Brad's Week in Dork! (8/10/14-8/16/14)

Why hello there.  Miss me?  This has been one of the busiest summers of my life.  Traveling to France with my 93 year old grandfather so he could be showcased on Brian Williams' Journey To Normandy, road tripping to Memphis with The Wife, devouring my fourth San Diego Comic Con, and having just experienced my first ever Business Trip...to the glorious state of Ohio.  I've been ignoring you guys.  If you've been following my Twitter & Instagram accounts then you know that I haven't ceased on the cinema consumption.  But I have abandoned ITMOD.  Matt's been keeping the fire burning, but it's time for me to get back on board.  No more lazing about.

Yeah, that's right, I met Andy Serkis.  Just one of the many cool moments from this year's Comic Con.  That photo was taken around 1:00 AM in the Hall H Saturday Line.  Spent nearly 20 hours on the grass & concrete and was granted various strange encounters during the wait.  I wish I had slapped a post together about this year's Mega Dork Event, but I figure I'll just sprinkle in the relevant photos as we move through the rest of the year.  For right now, you'll just have to settle for a typical Week in Dork.  Of course, being stuck in Ohio away from friends and family meant that there really wasn't much to do other than go to the movies.  Every night I was in the West Chester AMC.  Not the widest selection of movies, so forgive me if I had to settle on a couple of stinkers.

Lucy:  The set up is dumb.  The execution is dumb.  The performances are often silly.  But I can't help but think the movie was one or two kickass sequences away from being a great film.  Scarlet Johansson is snatched off the streets of Taiwan by Korean gangster Min-sik Choi (Oldboy himself!), and for about fifteen minutes there is some genuinely uncomfortable terror at play as they pack her belly with bright blue super drugs & prepare to ship her across continents.  When rape turns to a beating, and the drugs burst inside her, Johansson is gifted with enough brainpower to join The Uncanny X-Men.  The Black Widow has a couple moments to Matrix it up, but before you know it her cranium needn't bother with roundhouse kicks or gun kata.  The film races to its climax as Lucy taps into the universe, and the film attempts to pass beyond Stanley Kubrick's infinite.  I dig the ambition.  However, the film is too quick, too slight, and too obvious to actually be good.  A solid attempt, but a swing and a miss.

The Purge - Anarchy:  Man, I rally want to love these Purge films.  The idea of a government sanctioned night of violence & debauchery is both ridiculous and rather terrifying.  Yet, these Purge films are just stupid bullshit (Ha! Put that on the poster, "Stupid Bullshit!" - In The Mouth of Dorkness), and worst of all they are boring.  The first film took the Kill Crazy Rampage plot & dulled it into a snoozer of a home invasion story.  The sequel thankfully expands on the universe by taking its characters to the streets, and introducing us to Frank Grillo's Punisher.  If the film had committed to a solo film for Grillo then just maybe we would have had an entertaining horror/actioner.  Instead we've got the usual stupid cliches bumping into each other and falling prey to the spooky masked folk.  Can they possibly get it right for the third outing?  I'll be there to judge.

On Wednesday night I went wandering the back roads of West Chester, Ohio.  Not much to see.  Found the hole in the wall shop Queen Comics & Card Company, and then stumbled upon a White Castle.  In my thirty four years on this planet, I had never had the pleasure of consuming Harold & Kumar's most desired slippery treat.  Now was the time.  I ordered the number 1 Slider combo with cheese and few extra packets of Dusseldorf Mustard.  The bun was greasy, the meat was gray, and the flavor was rank.  I guess I can see the appeal of these tiny burgers, but don't dare rank this drunk food alongside In-N-Out or Sonic Burger.

The Hundred Foot Journey:  After choking down the White Castle and drowning it down with a bucket of soda, The Wife & I synchronized our texts so that we both sat down for The Hundred Foot Journey at the exact same time.  No new ground here, but it was fun to watch this cute little film knowing my better half was enjoying it several states away.  The basic premise of two opposing cultures finding kinship via culinary perfection is scientifically proven to warm the heart.  With the added bonus of Helen Mirren there is no way you can come away hating this movie.  It's sweet.  That's enough.

Sex Tape:  This film pretty much exists to showcase Cameron Diaz's side boob.  It certainly doesn't succeed on the laughs.  Jason Segel better be careful or these slumming it paychecks will result in a career of barely passable comedies.  A bored married couple attempts to rekindle their spark by adapting the Joy of Sex via their plethora of product placement iPads.  Rob Lowe pops up to snort cocaine & bizarrely reference Disney movies.  Sure, I chuckled once or twice, but I mostly sunk deeper into my seat at the thought of Diaz's inevitable future blunders.

Let's Be Cops:  Well it doesn't get much better here.  At least with Let's Be Cops you have two leads with genuine chemistry.  Jake Johnson and Marlon Wayanes Jr are a couple of failing thirty somethings (don't know what that's like???) desperate to recapture their dreams of youth by playing dressup.  What starts off as a quick pickup line swiftly transforms into hardcore vigilantism.  This not-so-high-concept lets its plot get in the way of the funny as villainous gangsters cockblock the jokes, and Johnson & Wayans have their improv stifled by a who-gives-a-shit narrative.  If you laughed at the trailer then you got the gist.

A Most Wanted Man:  This one crept up on me.  On the surface, it's a rather routine bit of espionage in this post 9/11 world.  But as the script ekes out its plot, the futility of the situation reveals itself and the dread ratchets from disgust to outrage.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman is exceptionally quiet in the film.  "Subtle performance" is a term that gets bandied about quite a bit, but I can't describe Hoffman in a better manner.  His stillness, his tiny control over his physicality allows for a final scene that I found absolutely devastating.  The man was one of the greats.  It irritates and bums me out that we'll never get to see an Old Man Hoffman character.  He could have done a Touch of Evil to melt our faces.  Of all the films I watched in Ohio, this was my favorite.

The Infinity Revelation by Jim Starlin & Andy Smith:  A few weeks ago Marvel published a one-shot Thanos Annual from Starlin & artist Ron Lim as a means of previewing this Original Graphic Novel.  That single issue was a trippy mindbender in which an Infinity Gauntlet era Thanos traveled back in time to save his past self from the clutches of Mephisto, all done within the context of Thanos' current failings during Jonathan Hickman's Infinity event.  I LOVED THAT ISSUE.  It was wild, weird, and plunging in batshit Marvel continuity.  It had me totally pumped for this book.  Yet...The Infinity Revelation is not bad, but it is nowhere near as good as that floppy comic.  This story centers around Thanos attempting to reconnect with Death by recreating the universe in his image.  The trouble is that his arch rival Adam Warlock has to tagalong and pester him with mumbo jumbo philosophy.  After the joy of this summer's Guardians of the Galaxy, I have been all about Marvel's Cosmic Comics.  Some are good, some are great, and some are ok.  The Infinity Revelation falls somewhere in the top of the OK category.

First Blood:  "It can be confusing sometimes."  For Saturday night's Late Show, The Alamo Drafthouse had Stallone's first Rambo adventure on the big screen.  Not the silly killfest that the franchise would eventually become, First Blood is probably more relevant today then it was in 1982.  A traumatized Vietnam vet hitchhikes across America in an effort to reconnect with the men he served with during the war.  Brian Dennehy's Korean War veteran turned proud local sherif sees a longhaired vagrant and attempts to run him out of town.  PTSD flashbacks send Rambo into a frenzy and the damaged soldier makes a run for it after humiliating the chucklehead cops.  Dennehy can't take a hint so he escalates the situation into a small town apocalypse.  First Blood is another cinematic bandaid on the festering wound that was Vietnam War, but Stallone's John Rambo could easily be roaming the country today, attempting to bury the trauma of Mission Accomplished.  It's a tough movie.  A sad movie.  A great movie.  Do not dismiss it because of the later films' taglines.

--Brad

A Fistful of The Maligned! (Brad's Picks)

Oh January.  What a wonderful dumping ground you are.  The Awards Season is over.  The Oscar Nominations have been picked.  Goodbye 12 Years A Slave, hello The Legend of Hercules.  For most moviegoers this is a time for catchup, snatching the good word of Lone Survivor, Frozen, The Wolf of Wall Street, and American Hustle.  But we here at ITMOD dream of the great bad movie, or the next forgotten misunderstood gem.  Sure, Renny Harlin specializes in write-off trash these days, but as you'll see below, he's ticked off a fun film or two in his time.  Maybe his baby face Hercules will ascend to the art of high camp.  Or what about this Jack Ryan fellow?  Or Aaron Eckhart's sexy stick fighting Frankenstein?  Look - these are long shots.  But gold has struck in January.  Remember The Grey, or Doomsday, or Rambo.

And I love to play contrarian.  The Great Defender.  While the world championed the arty ennui of Frances Ha, I was going to bat for the offensively weird The Lone Ranger.  I don't think you can really call yourself a movie fan unless you've encountered and battled for the underdog.  But in the batshit trenches of the Internet you can find fellow weirdos, and suddenly distributers like Shout Factory start producing Special Editions of Halloween III and Tank Girl.  When putting together my own list of Favorite (Unfairly) Maligned films I found it difficult to choose older films - the problem being that given enough time even the most hated films find their fanbase.  So who knows what popularity the films below will find in the future; all I can tell you is that when friends hear of my enthusiasm for these flicks a quizzical look crosses their face.  My co-dork Matt joins me for some of these, but no matter how hard I try he can't bring himself to understand the films in slots 3 & 1.  I'm gonna break him one of these days.

5.  Your Highness:  I'm generally not a fan of pothead humor.  I've never smoked a joint in my life.  And the glorification of weed and booze irritates the hell outta me.  I'm a regular L7 (after all, I just used L7).  But dammit, I can't help myself when it comes the stupidity of Danny McBride, Seth Rogen, and James Franco.  Mixing their brand of idiocy with the absurdity of the Deathstalker genre ignites a childish glee within.  Teaming the foul sloth McBride with Franco's Prince Charming in a latex heavy quest through mushroom wizards, wood nymphs, and minotaurs?  Hell yes, that is hilarious.

4.  Knight and Day:  Released not to long after the couch jump incident, when the world turned against the smiling scientologist, Knight and Day is an inexplicably titled action romance from journeyman director James Mangold that tickled all my right fancies.  Tom Cruise is utterly bonkers here, his Ethan Hunt persona cranked up to 11 and it's both terrifying & appealing to Cameron Diaz's bored bridesmaid.  Their flirtation is adorable - a genuinely cute middle aged couple, something you do not often find in cinema these days and certainly not found within the action genre.  The challenge for you is to separate celebrity from the movies - tear up your US Weeklys, your People Magazines, set yourself free and rediscover your love of fiction.

3.  Die Hard 2 - Die Harder:  "Another basement, another elevator. How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?"  Look, I'm not going to try and tell you that Die Harder is superior to Die Hard.  That's just foolish.  But Die Harder is a fascinatingly bizarre upping of the ante.  The film is filled with scenery devouring performances from a variety of familiar faces: William Sadler, Franco Nero, Dennis Franz, Fred Thompson, William Atherton, John Amos, Robert Patrick, Tom Bower, Art Evans.  Director Renny Harlin pushes the violence to extremes with blood splattered massacres, throat slicings, and icicle impalements.  There are not two lines of dialog without at least one juicy F Bomb.  Classy?  No.  But the sequel earns its "er" for sure.  Dumb and goofy, I love it.

2.  The Ladykillers:  Filmed directly after a true abomination (Intolerable Cruelty), but before their critical renaissance (No Country For Old Men), Joel & Ethan Coen chose to transplant an Ealing Classic to the American South.  They picked Tom Hanks for their ringleader and it's a shoot-for-the-moon performance not seen from the Oscar Winner since the early days of The Money Pit.  People tell me its not funny.  I don't get this.  I bust my gut laughing every time I watch another weirdo crook attempt old lady homicide.  The Ladykillers is not Fargo.  I see similarities to the comedy on display in Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy, but at the end of the day it's a feast of caricature.  You either accept that or you rewatch The Big Lebowski for the 100th time.

1.  Domino:  After years of photographic experimentation, Tony Scott took all his hand crank tricks, his splicing magic, his saturation pallet, and set fire to subtlety.  The "Based on True Events" screenplay doctored by Donnie Darko's Richard Kelly is an absurd assault on Reality Television and our celebrity obsessed culture.  Kiera Knightley gets pornographic with her posh accent, joining forces with the toeless Mickey Rourke, and showing Brian Austen Green & Ian Ziering how a true Beverly Hills diva throws a tantrum.  It involves nunchucks, machine guns, and lapdances.  There can't be a shot in this film that doesn't last more than half a second, but if you can train your brain to keep up, then Domino offers a sensory barrage like none other.  One of my absolute favorite films of the last ten years.

--Brad

Trailer: Gambit

They're making a big deal about the Coen Brothers involvement with this Michael Caine remake, but I'm not quite sure about this one just yet.  Looks fun, cute, but nothing special.  Everyone loves Colin Firth & Alan Rickman but Cameron Diaz's Southern accent leaves something to be desired.  We will just have to wait and see.

--Brad

Brad's Week in Dork! (12/18-12/24)

This week was about cramming as many theatrical films into one week as humanly possible.  I saw a good batch, but I could have done better.  Climaxing the week on Christmas Eve with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy at E Street Cinema was definitely the highlight.

MOVIES OF THE WEEK!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:  After Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is my second favorite film from director David Fincher. It's an emotional, magical epic spanning several of my favorite years in history while detailing the effects of life's odd characters upon your intellectual growth. Brad Pitt is brilliant under all that CGI and makeup, and as his story winds down I find it impossible to keep dry eyes. It's melodrama, but wonderful masterful melodrama.

Die Hard:  "Now I have a machine gun...Ho Ho Ho." How does one write a review of Die Hard? It is just so obviously awesome. Bruce Willis' California bewildered, just your average NYPD John McClane is the king of Roy Rogers cool as he picks his way through Euro Trash terrorists led by the ruthless Hans Gruber, aka the diabolically dashing Alan Rickman. Die Hard is THE action movie of the 1980s, brilliant popping squib work peppered with dismissive & sarcastic one-liners. If you don't recognize the genius of it than you just don't like movies.

Bad Teacher:  Cameron Diaz swears a lot and is an awful human being and she's A TEACHER! Funny? No. Not funny. Fifty minutes into the movie I let slip my first chuckle. That's not an exaggeration. After that I chuckled three more times before the hour and a half long film concluded. There could have been a Bad Santa comedy within this craptastic script, but instead what you have is an embaressment for all parties involved. Watching Justin Timberlake dry hump a bored Cameron Diaz is unexplainably painful. Yes, I expect more from you N*SYNC kid.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo:  I tried reading the novel. Couldn't get past the first fifty pages. The Swedish film was decent but couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. And I'm sad to say that David Fincher's crack at the material doesn't quite impress me either. His eye mashed together with Trent Reznor & Karen O's Immigrant Song makes for a badass movie trailer and one helluva James Bondy opening credits sequence, but the story is barely more than a little meh. Why put me through all that parole officer rape & humiliation? What's it got to do with anything? Frankly, I don't care at all for the gothy female protagonist--yank her outta the plot and I'd be just fine. What you got left is a solid episode of Cold Case.

The Adventures of Tintin:  Whoa. The Adventures of Tintin feels like young Steven Spielberg; a fun, humor rich globetrotting adventure film bringing the international comic sensation to ignorant American audiences. Indiana Jones lite? Yer damn right and I mean that with the highest of compliments. Jaime Bell is wonderful as the heroic investigative reporter, but it's Andy Serkis' Captain Haddock that steals the show when wonder dog Snowy isn't stealing the scene from him. There are at least two absolutely stunning action set pieces, one of which had me literally teetering on the edge of my seat. Forget the doubters, The Adventures of Tintin is the real deal, a stunning work of adventure art that just happens to be mocap.

Warrior:  Not a bad movie, but...Warrior will never get a second's thought after I've typed up this mini-review. Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy are brilliantly roided-out as their MMA sibling underdog brutes but it's all very typical Rocky emotional pandering pap. Sometimes, I just don't understand these inspirational sports sagas but this horrendously savage sport makes the attempt at spiritual uplift laughable. Nick Nolte does a fine job in the typically drunk dead-beat Dad role but like the rest of the flick it's nothing to write home about.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:  Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy would make a bloody brilliant companion piece to that other deliberately paced and intricately plotted espionage flick, The Good Shepherd. Gary Oldman gives one of his finest performances (and that's not hyperbole--sorry TIPTOES) as retired Brit spy George Smiley who must maneuver his way through the treacherously murky waters of MI-6 as he attempts to upturn a mole in the Circus. And surrounded by Oldman are some of the U.K.s finest: John Hurt, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch--they're all utterly brilliant bouncing around this booby trapped script. Don't expect The Bourne Identity, the action is done in small facial distortions and the violence is short but brutal. One of the year's best movies.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (10/16/11-10/22/11)

    An extra long week at work, but a pretty good week, all the same.  Not much new, but I had an adventure and posted my first article on cineAWESOME!  Up first, the movies.

The Thing (2011):  Did you ever sit back, while watching the amazing John Carpenter version of The Thing, from 1982, and wonder to yourself, ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if we learned the whole story of the Norwegians, how they found the Thing, and how they ended up at the camp, chasing a dog?  And what if we threw in a bunch of non-Norwegians so that John Q. Sixpack in America could still relate?  And what if we threw in a couple of women, because what The Thing really needed was a little bit of sexual tension to keep the focus off the plot.  And what if we made all of that really, really boring?’  Well, if you asked yourself that, you now have an answer.  I won’t say this is the most pointless remake (and yeah, though officially a prequel, it’s a remake), but it would likely make the list.  The CG effects don’t hold a creepy candle to the practical effects from nearly 30 years ago.  And the cast is just boring.  The only exception is Kristofer Hivju, who I think should be in every movie, just to react to crazy stuff.  The man has a face that was built for surprise.

Doctor Who: Arc of Infinity:  The return of Omega, the renegade Time Lord, brings the group back together and goes from Amsterdam to the Doctor’s home world.  It’s a fun, if inconsequential episode.  Nothing to make it really stick out, but watchable.

Bad Teacher:  While attempting to be crass and shocking, Bad Teacher misses all the marks on being funny.  I kept wanting to laugh.  I wanted to find the situations funny.  I even like a lot of the people in the cast.  But, blah.  Not funny.

 
Sweet Smell of Success:  Straight-up brutal.  Sleazy trash peddler Tony Curtis is the rotten core of this grim story of love, betrayal, yellow journalism, bribes, and all the ugly things that make the world hum.  The hulking spider at the center of the web of corruption is the fiendish Burt Lancaster.  Battles of wills, fists, and headlines splash across the screen, all driven by the wild jazz score of Elmer Bernstein.  The crazy dialog and collection of vile rogues make this one a must.  Grand.

The Pit and the Pendulum:  Vincent Price may be phoning it in for this Roger Corman cheepy, but even one of his hammy, hardly trying performances is a lot of fun to watch.  Lead actor John Kerr is shockingly awful, making Jack Nicholson of the same era seem positively dynamic.  Not one of the best Corman/Price films.  But it’s plenty watchable.

The Escapees:  Two young crazy girls wander around France, hang out with weird people, and get into some bad stuff.  The movie has a cool look/feel, and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy watching it.  But, it’s not especially good, or really all that interesting.

Uninvited:  Gah.  A danged boring western that feels like a college project.  Low quality.  Poor script.  Bad acting.  Just bad.

The Rape of the Vampire:  That was a bunch of stuff that was filmed.  I have no idea what the crap this movie was supposed to be about, if anything.  It looked pretty good.  Lots of cute girls took their clothes off.  Nothing made much sense.  The editing was awful.  Lots of jazz.  France looks cold.

    I also watched the first disk of Clone Wars season 3.  Man, that show does such a good job of making me forget the awful prequel trilogy.  It’s clearly made by people who actually like not only Star Wars, but the fans (read: not George Lucas).

    On Thursday night, Brad and I went to the AFI Silver and say Sweet Smell of Success and The Pit and the Pendulum.  Great time.  Great theater.  Unfortunately, we then got stuck in the worst traffic I’ve ever been in.  Two hours to make ten miles.  Gah.  That did not make me happy.

    Also, I finally posted my first item on cineAWESOME!  They were nice enough to invite me some time ago to write for them, but I’ve been having a kind of crazy time of it lately.  I’m working on my next piece right now (well, once this is posted).

    Haven’t done much reading, other than a bit more Clark Ashton Smith, which I’m really enjoying.  Makes me remember once again how much I love that era of weird fiction.  C.L. Moore, Lovecraft, Howard, and the rest.  Titans of the strange and wondrous.

-Matt

A Fistful of Bad Teachers! (Brad's Picks)

Cameron Diaz's Bad Teacher looks like it could be some potty-mouthed fun, but if you're looking for some seriously BAD teachers than look no further than The Fistful below.

5.  Suzanne Stone Moretto (To Die For):  Oh man, poor Lydia, Russel, and Jimmy.  All those burnouts wanted was a little attention and what they got was a cobra desperate to strike.  Teach Suzanne wants nothing more in the world than to be a Weather Girl and when her husband shoots down that idea she seduces her three most losery kids into bumping him off.  Amazing what a little outdoor Sweet Home Alabama dancing can do.

4.  Tiger McDrew (Pretty Maids All In A Row):  If you think Mrs. Moretto is bad than you have never seen the sexual escapades of Rock Hudson's gym teacher.  Not only does he sleep and mustache bath his way through half the student body (i.e. all the young girls), he may also be the local serial killer.  Pretty Maids All In A Row is an awkward gem from the same mind that brought you TV's Star Trek.  Snatch it up from the Warner Archive.

3.  Sensei John Kreese (The Karate Kid I-III):  Martin Kove is absolutely terrifying as Cobra Kai Master Kreese.  NO MERCY!  SWEEP THE LEG!  I'm pretty sure if Pat Morita had never shown up than Kreese and his Johnny goons would have killed wimpy Ralph Macchio without a bead of sweat.

2. Nicole Horner, Christina Delassalle, and Michel Delassalle (Les Diabolique):  Now here is a real trilogy of Teacher Terror.  Ms. Delassalle is married to the abusive Principle Delassalle who is boinking the black-eyed Ms. Horner who is friendly with Ms. Delassalle.  French Relationships are weird.  Wife and Mistress conspire to bump off the rotten fish loving Headmaster and it all goes downhill from there.  Who suffers?  The children of course.

1.  John Kimble (Kindergarten Cop):  Seriously.  Party Pooper Detective John Kimble does not care one iota that he's putting a whole classroom in utter peril by posing as a substitute kindergarten teacher in an attempt to capture vile drug dealer Richard Tyson.  Not only can Arnie not keep the class in order or accept their anatomical outbursts, but he lets a simple fire drill climax in gunfire and ferret attacks.  Bad Teacher indeed.

--Brad