The Lovely Bones… a review

January 19th, 2010 | 1 | No Comments »

Don’t make the mistake I did.

The Lovely Bones is not the latest adult film by Sasha Grey. There wasn’t a single handyman, cheerleader, or lonely housewife in the whole damn film.

No, this is about a 14 year old girl who is abducted and brutally murdered by her neighbor.

I’m telling you now, keeping an erection going for this film is not going to be easy.

Hey, if you want a tasteful review go over to “At the Movies”.

In the many years I’ve been reviewing films, this is my first one written entirely in bile.

Sometimes a film is boring, sometimes it’s just badly written, but once in a while a movie comes out that is so pretentious, so emotionally manipulative and so (damn, can I can pretentious again?), that my gall bladder immediately tries to leap out of my body and run away.

Peter Jackson owes me dinner.

I feel that I wasn’t just manipulated by fat boy, but rather I was bent over a Lord of the Rings Box Set and was given a good rogering by Gandalf’s staff.

In the past I’ve mentioned a little term that us budding screenwriters toss around that is known as “Deus Ex Machina.”

The literal translation is “God From the Machine” and it’s a plot device that the ancient Greeks used to pull when they wrote themselves into a corner.

Rather than have the hero figure a way out of the mess, one of the Gods would drop down from the sky (lowered by a crane usually) and would save the day.

Hellooooooo Zeus.

Wow is this film full of cameos by fate.

Now, we all know that Peter Jackson is one of the most self indulgent directors on the planet.

This guy could take a recipe for Jello and turn it into a seven part miniseries.

What dumbfounds me is how you take a movie about a serial killer who preys on teenage girls and then make it a non-event?

Imagine if Hannibal Lecter just made pretty sketches for two hours in Silence of The Lambs, and that’s what you get in this film.

A serial killer who doesn’t kill again? A serial killer who doesn’t go after the other sister or plan his next murder?

What the hell is the point in having him around then?

What you get in this film is scene after scene of people doing nothing, so that we can jump back into the in-between world and watch the pretty colours Peter cranked out on an iMac.

To make matters worse it’s a boring afterlife.

It’s like watching the opening credits of Little House on the Prairies after dropping some acid.

What’s the killer do during the movie? A lot of sitting in the basement fondling a charm he stole from the dead girl.

Um… are you gonna pick up a knife or something?

No?

Let’s go back to the freaky field.

Oh forget that. There’s not much going on here (unless you want to watch someone sit in a gazebo).

Fortunately, there’s a goth chick who can communicate with the dead.

Well, expect that she doesn’t, until at the very end when she can blow the case wide open and expose the killer.

Except that she doesn’t.

Tips on how to crack “the big” case after two years when you have no evidence and have accused everyone who has ever been in the same room as your daughter when she was alive.

Jump to conclusions?

Hey, it seems logical to me.

Tips on what not to do if you’re a serial killer.

Don’t draw a detailed map from your house to the sex pit (which by the way is in the middle of a field in FULL VIEW of 100 houses with large picture windows), including scaled architectural drawings of the pit (dude, it’s a hole in the ground, it’s not the Burj Khalifa Tower), while tossing in a few newspaper clippings of the missing girl, and maybe you might not want to include a locket of the corpse’s hair taped to the back.

Next time why don’t you just dangle her skeletal remains on the porch and masturbate ?

Just sayin’…

Hey, here’s a math question for you. How many men does it take to lift a giant steel safe that holds the decomposing body of a girl in it?

If you said “who the fuck cares?” then you too can be Peter Jackson, because the rules of physics kind of change depending on where you are.

Apparently, if you’re in a rush to escape justice, the thing is feather light and can be easily hauled out of the basement and loaded onto the back of a truck in 38 seconds without a crane or a former NFL linebacker helping you.

Once you get it to a giant sink hole though, it takes two men to flip it over enough times to get it to the edge.

Has anyone here ever seen a giant metal safe?

The metal part is the bitch.

They tend to be around 800 pounds.

Fortunately the killer likes to make dollhouses in his spare time so he has the quads of a Bolivian race horse.

All this to say…. (SPOILER ALERT)…  (seriously… I’m going to give away the ending)…. (Ok, I warned you) ….. in the end the guy gets away!!

WHAT THE FUCK?!!!

Relax… Zeus smites his ass at the very end.

1 star out of 5.

No… screw that… 1 star out of 20.

You'll wish he had killed you 20 minutes into this

You'll wish he had killed you 20 minutes into this

Youth In Revolt… a review

January 13th, 2010 | 1 | No Comments »

I wonder what a day in Micheal Cera’s life is like?

He wakes up after not getting laid, then sorts through a stack of scripts where he can’t get laid, and then he sits down and watches a rerun of a film he did where he doesn’t get laid.

Poor bastard.

At least when you’re typecast as an action hero you get to change professions now and then.

You could be an alcoholic former bodyguard, or a retired ninja, or the bodyguard of an alcoholic ninja.

The possibilities are endless!!

Plus, if you don’t get laid you can at least work out your frustrations on the bad guy with a flamethrower.

Toss in a witty rejoinder like “I’m burning my bridges Hans“, and it’s almost as good as getting laid.

What does Michael Cera have to look forward to?

Awkwardly trying to talk to a girl, while wearing awkwardly fitting gym shorts.

Poor, poor, bastard.

If there’s a car chase, he’ll be sitting in the back seat lecturing the cool guy about the use of proper hand signals.

Well, at least he’s rich, so he can pay for some of Charlie Sheen’s prostitutes… I mean his former prostitutes (of course).

“Youth in Revolt”

It’s kind of like “Fight Club” for nerds, if the first rule of “Fight Club” was “be a pretentious douche bag who knows every cliché from the Summer’s Eve product line.”

Nick Twisp” (Cera) is a 16 year old loser who listens to Frank Sinatra, and reads poetry while lamenting the fact that he’s not getting any.

Just once, wouldn’t you like to meet the 16 year old virgin who maybe listens to Fall Out Boy?

Why do all of these guys wear tweed jackets, and have a copy of Chekhov’s Three Sisters on their night table?

You know, as a former 16 year old virgin myself, I would like to point out that most of us who were not getting laid were as dumb as a sack of hammers, but we listened to cool music (not withstanding that brief fling with Flock of Seagulls).

Guys like this don’t get laid until they invent something called “Facebook” and even then it has to be in the back seat of their Porsche.

Besides, kids today have internet porn and wi-fi connections.

Who needs real sex?

Oh, and here’s some advice.

If you see a mysterious blue glow coming from some bushes beside your house, do not investigate it.

Little Johnny just discovered that there aren’t any parental controls on his iPod Touch (and you thought it was called touch because of the user interface).

But, back to the story.

Nick comes from a broken family, where his mom is a whore, and his dad is a nerd with a twenty two year old girlfriend.

Go dad.

One day he finds himself spending the summer in a religious campground after his mom’s boyfriend fleeces a group of sailors.

While there, he meets the local bible slut named “Sheeni”, and falls in love.

Thou shalt not, indeed.

Bounch-chika-ten-hail-Mary’s.

Sheeni enjoys teasing Nick, and when it becomes apparent that she likes that bad boy, he’s forced to create an alter ego called François to win her… um … heart?

(go with it, I’m not burning in Hell for your amusement)

Frankie turns out to be a bit of a pyscho though, and he’s generally not above doing things that society sort of frowns upon.

So really, what we have here, is a heart warming story about a boy who fantasizes about putting his finger in someone’s anus, while slipping drugs to the woman he loves, and committing arson.

Some of you can relate, and my restraining order is still in effect.

I laughed about 30% of the time, which gives it a passable 3 out of 5.

In other words… rental

Do NOT shake this man's hand

Do NOT shake this man's hand

Daybreakers… a review

January 13th, 2010 | 1 | No Comments »

What is it with Hollywood’s hard-on for Vampires anyway?

It’s gotten so bad, that they’ve started stealing plots from old movies and are updating them with an undead twist.

For instance, in the new movie “Daybreakers” they set up yet another type of “Matrix-like” existence in which most of mankind hangs suspended in some sort of giant factory, as our life essence is siphoned away into a giant stainless steel vat.

When you get right down to it, there’s not much difference between it and my office cubicle, (especially when you consider that they sleep all day and are naked).

I’m looking forward to more of these kinds of updates.

Maybe we can get an all vampire remake of “Braveheart“, or “Pulp Fiction“.

Tell me you wouldn’t pay to see that?

Actually, what I’d like to see would be a remake of “Dracula“, where the character sucks and not just the script.

Here’s the thing with mankind’s future existence. When the computers were harvesting our bio-electric output they knew enough to breed us like chickens and to keep us happy. The vampires however, just suck us dry until there’s nothing but a withered husk that they have to toss away.

It’s like Heather Mill’s wedding vows to Paul McCartney.

To no one’s surprise, they begin to run out of humans, which starts to lead to mass starvation.

This is where our hero “Edward Dalton” (played by Ethan Hawke) comes in.

Edward is a reluctant vampire. Shall we call him “Louis?” Hang on, he wasn’t turned against his will by a woman in a log cabin (see True Blood) or by Tome Cruise (see Crazy Scientologist), but rather he was turned by his brother Frankie (see who gives a crap) and thus forgoes drinking authentic human blood and goes for an artificial substitute.

Wait a second!!

I’m not quite sure how this works, because his job is to find a blood substitute.

Plot hole alert!!

How is he surviving then?

It must be residuals from Training Day, because after this turd he’s going to be forced to make a living on the club circuit with Paris Hilton.

Let’s continue.

One night while driving home, Edward gets into a car accident, but to his surprise, the car he hits is filled with humans.

Rather than turning them in to the police, he hides them in his car until the coast is clear, and then they scurry off into the night.

Hey, you know what happens to Vampires who don’t get enough blood?

They turn into Vampire Hobos, become a general nuisance on society, and are forced to live out their lives in the sewers.

Ok, so if you now take out your big book of left wing Hollywood propaganda (flip to page 36), you will find that the movie is really a giant sermon about the dangers of overfishing and the marginalization of the homeless.

Also, since this was filmed in the desert, I guess it’s safe to assume that the polar ice caps melted and we screwed the environment as well.

Damn greedy, insensitive anti-eviro blood suckers!!

Hang on…. I don’t think I saw any black people in this movie.

Racist vampires!!

With no pets!!.

Animal hating, racist, aerosol spraying, shark fin soup eating (when they were human), baby club beating, Nickleback fans!!

Honestly, when I become head vampire, I’m putting every human being on a strict diet of Viagra and vodka, then I’m sending them all to Aruba, (what the hell do I want with a sunny tropical island anyway?) and every television channel will be porn.

If that doesn’t work I’m just replacing everyone with Catholics.

Catholic, Chinese people.

Oh, now we’re talking.

Now that I think about it, what kind of pigs emptied out the entire continent of India?

I know what you’re thinking.

Texans right?

They probably rolled up in a Hum Vee, ate about 23 of them, and then whipped out a chain gun and went ape shit.

That or they just hacked off their arms and tossed them back into Mumabi.

What was I talking about again?

Oh, the stupidity of the plot.

Right, so remember those humans we met earlier? It seems that they have stumbled across a cure for vampirism.

What’s the cure you say?

Let’s put it this way.

It takes a leap of faith so great that in order for you to sail over this yawning chasm of “yeah RIGHT“, you’d have to be be Russian ballet dancer with a rocket pack in your tights (insert your own Mikhail Baryshnikov joke here).

Honestly, the cure has to be the lamest piece of writing I’ve ever seen.

It’s pretty much on par with “You have to drink a Diet Coke while eating Mentos” only less sciencey.

To top it off, we get grandiose speeches from the last holdouts of humanity explaining that they’re all going to live in the desert because it gets a lot of sunlight, but then they load up their buses and drive to the hideout at midnight!!

But wait… there’s more.

Humanity protects itself from vampires with wooden stakes and crossbows, except that apparently all you need to dispatch one of these things is a nice set of Gordon Ramsey’s kitchen knives.

You know what else seems to work?

Explosives.

If I can kill you with Ginsu 2000, or at the very least I can disembowel you with some hollow point shells, then why am I walking around with a splintered piece of a picket fence?

You know what I’d do? I’d walk over to the nearest Wal-Mart’s children’s department and get me a shotgun (and some bubblegum flavored SKOAL).

Sure if you’re a vampire, you might not die right away, but try to bite me when your knees are laying back in the jewelry department.

Hang on… I feel another sermon coming up.

What’s left to be lectured about?

Corporate Greed!!!

This is one hell of a preachy vampire flick.

Is Michael Moore a vampire?

Ok, now I know what happened to all of the Indian people.

2 amen brothers out of 5.

It sucks

It sucks

The Wrestler… a review

January 1st, 2010 | 1 | No Comments »

(I wrote this last year but forgot to post it)… hey at least I’m posting something (so stop bitching).

Did you ever have that dream where you thought that you were watching one of your favourite movies but for some reason someone else was starring in it, like Bea Arthur in The Matrix, or Pee Wee Herman in Death Race 2000?

I’m pretty sure I just “Joan Rivers” starring in the “Hulk Hogan Story.”

What’s that? It was Mickey Rooney?

Man, he’s really bulked up for an eighty year old.

Ohhhh… it was Mickey Rourke?!!

Dude, you’re starting to make Michael Jackson’s face look normal.

Well, this is the movie that everyone has been talking about eh?

It’s sort of like “Spinal Tap” but for the clinically depressed crowd.

Here’s a story about a washed up former pro wrestler who is locked out of his trailer park because he spends all of the money he earns on steroids, tanning sessions and forty something strippers.

I can relate to at least one of those things (and if you knew what I looked like, you’d have no problem narrowing the list down).

Randy “The Ram” hasn’t been a star since he took on “The Ayatollah” back in the late 80’s.

During the week he works as stock boy at a grocery store and on the weekend he wrestles in high school gymnasiums in front of a crowd of sixty or so drunken hillbillies.

He does however, have an action figure of himself glued to the dashboard of his battered pickup truck.

Holy crap, it’s like watching home movies!!

If he had a gap between his teeth I’d sue their asses off.

So anyway, after each show Randy (real name… Robin) decides to unwind at the local strip club and spend the thirty bucks he earned on a lap dance from Marisa Tomei.

Now, I never thought that I’d be saying this after watching “My Cousin Vinnie“, but the time when I wanted to see Marisa topless has passed.

I had finally forgotten her sex scene with Phillip Seymore Hoffman in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” and now I have to look at her pierced nipples poking out of a fish net halter top?!!

I may actually go back to using Kleenex to blow my nose.

So anyway, one night after fighting a match in a dirty gymnasium in front of 17 homeless guys Randy has a heart attack.

I know… I popping Xanax like it was Pez after the twenty minute mark.

After he has open heart surgery he decides to see if he can patch things up with the daughter that he abandoned as a child so that he could be a pro wrestler.

Ahhh the art film.

You can’t be happy in an art film can you?

I’m surprised he didn’t run over a baby duck on the way home from the hospital.

Fortunately the one thing that the lifts the art film above all others is the penchant for some good old cringe inducing violence.

Give a guy a bad haircut and then send him out into the wilderness with a can of compressed air or watch him plunge through a plate glass window covered in barbed wire.

Sign me up baby!!

For every scene in which The Ram moans into an empty shot glass about how he’s alone in the world, there’s a follow-up where he’s running a razor blade over his face.

If it wasn’t for the staple gun to the forehead I don’t think I could have suffered through this movie.

Sure the acting is great, but it’s depressing as hell.

Don’t even get me started on the bullshit Sopranos ending.

I’ll give it 3.5 anti-depressants out of 5.

Mickey is looking around to see if his old face is on the floor somewhere.

Mickey is looking around to see if his old face is on the floor somewhere.

My Top 10 for 2009

December 30th, 2009 | 1 | No Comments »

I’ve suffered through “Bright Star“, “Transformers” and “2012” this year.

I almost made it through 30 minutes of “Year One” and “GI Joe“.

I was legitimately ill during “The Road” and had to leave (seriously, I puked in the bathroom), but from what I hear I didn’t miss much.

So based on what I did see, here are my top 10 movies for 2009 IN ORDER!! (my disclaimer is that I didn’t get a chance to see “Drag me to Hell“, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox“, or “Where the Wild Things Are” and I’d rather have my balls pulled off than sit through a Dances With Wolves remake (Avatar) even if it IS in fantastic 3D that clocks in at almost three fucking hours. Write a compelling story first and then dazzle me with special effects. Oh, and since I also couldn’t get a free pass to see Sherlock Holmes [which I heard was "meh"], I spent my Christmas money on beer.)

Based on what I DID see… here’s what I recommend:

  1. Up… hands down Pixar does it again. A cartoon that made me weep? It doesn’t get any better than this.
  2. The Hurt Locker… a gripping war story that doesn’t get too preachy. It’s groin grabbingly good.
  3. The Hangover… The funniest movie since Old School.
  4. Star Trek…  I wanted to hate it, but I couldn’t. I feel so dirty.
  5. Coraline… Finally a SCARY kid’s movie.  Screw the Care Bears.
  6. 500 Days of Summer… been there, stalked her, left a burning bag of poop on her doorstep. It speaks to me.
  7. Zomieland… Double tapped this film twice (took my step daughter to see it… I’m an awesome parent)
  8. District 9… I have to put in one disclaimer here. There’s a plot hole that bugs me about this film. Why are the aliens sitting on top of a stockpile of superior weaponry and letting themselves be abused by a race of weaker and technologically inferior beings? You roast my eggs and see what happens asshole.
  9. Watchmen... My penis is bigger so it didn’t threaten me. This was a great story. Go see it (but ok , the penis was a bit much)
  10. I Love You Man… ok, not really a great film, but I ran out of flicks that I totally dug. It’s worth renting though.

North By Northwest (or why old movies SUCK)

December 27th, 2009 | 1 | No Comments »

I apologize for not having reviewed many films in December, but I just haven’t been in the mood to watch depressing films about child molesters and incest.

To me that’s more of a February thing.

Anyway, as you can guess I’m a bit of a film buff, and recently I decided to watch a classic film to see what all of the fuss was about.

My choice was the classic Alfred Hitchcock flick “North by Northwest”.

I’ve never seen it, but I knew all about the classic crop duster scene which is played ad nauseum whenever someone wants to talk about Cary Grant.

And by people, I mean the elderly because no one else gives a shit.

The premise of NBN is the classic story of mistaken identity wherein an advertising executive named Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for a “spy” named George Kaplan and is promptly kidnapped.

If you stopped your VCR (remember, you’re at your grandmother’s house while watching this) right then and there you’d probably look at me and say “What’s wrong with that asshole?”

Listen, I don’t know how the spy game worked in 1859, or 1959, or whatever ancient decade this piece of crap was written in, but I’m pretty sure that there is a more effective way to dispose of a troublesome government agent then to force him to drink liquor and put him behind the wheel of his car on a windy cliff road.

Hell, back in the 50’s that’s how everyone drove home anyway.

You might as well try to kill a Rastafarian with dirty bong water.

What’s wrong with just shooting a guy and dumping his corpse in the river? That’s how half of American marriages end anyway.

To no one’s surprise, this ingenious plot device doesn’t work, and now we get to see some classic 1950’s style acting in which everyone who is drunk starts singing and babbling like they just came out of a meeting of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes.

Roger’s suit is as natty as ever, and his hair is perfect.

I was a doorman at a bar for 10 years.

Here’s what it SHOULD have looked like:

Large stain of piss in the crotchetorial regions (soiled back optional), crust of vomit in the corner of mouth, and hair that looks like a bird’s nest (if the bird in question likes to build a home with cigarette butts, French fries and those tiny plastic swords that hold maraschino cherries).

Basically, we’re talking about Amy Winehouse.

Even more disturbing though is the fact that Cary (who looks like he’s in his fifties) calls his mother to come and get him out of jail.

Dude, you don’t have any friends? You sure as hell don’t have any shame.

Every man on the planet has a secret bank account that one of his friends has access to. In this account goes poker winnings which are stored to get you out of jail, or out of a beating when you’ve spent three hours in the champagne room and discover that you only have 100 bucks in your wallet.

You call your buddy, get your ass bailed out, and when your mom asks you where you were the night before, you tell her it was with a cheap woman and some expensive wine.

Is this something that we invented in the 80’s?

Sheesh.

Well, it gets more ridiculous from here because in the next scene, Roger tracks down the man whose house he was kept in at the United Nations.

Sensing that Jaggermeister Bombs are less effective that actual bombs, the spies decide to throw a knife at Roger, but instead end up killing a diplomat.

Talk about going from one extreme to another!

“Make it look like an accident”, suddenly turns into tossing kitchen knives in broad daylight.

Who the hell is running the planning department with these guys?

What’s the next step, carpet bomb the city and blame Hitler?

Naturally Roger immediately grabs hold of the knife protruding from the diplomat’s back, and in a shrewd bit of foreshadowing, he also leaves behind a semen sample so that DNA can implicate him in the killing thirty years later.

When people turn and look all that anyone sees is Roger holding the knife.

Ya, I was going to write something sarcastic, but really… what’s the point?

Roger is on the run and he jumps on a train whereupon he meets the biggest whore on the planet named Eve Kendall, who immediately hides him in her room and then helps him elude the police.

Train sluts.

If you think they’re a rare bird then go watch “The Manchurian Candidate.”

Amtrak is a rolling brothel.

Ahhh, but you say… Eve is really a double agent and is working for the spies.

Again I would like to point out that the planning department at the spy agency is going through some kind of internal power struggle, because now we’re back to trying to kill Roger with venereal diseases, or death by hickey.

Where’s Stabby Mcgee? The man is on a train for fuck’s sake. It’s a long metal tube about fifteen feet wide. Even if you throw the knife and miss him, it will probably bounce off the wall and get him on the rebound.

A shotgun would be pretty effective here.

Let’s eavesdrop on the planning department shall we?

“Ya, so I know that the gin and tonic didn’t work, and the knife thing sucked, and the whore is useless, but now I have an ingenious idea.”

“Well good, because quite honestly we were thinking of letting you go. What’s the new idea?”

“Death by crop duster.”

“Miss Johnson? Can you get Monster.com on the phone?”

“No wait… hear me out… We lure him out to the middle of nowhere see, and he stands at the crossroads. Then when he’s alone, we fly a plane down really low and try to cut him in half. We may or may not have a machine gun on the plane, that may or may not shoot at him on every third pass, and if he hides in the reeds we’ll spray him with chemicals!! He’ll die of cancer in twenty years.”

“Everyone smokes like a chimney in 1958. We’ll ALL be dead of cancer in twenty years.”

“Oh… um…”

“Well, we’ll give this idea one more chance, but make sure you hire a good pilot. I don’t want some idiot who just learned how to fly and ends up hitting a gasoline tanker truck in the middle of the prairies.”

This people, is the most talked about scene in the film. You’ve all seen it, and now you too can marvel at the stupidity of it all.

How are you going to make this look like an accident? You’ll either cut him in half (very inconspicuous) or you’ll shoot him from a passing plane.

This is the one bone fide moment when they can pull up in a tank and roast him with a flame thrower and there are no witnesses!!

Oh, I can just anticipate the hateful emails flooding in as I type this.

Of course, they’re all going to be signed “Tilley”, or “Edna” or will be written by a cat but in the end you know I’m right.

Anyway, the cavalcade of stupidity rolls on and now we discover that Eve is really a double spy working for the government and is in fact not trying to kill Roger even though the bitch totally set him up for the crop duster hit.

Roger, after getting boned on the train forgives all, and when he learns that Eve is in danger from the real spies runs up Mount Rushmore (apparently they have luxury condos on Washington’s forehead) and rescues her.

Fade to black.

I repeat… OLD MOVIES SUCK!!

2 stars out of 5.

Where are the sharks with the laser beams attached to their heads?!!

Where are the sharks with the laser beams attached to their heads?!!

Up in the Air… a review

December 17th, 2009 | 1 | No Comments »

I love the holidays.

More specifically, I love movies in December.

They’re just so warm and fuzzy. It’s the time of holocausts, and child molestation and musicals about infidelity.

God forbid that we have a FUN movie this time of year.

I can barely wait for next week’s release “Jingles, the Tumour Filled Puppy Mill Beagle.”  I hear he’s the pet of some kid in a concentration camp.

Which brings us “Up in the Air,” the new comedy starring George Clooney, about a guy who travels the United States laying people off.

Whoo hoo?

I mean, who DOESN’T want to see a job about people losing their jobs during the worst economic meltdown since 1938?

I thought movies were about escapism. Why don’t you just run tickertape along the bottom of the screen so I can watch my RRSP devaluate during the pre screening ads telling me how I can sell my gold fillings for food stamps?

George is a guy who has one goal in life. He wants to earn ten million airmiles and the only way he can get to that milestone is to stay on the road.

Unfortunately, one day the new girl comes in and has a great idea.

Why not just SKYPE them the bad news?

You know, get them to sit in front of a laptop and then give them the bad news from a call center that’s out of range from a high powered rifle?

Yes Virginia, I did bring a flask of eggnog to the screening (and a handful of Valium).

Did I mention that I’m now working my seventh job in the last ten years?

Layoffs to me are pretty much like bowel movements. They’re fairly regular, there’s no point in fighting it, and you can use your meager severance payments to wipe your ass with.

Well George is incensed. Not because he feels that laying people off in such an impersonal way is cruel, but because if he’s stuck in an office then he’ll never reach his milestone (well not on the company’s dime anyway).

Let’s go on a depressing road trip kids!!

George takes the new girl out to show her how it’s done.

Road trip movies should be about beer, transvestite hitchhikers and horny nerd virgins. I don’t want to see people cry, and threaten to kill themselves unless the nerd has just woken up after being deflowered by Hulk Hogan in fishnets.

Then, just when I thought it couldn’t get any bleaker, there’s a cameo by Young MC at a corporate party singing “Bust a Move”, except that he now looks like dad from the Fresh Prince of Bell Air.

Why stop feeling bad because you have no job? Let me remind you of how old you are too!!

Please God, just let someone fart or get hit in the groin with something and I’ll never complain about slapstick again.

Alas, the laughs just keep on rolling as the duo travel from city to city slashing payrolls and getting on each other’s nerves.

But, there must be a love story right?

Let’s not go there.

Technically there are three, but they’re more like the three stages of hair loss you can expect after a bout of chemotherapy.

This is not a bad movie, but to call this a comedy is like calling “Saving Private Ryan” a feel good date movie.

On the plus side, there isn’t a single scene of anyone coughing up blood.

Merry Christmas!!

3.5 out of 5

up_in_the_air

At least the plane doesn’t fly into the World Trade Center

X-Men Origins: Wolverine… a review

May 10th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Wolfie Wolfie Wolfie… how we missed you (and by “We” I mean the executives at 20th Century Fox).

Who doesn’t love the tale of an ass kicking character that suffers from amnesia? It opens up all sorts of sequels in which you can sort of hint about what happened without ever actually telling us the full story.

Heck if you name is Jason Bourne you can drag it out over three films…ooorrrr you can just blow your load in one giant special effects crap-fest and get it over with like they did with “Wolverine”.

Here’s a hint though whenever someone with amazing powers can’t remember who they are.

The government did it!!

Wolfie is one of those movies in which it probably makes more sense if the AUDIENCE is suffering from amnesia though, because if you actually stopped for three seconds at any point in the story to maybe mull things over, your head would detach itself from your shoulders and run into the lobby begging for someone to take it to see that Disney documentary about baby bears and spawning fish.

So, let’s begin at the beginning (hey… at least I’m going to try and be logical).

It seems that “James Logan” was born sometime around the mid 1800’s and life really sucks back then.

First of all the kid is sick.

Then his dad is killed for some reason that isn’t really explained, and when James kills the man who killed his father he learns that he actually killed his father (who really killed his step father).

On top of it all he did it with a nifty set of bone claws that sprung out of his hands and it only takes 30 seconds for the town to form a vigilante group and go after him (I guess this was the first gated community).

Fortunately, James is not alone.

He is accompanied by his half brother ”Victor Creed” who just has regular claws and not the “Tommy Lee” version that sticks out by a foot.

Both brothers are immortal, or at least have stopped growing older at around the age of FORTY which seems curious as personally I would have picked twenty six as a good time to stop the clock.

My hair was thicker and my bone claws… were a little … um… “bonier” back then.

Anyway it appears that the only job that two immortal savages can get over the years is “professional soldier.”

Does it concern any of their buddies that these two guys can take a bullet without getting killed or that they tend to bound like cats into the enemy’s trench?

Nahhhh…

More importantly though, I’d like to know who the idiots are that insist of running BESIDE them into battle?!!

Me?

I’d be like: “Yo.. Victor… I’m riiiiight behind you” because I can’t think of a safer position to be in than about ten minutes behind the bullet proof guy with huge claws.

Come to think of it, why even HAVE an army?

James? Victor? Would you mind killing that chap “Hitler” for us? That’s a good old boy. Pip pip and huzzah and all that. We’ll meet you at the polo grounds at eleven for some tea and crumpets wot?

Anyway, after a hundred years or so of killing the enemy (they did a pretty shit job in Vietnam if I might interject) Victor starts to become a little unglued.

He LIKES killing people.

Sure this sounds a lot like “The Comedian’s” shtick from “The Watchmen”, but the difference here is that Wolverine is the one chomping on the cigar, and not the psychopathic Victor.

See? They’re not exactly the same at all!!

Fast forward a few years and now James and Victor are part of an elite team of mutants who go around killing foreigners for a secret branch of the military.

When Victor finally takes it too far, James walks away but Victor chillingly says “You can’t walk away James” (which is the comic book version of subtle foreshadowing).

A few years have passed (not that you’d notice it from looking at the immortal guy with giant claws) and James has built himself a totally inconspicuous log cab at the very top of a mountain with running water and electricity and is living with his uber hot teacher girlfriend.

Hey, since when do logging camps have a school system set up at the base of their clear cutting operations?

I guess when Stan Lee (or whomever) wrote the comic book, they sort of misunderstood what a lumber company does because there’s an entire community in the thick lustrous forest that the lumber company hasn’t gotten around to cutting down yet.

Imagine how pissed you’d be when you fnally got your whole town set up and then the next day you opened your curtains and you were looking at forty square miles of stumpage?

The best (and I mean BEST) part of the movie is when James’ white girlfriend tells him an ancient native story about why the moon is so lonely.

It seems that her lover was tricked into coming to earth and now he can’t go back to her, so he howls at the moon in despair every night like a wolverine.

Uh… except that wolverines are basically a cross between a weasel and a bear, and they don’t howl at the moon.

That would be a wolf and not a wolverine you shmucks.

Holy crap, who wrote this story?!!

It sounds like something an Italian guy dreamed up while banging a hooker in a Vegas casino.

I’m surprised that Canada wasn’t spelled with a “K”.

Well, back to the story.

One day James’ former commander shows up to warn him that his former squad mates have been showing up dead.

Let’s scare the immortal guy with tales of people dying!!

Hey, I have another story for you and it involves a grilled cheese sandwich that was left on the dashboard of a Lexus.

As I said before… it helps to dead from the eyebrows up while watching this.

So, to speed this review along a bit, Victor shows up and kills James’ fake native girlfriend for absolutely no reason and when James gets beaten in a fight with him, the military decides that the best thing to do to an immortal guy is to infuse his skeleton with “space metal” so that he’s even more indestructible.

Are these the same assholes who trained Osama Bin Laden how to use a rocket launcher? I think so.

Well… anyway, just as the final drop of “adamantium” (named for Adam West  I hope) has bonded to his skull, Colonel Stryker announces in a clear voice that it’s probably a great time to betray Wolverine which sort of upsets the guy with the newly forged METAL claws.

In one of the great moments of stupidity in film history Wolverine, rather than saying “Hey… I’m indestructible and the asshole who wants to kill me is twenty five feet away” flees naked into the woods (that never seem to get cut down) where his presence promptly leads to the death of two innocent senior citizens who give him sweet looking leather jacket and motorcycle.

Vowing revenge, Wolverine tracks down some of his former colleagues and learns of a mysterious “island” that Stryker works out of.

There is only one man who knows about “The Island” and it’s Ewan MacGregor’s former agent who was fired after convincing his client that it was a can’t-miss summer blockbuster.

Oh wait, that was a “different” stupid movie.

Uh.. Oh ya.. the man who managed to escape from the island is named “Gambit” and if you ask me he didn’t escape, but rather they kicked his lame ass out because as mutants go he’s only slightly more menacing than Richard Simmons.

What can Gambit do? 

Check it:

As a mutant, Gambit is skilled in card throwing, hand-to-hand combat, and the use of a staff.

Card throwing?!! 

Can he guess my weight while he’s at it?

Wow, who would win in a fight between Wolverine and Gambit?

The indestructible guy with claws made out of space steel, or the guy who can nick your bottom with the ten of hearts?

I look forward to when Wolverine battles the guy who make balloon animals.

Annnyway… I probably shouldn’t go into this any more just in case you actually want to see it.

Somehow if you can manage to just completely not question anything (and I mean ANYTHING) it’s a passable summer action flick.

Sure it’s stupid, but I’m sure you can make a drinking game out of it somehow.

So, I’ll give it three claws out of five.

Two Lovers… a review

May 9th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »

Man, I tell you, there’s NOTHING that gets me more excited when I’m thumbing through the newspaper ads looking for a movie to see and I come across an adaptation of some “Dostoevsky”.

Does it get any better than that?

“Two Lovers” is an adaptation of “White Nights”, that famous short written in 1848 that still flies off the shelves at pretentious bookstores everywhere.

If this isn’t the perfect story to adapt then I don’t know what is.

Sure, some of you might prefer reading about cloned dinosaurs or a Vatican conspiracy, but for me it’s all about “a nameless narrator who lives alone in a city and suffers from loneliness and the inability to stop thinking.”

Where the hell is my Lithium?

First the good news.

After reading that set up, we can safely conclude that Paris Hilton will NOT be appearing in the movie.

An added bonus is for those of you who wondered what Gwyneth Paltrow’s boobs look like (all that I’m going to say is that you’ll be 50% satisfied), and for those of you who wondered what Joaquin Phoenix’s boobs look like… well, let me just say that they’re only slightly smaller than Gwyneth’s.

Now unfortunately I also have some bad news.

Russian existentialism is about as much fun as a family reunion at the Charles Manson ranch.

The movie opens with Leonard (Phoenix) attempting to commit suicide, but chickening out only after he’s jumped into the harbour and has to be rescued.

Naturally it’s a gloomy autumn day (do they have Summer in Russian literature?) and thus, wet and humiliated, Leonard shuffles home which turns out to be his parent’s run down apartment in the bowels of Brooklyn.

There’s nothing like a thirty eight year old suicidal loser who still lives with his parents to bring in the crowds during a recession eh folks?

Anyway, Leo has attempted this sort of thing before, but his elderly parents are more concerned that he gets cleaned up because they’re having “dinner guests” who are VERY interested in buying the dry cleaning business from them.

Now, I know in the past that I’ve complained about how no one in movies ever has a regular boring old job (they’re always architects, or lawyers, or executive chefs on Air Force One) but we’re ten minutes into the story and I would have given my left nut to see a drafting table in the corner.

All that was missing was a diseased cat siting on a broken wheelchair.

Things get a bit better when “Sandra” (Vinessa Shaw) shows up as the sexy daughter of the “would be purchasers” of the business and confesses that she came along to dinner because she secretly has a crush on Leo.

Being an avid amateur photographer, he takes her into his room to show her some photos that he’s taken.

Now we’re talking!

Who hasn’t used that line on the ladies at least once in their lives?!!

Ya, I’m a “photographer”. Why don’t you come up to my room and I can show you my equipment? Oh what a surprise… there seems to be a bucket of ice cooling a bottle of wine beside the tripod. Why is that some Barry White on the turntable? What are the odds?!!

Ya, well… forget that.

This loser blows a golden opportunity to shag a girl while her parents are in the other room, because he has a framed photo of his ex fianceé beside his bed next to the facial tissues.

What? He has scars on his wrist as well?

Well, get in line Leo because I’m starting to look for something sharp in my bag of popcorn because I think I might join you.

Somehow Sandra isn’t spooked by the depressed loser who lives with his parents and the two make a date to go out.

Hey, what a depressing Russian love story without some complications eh?

No sooner has Sandra left when Leo’s bumps into his new hot blonde neighbour Michelle (Paltrow) who has a bus ticket to “crazytown”.

Leo falls madly in love with Michelle who is having trouble with her boyfriend (a married lawyer cheating on his wife) and things get bleaker and more pathetic as the movie rolls along.

How many sides can a love triangle have anyway? Is this a love hexagon?

All that I know is I’ve never cared less for a group of people in my life.

Leo is a loser, in love with a loser who is in love with a asshole, and is loved by a loser who can’t see what an asshole Leo is.

Is there a documentary on the seal hunt, or cancer that I can watch? I could use some laughs.

So here’s the deal.

The movie is well acted and if bleak, grey depressing movies about a pack of bleak, grey depressing losers is your bowl of borscht then do I have a movie for you!!

For everyone else who is not taking a “film appreciation” course at the local community college I’m going to have to warn you against seeing this.

I’ll give it a three razor blades to the wrist out of five.

Anyone else need a drink after seeing this?

Star Trek… a review

May 8th, 2009 | 1 | No Comments »

People were shocked a few weeks ago to hear that Stephen Hawkings had been rushed to the hospital with an undiagnosed illness that threatened to end his life.

Do you want to know what really happened?

Stephen saw an advanced screening of Star Trek and fell to the floor while attempting to pull the hair out of his head.

Screw science. You want reality? There are fat people sitting beside you carrying broomsticks painted silver with the words “Klingon Pain Stick” written in red magic marker so that it looks like dripping blood.

Just wait. In fifteen years the Harry Potter losers will make these guys look cool!!

This was a battle for Style over Substance, and Style showed up looking like Chuck Liddel in biker gear, whereas Substance had a yoga mat and some Lululemon tights.

Let me give you an example.

Very early on in the movie a young James Tiberius Kirk is speeding down a dusty Iowa road in a vintage Corvette Convertible while being pursued by a highway patrolman on a “hover bike”.

The nerds gave out a throaty cheer as Jim sped towards the Grand Canyon a la Thelma and Louise while I sat there and thought to myself:

“Hang on… if there are hover bikes then why the hell are they still paving roads?”

I think Style bitch slapped Substance and told him to sit down or the next one was going to be a boot to the nads.

I’m kind of curious though.

Why is this series called “Star Trek” when every single freaking story is about “time travel”?

I guess “Time Travel Trek” is more accurate but then Style showed up cracking walnuts in his hands and Substance hid behind the frogurt machine.

Personally, I’m just happy that they didn’t discover “Data’s head” in a cave somewhere.

I guess Brent Spinner has finally reached the age when all of the CGI effects and and Vaseline can’t hide the fact that he looks fifty seven now and not Twenty six.

So much for the ageless android!!

If you’ve ever seen the original series then you will LOVE this movie.

Every cliché, every facial tic, every plot line that was sort of mentioned in passing  now has a dedicated team of seventeen writers working tirelessly on a joke that might explain it (or at least exploit it).

I think the only thing I didn’t see were Styrofoam rocks and Tribbles.

Oh how the nerds jiggled with joy when a guy in the landing party showed up wearing a red shirt.

Wait a second…. where’s Style?

He’s getting a prescription filled with Manny Ramirez?

PERFECT… let’s get Substance in here because he wants to apologize for a gianormous plot hole that even Helen Keller couldn’t miss.

So, if a black hole is really just a portal through time, then technically if you created a black hole in the middle of a planet, wouldn’t that just “move” the planet to a week from Tuesday instead of destroying it?

Ok. We’ll let that one go.

Maybe this gravity crushing force of physics needs a snack before the doors open up.

There’s something else that’s bugging me.

For a cosmic anomaly that swallows everything (including light) I’d just like to say that it works about as fast as a postal worker on a civic holiday.

“Hey man, there’s like… a black hole forming in your planet dude. You like… have twenty minutes to get the hell off the planet…Oh and can you bring me a bean burrito before you go?”

And why does farting in the direction of a black hole give you just enough thrust to push your free of the event horizon?

Farting… detonating a warp core. Really, the results would be the same wouldn’t they?

This thing EATS LIGHT.

I don’t think setting off a few firecrackers is going to help.

Oh shit… Style just came home. Everyone look busy.

Um… here’s a quick Winona Ryder joke to change the subject:

When I heard that Winona landed a role in the film I was sure that the plot was going to be about someone stealing the Enterprise.

bwahahahahahahaha.…. sniff….I kill me.

Ok, so the plot in a nutshell is that some Romulans have traveled back in time so that they can destroy the planet Vulcan and then destroy the planet Earth.

It doesn’t matter why, it only matters that we get to hear Chekov say “Wulcan” about fourteen thousand times.

How come a mining ship is armed to the teeth like the freaking Death Star you ask?

Well because as long as you’re going to “borrow” a few ideas from another successful science fiction movie, you might as well bring a big shopping bag to steal as much as you can carry.

Winona… can you come in here please?

There’s a WHOLE lot of “Star Wars” raping going on in this film from the jumping spinning light saber duels, to the nail biting showdowns on the Death Star’s precarious “catwalks” (honestly… would it kill you to put some handrails on the precarious catwalks? How about you just do away with them altogether and build some floors?!!), to the saber toothed snow beasts that chase you into an ice cave on the planet Hoth, and to the Ewok engineering mascot that doesn’t talk as much as it makes funny monkey sounds.

George Lucas is going to be PISSED.

Well, that’s if he can pull himself away from masturbating in front of a mirror long enough to see this.

Still… I gotta say… despite the dodgy science, the (cough) homage to Star Wars and the thirty minutes of actual plot (filled in with ninety minutes of character back story), this is actually a fun movie worth seeing even if you aren’t wearing Superman underwear and Devo style sunglasses.

I’ll give it four stars out of five.

And Winona… it’s good to have you back even if you aren’t wearing a tight sweater (but next time wear a tight sweater).