striking enough to make Gremlin a recommendation purely on the novelty of comparison. The biggest of these would regrettably be a major spoiler for both films, but if I can dance around it a bit, both movies start out as one thing, than dramatically shift into another at the half way point after the families involved suffer very similar tragic events that open the floodgates of supernatural evil to propel the rest of their respective narratives. The difference is that Gremlin’s narrative is actually satisfying because it comes about from an organic series of escalating complications that build upon one another and bring together the individual character arcs and the larger story, instead of just presenting a bunch of interchangeable bits of spooky imagery and random bullshit. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">To be honest, apart from a solid prologue setting up an intriguing mystery, the first half of Gremlin was actually beginning to feel a bit underwhelming. You get your characters set up, each with their own personal dilemmas to seed in potential interpersonal conflict and then once the titular gremlin starts literally popping up, I was starting to wonder if this was going to turn out to just be a generic, if generally well made creature feature. This would have been perfectly fine in its own right, just nothing special, but then that plot turn punches you in the gut at the half-way mark and everything changes. Suddenly those incidental character beats start to matter more to the supernatural mechanic of the movie, with two plot beats in particular involving pregnancy and adultery becoming much more pivitol to the plot than I anticipated they would be. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">At the heart of Gremlin is a curse not unlike the sexually transmitted stalker from It Follows, only instead of a death sentence that requires you to do a thing everybody loves and is probably doing anyway to pass it on, this one forces you to do something few people could ever bring themselves to do. The curse is a box containing a monster that slips out when you’re not looking and kills anything it sees. If you try to throw it away or leave it somewhere, it will always come back, and the only way to be permanently rid of it is to gift it to someone you love, condemning them to make the same choice and hope the person they choose continues the cycle, with the natural risk being that someone along that chain will inevitably hesitate or disbelieve long enough to let the monster loose. Like the It Follows curse, there are a million nitpicky ways you can deconstruct the mechanics of this, but if you’re willing to just accept that this family is human and doesn’t think with the ridged logic of someone watching a movie and analyzing in hindsight, it’s not hard to consider that you might fall into the same trap they do, letting mistakes in judgement compound and spiral out of control until the point of no return. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The realistic way in which the characters react to and struggle with the chaos unfolding around them is what makes Gremlin more interesting than your typical monster movie. A significant section of the film deals with the family debating and then carrying out the concealment of a dead body, because they know that they wouldn’t be able to explain to the police that a magical box gremlin was the culprit. Then later, they have to grapple with the morality of complicity when they’ve been pushed to the breaking point and suddenly realize that they have a candidate for re-gifting that technically counts as a loved one, but one that they’d be willing to sacrifice if it means protecting their core family unit. Gremlin could have easily settled for a repetitive litany of special effects kill scenes, but it takes the time to explore the characters instead so that you care about them beyond how they potentially might die.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">If I had one major issue with the film, its with the ending. Gremlin presents a primary conflict that is by its own stated nature essentially unresolvable, and then attempts to kind of resolve it in a way that isn’t so much disappointing, as much as it feels like the ending to a different movie altogether. I was instantly reminded of the end of 10 Cloverfield Lane, where a grounded psychological thriller suddenly just threw in an alien fight in the third act to justify the Cloverfield imprint. The ending to Gremlin is not nearly as incongruous, but it feels like a twist for the sake of a twist more at home in a pulpier movie, or a feature length episode of the 90’s Outer Limits TV show. I’m typically not a fan of ambiguous endings that leave the conclusion of a movie up to the audience’s interpretation, but I’m almost tempted to make an exception here and say that might have been better, if only because the cyclical pattern of the Gremlin curse would seem to preclude a more concrete endpoint. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">There’s a good chance that you probably hadn’t heard of Gremlin before now, as I’m pretty up on new movies as they come out and it completely passed me by last year. If not for my own experience with the writer/director’s most recent film, I likely never would have had any reason to bother with it, and I’m glad I did. If you’re sick of horror movies that are too reliant on jump scares, meaningless atmospheric visuals, and other tricks to distract you from the lack of a real story, Gremlin is a fine antidote to your lazy horror fatigue that puts in the work and doesn’t put on airs. It’s not the scariest movie since The Exorcist, but its the kind of movie that actually digs deep into the humanity of its characters to derive horror from your empathy, beyond your visceral, sympathetic response of how you would feel if the circumstances of the film were happening to you. I highly recommend Gremlin, and now I get to watch a movie about an Army of Frankenstein’s monsters fighting in the Civil War with what appear to be steampunk cyborgs. So wish me luck I guess?</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-5439181261134834602018-06-17T08:13:00.000-07:002018-06-17T08:13:01.374-07:00Tag (2018) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">2018 is shaping up to be a pretty good year for the kind of broad, mainstream comedies I usually hate. First we had Game Night, which managed to walk a very fine line between bubbly charm and dark, David Fincher inspired grittiness, and then Blockers re-contexualized the all in one night </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">“gotta get laid before an arbitrary milestone” sex comedy through a modern progressive lens. Even the new Melissa McCarthy movie this year Life of the Party, while by no means good, was more in line with the inoffensively bland ones like The Heat or The Boss rather than the offensively terrible ones like Tammy or Identity Thief. And now this week we have Tag, a fun, silly little movie built on character interactions, dialogue, and clever set pieces instead of shock value, pop culture references, and endless improv that goes nowhere. Its the kind of movie that gives me hope for the state of modern comedy, which will almost certainly be dashed whenever I finally get around to seeing that Overboard remake, or Action Point, or I Feel Pretty, or Show Dogs. You know what, forget everything I just said.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Had it not been for the Goldbergs style home movie montage at the end, I would not have known that Tag was based on a true story, because it is a legitimately crazy set up that you would think would only happen in a movie. It’s about a group of adult friends who have been carrying on the same game of tag since they were kids, taking one month out of the year to chase each other around for bragging rights and keep their camaraderie alive across time, distance, and family obligations via the dumbest full contact sport conceivable. When the only one of their group to never be tagged decides to retire after his wedding day, the others agree to a temporary alliance in order to finally catch up to him, only to be continually stymied by his Sherlock Holmes style deductive combat skill and insanely agile CGI arms. Yeah, look that up for yourself, because I barely noticed it in the film so I can’t exactly criticize it, but its still a bonkers testament to the limitless potential of modern day filmmaking. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Any ensemble comedy lives and dies by its cast and its character work, and admittedly it feels like Tag is cheating a bit, assembling a group of actors you’ve seen in other comedies before playing types of characters you’ve seen them play well before, and just sort of mixing them together into a new context. Ed Helms is the same doofy everyman from The Office, Isla Fischer is the manic firecracker from Wedding Crashers, Jon Hamm is smarmy but affable, and Hannibal Buress is ponderous and deadpan. Oh, and Jake Johnson is that guy you kinda remember as the vaguely stonery comic relief character from that movie or TV show you never watched. Is it stacking the deck a little bit to have all these comedians playing to such easily recognizable types? Sure, but they mesh so well together and it works well enough that you’ll probably be willing to forgive it and just go along for the ride. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The standout, and this surprised the hell out of me, is easily Jeremy Renner. It’s not that I dislike Renner as an actor, it’s just that he’s the only member of this troupe without an obvious past comedic performance to draw any sort of expectations from, with the closest thing being his bizarre cameo in The House last year, which was more funny for the stuff that was happening to his character rather than anything he brought to the role. That he can shift so effortlessly from something like Wind River to Tag showcases a range that I wish he’d been given the opportunity to indulge in more before now, and I hope he keeps finding chances to step out of the gritty action drama box he’s been put in so often. He’s still playing the smooth, super competent action hero type, making me think this might just be what Hawkeye does when not shooting arrows at aliens, but in the margins he captures a willingness to let loose that indicates he’s having so much fun in that way that encourages you to have fun along with him. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">That sort of encapsulates the whole movie for me. It doesn’t demand too much of its audience and just keeps trying to find clever and inventive ways to play around with its oddball premise. For example, you get Renner’s Sherlock style tactical narration throughout, but before it can get old, you get the same set up but with the other characters’ much less bad-ass inner monologues. Its so enjoyable to just watch the increasingly elaborate ways Renner’s character evades his pursurors and their feeble attempts to counter his gambits, especially knowing how many of these scenarios were apparently just as over the top in real life. One scene in particular set in the woods outside of a golf course escalates to an inspired level of silliness that feels like the perfect execution of the film’s central conceit. It even lets itself get a little dark now and then without spoiling the mostly upbeat tone, most notably in an assault on an AA meeting that sets up a running gag involving a miscarriage that culminates in easily the funniest line of dialogue in the entire movie. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Tag isn’t perfect by any means. There’s a love triangle subplot that basically goes nowhere, a whole character that follows the main cast around but doesn’t really add anything to the plot, and the ending gets a little too maudlin for my tastes, choosing to emphasis the larger theme of the groups enduring friendship where it seems to beg for a more cynical twist to undercut the schmaltz. It’s likely not something that will go down as a classic you go back to years from now, and it probably won’t end up on too many best lists, but its more than enjoyable enough to be worth the ticket price, if only to encourage more movies like it and less movies like, well, all the other movies that shoot for laughs but invariably fall flat. Tag gets the big stuff right and even manages to be a little heartwarming by the end, moving fast enough to never let the seams show or overstay its welcome, and it may be my incredibly low standards for modern comedies talking, but I think that’s good enough. Also it doesn’t have Melissa McCarthy in it, and if I gave letter grades, that would merit a whole grade up in my book. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-53085332076917005712018-06-16T10:53:00.001-07:002018-06-16T10:53:16.999-07:00I Have Podcasts!It suddenly occurs to me that since I started blogging again, I haven't pimped the fact that I have two ongoing podcasts you can enjoy!<br />
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The first is called The Dirty Sons Of Pitches, where my friend and writing partner Nate Zoebl and I talk about the new movies of the week and pitch movie ideas based on them. We also play a really dumb game afterwards involving bad Gene Shalit impressions.<br />
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<a href="http://sonsofpitches.libsyn.com/">http://sonsofpitches.libsyn.com</a><br />
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<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/dirty-sons-of-pitches/id511780183?mt=2">https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/dirty-sons-of-pitches/id511780183?mt=2</a><br />
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The second is called Saturday Night Jive, where my brother and I watch and review a typically obscure movie featuring a randomly selected SNL cast member, due to a weird mutation of our original format that proved unworkable.<br />
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<a href="http://saturdaynightjive.blogspot.com/">http://saturdaynightjive.blogspot.com/</a><br />
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<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/saturday-night-jive-podcast/id790767956?mt=2">https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/saturday-night-jive-podcast/id790767956?mt=2</a><br />
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Check em out if you want.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-28296617718396139582018-06-15T13:44:00.000-07:002018-06-16T12:42:04.931-07:00The Jurassic Games (2018) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Growing up on straight to video Full Moon movies and Cannon films schlock has instilled within me a pretty high tolerance for B movie cheese. While many might scoff at the bad special effects, poor acting, or generally low production values of say an Asylum film, I’m usually able to look past those technical problems as long as there’s an interesting story, well told, with characters I come to care about over the course of the narrative. Still, it is extremely rare that a low budget movie released directly to now VOD is good enough to break into my top ten for the year, and I didn’t anticipate it happening this year, that is until I saw The Jurassic Games. I heard about this one last year and it sounded like everything I could ever want in a movie - Jurassic Park meets The Hunger Games (or Battle Royale, or The Running Man, or Turkey Shoot, etc), and I am delighted to say that it lived up to my wildest expectations. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Do I need to recap the plot of this movie for you? It’s called The Jurassic Games and the cynical “this movie meets that movie” pitch structure is literally built into the title. Just go watch it right now. Seriously, I don’t even care what kind of movies you think you like or what your personal tastes are. Stop reading this review, go see this movie, and then come back when you’ve had time to change your pants after you stopped furiously ejaculating into them. The Jurassic Games is exactly what you think it is and exactly as awesome as you want it to be, and if you don’t like it, I’m sorry, but you need to just stop watching movies, because nothing is ever going to be good enough for you, and frankly you just don’t deserve good things in your life. It’s the Hunger Games, with god-damn, motherfucking dinosaurs in it. What more do you people want?</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Of course, that isn’t entirely true. What I’m about to reveal about the premise of the movie might feel like something that completely ruins any fun to be had, and it almost did for me until every other aspect of the film was the best thing ever in the history of things. You see, the dinosaurs in this movie aren’t real. This isn’t a world where dinosaurs have been genetically engineered and brought back to life or just never went extinct. The dinosaurs are part of a virtual reality program, and I know the narrative purpose for this, to provide the film with just enough of a sliver of plausibility so that the audience can suspend its disbelief at least as well as in say, The Purge franchise. Still, come on, you just viscerally want these to be real dinosaurs chomping on people, and for most of the movie, this was the one big thing that was holding me back from calling The Jurassic Games an unqualified success even as every other facet of it had me hooked. And then the third act exploded awesomeness all over my face and waited until literally the last shot of the movie to completely justify the VR mechanic in one insane image, as if it were just flat out telling me to go fuck myself for ever questioning that it would.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Okay, so…the plot. The movie opens with a quote from one of my favorite George Carlin bits, about turning capital punishment into a reality show to distract the masses. The Jurassic Games is that, just in VR with dinosaurs. Murderous volunteers culled from death row are given one chance for a full pardon if they can be the last to survive for an hour in a place literally designed to kill them where dying in the game means an instant lethal injection in the real world, just before feeling the very real pain of being mauled by a prehistoric monster, or taken out by a fellow contestant. All of this is televised to a dumbed down populace with a few glimmers of resistance to what gradually appears to be a vaguely dystopian society, complete with Verhoven-esque media satire like commercials for convicted killer action figures and instant replays of hapless victims being thrown around in a T-Rex’s mouth. Again, I feel like I shouldn’t have to keep taking about this stuff to get you to see this movie.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">This set up provides the perfect platform for organic exposition and character development. It’s a bunch of crazy archetypes thrown together into an even crazier situation, left to form alliances or fend for themselves and ultimately reveal who they are as people through action and dialogue, with any other necessary information and backstory filled in by programming inserts from the TV show they’re all on. As characters, the contestants are all fairly standard for this sort of thing - of course our hero is a guy who claims to have been wrongfully convicted, the one who seems innocent at first is really a sociopath, and the guy who seems like a raving hillbilly cannibal is a raving hillbilly cannibal. They’re the types you’d find in the videogame version of a story like this, but the movie goes out of its way to play with your expectations about them, either subverting them, or rewarding them just after it trained you to expect subversion. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">For instance, the save the cat moment we get with our hero finds him rescuing a young woman from a hulking rapist, and because you know how movies work, you assume this is The Jurassic Games equivalent to a meet-cute, and we’ll eventually find out that if this damsel is guilty at all, it will probably be for something justifiable that we can forgive her for so that they can fall in love. Then she turns out to be a vicious, unrepentant serial killer, so the movie introduces another girl and you think that this one will be the REAL romantic love interest, and then she’s even worse! And the fact that the good guy is the one sympathetic character in a group of monsters isn’t just a shortcut for the audience to like him; it becomes a plot point as the viewers begin to root for him and his story of innocence becomes a ratings ploy, adding to the satirical side of the movie. Then you have the Pablo Escobar-esque drug kingpin who’s still trying to use his influence on the outside to blackmail people in the game by exploiting their families, or the Chinese dissident who has a freaking kung fu fight with three velociraptors in the maze from The Maze Runner. I feel like I should repeat that. There is a kung fu fight with three velociraptors in this movie. The guy even does that “come and get it” finger beckoning thing…to a velociraptor!</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">All of this chaos is presided over by The Host, played with smarmy abandoned by Ryan Merriman, whose face I was trying to place for the entire film until I realized I was remembering him from a cheesy Disney Channel Original Movie from the early 2000’s about leprechauns playing basketball. He’s easily the highlight of the movie, acting as the greedy, amoral narrator of events, and thankfully eschewing the weird stare acting of Wes Bentley’s similar role in the Hunger Games in favor of a clear homage to Richard Dawson’s Killian from The Running Man, by way of an even more dickish Ryan Seacrest. Given what kind of movie this is, it shouldn’t count as a spoiler to say that he naturally gets his own bloody and hubris-laden comeuppance in the end, but it is so satisfying when it happens, if only because he gears you up to hate him so well that you’re willing to ignore the fact that it goes against the anti-death penalty message of the movie to punish him with such a gruesome death, and because it represents the second or third in a series of five or six rapidly escalating payoffs in the final minutes. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">If I could say I had one major problem with The Jurassic Games, its that there’s a brief lull in the action late in the second act, where it begins to feel like the dinosaurs are almost superfluous to the story, or at least being somewhat taken for granted as a threat. There are several kills where the dinosaurs aren’t involved at all, which would be fine if it were characters killing each other, but then one of them gets eaten by a killer plant, or a swarm of giant bugs, and it kind of loses focus on the central conceit that drew me in, at least until the last third brings it all back sharply. Also, the VR element does present some unnecessary questions, like why they would insert Brontosauruses into the game. It’s the opposite of the problem from the Jurassic Park movies, where you wonder why they would risk re-creating dinosaurs that ate people; here you wonder why they would bother populating a virtual reality world with any dinosaurs that wouldn’t eat people. And all the players have collars that make their heads explode if they cheat or refuse to play, but if this is VR and the lethal injection happens seconds later in the real world anyway, wouldn’t you want a slower, pain inducing method of correction rather than a vaporizing instant death? </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Overall, these are minor nitpicks, as the totality of The Jurassic Games is a nearly pitch perfect execution of a concept that would have been so easy to screw up by either being too self-aware and meta, or just too slap dash and unwieldy. There is a point towards the start of the film where all of the contestants are just dropped in, and they first see the dinosaurs and begin to grapple with the reality they are now facing, and the camera pans over to one of them who despite the terrifying thing in front of him, smiles to himself. Then a few seconds later, he’s the first one to be eaten, because this movie is so awesome that its willing to introduce an incredibly interesting character with one shot of his odd reaction, and then immediately dismiss all the potential this movie could have had with them, because it knows how great everything else is going to be, so it doesn’t even matter that he’s dead. If I was going to rate The Jurassic Games on a scale of “completely flaccid” to “painfully erect,” it would get a “my dick rips itself from my body and rockets into space.” Drop whatever you’re doing and buy it now. What in the VR dinosaur hell are you waiting for?!?</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-32032524693666550502018-06-12T12:39:00.000-07:002018-06-12T12:39:36.458-07:00Incredibles 2 (2018) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">It seems weird to say that I</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">’ve always felt a little bit conflicted by the prospect of an Incredibles 2, considering its been fourteen years since the original, even as its never stopped feeling like a foregone conclusion we’d inevitably get another one. The first Incredibles is still my personal favorite Pixar movie, and arguably one of the best animated movies of all time, and over the the years we’ve seen several franchises built out of other Pixar properties with far less depth and potential for expansion. My concern has always been that these other sequels have often been mediocre (Monsters University, Finding Dory) to outright terrible (Cars, Cars, and more Cars), with the Toy Story trilogy being the only one that really worked at all, and even then, there’s always been the sense that Pixar was leveraging the goodwill they developed with their earlier movies to cash in rather than maintain what appeared to be their almost slavish commitment to quality storytelling. The Incredibles was really the only Pixar movie that ever seemed to me to actually demand further adventures, and thankfully I’m happy to report that it was more than worth the wait.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Incredibles 2 starts off literally exactly where the first film left off with the titular heroes defending the city against the subterranean Underminer and his giant drill tank. Unfortunately the battle doesn’t go very well, and a resulting public relations backlash forces the superhero relocation program to shut down, leaving the Parr family with few options, until help arrives from a pair of wealthy sibling superfans with a plan to bring supers back into the limelight, and hopefully create enough support to overturn the superhero ban altogether. This time around the story focuses more on Elastigirl’s heroic aspirations, with her greater popularity pushing her to the forefront of the pro-super campaign, forcing her husband Mr. Incredible into the role of reluctant stay at home dad. If the first movie was the superhero take on a man’s mid-life crisis, this new story is its take on a woman’s drive to break the glass ceiling, and it provides a nice contrast to the previous film that actually allows for a little more room in the narrative to let the ensemble develop as everyone has to learn how to cope with this new paradigm. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The problem with this is that I kept having to remind myself that The Incredibles exist in this strange hybrid universe of modern and retro sensibilities where the expectations of the traditional nuclear family still go mostly unquestioned, assigning old school gender roles without much in the way of contemporary subversion or examination, even as the narrative challenges those very assumptions. Mr. Incredible’s instantaneous jealousy over his wife’s greater popularity, as well as his frustration at being forced to take on his wife’s former duties and forego what he had always considered to be the man’s responsibility as provider, are played for comedy, and a more modern character, or a movie more concerned with modern perspectives, would at some point acknowledge the sense of male entitlement that suggests about him. Throughout the film he learns to accept that the partnership inherent in his marriage is strong enough to account for this new balance, but some of the moments watching him get there were a bit cringeworthy only because I had liked his character so much from the first film, and had kind of just assumed he was already there and didn’t need to learn this lesson.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Its a minor quibble, as for the most part the character work in this movie is on point and in line with the first film. Everyone gets their moment to shine and contribute to the larger ensemble arc, including all the people you love and a host of new ones that fit in with the original cast very well. The older daughter Violet gets a nice little side story about balancing her new found zeal for crime-fighting with trying to live a normal life, and the younger son Dash continues to struggle with his super speedy ADHD hyperactivity, but the clear highlight of the movie is baby Jack Jack. The fact that I’m able to say that was probably my biggest surprise, as just based on the trailers I was positively dreading the larger emphasis on the cute little baby trope, but every time he revealed a new superpower or a previously revealed superpower paid off for a story point or interesting action set piece, it was a highlight, not the least of which being a mad cap chase sequence in the third act that brings all of them together in a rare moment of wacky cartoonish mayhem for one of the more grounded Pixar worlds.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">It’s the cumulative effect of a lot of smaller incidental elements like that sequence that makes Incredibles 2 so much fun. Little things like Elastigirl’s motorcycle being specifically designed to exploit her stretching ability turn what could have otherwise been a fairly simple train chase into a completely unique and visually interesting variation on Fast and Furious style vehicle action that only this movie could have done this well. We also get a whole new team of young superheroes inspired by Elastigirl to come out of hiding, and each one has a superpower that at first blush seems like a standard comic book concept, but when they’re unleashed all at once their abilities all blend together so well into this perfectly orchestrated panoply of action-packed insanity very rarely scene even in live action superhero movies outside of the famous airplane scene in Captain America: Civil War. At so many points the movie takes full advantage of being a sequel in a way that few manage to accomplish, recognizing that it doesn’t have to spend so much time setting up the world, and actually taking the opportunity to just live in it and explore fun new things about it.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">If I had one other minor complaint about the movie, its in the twist surrounding the nature of the main villain. I won’t spoil it here, but you’ll probably see it coming from miles away, and it’s not nearly a big enough reveal to justify the build up. I actually guessed it months ago from reading a casting notice before the first round of trailers even came out, and while it’s not necessarily a huge problem since enjoying the film is not dependent on being surprised, the story is still structured with it being a surprise, so it’s a little annoying that it’s so telegraphed. One interesting thing to note about the villain is that the politics seem to have switched around completely from the first film. The Incredibles embraced a clearly Randian ideal that social inequality was a natural and perfectly acceptable consequence of meritocracy, with Syndrome’s goal of democratizing superpowers being a threat to that worldview. This time around there’s a similarly conservative message that over-reliance on protection from powerful people and institutions, be they superheroes or governments, makes us soft, but this message is coming from the villain, and the heroes come to embody a much more altruistic and much more liberal point of view that if you see something wrong and have the power to stop it, it is a moral imperative to try.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Incredibles 2 is actually better than the first film in almost all but the most important ways. Its more inventive, more visually interesting, and just more fun to watch. Its the big stuff, narrative, characterization, thematic resonance, where the original outshines the new and remains the more significant achievement. There is never a moment in the new film like Mr. Incredible breaking down in front of his wife and admitting the thing he fears most is losing her again, or like Elastigirl being forced to tell her children how dangerous the world really is, taking away their innocence for their own protection. Incredibles 2 never really escapes the feeling like its just playing around in the sandbox of a much bigger and more well-realized idea, but its so satisfying to watch it play that it doesn’t really matter in the end. Yes, technically Incredibles 2 is not quite as good as one of the best movies to ever come out of one of the best production houses currently working today, but its still no doubt far better than the vast majority of movies you’re going to see this year, and its easily a must see. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-79426558498470171862018-06-10T15:34:00.002-07:002018-06-10T15:40:20.484-07:00First Reformed (2018) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">First Reformed is not a movie that you would ever think would require a spoiler warning. There are no superheroes in it and it doesn</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">’t end with a post-credit sequence setting up the Paul Schrader Cinematic Universe (though I would totally watch the hell out of that). Its the kind of small scale indie character-driven drama you’re likely to see in a tiny art house theater like I just did with a smattering of oldies and hipsters. Or rather, that’s how it starts, but as it gradually digs deeper into the dark, slowly deteriorating inner life of its protagonist, it builds to a climax that manages to be both shocking and surprising even as it feels like the only thing that could have happened if you were paying attention to what was being set up throughout the film. It isn’t a twist ending as such, even if it does wrap up at the diametrically opposite end from where it started, but precisely because it is so well-executed that it only seems so obvious right after you realize what’s going on, I almost don’t want to say anything else about the movie except to emphatically recommend you go see it while you can. Of course I am going to say more things, because what would the self-indulgent exercise of online film criticism be without verbosity?</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">First Reformed follows Reverend Toller, a former military chaplan turned small town pastor of a church with almost no congregants, financially maintained by a donor base of wealthy patrons as a local historical monument and occasional tourist attraction. Toller has been placed here as a steward and figurehead content to pass off most serious issues relating to the moral well being of his parishioners to the bigger, more corporately minded mega-church down the street. That is, until one of his flock insists that he talk to her husband, an environmental activists whose despair about the future stability of the planet has convinced him to demand his wife abort their unborn child. The reverend debates the activist in a sequence that takes up a significant portion of the first act, and that might try the patience of some viewers used to more fast paced blockbusters, but its a conversation that opens the door to an ideological and personal conflict for Toller that propels him through the rest of the film and takes him to a place that’s more than worth the slow build-up. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">To be honest, slow might actually be a bit of an understatement. First Reformed is the slowest of slow burns, and your ability to fully appreciate it will almost certainly depend on how much lee-way your willing to give the film before everything comes together in the final act. Though it is otherwise a very different film, I was strangely reminded of Yorgos Lanthimos’ last movie The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, which similarly but for a completely different stylistic purpose seems to almost revel in the quiet banality of its main characters’ lives. In the first half of First Reformed you see the repetitive cycle of Toller’s daily chores, taking out the trash, fixing the toilet in the men’s room, and tending to the graveyard behind the church, and it takes a good hour or so before these simple everyday moments begin to coalesce and take on greater significance as he struggles to maintain the facade of a soft-spoken pillar of the community while his psyche is crumbling on the inside. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I obviously want to leave the specific details of his descent into darkness unspoiled, except to say that the film posits a primary character arc and ultimate conclusion that on paper would seem to be completely unbelievable, and then proceeds to justify them so completely that there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else the character could have gone in retrospect, much like how Breaking Bad managed to convince you that a milquetoast highschool chemistry teacher could transform into a ruthless meth kingpin over the course of five seasons. Ethan Hawke likewise imbues his bad breaking clergyman with the quiet, smoldering intensity of a man who has suffered multiple tragedies while maintaining a Job-like adherence to his faith in God, only to lose all faith in his fellow man or in any kind of happy future for himself. Amanda Seyfried plays the wife of the environmental activist who sets Toller on his journey, ingratiating herself into his life as a source of innocence and hope to counterbalance his growing certainty that neither exists for him anymore. In the end, her presence in his life presents him a final choice of whether to reject her and complete the downward path he’s on, or let her save him from it, and while I would have preferred a more ambiguous resolution to that choice, the last shot of the film manages to provide a cathartic release for the rapidly escalating tension of the moments preceding it that I appreciated nonetheless. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">In many ways, First Reformed is a movie intensely preoccupied with the concept of salvation, both in the Christian context and the more universal human one. Its about what happens when you get it, what happens when you take it for granted, and what happens when you discover its limits. Its also a powerful mediation on forgiveness, what we can and cannot forgive, and what we can and cannot be forgiven for. On another level, at least for me, it represents the salvation of its director Paul Schrader, who you may know as the writer of most of Martin Scorsese’s best movies, or as the director of some wonderfully dark and gritty films of his own like Hardcore and Auto Focus. Or you may know him as the guy who thought it was a good idea to make The Canyons, a movie with the production values of a telenovela about shallow, listless Hollywood kids starring porn actor James Dean and future porn actress Lindsey Lohan. Having not seen the two straight to VOD Nicolas Cage movies he made after that abomination, I can’t honestly say if they were any good, so I don’t know if this is a return to form for Schrader, or the continuation of an upward trend. In any case, I never thought I’d be able to forgive Paul Schrader for unleashing The Canyons into the world, but First Reformed has renewed my faith in one of my favorite director’s abilities to make good movies again, so maybe, just maybe, that means that God really is watching over us after all. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">But still no, probably not. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-78273830965976147572018-06-09T06:52:00.000-07:002018-06-09T06:52:09.246-07:00The Strangers: Prey At Night (2018) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I am almost certain that I saw The Strangers when it originally came out back in 2008, but even as I say that, I don</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">’t remember anything about the movie that wasn’t in the trailer, and I’m beginning to wonder if maybe that’s all I saw, and I’ve just invented the whole experience of seeing the full film in my head in retrospect. I’m only considering this now as a possibility because I am also almost certain that ten years from now when The Strangers 3: Strangers In A Strange Land comes out to the excitement of no one, I will also likely find myself struggling to remember if I actually saw the second film in the franchise, Strangers: Prey At Night or just the ads. I literally just watched this movie five minutes ago from the comfort of my own home, and it was either completely unmemorable, or it somehow gave me early onset Alzheimer’s disease. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I distinctly remember the trailer to this new Strangers outing, because it was one of the dumbest in recent memory. If you didn’t catch it, the set up presented your standard slasher formula with a group of people trapped in a secluded area being stalked by faceless killers in spooky masks, but then half way through, the scary music switched over to Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” for no discernible reason, instantly removing any promise of tension the previous images might have suggested. At the time I just assumed this was a bit of too clever by half marketing done in the wake of Suicide Squad’s famous Bohemian Rhapsody ad that prompted a full on re-edit of the movie it was advertising. What I did not anticipate was that random kitchy 80’s music drops placed over the score with no apparent context would turn out to be this movies primary motif. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The plot is unremarkable to say the least: a family spending the weekend in a trailer cabin is stalked by what I think is implied to be another family of psychopaths who pick them off one by one, blah blah, final girl, blah blah. The music on the other hand almost pushes the movie into “so bad its good” territory, just with how blatant it is at trying to force a style onto material that was clearly filmed with no such style in mind. The kills are especially boring and unimaginative, but every time one of the killers approaches a victim, a random 80’s song starts playing out of nowhere, as if to beg the audience to appreciate what I think was a half-formed attempt at meta commentary beginning and ending with the superficial understanding that slasher movies were big in the 80’s and uptempo 80’s pop music would be cute juxtaposed against horrific violence. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Is it possible that an unfinished excuse for an idea like that combined with the perceived cache of an at best marginally well known IP is enough to green light a sequel to a movie ten years after the original? I didn’t think even I was that cynical, but there is literally nothing else about this movie that I can see anyone pitching a studio on. It’s not even like its set in the 80’s, which I assumed was the case until the teens brought out their smart phones, and its not satirizing or directly parodying anything related to the 80’ even if it is shamelessly cannibalizing the tropes of 80’s slashers because it has nothing original or interesting to do on its own. It’s just the music, and they don't even take the time to pick songs that have lyrics with ironic relevance to the action on screen to match the ironic tonal inconsistency. And come to think of it, I'm pretty sure "I Think We're Alone Now," the only one I can think of that would have had ironic relevance was switched out with a different song in the actual movie! It might seem like I’m harping on this, but its so obtrusive and annoying that it makes everything else that’s terrible about the movie pale in comparison.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">There’s a scene at about the midway point where one of the characters is pinned inside of a crashed vehicle, helplessly watching as one of the killers approaches. The killer climbs into the passenger seat and his posture suggests that he’s relishing the opportunity to take his time on a prone victim, which might have been a creepy moment, except he takes time out to slowly turn on the radio and methodically find a station playing an 80’s song before he starts carving into his prey, as if its a required ritual before the bloodletting. I’m reminded of a joke from of all things the Adam Sandler comedy That’s My Boy, where Sandler’s drunken loser protagonist and his inexplicable best friend Vanilla Ice are racing to stop a wedding, and when their car ends up in a ditch, its revealed that the Meatloaf song scoring the scene was actually playing on a mix-tape, prompting Sander’s character to worry that he won’t be able to make it without his “kickin’ tunes”. It’s like that, but in a freaking horror movie that wants you to take it at least somewhat seriously. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">This actually gets at one of the fundamental problems with how the music is specifically integrated into the action of the film - its diegetic to the story. These songs aren’t just playing over the soundtrack, it has to be presumed based on the sound design that the characters in the movie can actually hear the music as it plays. An earlier scene finds the mother and daughter trapped in a bathroom with the killer stabbing in the door, and as they attempt to escape through the skylight, the music continues, but muffled on the outside, so its clearly playing inside the house. There is no indication of exactly where the music is coming from, so we have to assume that the killer is wearing a hipstery 80’s walkman and turned it on just before deciding to attack. If this had been the joke, it might have worked if executed well, like maybe having the victims hear the catchy songs as ominous warnings or even use hearing the music as a tactical advantage, but there is otherwise no acknowledgement that its even happening. Later, Total Eclipse of the Heart is heard while a victim is attacked in a pool, but it is drowned out whenever he goes underwater, implying that we are hearing it as he does, which means the killer took the time to find a speaker system beforehand, because you just can’t put an axe in a dude without spinning that Bonnie Tyler LP first. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Admittedly, I’m focusing so much on this one stylistic element because the movie has so little else to offer even in things bad enough to criticize, which isn’t to say that the rest is good, but rather its so bland that I can barely summon up the ire to protest. You can imagine how well-written the movie is for example when the best line of dialogue concerns a man stubbornly insisting that the people around him explain to him what a queef is. And while I hate to boil down a movie like this to the creativity of the kills, I would be remiss in not mentioning just how startling the lack of creativity is here. There is nothing remotely memorable about any of the murder set-pieces, and since nothing else surrounding them tries to do anything either, I just can’t fathom what anyone might have seen in this exercise worth doing. Normally I would be incensed by the opening note that the film is “Based on True Events” but I’ve long since given up on railing against this trend in modern horror movies, still I do call BS, as the only way a movie this generic could possibly be based on a true story is if the producers are trying to say its based on literally any time anyone has ever been murdered, or just the general concept of murder itself. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">In the end, I guess I just wonder if the central conceit of the original film was ever substantial enough to sustain a sequel even if the best possible creative minds were behind it. There are only so many motionless creepy masks you can throw out at us before the image just gets boring without another gimmick to go along with it, and it feels like the Purge franchise has taken all the good ones in the last decade anyway, while adding on a political angle to keep the creepy killer thing fresh enough across at least four movies and a proposed TV show.And the reveal that these killers have no real ideology or agenda beyond random murder and that their specific identities are irrelevant is carried over to this film, but there are several moments when the prospect of pulling off their masks and revealing their true faces is treated like a suspenseful cathartic release, when the whole point is that they’re nobodies and there is no mystery attached to who they are. The Strangers: Prey At Night is as empty and meaningless as its antagonists, the reveal behind the mask being exactly as uninspired as it should be and as you would expect, but not in a meta-textual or thematic way that might have been satisfying, because the only themes we get are crappy 80’s songs. You probably skipped this when it came out, and you were right in doing so. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-20036030854873754242018-06-08T16:07:00.000-07:002018-06-08T16:07:12.201-07:00Future World (2018) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Vs-h-xJnyUgV71hazEMPjCnxJmEZBp49Uz_7jnQWJCcJZyyLIYgn7fSXPWQ_iTuM-AWpinXWeeiYsx01SAbO876GtXh_KCJmImoIZKPQyoKqrtngD9kYr1gpHKbECQgBUpVgGfzplsE/s1600/MV5BMWMxMDZhNjEtYjA3ZS00MzE5LTkwN2MtNmNhMzJiNjQwMzQ1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjM4NTM5NDY%2540._V1_UX182_CR0%252C0%252C182%252C268_AL_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="268" data-original-width="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Vs-h-xJnyUgV71hazEMPjCnxJmEZBp49Uz_7jnQWJCcJZyyLIYgn7fSXPWQ_iTuM-AWpinXWeeiYsx01SAbO876GtXh_KCJmImoIZKPQyoKqrtngD9kYr1gpHKbECQgBUpVgGfzplsE/s1600/MV5BMWMxMDZhNjEtYjA3ZS00MzE5LTkwN2MtNmNhMzJiNjQwMzQ1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjM4NTM5NDY%2540._V1_UX182_CR0%252C0%252C182%252C268_AL_.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I really wanted to like James Franco, until I really didn</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">’t. For a while there was something about his adventurous, experimental approach to acting and later producing that I started to develop a begrudging respect for even as it produced some pretty spectacular failures, not the least of which being his infuriating turn as the gun fellating white rapper named Alien from Harmony Korine’s offensively terrible Spring Breakers. Still, his willingness to make bold, unexpected choices when he was in a position to coast on safe mainstream roles was a refreshing thing to see, and it seemed like with last year’s The Disaster Artist the pendulum had finally swung far enough in the right direction for me to officially call myself a fan. And then we found out he created an acting school seemingly for the sole purpose of exploiting his mentor position over young aspiring actresses in order to groom and eventually sexually assault them. So yeah, fuck James Franco, and fuck his new movie Future World even more.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">It would be very wrong and incredibly inappropriate for me to even suggest that Future World is somehow a worse crime than Franco</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">’s many actual crimes, but its close enough that its in the conversation, which is troubling in its own right. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Future World feels like The Asylum, the company famous for producing mockbusters like Transmorphers and Snakes On A Train, decided to make a rip-off of Mad Max Fury Road three years too late and somehow got a few name actors involved to provide it some semblance of legitimacy. Actually, you know what, that</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">’s being too generous, because I actually saw the Asylum mockbuster they did for Mad Max at the time, called Road Wars, and while on its own it was just a mediocre post-apocalyptic zombie movie, what little I can remember of it is still far better than anything I just saw in Future World. Literally the only thing I remember about Road Wars is a scene where a character tells a story about parlaying one of the last Snickers bars in existence into a blowjob, and I’m standing by my comparative assessment. That’s how bad Future World is</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Normally I devote the second paragraph of my reviews to a brief description of the plot, just to provide some context to refer back to, but I feel like I don’t even need to do that with this one. Watch the trailer, and you know every thoroughly underwhelming thing about this movie. Its just every post-apocalyptic sci fi trope you’ve seen a million times in a million better movies, vomited onto the screen as rote and predictably as possible with no twists, turns, subversions, or stylistic flourishes to speak of. Even as a straight forward, un-ironic take on the genre it fails miserably, giving us barely any story to engage with, populated by some of the most thinly written characters I’ve seen in a movie for some time. The main lead whose name escaped me mere seconds after the movie was over is a naive ingenue in a world where such a thing would seem impossible, and his main motivation is to go from point A to point B and back again to find a medicinal macguffin, which he does, and then the movie’s over, which is only notable because as shallow as it is, it is the only thing remotely resembling character motivation in the entire film. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">For a movie like Future World to work at this point given how oversaturated we are by post-apocalyptic fiction, the details of the world building and the characters within it need to be made interesting enough to transcend the well worn setting. Movies like Fury Road with its insane over the top action sequences or Turbo Kid from the same year with its fun retro 80</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">’s videogame aesthetic give the audience something fresh and new to satisfy them even as so much feels familiar. Future World doesn’t even bother to try to innovate in any way, with the exception of one fight sequence late in the movie that seems to want to do something novel, attempting an unbroken tracking shot bouncing back and forth between several characters mid battle, but half way through it becomes clear that they weren’t able to maintain it or cleverly hide the edits when they couldn’t, so they just decided to do the same badly edited gimmick a second time right afterwards. Even the title is lazy, which I assumed going in was meant to be a deliberate oversimplification, maybe to poke fun at the genre and hint at a satirical take on it, but now I’m forced to assume it was the only title they could think of to describe a movie that fails to distinguish itself as much as this one does. It is set in a Future World I guess, but there’s nothing else to it, so that’s the only thing they could think to call it. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">What little world building we do get is both incredibly uninspired and all over the place. The movie starts with the first of many laughably ponderous bits of completely unnecessary narration going through just how the world got to where it is, with three successive apocalyptic disasters (an android uprising, ended by nuclear war, and followed up by a mysterious plague), none of which are really all that consequential to the story beyond providing a needlessly convoluted backdrop that we could have probably just assumed was something really bad if it was left ambiguous. It reminded me of the end of the first Maze Runner movie, which spends the whole running time building the audience up for the revelation of this great mystery, and then we find out it was some combination of solar flares, zombie viruses, and government conspiracies, only for it to just end abruptly so we can deal with it all in the rest of the franchise. But at least that was a cliffhanger. Future World starts there and then spends the entire movie not getting to anything resembling a point. To call it an exercise in futility would be an insult to futility.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">And for the record, I don’t bring up Franco’s disgusting personal life just to kick a man when he’s down. Knowing what we now know about him, watching him play a virulent misogynist who lives to sexually dominate women is like if Kevin Spacey’s last pre-MeToo movie was a biopic of Jerry Sandusky. The sexual depravity in this movie is gratuitous and gross even independent of Franco’s character, and not even in that way that can make exploitation movies fun if they lean into the silliness of it. A post-apocalyptic pimp played by Snoog Dogg (ney Snoop Lion) runs a stripclub/whore house in the desert because of course he does, and the women all wear sci-fi shock collars that might have been justified if they were maybe brought back as a plot beat later on, but it never is brought back, because nothing is set up or paid off in this movie. Its just feels rapey as a substitute for edgy. The first scene in which we see Franco appear has him raiding a secret facility designed to house the last of a line of human like robots, and it just so happens to be an attractive female who is kept standing up naked for Franco to creepily grope at before programming her to be his sex slave. There’s no narrative reason for why she has to be naked, and ultimately no narrative reason for most of the things in the movie, with the most charitable explanation being that they saw naked androids in other media like West World and just thought it would look cool, and the least charitable reason being, well, James Franco.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Other than the main character’s flimsy excuse for a hero’s journey, I could not figure out what anyone wanted in this movie or why they did the things they did. Franco’s zeal to get his robot back after it’s stolen suggests a grander scheme that I was waiting to pay off in the third act, but it never comes, and he spends most of the movie just driving around sand dunes on a motorcycle and screaming. Steve McQueen infamously threatened to walk off the set of The Great Escape out of boredom, only to be placated by a last minute change to include the iconic motorcycle chase, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the opportunity to get paid riding dirt bikes was similarly Franco’s only reason for taking this role. Milla Jovovich provides one of the only highlights of the film, turning in a wild-eyed crazy performance as a secondary antagonist and employing talent rarely demanded of her in the Resident Evil series, but as fun as she was, I never got a clear sense of who her character was or why she needed to be there, except maybe to give Franco more time to play with his motorcycle. The worst example is Ash, the robot, who starts out as a remote controlled femme fatale, until she randomly decides to rebel against her programming and join the hero, suggesting she might have free will and in one particularly ham-fisted scene in an abandoned church maybe even a soul…except when its narratively convenient for her to become evil again for a last minute fake out, after which she just randomly leaves the movie having fallen in love with a character we knew for all of ten minutes, now on a mission to find more of her own kind, despite having never expressed any desire to do this throughout the course of the movie.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Its somewhat fitting that so much of this horrible Future World is devoted to the haphazard thought process of an artificial intelligence, considering how much of it feels like it was written by a computer algorithm trying to approximate an actual screenwriter. If you fed every bad straight to video Mad Max rip off from the last three decades into a procedurally generated story program, you’d still probably get something more worth adapting to film. Chances are you weren’t planning on watching Future World, if you’d even heard of it before reading this review, but on the off chance that you happened upon the trailer and saw something in its punishing blandness that somehow suggested to you there was some reason to see it, do yourself a favor and skip it. It’s the kind of movie that’s bad enough to count as one of the worst movies of any given year, but almost certainly won’t register on my list when the time comes to make it, not because there are necessarily ten other worse movies, but because its also so boring that I will almost certainly forget it even existed by December. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">And in case I wasn’t clear enough - fuck James Franco. Before he fucks you.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-24525959002894773092018-06-07T14:45:00.000-07:002018-06-08T11:38:36.705-07:00Hereditary (2018) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">More so than in any other genre, there seems to be one horror movie every year that hits that very small sweet spot between indie obscurity and mainstream appeal to rise above its competition as a sort of </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">“it” movie that every horror fan just needs to see to be part of the zeitgeist. 2014 saw It Follows, 2015 had The Witch, in 2016 it was Train to Busan, and last year everybody was raving about Get Out. This year, it felt like John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place was a shoe-in for the 2018 title, and while that film has certainly seen a great deal of success critically and commercially, it appears that the hype might have shifted a bit in the last few weeks to another first time writer/director’s passion project, Ari Aster’s Hereditary. Its a supernatural thriller heavy on spooky imagery and atmosphere that’s being called the scariest film in years, with some critics even comparing it to the Exorcist and the Shining, but hype be damned, at the risk of sounding like an Armand White-style contrarian, it is easily one of the worst movies I’ve seen all year, if not the absolute worst. And keep in mind, this was the year A Wrinkle In Time came out. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Hereditary follows a family steeped in dysfunction and tragedy, struggling to maintain after the loss of their estranged grandmother sets off a chain of increasingly inexplicable events that leads their emotionally unstable matriarch to believe that a force of poorly defined otherworldly evil has begun to target them all. I understand that this description is both needlessly obtuse and a bit snarky, but you’ll have to forgive me some artistic license here, as I have to take some opportunity to entertain myself, since the movie itself provided me no such opportunity during its punishing run-time. The essential problem with Hereditary is one that tends to befall a lot of lower budget horror movies that shoot for the kind of indie street cred to set them apart from the typical Blumhouse schlock, becoming so preoccupied with engineering specific moments with iconic memorable imagery and cultivating an eerie tone and mood to connect them, that it forgets to actually tell an interesting story, or populate it with characters we as an audience might actually care about. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">If you watched the trailers, you might have commended the marketing team behind Hereditary for managing to keep so much of the plot mysterious when so many other trailers seem to shamelessly contain spoilers. As it turns out, this wasn’t a deliberate strategy, so much as it was a necessity, as there really isn’t much plot that they could have spoiled if they wanted to. Yes, technically things do happen in the movie. There is a basic progression of events from one scene to another that one could for lack of a better term call a plot, but once you get to the end of it, you realize that none of it ever really mattered from a narrative perspective. Some scary stuff happens, some more scary stuff happens, and then some other scary stuff happens, and while your milage may very on whether any individual jump scare or creepy image effects you out of context, there isn’t really a context to put them in. They are effectively arbitrary and interchangeable. For the most part you could shuffle the majority of these scenes around in any order without any bearing on the story, to the extent that there even is a story to have any bearing on. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Various specific elements have the obvious potential to be interesting, but because nothing in the movie comes together into anything resembling cohesion, all they amount to is a pile of missed opportunities. Toni Collette’s character spends her days working on miniature tableaus depicting mundane scenes of daily life that gradually morph into macabre depictions of her own tragic present, her daughter spends her time making creepy dolls out of found objects and dead animals, and once a seance goes horribly wrong, the whole family is haunted by ghosts, or maybe demons, or maybe witches, or maybe it never matters and was never supposed to matter because nobody cared if it did. In the end there are no pay offs to any of these puzzle pieces that the filmmakers play around with just long enough to distract you from the fact that they all came from different puzzle sets, and they had no intention of ever trying to piece them together, for fear that we might actually figure out that they never fit together in the first place. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">All of this being said, if the movie had committed 100% to its own weirdness and stayed true to a sort of surrealist anti-plot structure, I might have at least respected it on an artistic level in the way that I do, say, David Lynch, even if I find most of his movies to be unwatchable. Unfortunately, Hereditary tries to have its cake and eat it too, clinging to the pretense of having a story by applying the flimsiest excuse for mythology since Donnie Darko with none of the inventiveness or intrigue, via some of the most clunky, post facto exposition ever committed to film. Slight spoilers here, so fair warning:</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> At one point in the second act (the three act structure only barely applying to this mess), Toni Collette’s character has experienced enough of an escalating series of haunted nonsense to actually want to figure out what might be going on. In order to do this, she just happens to suddenly remember a random box of books that she found in her mother’s house, thinks for no apparent reason that it might have the answer, and proceeds to leaf through a random book to a random page, which just so happens to literally have a highlighted section plainly and explicitly detailing everything that’s happening! I won’t spoil the specifics of the revelation, but suffice it to say its nothing special, and I’m pretty sure its ripped whole cloth from one of the paranormal activity sequels. And if that weren't enough, when we get to the end of the movie, just in case you missed the oh so cinematic book reading sequence, the last few seconds close out with what passes for the film’s villain flat out just telling one of the remaining characters what just happened to them, even though at this point they should already completely understand everything, just in case anyone in the audience didn’t. And if </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">that </span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">weren’t enough, this final bit of expository dialogue that basically reiterates the highlighted text seen earlier is delivered without ever seeing the speaker’s face, in what was obviously a bit of last minute ADR, most likely insisted upon by a producer who went to the bathroom during the crucial moment in act two. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">So where does the hype come from? Why does ironically enough everyone and their mother say this is the scariest movie of the year and the second coming of Rosemary's Baby? You know, while I hate to question the integrity or motives of people simply for expressing opinions contrary to my own, I can't help but think that a lot of the people who came away from Hereditary with a positive attitude might have been a bit tricked. I've noticed a pattern in the reviews I've read where elements of the movie are cited in a very specific way, referencing disconnected moments and a general feeling that creeped them out, while almost never addressing the larger problems in storytelling that should be obvious to anyone paying close enough attention to have any strong opinion about the film one way or the other. The thing is, the aspects of Hereditary that are done right are all the things designed to enhance and articulate a good story, visuals, atmosphere, performance, and so on, without the underlying story itself pulling any weight. Of course when you put people like Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne in a movie together, its going to be entertaining, but there's only so far they can try to elevate material that simply isn't there. Hereditary is a movie made of a bunch of essentially random scenes strung together to make you think you're watching a movie when you're not, and if all you care about is those scenes and how they make you feel on a visceral level, and you don't care about having a story, than you probably wouldn't have any problem with it. But that's not how movies are supposed to work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">There is an especially perplexing school of thought perpetuated by a certain subset of especially pretentious film critics that insists that filmmaking is not at its core a storytelling medium. They will rarely articulate their dismissal of storytelling so directly, but they will throw around terms like “mood-piece” and “visual experience,” emphasizing tone and atmosphere while conspicuously downplaying narrative and character. They tend to rave about the aforementioned David Lynch, and will try to trick you into thinking Nicholas Winding Refn isn’t a complete hack. These are the critics who loved A Ghost Story last year in all its five minute long pie eating glory, or Annihilation earlier this year, despite its complete lack of an ending that made any sort of sense or had any sort of connection to what happened before. These critics will love Hereditary, and will seek to validate their own world view by trying to convince you to say you love it too, by making you think that if you didn’t pick up on the brilliance that isn’t actually there, you’re just too dumb to get it. Don’t believe them. They are appreciating film incorrectly, and the more their opinions retain cultural relevance, the more we will get movies like Hereditary. As of this writing, the movie has a 93% Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and while I am loath to risk implying that this aggregate statistic has any merit, it is the proper context to state simply and unequivocally that the critical consensus is wrong here, and you’d be wrong to listen to them, or to waste your time on this garbage.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-42734073821376578392018-06-07T14:33:00.000-07:002018-06-07T14:33:35.468-07:00So...I think I might be back?Hey anybody who still reads this blog<br />
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Or happens to randomly find it while searching for something else.<br />
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Yeah, probably the second one at this point.<br />
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Anyway, so I gave up blogging for a while, larger due to descending into a personal depressive phase the details of which I'd rather not get into. Then that while turned into a few years, and I had thought it might just be permanently over, save for the Wonder Woman review I posted last year, and now I'm back. Maybe. We'll see if I quit again.<br />
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I'll probably quit again.<br />
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In the mean time, you can check out my reviews for the new movies Hereditary and Upgrade as soon as I post them right above this post, and probably a few other ones before I get depressed and give up for a year or more. Enjoy. Or don't. It's none of my business.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-91555844385275795512017-06-05T15:52:00.000-07:002017-06-05T15:52:08.670-07:00Wonder Woman and the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I know that title is a bit arch, so listen up bitches, cause I need to mansplain something to you so you’ll all manderstand where I’m coming from here. Also, fair warning, I’m going to spoil the fuck out of this movie, so if you haven’t seen it, you may want to stop reading now if my facetious meninism didn’t already turn you off. <br />
<br />When I look at the ridiculously over the top praise of the new spectacularly mediocre Wonder Woman movie, I can’t help but think about Donald Trump. This is not because Trump is such a virulent misogynist, or even because the DCEU is the cinematic universe equivalent of his disastrous, insultingly treasonous administration and its offensive, un-American failure to do its job. Those are both true of course, but the real reason I can’t stop linking Trump and Wonder Woman in my head is because of that weird period before the Comey firing when everyone in the media seemed to be itching to legitimize the Trump presidency, constantly looking out for brief moments of normalcy, like when he made a whole speech without pooping his pants or bombed a sovereign nation without congressional approval, you know, like real presidents do. It was like there was this desperate rush to declare that finally Trump had “become the president”, and now everything would be fine and we wouldn’t have to worry about this petulant man child having the nuclear launch codes. This naturally brings us to Wonder Woman, the movie that technically didn’t poop its pants like the last three movies in this franchise did. So I guess everything’s going to be okay, right?<br />
<br />Wonder Woman is the story of Princess Diana of Themyscira, the prettiest and most specialest of all the Amazons, so special in fact that her fellow warriors arbitrarily adopt her obviously Israeli accent, as she journeys to the brutish smoggy civilized world to teach us men the error of our warlike ways…by killing people. But I guess she kills the right people, or kills them better? It doesn’t really matter as long as it’s all portrayed in that unwatchable gloomy funeral dirge Zach Snyder style, constantly jumping back and forth between slow motion and fast motion to distract you from the fact that none of the action sequences matter or progress the story forward, which itself barely gives you anything to engage with save the aforementioned action sequences. You say you want interesting characters that grow and change and give you cause to care about them throughout the narrative for more than their most superficial traits? Well fuck that, because half the time she isn’t even a person on screen, because every other time she leaps around, she magically transforms into an ugly CGI construct that flings itself awkwardly into faceless Nazis (one of her many ill-defined powers in the movie). Of course, they’re not quite Nazis, at least not yet, because this movie transplants her origins from WWII to WWI, so as to avoid too many reminders of how Marvel did basically this same story so much better in Captain America: The First Avenger like six fucking years ago.<br />
<br />Sorry, sorry, I know, I’ll try not to hurt DC fanboy feelings by making too many comparisons to the MCU, at least now that I’ve already earned that fat paycheck Disney sends out to all the critics. That being said, I do think it’s valuable to ask those who claim to enjoy this movie to try to actually, objectively rank it next to any of the Marvel films that DC and Warner Bros. have been chasing for the last decade or so. Is it even close to any of them let alone better than even the worst one? It’s arguably better than Thor 2, the only Marvel film that actually crosses the threshold into being outright bad, but even that had Tom Hiddleston’s Loki to liven up the proceedings occasionally. Even allowing for the argument that Wonder Woman surpasses Thor 2, is being slightly better than the worst Marvel film really an accomplishment? I guess it’s not as bad as Catwoman or Elektra, so clearly all of our daughters must be inspired by this blow for cinematic representation. Or at least be inspired to spend a bunch of money to see it multiple times in the theater and buy toys and DVDs and Halloween costumes that I’m totally sure will only serve to enrich the bank accounts of the minority of female executives rather than all the men who dominate the corporate culture behind the film, who now conveniently have a whole new demographic consumer base to shamelessly exploit. Because progress.<br />
<br />I think it has to go without saying at this point that the outrageously positive reviews for Wonder Woman have more to do with the meta-narrative of the first plausibly successful female-led superhero film (because I guess Lucy didn’t count) rather than the actual, punishingly bland narrative of the film itself. It’s understandable, at least in so far as it is always easier to create fictional heroes to look up to, who lack the complexities of real heroes who may fail us or fail to fit into our preferred oversimplified black and white view of history. Consider in contrast another war movie from 2017, Their Finest, a cute little female-centric indie about real life women doing what they could to break out of a man’s world and prove that they too could be heroes even if they weren’t allowed to fight in the trenches or conform to the traditionally masculine model of heroism. But fuck that noise, because only a woman can cross the No Man’s Land (get it, NO MAN’S LAND! GET IT!), not to mention block all the bullets the Germans shoot at her shield and nowhere else on her body for some reason. And doubly fuck all those complicated, often convoluted reasons for the war, because our hero is so without flaws save for her natural fish out of water innocence that she puts Rey from The Force Awakens to shame in the Mary Sue contest, winning the war single handedly by literally punching the living personification of the concept of War so hard in the face that we all become better people as a result. Bet she could fly the Millennium Falcon without any prior training too!<br />
<br />By the logic of this movie, people like Harriet Tubman and the Suffragettes didn’t have superpowers, so they can all go fuck themselves apparently. I’m once again reminded of politics, specifically a tweet from documentary filmmaker Michael Moore sent back in October during the general election campaign in defense of History’s Greatest Monster Hillary Clinton, where he stated: “No women ever invented an atomic bomb, built a smoke stack, initiated a Holocaust, melted the polar ice caps, or organized a school shooting.” The internet was quick to rebut his contention, providing several examples to complicate the narrative he was trying to push, and thankfully pointing out that placing women atop an impossible pedestal of moral perfection takes away their agency and diminishes their essential humanity. Wonder Woman leaps over this pedestal like the shitty CGI assisted gallop that provides the last shot of the movie, presenting an impossibly perfect, and therefore amazingly boring protagonist who can do no wrong, and for whom the entire world of the movie strains to fit her inherent rightness whenever her point of view would be considered wrong by any reasonable person, male or female. Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor spends a great deal of the film trying to calmly convince Diana that her “Ares Did It All!” explanation for man’s inhumanity to man is too simplistic, and instead of confirming this with, you know, fucking reality, it turns out she’s right, and once Ares is defeated in a terrible special effect sequence, everybody just decides to get along and forget why they were fighting in the first place. At least until Ares comes back to life for WWII I guess.<br />
<br />And speaking of Ares, it is kind of amazing that I’ve already gotten five paragraphs into this screed without even mentioning David Thewlis’s big bushy fucking mustache! Despite everything that I’ve said to the contrary, I am almost tempted to still recommend that you go see this movie so that you too can marvel at how ridiculously it falls off the rails in the third act, due in large part to perhaps the most miss-cast and poorly conceived villain in any superhero movie to date. Again, major spoilers abound – but if you don’t see the twist concerning the real main villain coming a mile away, you should consider it a symptom of mental disability. Towards the end of the movie, Wonder Woman straight up murders the guy she thinks is really Ares, only to find that he must not have been, because the war didn’t magically end with his death (never once considering that maybe the war might be happening for other reasons). But before the movie has a chance to maybe be interesting, we find out that Ares was really taking the form of a kindly old British guy from the first act played by David Thewlis, who appears for no reason to give a villain speech, in which he describes in flashback how he was cast down from Mt. Olympus. In said flashback, we see him in his previous godly form, and for some reason I still cannot fathom, he still has his big bushy mustache! It wasn’t an affectation to blend into British society, but rather something this GREEK GOD has always had on his goofy fucking face. I know when I think about the pantheon of Ancient Greek Gods, I always picture them with big bushy fucking mustaches. By the gods, if there was ever a time to turn your villain into a CGI monster, this was it, and they almost do, giving him magical armor for the big fight, but then he goes out of his way to claw open his helmet so you can see his face, just in case we forgot that he in fact has a big bushy fucking mustache! I know that this sounds like nitpicking, but it diminishes any threat or menace he might have otherwise had, and I defy you to watch this part of the film and not burst out laughing.<br />
<br />Of course if it were just a matter of one silly mustache, it could be forgiven, but this whole sequence is just embarrassing. Thewlis lazily flings special effects at our heroine in a fashion eerily similar to an actor who can’t be bothered to give a shit, and since Wonder Woman’s powers and weakness haven’t been clearly defined throughout the movie, we get no sense whatsoever that she is in any sort of danger, and have no frame of reference for when she suddenly develops the ability to absorb lightning in her gauntlets and shoot it out like a laser beam as if she could do it the whole time, because why establish that sort of thing before the last ten minutes? And just before killing Ares, right after delivering a defiant “Nooo!” rivaling Darth Vader from the end of the prequels, she’s tempted by Ares to kill one of the lesser villains and essentially prove his philosophy right, but instead she spares the minor villain, explicitly stating that she has learned the power of mercy, only to then kill Ares rather than spare him, which is kind of exactly the opposite of the lesson she just fucking said she learned. Easy fix, remove Ares altogether, reveal that humans are at war for complicated reasons rather than the curse of an evil deity, and make our previously naïve character deal with the consequences of that realization instead of having her magically idealistic conception of the world confirmed so she doesn’t have to ever question herself at all. You can still have a big fight scene by bringing back Dr. Poison, maybe augmented by some magic gas or some shit instead of just wasting her like the film does, but you also get that depth that DC fanboys insist makes these movies more rewarding than the mainstream Marvel formula. But then the man would be right and Diana would be wrong, and we can’t have that, can we?<br />
<br />And I could go on and on. There’s an entire team of boring ass side characters you will not care about who are all given dilemmas that beg for resolution but get none (a sniper who can’t shoot due to PTSD, and never does; an actor who can’t act because of his skin color, and only kinda does, badly). There are the Boris and Natasha cackling side villains and their weird gases, some that kill you, some that kill you harder, and some that make you super-strong somehow, one of which was developed in a dream after the macguffin notebook they claimed to need to make the gas was stolen, making the macguffin completely irrelevant! Okay, sure, it’s not the unmitigated disaster that was Batman V. Superman or Suicide Squad, but not being as bad as two of the worst movies of last year doesn’t make this movie good. All it had to do to be better than the previous entries in this franchise was have scenes that connected together sequentially in a way that made some kind of sense, and it does this, but that’s the bare minimum for any movie. A good movie also has to have an interesting story that you can engage with intellectually and emotionally in and of itself, independent of how long you may have been waiting for a story like this to satisfy your need for representation. It needs characters that develop over the course of the story with flaws and complexities that make them unique, rather than unstoppable, unassailable cyphers for our idealistic heroic fantasies. Good movies need to actually be good, not just better than the previous shitty thing! Demand more of your movies people. Lower your expectations, but don’t lower your standards. Be better movie goers, or don’t act surprised when this garbage is the best we get.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-40050164033721114642015-02-08T16:23:00.003-08:002015-02-08T16:23:51.228-08:00Saturday Night Jive - Episode 37: Loose Cannons<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvWBXEI9isGNXilzFImX-yBg-Ik4RVIsLtXPjddygf9a0VD2XNmmwmqLpT9cKrNYwTt_xX2kSlBJzj2n33BIZXEPq6n52sPTynbWLh5ptTA-KLY2KMqIhoMfZEPx6_g2u4CSTXBttQahM/s1600/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvWBXEI9isGNXilzFImX-yBg-Ik4RVIsLtXPjddygf9a0VD2XNmmwmqLpT9cKrNYwTt_xX2kSlBJzj2n33BIZXEPq6n52sPTynbWLh5ptTA-KLY2KMqIhoMfZEPx6_g2u4CSTXBttQahM/s1600/download.jpg" /></a></div>
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The Saturday Night Jive podcast is back, and once again we're...not actually talking about the show. We're pretty much onto movies full time now, because this show and our podcast kinda sucks. So this week we watched a movie featuring an SNL alum that really sucks called Loose Cannons. Prepare yourselves for the movie that Dan Akyroyd thinks is his worst movie. Seriously. It's a movie so bad that its accidental discovery actually led to a murder investigation. Enjoy.<br />
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<a href="http://saturdaynightjive.blogspot.com/2015/02/ep-37-loose-cannons.html">DOWNLOAD HERE</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-67281566025657878322014-09-30T18:37:00.001-07:002014-09-30T18:37:33.659-07:00Saturday Night Jive - Episode 36 - Chris Pratt Premiere<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH6qsbQxfVCVqOyKo_dRKjUyheOclsTNdgMnqQWL08TjHWeqnCthMPG8N-X0z9eGg8Cr1xVpaGLtyBUCBem73wJWA9uBVHUJ2hFUnE1z2t34VbRoLYh9YveBaBdGAwGXUq92FEC6ret2A/s1600/rs_560x415-140928103544-1024.Chris-Pratt-SNL-He-Man-Lion-O.jl.092914.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH6qsbQxfVCVqOyKo_dRKjUyheOclsTNdgMnqQWL08TjHWeqnCthMPG8N-X0z9eGg8Cr1xVpaGLtyBUCBem73wJWA9uBVHUJ2hFUnE1z2t34VbRoLYh9YveBaBdGAwGXUq92FEC6ret2A/s1600/rs_560x415-140928103544-1024.Chris-Pratt-SNL-He-Man-Lion-O.jl.092914.jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></div>
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This week on Saturday Night Jive, we talk about the first episode of Season 40 featuring host Chris Pratt, blending into the scenery in an episode that is somehow both bland and vehemently annoying. Is SNL suffering from Weird Al Syndrome? Should it be cancelled after all these years? How bad can my impression of Harrison Ford possibly be? Find out!<br />
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<a href="http://saturdaynightjive.blogspot.com/2014/09/ep-36-season-40-premiere-chris-pratt.html">DOWNLOAD HERE</a><br />
<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-45767442992091532572014-09-28T17:43:00.000-07:002014-09-28T17:43:12.168-07:00New Dirty Sons Of Pitches, Episode 95! Now Available<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ubRdo37C-Xa58WWEPv8FVBGKOqs2OK3peTGqs8yTnaNYVq0xPL30st4nDD8a_RvxjCzETB3vDV3Qtj0vA8yv_x1irSwZL2H3WCivOmOZx_EGYKWL6BqVGdCtrg3w7lX39vYG4Vue-GE/s1600/t1larg.tea.party.gi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ubRdo37C-Xa58WWEPv8FVBGKOqs2OK3peTGqs8yTnaNYVq0xPL30st4nDD8a_RvxjCzETB3vDV3Qtj0vA8yv_x1irSwZL2H3WCivOmOZx_EGYKWL6BqVGdCtrg3w7lX39vYG4Vue-GE/s1600/t1larg.tea.party.gi.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
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This week on the Dirty Sons Of Pitches we get all political, inspired by the release of Atlas Shrugged, Part Three. We also talk Fall TV premieres and the state of modern television, and play a new-ish game, a refined version of last week's game Five By Five. Enjoy<br />
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<a href="http://sonsofpitches.libsyn.com/ep-95-no-celebrity-boobs-to-reference-this-week-tv-shows-and-politics">DOWNLOAD HERE</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-85024859260623340652014-09-19T19:44:00.001-07:002014-09-19T19:44:49.764-07:00Saturday Night Jive, Episode Thirty Five! My Giant. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcgc1gKvKzijUpJFV-yWbzuPv5a84IIj6MPeOmuVlTfx5r5cbtLXsOhaUUATrDO-06SrO_dJbwawtQPjJVhyphenhyphenJwStDfk9K74kUrHZFPX9wNIAcGFSzffaitZ7DDZJA_vgeFE2jZMFLyivk/s1600/1364122053-1-0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcgc1gKvKzijUpJFV-yWbzuPv5a84IIj6MPeOmuVlTfx5r5cbtLXsOhaUUATrDO-06SrO_dJbwawtQPjJVhyphenhyphenJwStDfk9K74kUrHZFPX9wNIAcGFSzffaitZ7DDZJA_vgeFE2jZMFLyivk/s1600/1364122053-1-0.jpg" height="320" width="227" /></a></div>
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This week, Saturday Night Jive tackles Billy Crystal's My Giant, and it tackles back, hard. We struggle to make sense of a movie where half the exposition is revealed by a mush mouthed former basketball player who acts as well as he speaks, and the other half is translated with a heaping helping of Borscht Belt pseudo-charm. Is Billy Crystal the worst human being alive, or does he just play him in this movie? Find out with us.<br />
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<a href="http://saturdaynightjive.blogspot.com/2014/09/ep-35-my-giant.html">DOWNLOAD HERE</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-66778486418473340402014-09-17T19:19:00.001-07:002014-09-17T19:19:28.750-07:00The Dirty Sons Of Pitches, Episode 94, Now Available!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6TryqULzvShqfajMCdQhGwRw9M9uXe1-bGfllMk_hpl9GWe6F8CBtB-8WF6sHi27NXMdldIei1cABbdhkxOfuIOYfuh6oLrCtYw5Lt4qPr6JGegThnt-szRgqOnEzjuINwkLgtls09Tg/s1600/w8715.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6TryqULzvShqfajMCdQhGwRw9M9uXe1-bGfllMk_hpl9GWe6F8CBtB-8WF6sHi27NXMdldIei1cABbdhkxOfuIOYfuh6oLrCtYw5Lt4qPr6JGegThnt-szRgqOnEzjuINwkLgtls09Tg/s1600/w8715.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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This week on the Dirty Sons Of Pitches podcast, we take a look back at the summer movie season to see where it all went wrong. Also, genital wigs, Joan Rivers RIP, and a brand new game if you can believe it. (Note: Take my advice, do not search for Merkins in Google Images).<br />
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<a href="http://sonsofpitches.libsyn.com/ep-94-merkins-summer-movie-redux-and-five-things">DOWNLOAD HERE</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-35280216644252570692014-09-11T18:07:00.001-07:002014-09-11T18:07:14.096-07:00Saturday Night Jive - Episode Thirty Four: Real Men<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfMlmd0m9EpIrui2nSeT3YDoQ9OtR2jXNZejqFnRq7O0OsVx6qutRloAkwblVNIKs9P-zliCSI7D13Xk1ExeFVlt-MN1qojoARjc5LrT6sq0H9cMJkUGstGUxYf8ZUddzxy-uLMq39A9k/s1600/DVD_cover_of_the_movie_Real_Men.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfMlmd0m9EpIrui2nSeT3YDoQ9OtR2jXNZejqFnRq7O0OsVx6qutRloAkwblVNIKs9P-zliCSI7D13Xk1ExeFVlt-MN1qojoARjc5LrT6sq0H9cMJkUGstGUxYf8ZUddzxy-uLMq39A9k/s1600/DVD_cover_of_the_movie_Real_Men.jpg" height="320" width="221" /></a></div>
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This week, Saturday Night Jive takes on the bizarre 80's action comedy Real Men starring SNL alum Jim Belushi and the late great John Ritter in an adventure involving a dominatrix, CIA clowns, aliens, and commies. It all kind of works, though we both could have done with less Jim Belushi.<br />
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<a href="http://saturdaynightjive.blogspot.com/2014/09/ep-34-real-men.html">DOWNLOAD HERE</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-69978938818580993762014-09-07T19:25:00.002-07:002014-09-07T19:25:13.200-07:00New Dirty Sons Of Pitches Episode Available! Now With Boobs!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfctxOx-rroMfpIEgEhs4e0xJNJrVkdV80LBB3T1QICpKZbQ27SDN4b5ndVlQdWyoWDtOF2sXmKQqFqMC28xEt_ftxP9-u8drWqJ4EIoHXvSR7-EEKweG5wvTc5I4K7SLbuJayksjQYic/s1600/i.1.s-the-fappening-nude-photos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfctxOx-rroMfpIEgEhs4e0xJNJrVkdV80LBB3T1QICpKZbQ27SDN4b5ndVlQdWyoWDtOF2sXmKQqFqMC28xEt_ftxP9-u8drWqJ4EIoHXvSR7-EEKweG5wvTc5I4K7SLbuJayksjQYic/s1600/i.1.s-the-fappening-nude-photos.jpg" height="271" width="400" /></a></div>
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This week on the Dirty Sons of Pitches, it's all boobs, all the time. We get all kinds of inappropriately titillated by the release of a treasure trove of celebrity nude pics, dubbed The Fappening by people who put way too much effort into naming stupid things. Hey, did you know that putting keywords into posts like Nude Jennifer Lawrence or Nude Kate Upton is something called SEO, or search engine optimization? Well I do. You're welcome.<br />
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<a href="http://sonsofpitches.libsyn.com/naked-jennifer-lawrence-nude-celebrities-boobs-and-other-seo-riffic-keywords">DOWNLOAD HERE</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-72171260448286025172014-09-02T19:52:00.003-07:002014-09-02T19:52:59.367-07:00Saturday Night Jive, Episode Thirty Three: Man Of The Year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIIv_jQFOH0ZLmRweRo-3fufIClZFFXwy2rfsnzBu6trWi5s9lA9E2DiMY2Uwfz31-Tda9vSRat3-JDckczeM8dU6ApYNiinWq8MqETNqYJZVXS9-LRQPQYUlu2t7BYk3dw4sNk6oN4BQ/s1600/MV5BMTM0NzQxMjk0OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDUyNDgzMQ@@._V1_SX214_AL_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIIv_jQFOH0ZLmRweRo-3fufIClZFFXwy2rfsnzBu6trWi5s9lA9E2DiMY2Uwfz31-Tda9vSRat3-JDckczeM8dU6ApYNiinWq8MqETNqYJZVXS9-LRQPQYUlu2t7BYk3dw4sNk6oN4BQ/s1600/MV5BMTM0NzQxMjk0OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDUyNDgzMQ@@._V1_SX214_AL_.jpg" /></a></div>
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This week, Saturday Night Jive delves into the Robin Williams masterpiece Man Of The Year. We pay tribute to a fallen legend by tackling what may be his worst film, because that's just how we roll. And its a bad one folks, an attempt by non-comedy writers to write about comedy writers doing comedy. Oi. R.I.P.<br />
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<a href="http://saturdaynightjive.blogspot.com/2014/09/ep-33-man-of-year.html">DOWNLOAD HERE</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-14060079850622149782014-08-31T19:30:00.000-07:002014-08-31T19:30:45.805-07:00The Dirty Sons Of Pitches - Episode 92, Now Available!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdjX4TAU16iSygURDwXhTiXAxs4cLA7bZ5TyAXG0HbMxEALPT5848i61QzwgaeKwAlQekETN_DfBYiOIydviA0j8wiCIoXGjw7glBH078jCwY2fOIPgLCsoxkBUKp0dviS0sqUi4_hK_I/s1600/OnSet11-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdjX4TAU16iSygURDwXhTiXAxs4cLA7bZ5TyAXG0HbMxEALPT5848i61QzwgaeKwAlQekETN_DfBYiOIydviA0j8wiCIoXGjw7glBH078jCwY2fOIPgLCsoxkBUKp0dviS0sqUi4_hK_I/s1600/OnSet11-1.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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New episode of The Dirty Sons Of Pitches is up. This week we talk Mistaken Identity movies in honor of Let's Be Cops, a movie neither of us had seen at the time. Pictured above, a gaffer, not jerking off a movie star.<br />
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<a href="http://sonsofpitches.libsyn.com/ep-92-death-mistaken-identity-and-the-gafferbest-boy-connection">DOWNLOAD HERE</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-48704873014561716872014-08-26T19:43:00.002-07:002014-08-26T19:43:29.029-07:00Saturday Night Jive, Episode Thirty Two: Mom And Dad Save The World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNWYXOEevuewCGTf3BZRBkCKCAPYtMt3beDhSmrhGQO5Vwr38mlQrHJtcZ-aTukM6-85rtqhyPbIGoTkYo20GTAlOcMVeW8SaZtlAAJQzRMrrDO8S6-KUZHyJCFMS5eFWG8HCBbKLWGsw/s1600/screenshot20090926at333.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNWYXOEevuewCGTf3BZRBkCKCAPYtMt3beDhSmrhGQO5Vwr38mlQrHJtcZ-aTukM6-85rtqhyPbIGoTkYo20GTAlOcMVeW8SaZtlAAJQzRMrrDO8S6-KUZHyJCFMS5eFWG8HCBbKLWGsw/s1600/screenshot20090926at333.png" height="220" width="400" /></a></div>
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This week on Saturday Night Jive, we mourn the passing of a legend and promise to do a more fitting tribute next week. In the mean time, we take about a shitty movie with a pedophile and Jon Lovitz. Mom and Dad Save The World is the film Lovitz quit SNL to make. Find out if it was worth it (Spoiler: No, it absolutely wasn't).<br />
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<a href="http://saturdaynightjive.blogspot.com/2014/08/saturday-night-jive-episode-thirty-two.html">DOWNLOAD HERE</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-71658362147999459502014-08-20T19:46:00.002-07:002014-08-20T19:46:55.263-07:00The Dirty Sons Of Pitches Episode 91 - Now Available!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCVPNrXOKP9w46hREw9hkE78ba39cH_ooWfRz9JFov07g2a35z49xiPrq7kWZZVAOOGr2uf6KLylZI8OnNI0fWV0aj-o_Y9DSKpCZV1O8IboTT-f35ECg7Ap7zfBh32fG5A-BIjvII_3I/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCVPNrXOKP9w46hREw9hkE78ba39cH_ooWfRz9JFov07g2a35z49xiPrq7kWZZVAOOGr2uf6KLylZI8OnNI0fWV0aj-o_Y9DSKpCZV1O8IboTT-f35ECg7Ap7zfBh32fG5A-BIjvII_3I/s1600/images.jpg" height="210" width="400" /></a></div>
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Check out the latest episode of the Dirty Sons Of Pitches, where we talk about, well that thing up there, or rather down there...Also, the death of a beloved entertainer. And pitches about Idris Elba's cock...I mean Other Planets.<br />
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<a href="http://sonsofpitches.libsyn.com/ep-91-idris-elbas-death-robin-williams-penis-and-space-travel">Download Here</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-34206034602346497752014-08-17T19:23:00.000-07:002014-08-17T19:23:00.651-07:00Saturday Night Jive, Episode Thirty One - Ghost Dad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This week on Saturday Night Jive, we take on the 1990 Christine Ebersole classic (also featuring Bill Cosby), Ghost Dad. We question the physics of ghostly existence, then criticize the movie for trying to explain them. We also get run of the mill satanists, deleted ghost sex, and a theory of racial allegory that kind of falls apart as soon as it begins. Its not as bad, or as good, as you might remember. Enjoy.<br />
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<a href="http://saturdaynightjive.blogspot.com/2014/08/saturday-night-jive-episode-thirty-one.html">DOWNLOAD HERE</a><br />
<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2894382412529555768.post-7005415166228351572014-08-14T18:42:00.000-07:002014-08-14T18:42:10.394-07:00The Cinema File #376: "Hercules" Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One of the most pivotal scenes in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock is when the starship Enterprise self-destructs. So powerful was this moment that the marketing department decided to show the whole thing in the trailer, over director Leonard Nimoy’s strenuous objections. This happens a lot, where elements of a film meant to be shocking or surprising are outright spoiled in the advertising, so much so that you have to hand it to them when they can keep their mouths shut. The new film Hercules has a twist that is central to its premise that you would never guess from the commercials, and that I must regrettably spoil to review the film. Unfortunately, this is the only thing the movie has going for it.<br />
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Okay, well that’s not entirely true. There is one other thing, and that’s Dwayne the motherfucking Rock Johnson, who I’m fairly sure actually is the immortal Greek demi-god of the title, masquerading as an actor playing himself. The fact that this country is still so racist that this walking ball of charm isn’t playing Superman, and I don’t just mean in Superman movies but literally every movie regardless of whether it makes sense to have Superman in it, should be held up as a point of national shame. The guy is awesome is what I’m saying. Perhaps too awesome as it turns out, as in the context of this retelling of the Hercules legend, he’s not actually supposed to be.<br />
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That’s the twist by the way. Hercules is not in fact the immortal and indestructible son of a god, but rather the mortal but still extremely kickass leader of a band of mercenaries, spreading the myth of Hercules as a supernatural force in the ancient equivalent of a PR campaign. Its a brilliant angle, reminiscent of the original script for Ridley Scott’s 2010 Robin Hood, which cast the Sheriff of Nottingham as the hero, retelling a story we’ve seen hundreds of times before in a new and different way that justifies one more go. Still, its a hard needle to thread, potentially losing a lot of what makes the traditional Hercules story interesting, so only a director of the highest caliber should attempt it. Let me just check my notes to see who made this…<br />
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Oh fuck.<br />
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That’s right, this is a Brett Ratner joint. If you’re only vaguely familiar with the name, perhaps you heard it in the wailing cries of a million X-Men fans over the travesty that was The Last Stand. Or maybe you just have “Fratboy Dickbag” as a Google alert (for what I will assume are completely legitimate reasons). Ratner is the director that everybody thinks Michael Bay is. He’s Uwe Boll with a bigger budget, and one might guess from his public displays of bravado, a much smaller penis. He is the last person you would want directing any movie, let alone one with as ingenious a premise as this one, and he does not disappoint in being thoroughly disappointing, turning what could have been and by all rights should have been one of the best movies of the year into forgettable garbage you’ll soon be ignoring in your Netflix queue.<br />
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Its not entirely his fault of course, or rather, while his inept direction is comprehensibly terrible, even a good director would have needed a better script to make this idea work. One would think that the main conflict of this movie would be similar to a con film, just in an action movie veneer, with the characters constantly under threat of having their secret revealed. Instead, the movie basically forgets the con altogether, as the crew fully admit to the fraud as soon as they’re hired. How about forcing them to test their supernatural claims? Maybe instead of just facing off against a nameless boring enemy army, they encounter a rival playing their own game, but better. Nothing so interesting. Its one of those movies that starts out so novel that you assume it will be more clever than it ultimately is, so that its predictable plot turns are only cloaked by your initially inflated expectations.<br />
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Hercules is a film that does not deserve the few good things that set it apart from the cliched rut it tries so doggedly to dig for itself. It takes a golden opportunity to do something different and dare I say wholly original and squanders it on barely passable action sequences strung together by the flimsiest of connective tissue featuring backstory and incidental character beats you’re given no reason to care about. The characters themselves are often engaging only because the cast is so much better than the movie, but when they shine, it only serves to remind you of the much better movie this could have been. It wouldn’t have been that hard for even a marginally talented action director and maybe one or two more drafts of the script. But instead we got Brett Ratner and the writer of the The Lion King 1 and ½. In a year with so many great high concept action movies, such a failure snatched from the jaws of greatness seems particularly egregious.<br />
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Not mention, it actually manages to make The Rock look bad, which I honestly didn’t think was possible. Doom couldn’t even do that shit.<br />
<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05975603006645625425noreply@blogger.com0