The Grey… a review

January 26th, 2012 | Uncategorized | No Comments »

You know those films in which a group of people are trapped somewhere, and are then butchered like pigs for the next ninety minutes?

I call them body count flicks, because once the premise is set up in the first act, it’s basically one gruesome death, every ten minutes, until the end of the film.

We’ve seen it set in abandoned space stations, abandoned summer camps, and abandoned mansions.

Look around you.

If you’re in a group with bunch of guys who are easily distinguishable because of their ethnicity, facial hair, or choice of hats, and you’re in the middle of nowhere, then you’re screwed.

Fat black dude, funny guy with a parrot, and hot chick with an accent will be the first to go, and if you’re in a wheelchair, just shoot yourself now.

In Liam Neeson’s latest film, “The Grey” he plays a hunter who, along with a group of rugged northern miners, survive a plane that crashes in a  section of secluded wilderness that is populated by a pack of killer wolves.

Secluded… abandoned… you’re not fooling me with this technicality; this should have been called “Frosty the 13th” because, at its core, it’s just about harpooning some horny teenagers in the boat house.

The film opens with Liam wandering around a secluded (there’s that word again) mining camp somewhere in Alaska.

Liam is sullen and suicidal, but the only thing that keeps him going is the memory of his wife who keeps getting ripped away from him in violent flashbacks while he’s lying in bed.

She keeps smiling and saying things like “Don’t be afraid”, except that she gets sucked out from under the sheets like her ankle is attached to Halley’s comet each time.

You know, whenever someone says “Don’t worry”, I usually start to worry, because no one ever says that when they’re giving you a cake, or a lap dance.

Try this out for an experiment sometime ladies; the next time you’re about to have sex with a man for the first time, smile and him and say “Don’t worry” and see how fast his erection disappears.

Anyway, on the plane ride back to civilization, the plane crashes and Liam, being an expert on wolves, determines that the must be near a den of wolves, and that if they want to survive they have to find shelter.

Then they run directly into the forest.

I’m sorry, but I thought that you wanted to get “away” from the wolves.

Running into the woods makes about as much sense as fleeing to Florida to get away from Quebecers.

One by one the group begins to fall, which is always a challenge when the only thing the director has to work with is a pack of man eating dogs.

Give a guy a hockey mask and tool shed and the choices for impalement are endless, but you can only rip someone’s throat out in so many different ways before it gets boring.

Fortunately this is where Mother Nature steps in and offers up a tasty menu of hypothermia, sheer cliffs, churning rapids and, if Al Gore had his way, exposure to ultraviolet radiation because of the thinning ozone layer above them.

Now, in order to make us care about who is about to die, the meat sacks, in between each savage owl attack, pour out their life story to one another or argue about which direction they should be traveling in.

Guaranteed that, as soon as someone says something witty, or two people shake hands, there will be a crimson spray that will shoot out across the nice, white, snow.

You want character arcs? Watch the arc of the blood as it spurts out of someone’s jugular.

This brings us to the climatic ending, which I can’t reveal, except to say that it will totally piss you off.

Imagine watching “Aliens” but at the end, Sigourney Weaver careens her spaceship wildly in front of some space cops, who pull her over, only to discover that the Alien Queen is hiding in the back seat, and they arrest her.

Here’s a tip…  stick around through the credits because there’s a final, secret scene that explains in greater detail, what happens at the end of the film.

It doesn’t make the ending any better, but as long as you’re angry, you might as well be really angry, which you will be after sitting around for 5 more minutes and finding out who the fucking “Best Boy” was before they finally show it to you.

I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

Im angry, Im cold, and Im Irish... bring it, meat sack.

Haywire… a review

January 24th, 2012 | Uncategorized | Comments Off

Watching “Haywire” is like watching a championship sumo wrestling team performing  “Swan Lake”.

It’s so freakishly bizarre, that you can’t look away.

“Haywire” is stacked full of amazing actors; Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, and Antonio Banderas, but they’re not even starring in the movie! No, the lead role goes to an MMA athlete (Gina Carano) whose acting is so bad that they had to hire someone else to overdub her lines.

The results are freakishly artificial, and not in the “Where the hell did Gina’s boobs come from, because I saw her last fight, and she wasn’t stacked like that”, kind of way.

Now, pretend that you’re the director Steven Soderbergh, and you’ve been told to make a movie with a chick whose only talent is kicking you in the balls. How the hell do you fill two hours of film with that?

I’m sure that Steven rented every Sylvester Stalone movie on Netflix when researching his answer.

Here’s the basic formula for the movie:

Gina walks into a room, she squints and pouts sexily, and then peels off a layer of clothing so that we can get a good look at her smoking body (which, by the way, is actually a bit thick in the legs by Hollywood standards, but if I say anything more, it will be my wife kicking me in the nutsack, and so I’m going to let it go).

Then she gets into a fight. Think of it as Jackie Chan light. She’s not jumping through a ladder or beating someone up with a dish towel, but she has enough skill to make everyone laugh when she beats the shit of a much bigger man.

And it’s ALWAYS a man.

I think they missed a golden opportunity here to have her get into it with another hot female assassin.

If I had written this, the climatic girl on girl fisticuffs would have started in a car wash in tight white blouses, and would have culminated in a kiddie pool, that would have mysteriously fallen off the roof rack of the car ahead of them, onto the floor in the hot wax section.

Sorry, what were we talking about again?

Oh right….

Anyway, after she finishes the obligatory beat down, it’s “Run Gina Run”, usually through the back streets of a European city, which will hopefully distract anyone who has done any actual travelling long enough as they think to themselves, “Hey, I had lunch at that place.”

After fleeing somewhere it’s time for a wardrobe change (into a different sexy outfit), then it’s back to pummeling someone, and then time for another travelogue.

Listen, if Condé Nast Traveler had photos of chicks in tight undershirts dropping an elbow on a spice merchant in the markets of Cairo, maybe I wouldn’t have let my subscription lapse.

Here’s the weird part.

Just when you think that the movie is going to be a total waste of time, someone who can actually act steps in and draws you back into the story.

It’s like being in an abusive relationship with great sex in a five star hotel. You keep threatening to leave, but then room service comes and you get a blow job with the lobster bisque.

I’ll leave… tomorrow… the day after at the latest.

The lizard part of my brain and the intellectual part, still aren’t talking after watching this because if you think about the plot, it’s kind of stupid.

  • Nefarious international plots come undone because someone couldn’t be bothered hiding the evidence under anything better than a drop cloth in a barn
  • People are randomly kidnapped and dragged along,  but aren’t given anything to do (at least the chick in The Bourne Identity had to get lunch once or twice)
  • Sometimes a spy will show up at a party, recognize another spy and then just eat a canapé and wander off (WTF?)
  • Assassinations are foiled because the trigger happy hit men insist on starting a gun fight when there are spare weapons and handcuff keys within easy reach of the target
  • And when they decided to film a car chase, someone thought that going in reverse, through the snow, at low speed,  would be really awesome.

This film is just so weird on so many levels that I don’t know what to think.

You get scenes where Gina is suspicious enough to hack her partner’s cell phone, but then willingly turns her back on the same guy as they enter a hotel room together.

Gina will chase down a guy who just shot at her, beat the crap out of him, and then simply walks away without questioning or killing the suspect.

You should be questioning the film, but then you get a great bit of acting, and another shot of a tight t-shirt, and you just let it go.

Then, before you know it, room service has shown up with a hot beef sandwich and set of furry handcuffs.

I’ll give it three stars out of five, but I feel cheap.


You can kick my ass... just do it slooooowly

You can kick my ass... just do it slooooowly

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy… a review

January 12th, 2012 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” is a film for clever people.

No, scratch that, because truly clever people would never use a word as pedestrian as “clever”.

In order to truly appreciate this piece of celluloid, you must find a way to work “byzantine” into the description.

This is one of those films that you’re too embarrassed to admit that you didn’t understand a single frame of story and so instead you wander around outside waving a three foot long ebony cigarette holder saying “Huzzah”.

I fucking hated this movie.

“Oh sure”, you say, “but you hate everything”, and while this is accurate, this is a special case. I don’t hate it because it was stupid; I hate it because it made me feel like a complete dullard for not getting any of it.

This film takes subtlety to such an art form that it deserves its own wing at a fancy museum at the end of a cobbled road somewhere in France, and even then, the only way that you could find the museum was if you were an Orienteering champion in elementary school.

Let me give you an example:  One of the characters is married to a woman who is cheating on him, except that we never meet the woman, and we only know that she’s cheating on him because there’s a scene when he comes home and he finds that his friend is in his dining room and he’s not wearing shoes!

See, now pants I get, but shoes?!

This scene had to be explained to me by a guy with a pocket protector and Buddy Holly glasses.

This story is an adaptation from a John le Carré book, which explains why everyone on the theatre looked like Agatha Christie’s grandmother, and it’s a classic example of why films need an antagonist for us to follow.

For two hours we wander around Europe during the rainy season, searching for clues as to who might be the secret mole in the British Spy Agency, except that at no point do they actually spend any time closing in on the bad guy.

As far as I could tell, Gary Oldman just randomly drew a name out of a mason jar when there was ten minutes left in the story.

Random people seem to get shot, or have their throats slit and I couldn’t begin to hypothesize why, other than the fact that they spoke with an Eastern European accent.

Even the subtitles are condescending.

Instead of just telling us what the person is saying, the subtitles always open with a description of what language is being spoken.

Again, I’m sure someone in the audience was squealing with delight when they found out that a Bulgarian was talking on the phone instead of a Russian, but then again, everyone sitting behind me probably spoke 6 languages anyway.

Why did any of this matter?

And if you’re one of those people who gleefully look forward to going back and watching the film again because you can’t figure out the ending, please fuck off and die right now.

I don’t want to have to consult a bulletin board with an abacus and coloured pieces of yarn before I head out to the cinema with my notepad and my fancy pen that allows me to write in the dark.

I give this film 1 out of 5, but only because the part of my brain that handles math caught fire and died as I tried to figure out what the hell was going on in this movie.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo … a review

December 21st, 2011 | Uncategorized | No Comments »

I think they should have called “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”– “The Girl with the Esophageal Tumour”, because I’ve never seen a film with more smoking in it than this.

People smoke in bathtubs, in cars, in bars, in the woods, in the hospital, in boardrooms, while making toast, while raping someone, AFTER being raped by someone.

Why not just save some money next time and film it in a tobacco field?

Now, if you saw the first film (my condolences, by the way), then you’re either a book nerd, a glutton for punishment or you write a sarcastic movie blog, because why the hell would you put yourself through this twice?

This is one of those films with twenty seven plot lines, which means the only way your brain can prevent its lobes from melting together is to just completely shut down the logic center and let the shiny-object-lizard-section take over.

Logic is jealous bitch goddess who packed up and left this story because she saw you checking your hair in the reflection of a stainless steel dildo.

The film opens with journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) being convicted of slander in a court of law. In the first film, he was actually sentenced to prison, but in this American remake, he now just has to pay a fine.

I think he had Lindsay Lohan’s lawyer.

Mikael is on the verge of bankruptcy and since Playboy isn’t inviting him and the development team from Photoshop over to the grotto for a meeting, he has to find a new way to make some cash.

He gets a phone call from an elderly billionaire who has been searching for the killer of his favourite niece, that disappeared forty years earlier.

Who cares if a string of gruesome ritual style murders happened within a sixty foot radius of a private island owned by the richest man in Sweden? There simply can’t be a connection, can there?

Next we meet Lisbeth Salander, who is the greatest computer hacker in Sweden. This chick can type “Google” faster than anyone else in the country.

It turns out that Lisbeth was also hired by the billionaire to do some digging.

Why didn’t he just hire Lisbeth to investigate his niece’s disappearance?

I’m guessing that there wasn’t an entry in Wikipedia for her to print off.

For the next hour, the two stories chug along separately, until the billionaire, in a stroke of genius, decides that maybe he should introduce the two of them.

Like, seriously – how much would this story have suffered if we had just cut to the chase in the first 10 minutes?

Chris Tucker? Meet Jackie Chan.

NOW we’re going to get somewhere right? Some compelling evidence hidden in a high tech security complex that will require Lisbeth to hack the surveillance system, as Mikael, dressed in a rapidly deteriorating disguise attempts to download the incriminating evidence before the computer files are erased?

What? All of the circumstantial evidence is pasted into scrapbooks and photo albums?

Is the edge of the paper at least coated in a deadly neurotoxin?

You wish.

And the evidence that they uncover?

Ya, basically if you went into a court of law it would go something like this:

“Your honour, I would like to point out that the killer was in the SAME TOWN as the victim on the day she disappeared!”

You’re joking right?

Isn’t this the same judicial system that couldn’t prove Joran van der Sloot murdered a woman on the beach after he was filmed getting into a car with her and he admitted to having sex with her after he lied about ever knowing her? (Sweden/Netherlands… whatever)

Holy shit, you mean a blurry photo at a parade could have cracked that whole case wide open?!

I did learn one valuable lesson though. Always make sure that you close the secret sound proof door to your sex dungeon when entertaining a client.

I give this movie 2 incriminating Facebook profiles out of 5.

New Year’s Eve

December 9th, 2011 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Hey, remember that really shitty 1980’s television show called “The Love Boat”?

Well, they’ve made a movie version of it, but changed the name to “New Year’s Eve.”

Now, if you’re under the age of 30, let me explain how show worked.

First you write 87 short stories — toss the script in a blender along with an assortment of stars you had forgotten about, people that you “sort of recognize” (but don’t know their names), and just for fun, toss in someone who’s famous, but not for being an actor (musicians… porn star… athlete).

You see, half the fun is saying “Oh, I remember him from that Purina dog food commercial in 1993!”

Ok, so we’re on a strict schedule here because we only have 30 seconds with each character before we move on, and so when a character opens their mouth, their entire back story must be worked into the dialogue.

Screw subtlety.

It sounds a lot like this:

“Mom, you need to let of go the fact that dad died twelve years ago today in the very building that you’re going to accept this award that could change your life, and for God’s sake, don’t let the fact that the boy who stood you up at your senior prom, and is also the award presenter, rattle you.”

Then take widow and her ex boyfriend, put them in an elevator, and cue the city wide blackout.

If you don’t have a malfunctioning elevator, then a car accident or a runaway chimpanzee will also suffice.

Now, much like a poker game in a James Bond movie, you also have to make sure that we can keep track of each character.

An eye patch, a parrot on their shoulder or a racially offensive accent is gold.

Why is a Swedish party planner working with a Jamaican delivery boy? We couldn’t get the parrot to stay still for the shot. Hopefully no one will notice that he’s actually Korean.

Now we need something to tie all of these stories together. A giant cruise ship with horny ship’s doctor works great, but so does a city with a famous event.

How about New York City on New Year’s Eve?

Fucking GENIUS!

Aside from the fact that New Year’s Eve usually happens in the winter, and there isn’t a single flake of snow to be seen in the city.

Seriously, it looks like its June.

Hell, who cares? There’s a chimp eating the face off a Norwegian porn star with a parrot on her shoulder in the next scene.

Two stars out of 5.

I was more interested in THESE characters!!

The Runaways… a review

April 8th, 2010 | 1 | No Comments »

After watching the biopic “The Runaways” last night I couldn’t help but think to myself “Was this a story that needed to be told?”

The epic story of how a no hit band that influenced no one, rose to mediocrity before self destructing after playing a series of bowling alleys in Newark.

Wow, what’s next: “Let’s Go All the Way – The Sly Fox Story”?

Plus, I don’t want to complain, but did we really need to see Dakota Fanning get her period on the big screen?

Thanks God this wasn’t directed by James Cameron or it would have been in 3D.

For the 99% of the population who don’t remember ever hearing a song by the Runaways, this was Joan Jett’s band right before she had her one hit.

That’s right.

This is the story about what happens right before anything interesting happens.

Joan grew up idolizing Suzi Quattro as a kid and decided that she wanted to be just like her.

Wow, considering that no one has ever heard of Suzi Quattro I guess I should say “mission accomplished.”

Actually, you may have heard of Suzi, but only if you watched “Happy Days” where she was better known as Fonzi’s girlfriend ‘Leather Tuscadero’.

This whole thing makes me think of a Pizza Hut commercial starring the Sex Pistols.

“I declare the new stuffed crust pizza Sid-Delicious!!”

This redefines street cred as a bicycle path that leads to the Pottery Barn.

The real story is about what happens when you take a bunch of 15 year old girls and send them out on the road with fake I.D.s.

What?!!

They get drunk, make immature decisions and get into arguments?!!

Oh my GOD.

I had no idea that this would be the result.

Especially when I come home at 4 pm and find my teenage step daughter is still in her pajamas, there’s a half eaten pop tart in the sink and the dogs are drinking out of the toilet.

Teenagers are irresponsible?!!

Genius.

I give this movie 2 ch-ch-ch-cherry bombs out of 5.

A cherry bomb is still a bomb

A cherry bomb is still a bomb

Shutter Island… a review

February 18th, 2010 | 1 | 2 Comments »

It’s been a few years since I took a film studies class, and so I’m a little rusty on “self-indulgent imagery” in movies.

What does “shit floating in the air” mean again?

It must be really important because “Shutter Island” looks like if was filmed through a novelty snow globe in a tourist gift shop.

If it’s not raining, it’s snowing, and if it’s not snowing then the air is filled with either floating paper or ash.

It’s like a ticker tape parade on Mount St. Helens

Does this represent the fragility of humanity, floating in an endless cosmos of despair?

Oh wait, it’s all coming back to me now.

Everything in “Shutter Island” has a deeper meaning.

Why does Leonardo have a bandage on his head?

Who is the 67th patient?

Why is this movie two and a half hours long?

Well, the last question is easy to answer.

It was made by a self indulgent director with an Academy Award.

Peter Jackson, George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Martin Scorsese… when was the last time these douche bags made a 90 minute film?

The opening credits are usually an hour long for crying out loud, and what do we get for spending an extra 30-45 minutes in our seats?

Imagery.

Even Freud once said “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”, but then again Siggy never made a film.

If he did, the cigar would require a special effects team involving a carrot with little white balls glued to it so that it could be properly texture modeled.

The cigar would also have it’s own team of people that would demand script changes, including a back story involving a Zippo lighter.

Be grateful that Mel Gibson didn’t direct it because then the Cigar would speak in Kalaallisut and would have English sub-titles.

“Shutter Island” gets the rare “PP” rating from me.

Pretentious and predictable.

Leonardo plays a Federal Agent with a fear of water who travels by boat to a mysterious island filled with violent psychiatric patients as a hurricane approaches.

Once on the island he suffers from terrible headaches, as the uncooperative staff on the island stonewall his investigation of a missing mental patient.

In between cryptic notes, apathetic staff members and interviews with the criminally insane, Leo finds himself the victim of stabbing headaches, hallucinations of his dead wife (dripping wet even though she died in a fire), and dreams of Nazi concentration camps.

Who is the 67th patient?!!

Wow… are you kidding me?

A crossword puzzle with one word in it would be more difficult to figure out than this film.

I do have one piece of advice for Marty though.

Fire the guy in the rafters who’s dropping buckets of paper onto the set and get him to work in continuity, because I lost count of how many scenes switched from being sunny to cloudy depending on the close-up.

You’d see someone’s hands sliding down Leo’s chest to his hips and then suddenly they’re cradling his face.

That’s what’s great about making an art film… he can say it’s a metaphor for “mediocre film making”

2.5 out of 5.

Careful with that match Leo, the air is filled with floating paper!!

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