Brad's Week in Dork! (1/5/14-1/11/14)

Blink and you'll miss it.  That's what this week felt like.  2014 has barely started and I can already feel it slipping away.  I spent a good chunk of it compiling this year's Cinematic Resolutions, but I'm not quite ready to tackle any of them yet - which is certainly foolish if I have any hope in hades of devouring those Godzilla flicks before the latest reboot hits the big screen.  Gotta get hot.  I did manage to finish off Sweet Tooth & begin Grant Morrison's Animal Man.  Feels good to be tackling comics outside of the weeklies, and I hope it's a trend that lasts.  I'm tired of looking at all those unread trades piling up next to the bookshelf - Gotham Central, Doom Patrol, Infinite Kung Fu, Rasl, Swamp Thing, Loveless, and our next entry in the Graphic Novel Book Club, Sailor Twain.  New Year, and I want to refocus some of my dork energy into the other pop mediums.  Let's not forget I'm only halfway through Richard Stark's Parker series, and Darwyn Cooke is already adapting novels beyond my knowledge.  That ain't cool.

"What A World!" & "I'm Melting...I'm Melting!" by Jason Edmiston

I'm not bitching and moaning about the week, it just feels like it lacked focus.  I want to buckle down, but I guess I'm still decompressing from the massive 2013 movie dump I did in December.  This week started with a Late Show Drafthouse screening of Walter Hill's The Warriors.  My buddy Herms was in town from Texas, and it was a blast subjecting his fresh eyes to the Gang War crazy of late 70s New York City.  Yep.  This is the way it was folks.  Fact.  Matt & I also finally got ourselves around to witnessing the atrocity of the latest 47 Ronin.  Oh man.  What a waste.   So...yeah...the real highlight of the week was easily the Alamo 100 Raiders of the Lost Ark screening.  I've seen that film well over a hundred times now (at least 4 on the Big Screen), and it just never gets old.  Me & Indiana Jones?  It's true love.

The Warriors:  "I don't like the way you live." Ok.  I don't love The Warriors.  It's one of those seminal films of my youth that I just never bothered with.  The first time I saw the movie, I was 18/19 and well on my way to being a snooty film freak.  My initial thought back then was that Walter Hill perfected this sort of whacko gang land in his rock opera Streets of Fire.  Still, this film is a bit of a wonder, and I absolutely love its earnestness.  Here's a New York City in which Mimes rove the streets looking for trouble, where Baseball Furies terrify in warpaint, and where hillbillies in roller skates are the toughest dudes on the block. You can't help but chuckle at the sight of skinhead goons marauding about in a Road Warrior wagon. It's all about honor, friendship, and gash....uh...yeah, there are some awkward moments. The Warriors themselves always seem like a bad date away from running a train on their female companion - I know this, cuz our hero Swan says exactly that.  James Remar is the angry tough guy that gets taken off the stage when he fails to rape an undercover police woman.  So yeah, The Warriors, it's not too PC.  It's an icky fantasyland birthed from the same community fear that brought us Bernie Goetz and his cinematic Death Wish.   It's nearly two hours of confused, but somewhat intoxicating outlaw philosophy.  After all, as The Director's Cut clumsily establishes at the start, The Warriors is a story of courage similar to that of the 300 Spartans......uh....wha?

Sweet Tooth Vol 6 - Wild Game:  Gosh darn.  I just could not get past how damn sad this series got.  In a lot of ways it reminded me of Brian K Vaughn's Y The Last Man.  A Post-apocalyptic landscape.  An on-the-road quest to discovery the origin of a plague.  Bonds of friendship.  Bonds of love.   Maybe it's Lemire's somber, sometimes morose art-style, but I could never really connect to any other emotion than sorrow.  Sweet Tooth & Company finally reach their Alaskan destination, but the answers there are typically more ponderous than narratively satisfying.  Lemire writes a helluva page-turner; once I got back into this series, I was racing to the climax.  I love the sequential tinkering he puts his story through, and he's obviously having fun with the medium.  It's painfully refreshing to witness an artist utterly aware of his medium's visual importance.  This is not Brian Michael Bendis with neverending captions and word balloons.  Sweet Tooth is art.   But gloomy as hell, and I can already feel the story leaving my cranium.

Deceptive Practice:  The first time I encountered slight-of-hand artist Ricky Jay was as the narrator of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. That voice. Once heard it will live in your head. The next time I saw Ricky Jay was in David Mamet's Heist. That lead to an obsession with Mamet's films & plays which in turn lead to obsessions with Joe Mantegna, William H Macy, and Ricky Jay. Now for the first time, director Molly Bernstein takes us inside the tricks of Ricky Jay's trade. No, this is not a How-To on his artistry, but a sort of origin tale - a documentary that will drop your jaw in astonishment while also digging a bit into the history of stage magic. I'm a sucker for this type of thing. Penn & Teller. The Amazing Jonathan. Fun stuff. But Ricky Jay is an artist, a genius, and it feels like a privilege to get a peak inside.

Raiders of the Lost Ark:  "You want to talk to god?  Let's go see him together."  You know the deal.  On the verge of another World War, the American Government responds to rumblings of Hitler's Occult shenanigans by recruiting world renowned archeologist/adventurer, Dr. Indiana Jones.  It's an absurd premise born from the whacky pulp adventures of various movie serials, and succeeds thanks to Harrison Ford's uncanny badass charm.  This is one of those exceptional fits of character & actor.  Yes, you can imagine a world in which Tom Selleck traded idol for whip, but that's an offcentered Fringe universe where RC Cola reigns supreme.  No thank you.  The Big Bang Theory recently postulated that the good professor's presence in the narrative achieves absolutely nothing in the plot, but I actually think the futility of the Nazi's scheme adds an extra layer of apocalyptic gloom.  It's not a matter of Indy saving the day, but Indy bearing witness to God's Wrath.  Can't shake it.  Raiders of the Lost Ark is still the all time greatest adventure story.

47 Ronin:  If you're looking for an Asian Adventure with heavy doses of CGI then let me recommend Stephen Chow's Journey To The West.  If you're looking for a few against the many samurai slaughterfest then let me suggest Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins or the obvious Seven Samurai.  But if you're looking for the 47 Ronin saga told exceptionally then you better go with any other dozen retellings such as Kenji Mizoguchi's double feature or even Mike Richardson & Stan Sakai's recent Dark Horse Comic.  Cuz you're not going to want to bother with this one.  This film is nearly as lifeless as Keanu Reeves' performance.  It's a dull flop destined for banishment in the Wal-Mart five dollar bin or the black hole of streaming services.  Maybe some ignorant child will discover a curiosity for the genre after stumbling across it, but that's the best possible future this 47 Ronin can hope for.

21 Jump Street:  "They don't serve vegan in jail, bitch!"  I lost money on this one.  No way did I think a cinematic reboot of a crappy teen beat cop show from the 80s was going to work - especially one fronted by GI Joe's Duke Meathead.  Directors Phil Lord & Christopher Miller obviously enjoy a challenge; coming off a hilarious weirdo adaption of the unadaptable children's classic Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, they go foul mouthed, meta absurdist, and weirdly violent for the buddy cop genre.  21 Jump Street is too damn odd to be this generations Beverly Hills Cop, but I appreciate the life & death stakes filtered through a gross-out, silly Superbad sensibility.   And Channing Tatum shines with his role.  He's an adorable idiot wandering the world of nerdom and discovering humanity while Jonah Hill descends into assholehood via the cool crowd.  It's a dumb ass movie with brief hints of legit high school commentary.  Something the original show could never claim.

The Other Guys:  Playing with the same Buddy Cop nostalgia as 21 Jump Street, Will Ferrell & Mark Wahlberg are the station house dolts that never walk away from explosions while the world champions the heroics of Sam Jackson & The Rock's Lethal Weapons.  But when aiming of the bushes results in a Wile E Coyote-styled roadkill splat, Ferrell & Wahlberg rise to the challenge of gunkata gymnastics.  Although seemingly impossible, The Other Guys is far stupider than 21 Jump Street, but that's the universe of Will Ferrell, and it's impressive how well Mark Wahlberg inhabits the stupid - "I'm a peacock!!!"  The Bernie Madoff social commentary is welcome even when the actual mechanics of the plot get murky.  You're really just hear to watch Wahlberg torture himself over Ferrell's sexual ownership of Eva Mendes.  "Gator don't take no shit."

Cellular:  Based on a story by Larry Cohen (Hell Up in Harlem), written by Chris Morgan (Fast Five), and directed by David E. Ellis (Snakes on a Plane).  Cellular is actually an extremely entertaining thriller that fully commits to its gimmick.  Chris Evans is dragged all over Los Angeles after he answers an unknown caller, and a weak cell signal keeps him at an arm's distance from William H Macy's savior cop.  It all has something to do with corruption, video tape, and Jason Statham's sneering 5 o'clock shadow.  Sure, Cellular is disposable, but it's the perfect film to catch on TNT.

MST3K - Warrior of the Lost World:  "This isn't Mad Max, it's Sad Max."  The Italians know how to pilfer American Cinema better than most modern day Hollywood Suits, but for every Fistful of Dollars or Django, you get two dozen Warrior of the Lost Worlds.  Doing his best Blofeld, Donald Pleasence rules over a post-apocalyptic wasteland with the doomsday threat of Mega Weapon.  Robert Ginty mumbles his way into the heart of Persis Khambatta, and races through the ashes of exploded henchmen while Fred Williamson's reigns fire from above.  I really can't imagine surviving this movie without the Robot Roll Call, and MST3K feasts upon this horrid buffet with great gusto.  Lots of cheap shots, well played.

Tropa De Elite:  "Put your bad face on."  We're just a month away from Jose Padilha's Robocop remake, and as a means of battling my own anxiety, and thanks to my buddy Darren slapping an import blu-ray in my hand, I finally decided to see if all the fuss about Elite Squad is genuine.  Turns out, this is not the balls-to-the-wall shoot-em-up I had been lead to believe.  Elite Squad is an oppressive cautionary tale destined to keep me the hell out of Rio De Janeiro.  After years of battling unstoppable drug trafficking and corruption, Wagner Moura must find a replacement before his baby is born.  His options are a couple of kids facing their own hurdles in a vile system, and whatever the outcome the resolution seems utterly pointless.  Every Drug War story concludes in futility, but few have achieved such heartbreaking pessimism as Elite Squad.  There is plenty of action here, but I left the film more impressed with Padhila's societal assassination than his shaky-cam.  Hopefully he can retain that awareness for the Robocop.

Animal Man Vol 1 by Grant Morrison & Chas Truog:  I've owned these trade paperbacks for three years.  Only now am I tackling them.  Why did it take so long?  I have no idea.  I guess I was just waiting for Morrison to finish up his Batman run before tackling these supposedly iconic stories.  I think I was also nervous that they couldn't possibly live up to their hype.  Well, I'm happy to report, that the first volume of Animal Man is absolutely, utterly, stupendously fantastic.  And weird as hell.  Just the way I like my Morrison.  In the first four issues, stuntman Buddy Baker finally decides that its time to come out of retirement and embrace his mind-bendingly strange animal powers.  He can suck the life essence from any creature in his presence - meaning a bird above can give him flight or an earthworm below can help him regenerate a severed limb.  When he's hired by S.T.A.R. Labs to investigate a giant puddle of monkey meat, Buddy Baker comes face-to-face with an even grosser lost hero of the DC Universe - B'Wana Beast!!!!!  It's an epic clash of the "Oh Dear God" and it's a sobering warning to any reader not ready for Grant Morrison.  This is the deep end kiddies, time to get nuts.  The next issue is a one-shot look into God's Lonely Man, Wile E. Coyote.  Yep, you read that right.  No Looney Tunes character is safe.  You also get the apocalyptic art of Hawkworld, a super villain satirizing of Edgar Allen Poe, and a home invasion from Mirror Master.  Those looking for Superman should take a hike.  I've had a few things spoiled for me, but my understanding is that Morrison's Animal Man only gets better and more bizarre in the next volume.  Can't wait.

--Brad

A Fistful of Fictional Presidents! (Brad's Picks)

I am not a fan of Roland Emmerich.  The case against him:  Godzilla, The Patriot, The Day After Tomorrow,  and 10000 BC.  I have mildly enjoyed some of his films (Universal Soldier, Stargate, Independence Day, 2012, Anonymous), but not enough to give a rat's ass about his next movie.  Then last week I saw the final theatrical trailer for White House Down attached to This Is The End.  I lost my mind with laughter.  This does not appear to be a simple Olympus Has Fallen siege film - the White House is certainly down, but so is The Capitol!  Air Force One!  All of Washington D.C.!  The only thing standing in the way of total American devestation is Jaime Foxx's four-eyed POTUS and his super hunky body guard Channing Tatum.  Their buddy cop banter makes Shane Black squirm, but it's just cheezy enough for me and my giggles.  However, my real question is, can Jaime Foxx's President Sawyer stand proudly next to this fictional Hall of Presidents?

5.  President Lindberg (The Fifth Element):  In the 23rd Century if you're the President, and you can't get the crew of the USS Enterprise, than you better call on your top agent Korban Dallas to take down the evil corporate scumbag Zorg and his partner-in-galactic-crime, The Great Evil.  Of course, citizens of the Earth are never too worried when Tommy "Tiny" Lister is your chief.  Even if Dallas couldn't pulverize The Great Evil, you know Lister could shake him outta orbit with just a simple stare.

4.  President Jackson Evans (The Contender):  Jeff Bridges's sandwich loving negotiator feels like the most accurate representation of the job on screen.  He's a guy who at one point was full of heart & idealism, but slowly compromised his way to the top.  When his nomination for Vice President is discovered to have a deep dark sexual secret he does everything in his power to backpedal and circumvent.  He's all charm, but also rather pathetic.  One of Jeff Bridges finest performances.

3.  President Merkin Muffley (Dr. Strangelove):  "Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb..."  And here's the President you most certainly don't want at the helm of your nation.  The world is going to hell in a hand basket and he can't even stop the fighting in The War Room.  Painfully, bitterly funny.

2.  President James Marshall (Air Force One):  "Get Off My Plane!"  If you can't get President Lindberg on the line than your next best bet for Presidential Asskickery is Indiana Jones.  When a group of Russian Thugs led by Gary Oldman (him again!) take control of Air Force One, it's up to President Marshall to Die Hard their asses.  Harrison Ford brings the weight of his two great franchises wherever he goes, and it packs a powerful wallop when Han Solo bashes a chair over your head.  Just a great crowd pleaser.

1.  Dave Kovic (Dave):  Shhhhhhhh!  He's not actually the President, just a guy who looks like him.  For whatever reason, Dave had a tremendous impact on me when I was a teenager.  When the real POTUS dies mid orgasm, his henchman have to scramble to find a look alike to fill his remaining term. Enter Kevin Kline's Unemployment Agent with all his bright, brash, & hopeful idealism.  Ivan Reitman's comedy manages to balance cynicism with optimism.  As the credits roll I become hopeful that out there, somewhere in the thunder dome of the two party system, is a guy like Dave.  A Dreamer.  A Believer.  A Good Guy.

--Brad

Dork Art: 80s Heroes

Artist Guillaume Singelin tackles classic 80s Heroes as brought to us by the twisted brains of John Carpenter, Ridley Scott, & James Cameron.  There is certainly a lot of manga influence here, but I also see a hefty bit of Dr. Seuss as well.  And the coloring feels like a Dan Hipp drawing.  Whatever the case, I dig em.

--Brad

Dork Art: The Almost Supermen

Artist Jeremy Wheeler recently wrote an article for Esquire Magazine entitled, "The Men Who Were Almost Superman."  It's a fun little blog post detailing the near misses with actors Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Nicolas Cage, Christian Bale, and Joe Manganiello.   Because I'm a sickie, the only alternate version of Superman I would have ever wanted to see would have been Cage's long-haired, giant-spider bashing version.  Kevin Smith has made that failed script the stuff of legend, and I can only imagine how horrifyingly twee Tim Burton would have saturated the much beloved Man of Steel.  I do think that Christian Bale could have pulled off Supes...maybe not Clark Kent, but his Man of Steel seems the most plausible out of the bunch.  Thanks to Crome Yellow for the heads up.

--Brad

"You Will Be The Last!" - The Hugo Kid is a New Kind of Solider in this first Ender's Game Trailer

I've never read the book.  I have met Orson Scott Card for about ten minutes of my life; he was a nice enough man despite his insane morals & opinions.  So I'm not one of those kids freaking out about Hollywood's latest adaptation.  But like Matt, I'm always rooting for big sci-fi movies.  Fingers crossed on this one.  Can't really say the trailer grabs me.  Ben Kingsley & Harrison Ford cashing their supporting role check.  As much as I loved Martin Scorsese's Hugo, I can't say that Asa Butterfield gave an amazing performance and it looks like he'll have even more greenscreen to act against.  I did really appreciate Hailee Steinfeld in the Coen's True Grit, and hopefully they'll pair well.  The director is Gavin Hood, the man who helmed the abomination known as X-Men Origins - Wolverine.  One of the absolute worst comic book movies to ever seer my vision.  I'd watch Ghost Rider 1 a hundred times before I pained myself with that flop again.  So...that's troubling.

Dork Art: "Can't We All Just Get Along?" Star Trek vs Star Wars

A lot of chatter on the internet about Star Trek & Star Wars these days.  JJ Abrams getting the Episode VII job has thrown many a Trekkie into emotional turmoil.  But friends, I'm here to tell you that we live in a geek paradise, and we are now allowed to love both Star Trek & Star Wars.  It's not one or the other (although it is obvious that Trek is superior to Star Wars, right?).  Artist Robert Shane has come to the rescue with this pair of Star Trek/Star Wars mashups.  I'm so tired of William Shatner & Carrie Fischer fighting.  Let's just agree that both franchises are awesome and move on.

--Brad

"I'll Give You The Guts." Jackie Robinson Trailer Stirs Your Emotions

This biopic looks fairly typical.  But I love the Jackie Robinson story, and I love baseball movies despite my complete lack of knowledge for the actual sport.  You've seen a lot of Chadwick Boseman on the boob tube, in shows like Justified, Fringe, and Castle but you've never really seen him act his heart out.  This is his first chance at a real cinematic career.  But what really strikes me about the below trailer is that Harrison Ford actually looks like he's playing a character and not just Harrison Ford.  The man has taken a lot of lumps in the last couple of decades; I'd like to see his later years filled with glorious character work.  And Christopher Meloni, he sure knows how to throw a tantrum.



--Brad

Brad's Week in Dork! (9/16/12-9/22/12)W

After last week's sad lack of movie watching, I decided to make up for it with a crap ton of movie franchises.  Started the week off with a massive Resident Evil marathon, blitzing through that silly-stupid franchise so fast that I barely noticed the transition into the Indiana Jones blu ray box set.  And as much fun as I had with Milla this week, Dr. Jones ruled my week in Dorkdom.  The new transfers are stunning - not as mindblowing amazing as the JAWS disc from a few weeks back, but still absolutely killer must-buys.  Also, I couldn't wait till next Tuesday for The Dark Knight Returns cartoon cuz once I saw it pop up On Demand I had to watch it.  Thankfully it's real dang good.  But no comics.  No TV.

MOVIES OF THW WEEK!

Plague of Zombies:  Fascinating to see the zombie genre through the lens of Hammer Horror. This is not George Romero. It's the classic hoodoo voodoo undead with lots of busty English lasses swooning in fear as zombies creep in the foreground and a couple of Sirs and Doctors fend 'em off with fire...and lots of it. Plague of the Zombies is definitely not the best of what Hammer has to offer but it's fun enough.  And who doesn't love a good and scary hooded cult leader?

Resident Evil:  An enjoyable, but sanitized introduction to this super silly zombieapocalypse saga. The film suffers from its claustrophobic (and really just cheap) underground bunker setting, and the good stuff really awaits in the final two minutes of the world-gone-by epilogue, but you gotta start here if you want to experience one of the silliest and goofiest franchises in the horror genre.  I just can't shake my affection for the Resident Evil films.  They're not "good" but they're fun.  Here at the start, Milla Jovovich is not the unstoppable super human ass kicker of the later films; she's far too quiet & meek, letting Michelle Rodriguez overtake the frame with her smug tough face. Hard to let the iffy CGI & been-there-done-that horror action slide when the plot and characters are so dang banal...but just you wait till shotgun toting Milla gets above ground and the Umbrella conspiracy reaches max lunacy.  For fans of cheese only.

Resident Evil - Apocalypse:  Thankfully the first Resident Evil sequel takes itself much less seriously than the original and it benefits greatly from it newfound ridiculous B Movie gusto.  Thanks to the mad scientist ways of the diabolical Umbrella corporation, Milla Jovavich's Alice is now a Neo-like wonder woman. Leaping, kicking, deadshot blasting her way through hordes of the infected--including the now mutated Nemesis monstrosity packing some seriously badass artillery along with its hideous tumor face. Yes, it is true, Sienna Guillroy's Jill Valentine is quite terrible but she's at least more tolerable than the mopey punchfaced Michelle Rodriguez. And Mike Epps's gangsta provides plenty of so-bad-they're-great one liners: "My Last Ride Was A Cadillac!" So, yeah, it's silly and big time dumb.  But man it's fun.

Resident Evil - Extinction:  The third in the series is definitely the best of the bunch (so far) with Milla Jovavich's Alice hacking her way through the gray crispy wet undead, sporting duel Khukuri along with her fetishized Spaghetti Western duster. We're beyond Raccoon City, the world having moved on to a Road Warrior apocalypse. These are not the PG-13 zombies of the first two--nope, these are spitty, dried, withered, jerkied zombies. Proper zombies. Director Russell Mulcahy brings his Aussie doomsday Razorback eye to the proceedings and it's the most visually appealing armageddon offered so far from the franchise. Sure, the returning Oded Fehr and Mike Epps get short changed a little, but Ali Larter is much more welcomed than the last film's anemic tough girl Sienna Guillory. And you gotta love that cliffhanger ending--The Jovovich Clone Army gunning for Umbrella.

Resident Evil - Afterlife:  The first fifteen minutes of Afterlife definitely fulfills the insane promise of Extinction's cliffhanger ending and it is glorious. But then there is a serious mistep in curing Milla of her crazy super powers -- I guess they didn't want to go all Matrix Reloaded but I would have loved to have seen them try. Taking a page from Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, Alice finds herself held up in an LA Prison with a decent group of zombie fodder (faves being Boris Kodjoe's NBA superstar and Kim Coates DB movie producer), and one mysterious ax wielding zombie lummox roaming the shower rooms. Paul WS Anderson has some serious wet slo mo fun with their battle and its a highlight of this pleasingly bland franchise.

Resident Evil - Retribution:  The first three films expanded on the universe spreading from the underground lab of Resident Evil to the Apocalypse of Raccoon City to the Road Warrior wasteland of Extinction. In Afterlife our mary band of Umbrella haters find themselves confined to a prison stronghold, and in this latest excursion Milla's troop of mercenaries return underground to yet another Umbrella laboratory bunker. Despite its Holodeck tour of the world, Retribution feels confined by budgetary constraints and a lack of ambition. This is a goofy franchise and it works best when it goes for the gonzo-giant licker monstrosities, clone armies, and chainsaw swinging zombie Soviets. But when this saga should be getting global like the posters promise it's actually shrinking in scope...that is until its magnificent cliffhanger climax promising a grand Helm's Deep like battle for the fate of the world or at least the good ol' U S of A.

Raiders of the Lost Ark:  "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage." Genre cinema doesn't get better than Raiders of the Lost Ark. Cracked from the head of George Lucas and filtered through the pen of Lawrence Kasdan and the lens of Steven Spielberg. Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones is the ultimate adventurer getting into scrapes far too large for his academic sensibilities but thanks to a heap of charm, a quick draw, and the wrath of god this college professor can take down the whole Nazi army. And score with his mentor's sassy daughter while he's at it; saving the free world has never been so much fun.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:  After nearly meeting his end at the hands of a Chinese gangster, Indiana Jones drops down on India seeking fortune and glory when he's not feasting on chilled monkey brains. Temple of Doom is not the flawless adventure that was Raiders, but there is still plenty of fun to be had with Harrison Ford lusting for Kate Capshaw's dumb blonde while blocking the heart wrenching plans of ancient chanting cultists. The glitzy gangland opening and the climactic machete bridge face off are some of the series's most iconic moments.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:  In a lot of ways, The Last Crusade is a simple remake of Raiders with the return of Nazi antagonists and another holy relic race, but the addition of Sean Connery's proud pappa manages to enrich the character of Dr. Jones with his "Don't Blaspheme" lectures and "Army of Darkness" speeches. I do find the buffoonery of Marcus Brody a touch disappointing as Denholm Elliot deserved a better path than comic relief and the prequel opening represents all that is wrong with George Lucas' brain --in one afternoon we see how Indy got the hat, the whip, the scar, and his fear of snakes! Lame.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:  There are some serious wince inducing moments in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (nuke the fridge, Shia's Tarzan routine, etc) but if you squint real hard you can still find the charm of the original films. Ford's still got it as the good doctor, and his relationship with Shia's Mutt nicely mirrors the Sean Connery banter of The Last Crusade. Are the Reds & Inter-dimensional spacemen nonsense any crazier than the Nazis and the Biblical mumbo jumbo? Nope. And I love the teenage love on display between Harrison Ford and Karen Allen and I'm all for the climactic hat grab in the church. Maybe my nostalgia lets me forgive too much, but I'd rather be a happy internet troll than a raging one.

Cabin in the Woods:  An entertaining Upstairs/Downstairs satirization of the horror genre, Cabin in the Woods is more funny than scary and it really doesn't hit levels of genius until the last fifteen minutes when the genre goes splatter all over the walls.  Richard Jenkins & Bradley Whitford are hilarious as the buddy-buddy G-Men and I'm entertained every moment they're on screen, but even when they're poking fun at the genre cliches I still managed to find the teenage archetypes to be tiring. The winks might have worked a little bit better for me if the red neck zombie scares were actually effective. Still, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard are having a lot of fun here and it's impossible not to join in on the joke.

Halloween III - Season of the Witch:  "Turn It Off!" There is no room in Halloween III for the teenage slasher Michael Myers, and that might have been a poor business decision on the part of the studio but I much prefer Dan O'Herlihy's evil toyman transforming the world's children into druidic birthing centers for Roaches! Roaches! Roaches! than another babysitter bloodbath.  Tommy Lee Wallace gives us a pod movie akin to Invasion of the Body Snatchers and They Live; a little light on the social commentary but Season of the Witch makes up for it with plenty of mustachioed screaming Tom Atkins.  He will punch you till yer soupy orange goo.

Judge Dredd:  The opening credits crawl over a montage of 2000 AD comics. James Earl Jones narrates the apocalypse. Gorgeous matte paintings introduce you to the overstuffed eastern seaboard of Mega City One. Then Rob Schneider steps off the prison jet. And so ends the most amazing 30 seconds of this film. From here on Sylvester Stallone is taking off Judge Dredd's helmet, Schneider is comic reliefing all over the place, and Armand Assante is trying to out-"I AM THE LAW" the lead with his monstrous scream acting. All that being said, Judge Dredd might be an abomination but it's an entertaining failure and worthy of Stallone's action cannon...I'll take this any day over Daylight and Driven.  Sure, brit comic fans should remain disgusted but at least Karl Urban's Dredd seems to be on target.

Batman - The Dark Knight Returns Part 1:  "This is no mud hole, it's an operating table and I'm the surgeon." Well here it is folks. Frank Miller's epic graphic novel come to life in animated form and it is wondrous. The DC Animated team have outdone themselves, not since The New Frontier have they succeeded so well in adapting the original material. Peter Weller is the perfect Old Man Wayne and his voice perfectly captures the rage & frustration of Miller's dystopian 1980s. If there is one problem with the film is that it had to be split into two parts, part I is all set up to the absolutely bonkers second half with the psychotic Joker violence and Ronald Reagan's Man of Steel. So excited to see this in motion.  But we gotta wait till 2013.

"I Knew You'd Say That."

--Brad