A Fistful of Super-Free Comic Book Movies! (Matt's Picks)

    With Snowpiercer finally hitting screens in America (limited number though it may be), we here at In the Mouth of Dorkness want to take a look at some of our favorite comic book/graphic novel adaptations that don’t involve super powers or caped crusaders.

5.  Red:  Several retired government killers are forced to get back in the game.  Not exactly the most unique premise for a film, but the cast does a fine job and the script is a great deal of fun.  Helen Mirren proves she’s still hot as hell.  It’s goofy fun all around.

4.  Weird Science:  It’s true!  Loosely based on a story from an old anthology comic, Weird Science was one of my childhood favorites.  I totally understood the two dorky leads, and was blown away by the lovely Kelly Lebrock (I never hated her, because she was beautiful).  It’s a fringe Brat Pack film, but probably my favorite.

3.  A History of Violence:  My favorite latter day David Cronenberg film, it’s got a great cast, some intense ultra-violence, and a cool story.  I gather from several friends who’ve read it, the movie is far superior to the graphic novel it’s based on.

2.  300:  What can I say?  I love this big, dumb movie.  Almost certainly more than anyone should.  Visually outlandish and wonderful, full of muscle and bravado, heroic and weird.  It’s great.

1.  Dredd:  They got him right!  2000AD’s venerable hardcore Judge Dredd finally hits the big screen with all the scowling, helmeted badassery that makes him so beloved.  The movie is gorgeous, simple, fun, brutal, and everything I wanted it to be.  Now that people are discovering it on DVD, maybe we’ll get that follow-up after all.  Maybe Judge Anderson will come into her own.  Maybe we’ll get a taste of Judge Death.  Who can say?

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (7/14/13-7/20/13)

    With co-Dork Brad and many others on the left coast this week for the Nerd Jamboree, Comic-Con, I have remained here, keeping the light on.  Not a particularly exciting week, but not a bad one, either.

Game of Thrones Season 2:  Watching a regular episode of this show can be stressful, because you know anyone could die at any point, but watching the last couple episodes, you know death is riding.  The second season of the show is quite good, though it gets off to a wonky start.  Look, I love me some nudity and I’m no prude, but the first two episodes had me looking at my watch thinking, ‘can we please just put the tits away and get on with the story?’  And then they do, and the rest of the season keeps it balanced pretty well.  Peter Dinklage remains my favorite part, though there’s plenty to love.  His character is probably the most interesting and he plays it with gusto.  I haven’t read the books, and frankly, have no interest.  But my hope is that Tyrion Lannister is the last man standing to claim the throne.  If you don’t mind wall to wall swearing, violence, and sex, this series is a great companion to the Lord of the Rings films.  It feels like Middle Earth in the centuries after the King.

King Kong:  One of my all time favorite films, I was super excited to see it on the big screen.  However, some awful, literally snot-nosed little kid that couldn’t keep still pretty much ruined it for me.  Whatever.  Still one of the great movies, and a must see.  But parents, either don’t take the kids, or serve as a buffer between them and strangers.  Don’t let your hyperactive, sinus-shunt needing spawn ruin a someone’s 30 year aspiration.  Dick.

FDR: American Badass:  “I’m a motorcycle of death.  I ain’t got no sidecar.”  You have to know, going into this, that a movie called FDR: American Badass is not going to be some classy discussion of the life of an American president.  It’s about a guy who gets polio from Nazi werewolves, becomes President, smokes Lincoln inducing weed, and personally leads the attack on werewolf Hitler and Mussalini.  It’s crass, stupid, goofy, awkward, extremely cheap looking, and pretty much straight up awesome.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II:  “The mind is a labyrinth.”  This is a profoundly strange movie.  It’s an old favorite of mine, and I totally get why.  But after probably a decade without seeing it, this rewatch put how bloody strange it is into perspective.  The editing is all off, the story hops in weird ways, the acting and dialog are very wonky, and the music is bugnuts.  It’s totally anti-climactic and has several pretty big problems.  But I still find it very compelling, like a very gory adult fairy tale.  All the puzzle/riddle/maze stuff is great, and I think handled the best of all the films in the series.  It doesn’t shy away from physically traveling to hell, as most movies of this sort would; teasing for an hour and ten minutes, then giving a couple brief glimpses in the last reel.  No, this time we spend a third to half the film in the twisting strangeness of mat paintings and forced perspective.

Evil Dead (2013):  As soon as the Paul Dano looking chump opened the book and it was revealed to just be garden variety Satanism, I pretty much checked out.  One of the things I always liked about the original Evil Dead films was the Lovecraft hints.  The movie looks nice, but otherwise is just a bunch of boring retreads.  I’m not against remakes.  But Evil Dead 2 and (to a lesser degree) Army of Darkness already remade Evil Dead, and both movies had 100% more excitement and fun.  Skip it.  Watch the original.  Nothing to see here.

Jack the Giant Slayer:  Another ‘revisionist’ fairy tale, this by the numbers snooze-fest looks and feels like a made for TV movie from 20 years ago (10th Kingdom, Gulliver’s Travels, etc.).  A cast of better-than-this actors phone in performances, dishing out lifeless dialog that doesn’t even have the good taste to be memorably bad.  CG used where practical effects would have likely been easier, cheaper, and certainly look better.  Ho-hum.

Welcome to the cutting edge of 1992.

    Friday night through Saturday, I was on mission.  Co-Dork’s lair.  Blu-ray player.  Chinese food.  Like John Rambo before me, I got the job done.

Melvin & Howard:  Man, can I pick ‘em.  I thought this movie was going to be about a guy hanging out with Howard Hughes, not a s#!+ kicking hillbilly without the sense (or cents) to get his slack-jawed life together.  Between his soft-headed first wife, sleazy bosses, and own lack of brain cells, it’s a wonder our grease stained blue collar hero can drive and sing crappy songs at the same time, much less succeed in life.  As the movie progresses toward its climax (?!), the filmmakers rely on the viewer to be well versed in the actual shenanigans the film is inspired by…which I’m not.  This was up for Oscars?  This WON Oscars?  Maybe I can stop using Geena Davis’ win as my example when I point to how moronic the Oscars are.

My 2 minutes are the best part.

Jubal:  A good cast does a good job with a fairly standard collection of Western tropes.  There’s not really a heck of a lot to this movie, nor a lot to make one take note, beyond the excellent cast.  It was fine, and perfectly watchable, but not especially memorable.

Videodrome:  “Nobody on Earth was made for that show.”  Cronenberg’s grimly disturbing, and creepily prescient vision of the entertainment industry is quintessentially 80s in its execution, but timeless in its vision.  James Woods only thinks he’s an amoral would-be TV tycoon, peddling sleaze to the lowest of the low.  But when he discovers Videodrome, he may have found a line even he isn’t willing to cross.  Is it simply broadcasts of sadistic murders, or is it the beginning of a new political/religious/evolutionary force?

The Video Dead: A really, really weird 80s zombie movie, it’s not very good, but it’s certainly …um…unique.  A cursed TV, wandering zombies, the Garbage Man, a cowboy.  OK.  This isn’t a great movie by any means.  But it’s a fun 80s weirdo, with a cover you probably remember from poking around video stores 20 years ago.  Worth checking out for the strangeness, if nothing else.  And it doesn’t play out as one expects these films to go, which is a nice surprise.

French Stewart!  What happened?

    After my return from the abode of my counterpart, I finally cranked out the last few pages of da Vinci’s Ghost, from the author of The Fourth Part of the World.  Good, entertaining and informative history.  Da Vinci seems like he’d have been fun to hang with.

Fantastic Voyage:  The slow pace might be tough for some, but this voyage into inner space is pretty good.  Nice effects and a solid cast, as well as some rather overblown theatrics of Science! help sell the crazy.  There’s also a good dose of Cold War paranoia.  The opening of the movie feels like it dropped right out of a spy film.  It goes astray in the last act, and I can’t say that the resolution is especially satisfying.  But all in all, a fair sci-fi adventure flick from the 60s.

    Other than that, I’ve been addicted to Prog Rock all this week.  Started reading a book, Yes is the Answer, which is spawning more interest than usual.  It’s interesting going back to this music as a total outsider.  I don’t use drugs.  I wasn’t alive when Prog was at its height (or, I was just being born).  But I feel a certain connection to it.  The grandiose storytelling, the operatic sound and theatricality, the more Classical than Country composition.  Love it.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (5/19/13-5/25/13)

    On Sunday morning I read Alan Moore’s Skizz.  It was an OK bit of fluff.  Then I read three graphic novels by Jason.  Dang, that guy’s a genius…of some kind.  Between Jason books, I read Animal Man volumes 1 and 2.  Not genius.  And on Wednesday night, I finished Christa Faust’s first Fringe tie-in novel.  Good stuff.  Later in the week I read the Poul Anderson short story The Problem of Pain.  Interesting look at an alien religion through the eyes of a religious human, and how concepts of God and ethics vary.

Surveillance:  “You know how people get out here, Captain.”  Some dark, dark things are going down in Middle America.  At a rural police station, some cops, some witnesses, and a couple F.B.I. agents come together to piece together the facts of a series of brutal murders.  Everyone’s got a secret.  Tensions are high.  And as the stories come together the madness ramps up.  Broken and twisted people.  Monsters hiding behind human faces.  Director Jennifer Lynch came back after a long absence with this gleefully bizarre descent into human horror.  Who would have thought someone could make French Stewart terrifying (‘I’m all about safety.  That’s how I do it.’)?  And he ain’t the half of it.  Julia Ormond, Bill Pullman, and a whole cast of excellent second or third stringers help pull this absolutely awful business through hell and beyond.  Actions these horrendous shouldn’t be this much fun to watch.

The Talented Mr. Ripley:  “I always thought it’d be better to be a fake somebody, than a real nobody.”  Can you ever trust someone?  Where does friendship end and dangerous obsession begin?  The dark side of friendship comes to light with this thriller about young, pretty Americans living the ex-pat life in Italy.  A young man who tells lies like breathing goes to Europe to bring a wealthy scion back home.  Things get pretty intense as Tom Ripley drowns himself in the life of Dickie Greenleaf.  But nothing lasts forever.  Tom is a caterpillar approaching his moment, when he will become a butterfly, birthed in the blood of a man.  Patricia Highsmith’s devilishly charming archvillain Tom Ripley begins his career of mischief and mayhem in this beautifully stylish film.  It recreates an era of post-War Europe where the wealthy could live lives of beauty and frivolity that casts its spell to this day.  This is the life that would give rise to the Bond films, to all those romantic capers, to the advertising campaigns of Mad Men.  Light a cigarette, slick back your hair, put on a nice jacket, and get ready for some swinging jazz…and murder.  I’m profoundly impressed by how the film somehow makes you empathize with a murdering nutcase.

The Slams:  Jim Brown crosses the mob for a ton of dough.  He  goes to prison, but it’s OK.  He can do his time ‘til it’s time.  But everybody wants to get a piece of him, or a piece of his action.  He befriends the African Tom Jones while getting in trouble with James Coburn’s giant twin.  Every character actor they could find has been crammed into 91 minutes.  It has some good moments, and I love Jim Brown.  But I don’t like prison movies and this one didn’t win me over.

Calendar Girls:  “Flowers of Yorkshire are like the women of Yorkshire.”  This extremely cute and heartfelt comedy centers around a group of older women who wish to honor a friend in a way that raises more than a few eyebrows.  An excellent cast and a light but touching script takes the viewer through numerous awkward encounters and cheeky misunderstandings.  But it’s all very recognizable.  These are people we know.  They’re the people we’ll soon become.  Mortality, aging, abandonment, grief, and the simple joys of love, friends, and family.  If you’re in the mood for a nice, adult comedy that isn’t just about fart jokes, check this one out.

The ABCs of Death:  Anthologies are tricky.  Any anthology.  Anthology films are really tricky.  This features 26 short films, each based off a word from a letter of the alphabet (D is for Dogfight, W is for WTF?, U is for Unearthed, etc.).  Some are really neat.  Some are really lame.  A bunch are in the middle.  There is absolutely no consistency in tone, style, or strength of content.  Some look professional, others like amateur hour.  Some have some very strong gore or extremely wrong behavior.  Others are just good clean fun.  If you’re a horror fan, you should find at least a few to enjoy, and none of them are so long that you can’t sit through ‘em.

Star Trek:  “I like this ship!”  In 2009, something fairly surprising happened.  A movie came out that was at once a sequel, and a re-launch of a venerable TV and film franchise, that was fun and entertaining while being true to much of the spirit of the original, that brought in new fans on an unprecedented level, yet managed to mostly please a legendarily picky and unhappy fanbase.  By creating an ‘alternate timeline’ the writers were able to go back and revisit the most popular characters of the Trek universe, without being hamstrung by decades of established history that was more bloated, contradictory, and minutia-weighted than the Bible.  Star Trek is an exciting film that manages to balance action, emotion, and humor without letting one get in the way of the other.  And when it ended, the universe was wide open for a really thrilling and new story to be crafted…Of course, after having watched Into Darkness, it turns out the universe was wide open for shoddy rehash.  Sad.  Still, this movie is a blast for all but the most cynical.

They Live:  “I believe in America.”  The Alamo Drafthouse recently opened a location here in Northern Virginia, and I was glad to get out this week to see one of my favorite 80s movies, and one of John Carpenter’s greats, They Live.  It’s filled with amazing quotes, ultra-heavy-handed moralizing, kickass Carpenter scoring, and so much Keith David.  And it has one of the all time great fistfights, which must be seen to be believed.  Just when you think it’s over…it’s just begun!

Furious 6:  It deeply saddens me to say that this movie is not nearly as amazing as Fast 5.  It’s fine, I guess.  But there’s a magic missing; and that magic is the sweaty, Jesus-loving sexual tension that permeated every scene between Vin and The Rock.  Yeah, they had their various dames, but their hearts belonged to each other.  That much was obvious.  This time around, it’s just not there.  Also, the middle gets pretty danged dull.  Where Fast 5 kept the adrenaline and idiocy pumping from moment one, right through to the tag, this one flounders a couple of times.  Still, for extremely dumb, meathead action and gratuitousness, this one should have enough to enjoy.  Some cast members are missing, some come back (from the dead).  And a few get shorted on action and screentime.  But it still has plenty of good bits.  Man, Vin gets uglier and uglier as time goes on.  Kiefer Sutherland and Brad Pitt aged into their weird faces.  Vin has become more and more monstrous, like some terrible Clayface.  It’s awesome.  Look, these movies are hysterical, but part of what makes them so awesome is how serious everyone involved takes themselves.  This is heartfelt, sincere stuff, and it’s terrible…But wonderful.  I don’t give a hoot about street racing or cars in general.  But the stupid caper and car battles make for tasty cheese.

Exorcism:  Jess Franco is like Orson Welles with this turn as actor and director.  Except he sucks.  The story is stupid, the dubbing childish, the gore lame.  Some of the women are pretty and there is wall to wall nudity.  For a Franco film, it‘s not too filled with technical flaws.  The music sucks.  The frustration I run into now is that Franco worked on so many movies under so many assumed names, I keep seeing his films, even though I’m trying not to.  Ugh.

Actress yawns her way through a scene.

Grand Hotel:  “Nothing ever happens.”  An all star ensemble cast (a groundbreaking idea at the time) comes together in this 1932 classic.  Great performances abound, as does the cracking dialog.  It’s funny and sad, with some great romantic moments and some very melancholic bits.  Garbo is beautiful, but I was surprised by how pretty young Joan Crawford was.  I think I’m just used to older, crazier Crawford.  And the Barrymore brothers are fantastic.  Good stuff all around and a must for fans of the classics, and of good movies in general.  I can certainly see why it won Best Picture.

John Carter:  “John Carter of Mars; sounds much better.”  After a hundred years, with many starts and stops, a film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian adventures has finally hit the screen and it’s…well, OK.  The story takes bits and pieces of several Mars novels and reworks them into a kind of bland and typical sci-fi adventure.  Now, there are obviously going to be things that seem familiar to anyone not living under a rock, because nearly every science fiction, superhero, or fantasy film made owes a little something to Burroughs and John Carter.  But it did have something unique, and that magic does not make it into the movie.  Or, very little of it does.  Sadly, the awkward and wooden Taylor Kitsch was cast in the title role, which he doesn’t botch, but doesn’t succeed in capturing.  But the saddest thing of all is how Disney itself became this film’s worst enemy.  After putting up a good deal of money, with the director of one of the best recent science fiction films (Wall-E) at the helm, they spent at every ounce of energy at hand to abandon, flee, and burry the film, obscuring its content and driving away everyone who might want to see it.  I read an article that talked about how Disney assumed a huge audience as a matter of course, and spent its advertising budget not on making people want to see it, but on trying to hide any and every aspect that might make someone not want to see it (even changing the name from John Carter of Mars to the completely lifeless John Carter, in case someone thought Mars might scare someone off), which backfired, making nobody at all give two craps about the film.  That sounds about right.  This is a film I’ve been wanting to see for almost 30 years, and by the time it came out, Disney had nearly convinced me not to bother.  Getting back to the movie itself, while it hits several of the right beats, it feels entirely too restrained, never fully daring to go as crazy as the source material demands.  The growth of Tars Tarkas from closet doubter of his people’s cold and brutal ways to openly sympathetic is a great arc in the book, but here is skipped entirely.  Sad.  Time and again the movie goes a little crazy, but time after time it didn’t go anywhere near crazy enough.  I just wish it had done well enough to warrant a sequel, where they might be able to get more on the right track.  Unfortunately, even though its actual box office take was pretty good, it was considered a bomb for whatever reasons movie studios consider movies bombs.

Fast Five:  “You know I like my dessert first.”  After watching the slightly disappointing Furious 6, I figured I had to go back and recharge the love.  This muscle and steel charged heist movie is as dumb as it is sincere.  And believe me, it’s one danged sincere flick  Plus, you add Dwayne Johnson and you know I’m on board.  Silly stunts, a good villain, lots of muscles and sex-faces.  A frickin’ awesomely terrible and fun movie.  While not as homoerotic as pro-wrestling, it’s certainly got more guy-guy chemistry than Brokeback Mountain, as the touching romance between Vin and The Rock unfolds (“I will find you.”).  Sure, Vin has a hot Brazilian girlfriend, but you know he and his family have enough love to go around.  And the way they work in the obligatory street-racing scene…oh, man.  Though the one in Furious 6 is even more entertainingly stupid.  So much hoochie.  And the action sequences are better done, especially the totally ridiculous finale.

Love.

Rabid:  “I decided to try a little experiment.”  I love this movie.  I love its tone, its look, and its shattered dreams.  Plastic surgeons have developed a new experimental technique (basically stem-cells) to repair catastrophic damage.  When a pretty young woman is horribly injured in a motorcycle crash, she gets the treatment.  It’s a Cronenberg film, so you know things aren’t going to go well.  It doesn’t take long for an armpit vagina to shoot out a spiked penis that infects people with a super-strain of rabies, and she goes completely feral.  That old story.  I especially love the opening.  That rotating shot of Marilyn Chambers is gorgeously moody.  And motorcycle riding sequence that follows is nice, reminding me a bit of the driving footage in Mad Max (not in content but cinematography, I guess).  And that gorgeous, cold Canadian desolation is like a bare tree covered desert.  Every time I see this it makes me a little sad that Chambers wasn’t able to make the transition to mainstream film.  She isn’t an amazing actress, but she has a quality, a sort of open sweetness with just a dash of danger that I think could have been cultivated.  Frank Moore who plays her boyfriend is like the Canadian Christopher Walken…only really bad.  His crying phone meltdown is some epic Shatner level stuff.  The rest of the cast is all over the place, from good to bad.  And there are elements of the final act that could have been better with a bigger budget.  But a good, uncomfortable film.

    And that was pretty much it.  Finally, on Saturday, the sun really came out, though the temperature also dropped back into unseasonably cool.  That’s been the last 6 plus months here in the greater DC area.  Autumn turned cool very early, Winter dragged on too long, and Spring stayed cool until it got super-hot.  And rain all the time.  Starting to feel like I’m back in Maine.  With all the rain, I’ve spent a lot of time indoors, watching movies and reading books.  Now, I like those things.  But I also enjoy riding my bike, taking walks, and going places in the sun.  Hopefully the Summer gets better.  I don’t want to have to look into moving out west.  That does not appeal to me, but if it doesn’t stop raining, I’m going to have to do something.

-Matt

Book Review: Fringe: The Zodiac Paradox

    I’m a surprise fan of Fringe.  I heard about it, but thought it sounded like a crappy X-Files riff; another of so many shoddy TV shows that recycle ideas with a couple of semi-novel ‘twists,’ last a season (or in truly dire situations, more than one season), and fade into justified obscurity (see every show featuring a vampire in the lead, with the possible exception of Dark Shadows).  And this time, one of those goofy dudes from Dawson’s Creek was on the team and Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  Still, I am not made of stone (though I do have a piece of coal where my heart should be), and eventually I listened to one of the many voices singing its praise and gave it a try.  Glad I did.  It is like X-Files.  Except that instead of one in five episodes being pretty good (with the rest being forgettable or bloody awful), Fringe was fairly consistently good and thematically focused.  And what’s more, the Dawson kid was good (?!).  But the best character, the most fun to watch, the one I found myself paying attention to, empathizing with, and wanting to know more about, was the resident mad scientist, the drugged up nutter Walter Bishop.

    Take my favorite character from an excellent show and put him into the hands of one of my favorite active writers, Christa Faust?  Sounds like a good recipe.  And so it is.  A prequel story about Walter, William Bell, and Nina Sharp and a protracted battle with the Zodiac killer.  Sign me up.  But media tie-in novels are a tricky thing.  I’m a long time Star Trek fan, and have read my fair share of Trek novels…a few of them were even good.  I’ve read some Farscape books, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and others.  More often than not, they’re not very good.  By which I mean they’re garbage.  The key problem is writing characters that sound and feel like the ones you’re used to from the show/film.  Why was The Wounded Sky a good Trek novel?  Because Kirk spoke and acted like Kirk, and McCoy spoke and acted like McCoy.  Once a writer does that, I’m much more willing to sit through whatever story they might wish to tell, but if a writer can not do that…I’m out.  All that is a long way of leading into  the strength of this book.  When Faust puts words into Walter’s mouth, I hear and see John Noble.  When she puts words into Belly’s mouth, I hear and see Leonard Nimoy.  After that, it’s all gravy.

    The story deals with early stage explorations into the mind altering drugs and reality breaking research that is the backstory of Fringe.  Bishop, Bell, and Sharp come together in the early 70s and lay conceptual groundwork for their lives, building the foundation of all that will lead to the events of the TV series.  And this is the stuff I loved about the show.  I’m really fascinated by all that post 60s, post hippie Utopian insanity.  Like the Dharma Initiative on Lost or The Arboria Institute from Beyond the Black Rainbow.  Or experimental hospitals in movies like Rabid and The Brood.  People with nothing but the best of intentions, trying to craft a new, better world, but with dire and sometimes apocalyptic consequences.  Some combination of drugs, the Cold War, profound social change, and wild tech growth created a weird time where almost anything seemed possible.  A time when two science nerds tripping balls in a park might just open a rift to another world, or find a way to boost human evolution.  I’ll admit, the Zodiac killer didn’t particularly interest me.  This is largely due to my ambivalence toward serial killer history and fiction.  It’s well handled, and I think the scenes written from his point of view are appropriately creepy and disquieting.  But due to my own interests and prejudices, I kept wanting the scenes to end so I could get back to Walter, Nina, and Belly, or the student researchers, or even the psychedelic rock band trying to change the world with their music, man.  I can’t imagine there are a lot of people like myself, who would love to read a novel about the founding of Massive Dynamics, and their early research work, without need of a monster or villain.  I should probably just pop on a few more prog-rock albums, watch Videodrome, and be content.

    If you’re a Fringe fan, absolutely check this book out.  It’s nice supplementary material that builds the world a bit more and gives details on the early lives of some major players.  If you’re a Christa Faust fan, you should enjoy her typical cracking action, natural dialog, and uncomfortable violence.  It is a tie-in to a PG-13 type show, so the violence is more restrained than in Choke Hold or Money Shot.  But it doesn’t feel false or too sanitized.  If you’re like me, and a fan of both, this is a no-brainer.  Read it.

-Matt

Brad's Week in Dork! (12/23/12-12/29/12)

Here it is.  The last "real" week of 2012.  Amidst all the Ho-Ho-Ho and Jingle Bells was the last ditch effort to capture New Movies into my brain; it was a mad dash to consume in an attempt to make my upcoming Dorkies as complete as they possibly can be.  Thanks to On Demand & Netflix Instant, I was able to see a lot of those flicks I missed earlier in the year...none really knocked my socks off though. Frankly, nothing could excite me once I saw Django Unchained.  QT's latest floored me.  And I cannot tell you how happy I am to end the year with one of its very best films.  A much more thrilling experience than last year's so-so War Horse.

I am so happy to have the Holidays behind me - the retail madness has pretty much come to a close.  And The Wife & I had a wonderful Christmas with both our families.  As usual, she won the gift giving battle by supplying me with James Bond's favorite Scotch, a Black & White Darwyn Cooke Batman, and some crazy looking Terminator knock-off legos.  I am so lucky to have found a woman who not only understands my boyhood fantasies, but is my greatest enabler.

Killer Joe:  "Do You Want Me To Wear Your Face?"  Yikes.  Matthew McConaughey channels his Texas Chainsaw Massacre persona and delivers one of this year's most delightfully unsettling performances.  That being said, I didn't really like this movie.  Sure, it's got the greatest use of Fried Chicken you'll ever encounter in cinema and all the other actors do a fine job at portraying their despicable characters, but the narrative never excites since you can pretty much guess where this kidnapping plot unravels...that is until the drumstick emerges.  I want more manic McConaughey in my life.  If Tom Cruise delivers wonderfully unnatural intensity, McConaughey is the master of handsome insanity.  He radiates madness like no other - the aforementioned Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4, Reign of Fire, Surfer Dude, Frailty.  He's perfectly fine as the good boy scout, but when he's chewing around a psycho killer?  That's entertainment.  I just wish the rest of the film was more interesting than its fishbowl leering on poor white trash.  And Gina Gershon, just keep your pants on.

Die Hard:  If you were to push my face into the ground, twist my arm around my back, and force me to name my All-Time Favorite Straight-Up Action Film I would have to cry Die Hard.  Like the best action films of the 80s, it's wonderfully simple.  A New York Cop trapped in a building with a dozen money hungry terrorists.  There's enough emotion at stake thanks to the cop's troubled marriage, and the death of a few key innocents but for the most part it's just an excuse for Bruce Willis to machine gun his way through various squibby set pieces.  And those squibs?  Have there ever been better bags of popping fake blood?  Don't think so.  Alan Rickman's diabolical Hans Gruber is as dashing as he is scary, and his final drop from the heavens is so completely satisfying.  To top it all off, it's a Christmas Movie!  There is no better film to watch when you decorate your tree on Christmas Eve - that's exactly what The Wife & I did.

Inglourious Basterds:  "We Will Be Cruel To The German!"  One of the most satisfying climaxes in movies.  Watch a film like Schindler's List or Sophie's Choice, get your brain really dark and depressed and then immediately follow it up with The Basterds.  You will hoot and holler with bloody enthusiasm as Brad Pitt and the rest of his Apache Warriors exact their gleeful vengeance on various Nazi scum.  But this is not just a World War Kill Bill.  It's still littered with dazzling film references and that now typical mashup score, but there's no distraction in its execution.  It's another feast of Tarantino dialog; the language here is dangerous and often scariest aspect of the film.  The opening scene between Christophe Waltz's Jew Hunter and the poor French farmer is some of the most suspenseful cinema this side of Hitchcock.  In fact every scene with Waltz is horrifying, no matter how wide his smile or extreme his gesticulating.  But as hard as he tries to steal this film, Inglourious Basterds is really Melanie Laurent's movie.  And as fun as it is to see Brad Pitt's dirty dozen scalp their prey, the real satisfaction comes from Shosana's fiery retribution.  I genuinely find Basterds to be a cathartic movie watching experience; having been force fed the horrors of history all my life, it feels incredibly good to give myself to Quentin Tarantino's rulebook.

Django Unchained:  Want to get nuts?  Lets get nuts.  Django Unchained may very well be my favorite Quentin Tarantino film.  That seems extreme, I know.  I'm not totally sure I believe it just yet.  I know I have a predisposition towards Westerns (or Southerns as the case may be here), but I don't think this is another case of being blinded by Appaloosa.  This is genuine love.  Fanboyish, sure.  My reaction to Jamie Foxx's final moments in this film were rather similar to The Hulk's declaration of "I'm Always Angry" - pure, unadulterated joy.  Django Unchained feels like an emotional sequel to Inglourious Bastereds.  But where as the cathartic vengeance release in Basterds relies mostly on your predetermined hatred for Nazis, Django Unchained explicitly depicts the horrors of slavery.  There are moments in this film that are tough to watch - some of them release awkward reactionary laughter, some honest Blazing Saddles comedy.  But that's what QT specializes in, he runs the gamut of emotions and couches them in genre.  This is exploitation at its very best.  Jaime Foxx's Django lives in the nightmare landscape of Sergio Corbucci, but the script offers him a fairy tale hero's quest and in rescuing his bride from the clutches of Leonardo Dicaprio's plantation monster Foxx succeeds where Kunta Kinte failed.  There is no high road here.  We want the low road.  We want Django to whip these hateful beasts to death.  We want the horrors of slavery to be vanquished through blood.  It's a fantasy.  And in my fantasies I want violent triumph.  If you've cheered with Jim Brown's Slaughter than you know exactly what I mean.  If you haven't, if you want the history lesson...stick with Roots.  But Inglourious Basterds & Django Unchained are a blast of operatic rage against racism and they both offer a pleasure not often experienced in contemporary cinema.  It's a base need, maybe you don't need it or want it, but I most certainly do.  And the fact that you can also play QT's Where's Waldo game of Spaghetti Western references and Hong Kong snap zooms, that's just icing on the cake.

John Dies At The End:  "That dog just saved the universe."  I really, really, really wanted to enjoy this movie.  Don Coscarelli's Phantasm films are staples of Halloween, and his adaptation of Bubba Ho-Tep is much better than I ever thought possible.  The trailers for John Dies At The End promise all sorts of weirdo monsters and violent hijinks, but as I found myself drifting away from the movie I couldn't help but think of this science fiction as a wannabe teenage version of Cronenberg's Naked Lunch.  It seems to be trying really hard, but from nearly the very first shot we're never given a moments rest from the main character's insanity...or whatever.  It's a whole lot of kooky, but kooky a movie does not make.

Universal Soldier - Day of Reckoning:  "That's the spirit soldier!"  I probably enjoyed this much more than I should have, but I couldn't help but fall victim to its bloody beatdown charms.  I would love to tell you that this is Jean Claude & Dolph Lundgren's movie, but like the previous Universal Soldier flicks this franchise now belongs to Scott Adkins.  But ya know what?  He's seriously badass in this film.  He has a showcase fight sequence set in a sporting shop that rivals Gina Carano's Fassbender whoopin found earlier this year in Haywire - the man knows how to crack a skull with a baseball bat.  And when it's time to go Versus against JCVD & Lundgren, the man holds his own against these aging monsters of action.  Their final showdown easily excites more than any phony baloney CG shoot 'em up found in either of the Expendable films.  Machetes and blood.  That's what this action audience wants.

Beasts of the Southern Wild:  It's this year's indie darling, and it totally won me over.  Set in this surreal, post-apocalyptic(Katrina?) island called The Bathtub, a young girl and her father fight to survive the challenges of their environment.  As the wild child Hushpuppy, Quevenzhane Wallis is a natural force of childlike wonder; she offers the type of performance impossible to find beyond the age of reason.  But as much as I was captivated by her astonishing abilities, I was equally enraptured by Dwight Henry's Wink.  He's the proud papa - not so much of his child (although that's there too...eventually), but of the world he inhabits and the four alarm fire he once bedded.  There is a fiery heart to be found in his contempt for the world outside The Bathtub; he doesn't understand that world and he doesn't want it to understand him.  This is not so much a coming-of-age story as a passing-the-torch story.  Wink lays out the spread, the buffet of the universe for young Hushpuppy to feast upon.  It's up to her to crack into the crab and Beast It!

FDR - American Badass:  Oh boy, oh boy.  This movie is just wrong.  But wonderfully so.  Unlike the tepid comedy failure of Iron Sky (see last WEEK IN DORK), FDR succeeds in never shaking from its horrendous buffoonery and outright assault on historical - no, scratch that - human decency.  As you watch Barry Bostwick scream his Presidential victory howls while dousing a gallon of milk upon his chest you'll be awestruck by the producer's ability to snag these actors for this beautiful cinematic atrocity.  Ray Wise, Bruce McGill, Kevin Sorbo, Lin Shaye, William Mapother?  I know you guys will work for a sandwich, but how'd you get here?  But ya know what?  They all go for it!  They've bought in to this ridiculous charade, and they scream their lines with pure trash movie conviction!  JELLYBEANS!!!!!!!!!!

Cosmopolis:  David Cronenberg meet Robert Pattinson...wait, what?  That was my initial reaction upon hearing the news of this oddball partnership.  The Twilight Kid riding around in a Cronenberg limousine driven by novelist Don Delillo?  After a few minutes thought that sounded like a wonderfully mad idea worth backing - and those early trailers made Cosmopolis out to be his new Naked Lunch.  But, unfortunately, the film is much more pedestrian than desired.  Another asshole protagonist raping the world around him.  Sigh.  But I think I just have to let go of the old David Cronenberg.  If I'm looking for new incarnations of The Brood than I should just watch Beyond The Black Rainbow again, cuz the Canadian Cinefiend is firmly established in the run-of-the-mill human monsters these days.  Cosmopolis is a nasty little hit at Capitalism, a touch obvious, but the bumps in the road are watchable.  But I can't get freakout crazy for this flick.

Deadfall:  A somewhat solid wannabe Elmore Leonard crime tale.  Siblings Eric Bana & Olivia Wilde are on the run from the law in the winter wasteland of the Canadian border.  There's a bundle of stolen cash, a dead police officer, and a potentially incestuous relationship.  In stumbles Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam, a convict boxer looking to fall in love through a pair of Olivia Wilde's panties.  There might have been an interesting relationship between the three leads if not distracted by wasted B plots involving Kate Mara's policedaddy issues and Kris Kristofferson disapproving Thanksgiving dinner.  More treachery & violence and less furrowed brow melodrama.

--Brad