Brad's Week in Dork! (11/24/13-11/30/13)

Thanksgiving and Black Friday got in the way of some serious movie watching this week.  Can't really complain about that though, can I?  Life is good.  Family is sweet.  And Business is a boomin'.  Started the week with Matt at The Angelika for Alexander Payne's Nebraska.  It's certainly not going to make my Top Ten List this year, but Bruce Dern is a serious contender for the Oscar race.  On Wednesday The Wife and I made it over to The Alamo for Hunger Games 2.  Better than the first film, but the best part about the night was still the Drafthouse pre-show.  SNL skit was actually pretty funny. And we came home from the movie craving real entertainment, so we had ourselves a double feature with the This Is The End & The Word's End blu rays.  Before my Black Friday got on the way, I caught both Philomena & Oldboy on the big screen while my Brother-In-Law tagged along for the adventure.  Probably couldn't pair two films as different as those.  However, the best film I watched this week was Plunder of the Sun.  Glenn Ford doing that mean bastard routine.  I love it.

While at work on Saturday, I got word that Paul Walker had died.  I'm happy to say that I have always been a Walker fan.  The man appeared in a lot of crappy cinema (the first two Fast & Furious flicks, Into The Blue, Bobby Z), but he's also rather amazing in Running Scared.  I've sung that films praises numerous times on this blog, and I'll take the opportunity again to send you running to your TV set.  It is simply an amazing bit of gonzo cinema.  A Grimm's Fairy Tale remake of Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog featuring possibly the greatest tribute to John Wayne this side of Garth Ennis's Preacher comic book series.  Not to mention those terrifying Nosferatu Pedophiles!!!!  If you haven't seen Running Scared than I demand you drop what you're doing right now and check it out.  If you're looking for other great Walker flicks to tribute and you've already exhausted Fast Five, then I also suggest Joy Ride (see below) and the more recent Pawn Shop Chronicles in which Walker plays a buggin' out meth head.  The man knew how to have fun on screen.  I'm gonna miss ya.

Nebraska:  I've been listening to a lot of conversation surrounding Alexander Payne's latest flick.  From one podcast to the next - Slashfilm, Operation Kino, Battleship Pretension - one critic blasts it as a mean-spirited mockery of the midwest, and another calls it a searing character study.  One thing is certain - Bruce Dern delivers a quiet, painful performance as the senile father determined to collect his million dollar sweepstakes.  And as a city slicker kid who occasionally spent his summers in Taylor, North Dakota population 148, I felt a lot of kinship for Will Forte's interloper.  Is it mockery?  At times.  Is that a bad thing?  I don't know.  I was always told by my teachers that it was cruel to laugh at others, and Nebraska certainly gains a lot of its comedy from pointing the finger.  So maybe I'm an asshole.  I enjoyed Nebraska.  Not the kind of film I'll watch over & over again, and I absolutely prefer Payne's The Descendants, Sideways, About Schmidt, & Election, but I'll root for Dern come Oscar time.

Plunder of the Sun:  "How hard can you beg?"  Now here is a beastly little diddy that does not get the praise it so rightfully deserves.  Glenn Ford, very much in the spirit of Gilda's Johnny Farrall, is an insurance investigator ensnared in an archeological heist when Patricia Medina bats her eyes across the barroom.  Ford is an amazing bastard in this movie, delightfully selfish, and cool as ice in the face of danger.  I absolutely love how no jackbooted thug can take this man down, and how heartlessly mean he can be to a beautiful woman when she attempts to play villain.  Imagine Indiana Jones mixed with In The Mouth of Madness's John Trent and a little of Prime Cut's Lee Marvin and you get Glenn Ford's beastly idol robber..  In 2013, having recently discovered or rediscovered flicks like The Big Heat, 310 To Yuma, Gilda, and Plunder of the Sun, Glenn Ford has climbed himself to the top of my favorite "classic" actors list.  He lives proudly next to Burt Lancaster, Henry Fonda, and Lee Marvin.  Now it's time to devour the rest of his back catalogue.

Medium Cool:  "I understand that you have some problems."  Robert Forester is a TV cameraman attempting to navigate the civil unrest of the late 1960s.  The story itself is pretty much what you expect, but Haskel Wexler's in-the-trenches documentary direction perfectly mirrors the era's primetime media assault.  Remember when journalism could make a difference?  Sigh.

Catching Fire:  I really just don't understand the appeal of these movies.  I've seen dozens of dystopian sci-fi hellholes.  Some I idolize - A Boy And His Dog, Logan's Run, Soylent Green, District 9.  Some I hate - No Escape, In Time, Johnny Mnemonic.  But The Hunger Games and this redo sequel are just soooooo booooooring.  Doesn't help that I'm not the biggest fan of Jennifer Lawrence's steely-eyed acting (minus Silver Linings Playbook, which is awesome, and her constant red carpet shit-talking).  Seriously, let's see some real deal emotion lady!  You just butchered a dome full of kids and all you can muster is some scream dreaming?  I dig the gender reversal of asskicker Katniss & Josh Hutcherson's damsel-in-distress, but why rehash the structure of the first film?  How 'bout doing something of note with these old ass tributes?  Geoffrey Wright is in your movie!  Use him!  Phillip Seymour Hoffman is in your movie!  Use him!  How can a film be nearly three hours long and have so little plot?  But since this flick just made a butt load of cash at the box office, I must be missing something.

This Is The End: "Call me your Prince of Persia..."  This is not sophisticated satire, it's a ferociously obscene assault on celebrity culture as seen from within.  I've always been a sucker for Seth Rogen's pothead comedy (Pineapple Express & Your Highness), but I don't think it's ever been funnier than it is in the moment when he & Jay Baruchel return from an L.A. Revelation to find all their Hollywood friends Left Behind at James Franco's house party.  One by one, they are either swallowed up by the Earth, impaled on sharp instruments, possessed by Satan, or welcomed into the Donner Party.  Their only option for salvation is to learn & live The Golden Rule.  It does not go well.

The World's End:  "Back to the dark ages."  Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg tackle the apocalypse from a much different, far classier, smarter, and typically British perspective.  I've watched the film three times now, and with each viewing I love it more and more.  I am very comfortable in calling The World's End one of the year's very best films, and even if I rank it at the bottom of the Cornetto Trilogy, it's still one of the finest emotionally wrenching comedies.  It also helps that it so easily Out-Star Trek's this year's abysmal Into Darkness atrocity with Simon Pegg expertly Kirking The Computer.  The World's End also offers the strongest performances yet from both Simon Pegg & Nick Frost.  Pegg's drunkard turned savior, Gary King never quite learns his lesson, but he comes close enough.  The apocalypse is not the awful part, it's how the apocalypse warrants his stagnancy.  The Loser Reigns!  Just what all isolated fanboys dream!  But my favorite delight is watching Frost's sober suit transform into the Pink Hulk of robotic destruction.  We've all seen the slobby brute, but I don't think we've ever been blessed with a prim & proper Frost.  Hard to take at first, but it's all worth it for when the shots hit the table.

The Killers:  Using Ernest Hemingway's short story for the opening scene, the rest of the film traces the actions of Burt Lancaster's punched-out boxer that lead to his inevitable assassination.  This is solid noir.  The flashback structure prevents it from fully capturing my passion, but it's also what gives the overall story its sense of dread.  There's no happy ending here.  Burt Lancaster dies in the first ten minutes and there's no resurrection.  The film has all the genre hallmarks, and Ava Gardner's Femme Fatale is exceptionally venomous with her dialogue.  "You touch me and you won't live till morning."  Don't mess with this lady folks.  She'll drive you to suicide.

Philomena:  Who doesn't love Judi Dench?  Who doesn't love Steve Coogan?  Only the soulless.  Dench plays a woman determined to find the son she was forced to abandon when she was barely a child herself.  Coogan is the failed journalist plunging the trenches of the human interest story to regain some hold on his career.  Philomena manages to be a searing look at the hypocrisy of religion while still managing to not make a mockery of faith.  Everybody wins.  It's the cliche "You'll laugh, you'll cry" kind of dramedy.  Well done, Mr Frears.

Oldboy:  A serviceable remake.  There are a few changes to the Korean original, but a lot of the horror of that film is surprisingly maintained in this Spike Lee joint.  Josh Brolin is pretty damn great as the American businessman kidnapped off the streets and mysteriously imprisoned for ten years.  Suddenly released, Brolin beats, bashes, and hammers his way through a variety of thugs until he finds the man responsible for his torture.  Along the way he meets Elisabeth Olsen's attractive social worker and does things he shouldn't.  Besides being totally unnecessary, I have a few other complaints in regards to Newboy - Sharlto Copley is far too James Bond Villainy as the billionaire beast, the film rushes too quickly towards its climax, and never properly establishes the "love" between Brolin & Olsen.  And could we please stop with the CG bloodwork!?!?  I hate it sooo much.  Still, it could have gone down a lot worse.

We Steal Secrets - The Story of Wikileaks:  "I like crushing bastards."  I'd love to tell you I was a socially conscious person.  But I'm a pop culture freak.  I can drone on and on about the merits of Roger Corman, but can barely string a sentence when it comes to the politics of the day.  I'm trying to be a better American.  I probably should venture out further into the real world than the handful of documentaries I watch a year.  I knew very little about Wikileaks before watching We Steal Secrets.  Similar to The Act of Killing, I found it to be a rather disturbing viewing experience.  What is the truth of the Red, White, & Blue?  What can we as Americans accept as collateral damage?  Wikileaks is incredible.  Too bad Julian Assange is such a hypocritical asshole himself.

Joyride:  I love Joy Ride.  Co-written by JJ Abrams and directed by John Dahl, the film is the closest this century has come to crafting the classic noir screenplay.  It's Detour populated with sexy young things.  While on a cross country roadtrip, two brothers punk a trucker using sex as temptation, and unleash a nightmarish Duel on the freeways.  Paul Walker & Steve Zahn are so much fun to hang out with that you forgive their idiotic prank and cheer them on to victory.  Too bad the film doesn't have the grit to adhere to its noir heart, and falters with a too-neat climax.  And Leelee Sobieski should totally Femme Fatale these bozos, but is simply relegated to the damsel-in-distress.

--Brad

Brad's Week in Dork! (8/25/13-8/31/12)

I caught my last film of the summer this week (You're Next) and I'm thankful that this latest horror gem made its way onto my Fistful of Summer 2013.  But the real big screen treat was catching Razorback at the AFI Silver.  Yeah, you read that right.  The Australian Giant Pig movie played this week at The American Film Institute.  What next?!?!?  Dead End Drive-In!?!?!  Uh...that's next week.  Ha!  We certainly do live in a Brave New World.  I've never been happier as a film fan living in the Washington DC area; this may not be L.A. or New York, but we're on our way.

The rest of the week was filled with blu rays and VOD.  Rewatched a couple of 2013 releases, and both Pain & Gain and Trance have shot to the top of my favorite films of this year.  The Rock and Rosario Dawson certainly deliver fun genre bending turns with their respective roles.  Very different, but bother are equally as demented.  The less said about Nicolas Cage in Frozen Ground the better.  How the mighty have fallen (I know, old news, right?).  Matthew McConaughey is certainly making a play for this year's Actor of the Year...too bad none of his movies are quite as good as his performances.  On two separate nights I fell asleep watching Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop 1 & 2 - it's what Netflix was born to do.  And the absolute best movie I watched was A Boy And His Dog.  Holy cow!  It had been a while since my last viewing, and that little beast of a flick floored me.  Truly one of the best blu ray releases of the year.

Razorback:  "Somethin' about blowin' the shit out of a razorback brightens up my day!" This is not simply a Jaws knockoff - it's the ultimate Jaws knockoff! Forget Piranha, forget Orca. They might have the marine life, but Razorback takes the Man vs. Evil Nature plot and uses it to propel its narrative down a music video dreamscape so smokey & cacophonous Tony Scott & Terry Gilliam wake from terror sweats contemplating their failure to capture it's insanity. Bill Kerr is Jake Cullen, a Kangaroo hunter who trades one killing spree for another after a boar the size of a rhino carries off his infant grandson. Partnering with Canadian blank slate Gregory Harrison and wildlife tracker Arkie Whiteley, Kerr navigates an endless display of foreground skulls to rid the outback of the great beast. But is Razorback the real threat, or does the true face of pockmarked evil belong to Dicko Baker and his piggy pleasure squeals?  A lost 80s classic well worth your attention.

You're Next:  This was a deceptive little movie. After years of the internet hype machine, and a batch of mediocre-to-terrible trailers from Lionsgate, I was ready to dismiss You're Next as just another slasher flick in an already redundant genre. And for the first twenty or so minutes, I did not give a good god damn about anything happening on screen. Disgruntled family bickering, killers attack, yawn. But then Sharni Vinson (so bendy and proud in Step Up 3D) reveals herself as one tough cookie, her John Carpenter theme starts thumping, and suddenly I'm cheering for a Final Girl in a way I haven't since Ellen Ripley. You're Next is not a dour, dumb teen slasher. It's a crowd pleaser. A violent, root 'em toot 'em siege film that's got more in common with Assault on Precinct 13 than The Strangers. It's fun! And that's the message that's getting lost in the marketing.

The Frozen Ground:  A couple years back I was really championing the mega acting talents of modern day Nicolas Cage. The man was devastating the silver screen with mountaintop performances in The Bad Lieutenant, Kick Ass, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and Drive Angry. The internet had turned against Cage, but I was right there with him as he sank into Season of the Witch and Ghost Rider 2. Just fun goofy movies elevated by his commitment to absurdity. But then came Trespass. And Seeking Justice. And Stolen. Yeash. Just absolutely boring direct-to-dvd dreck. Sadly, that trend is not broken with The Frozen Ground. It's a far too serious and dull serial killer pursuit picture; it plays like an A&E attempt at The Silence of the Lambs. And haven't we had enough of those already. Cage is mundane and checked out. I'm sure John Cussack is having a ball playing Next Door Evil, but it's a character we've seen a dozen times before and often better. The Frozen Ground is going to be one of those movies I forget fifteen minutes after I write this sentence. Oh yeah, Vanessa Hudgens is a stripper/prostitute damsel. So what? She's abysmal.

Beverly Hills Cop:  The 80s Action Comedy was born with this Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer production, and Eddie Murphy has never been better than he was here as the wisecracking fish-outta-water Axel Foley. His black man assault on rich white society is infectious.  Axel Foley is the cross hair on Reagan Era consumption, but Beverly Hills Cop is too damn funny to be a genuine cultural critique. Great music, great one-liners, great violence, great Bronson Pinchot. Anything beyond that is just the cherry on top.

Sweet Tooth Volume 1 - Out of the Deep Woods:  Here's a strange one I've been hearing good things about for quite some time now.  Given the fact that I've recently enjoyed Lemire's Underwater Welder, Trillium, and - *gulp* - Green Arrow, I thought it was high time that I tackled his weirdo post-apocalypse book.  The funny thing is, it's not that weird.  Sure, the world has gone to pot.  Children are born these days with antlers, hooves, and snouts, but so far Sweet Tooth displays some fairly typical world-gone-by tropes.   After his pop slips into the nether, our hybrid hero Gus attempts to break free from his religious fear with the help of sharpshooter woodsman, Mr. Jepperd.  But do friends exist in the Apocalypse?  Volume 1 certainly doesn't leave Gus in a better place than where we met him, and by all accounts life is going to get a whole helluva lot rougher before this series reaches its end.  The rest of the Sweet Tooth volumes are at the top of my shopping list for this year's Baltimore Comic Con.

Pain and Gain:  "When it started, America was just a handful of scrawny colonies. Now it's the most buffed, pumped up country on the planet. That's pretty rad." I've never cared for the Mark Wahlberg tough guy routine. I just don't buy it. At the same time, I'm not sure there are too many other actors out there that can achieve the comic heights of his self deprecation. Boogie Nights, The Other Guys, Pain & Gain. When he's playing dolts with delusions of grandeur, Wahlberg is your guy, and his Daniel Lugo just might be his greatest bonehead creation yet. Too bad he gets completely overshadowed by Dwayne Johnson's coke fiend Jesus freak, El Dad. His weak-link convict earns more laughs out of the depravity displayed on screen than any other Bayified scumbag. And speaking of Michael Bay, Pain & Gain is his crowning achievement as well. Where we've all chastised the fratboy for his homophobic, sophomoric, and misogynistic sight gags in the past, his pretty picture fart joke sensibilities are essential to Pain & Gain's success.  Based on True Events?  Yeah.  Crime for laughs?  Yeah.  Awkward?  Yeah.  But it's damn entertaining.

Mud:  The Matthew McConaughey renaissance continues with this Southern Gothic coming-of-age story. Two boys dealing with their own family melodrama discover McConaughey's cross healed hobo living in a boat in the forest. Jeff Nichols, the director of Shotgun Stories & Take Shelter, certainly knows how to pull great performances from his players, but I've found his screenplays lacking in the climax department. The narrative twists are telegraphed a mile out, and I'm more than a little full of the innocence-lost plots.  McConaughey makes it work, but the story is too rote to be memorable.

Beverly Hills Cop II:  "You can never have too much firepower."  After their successful collaboration on Top Gun, Jerry Bruckheimer, Don Simpson, and Tony Scott reteam for this hit-the-beats sequel.  Eddie Murphy is dragged back into Beverly Hills after Rony Cox's Captain Bogomil is gunned down by a member of the Alphabet Gang.  Again we get the Axel Foley ogling of swimming pools and strip clubs, but the one-liner attacks seem less important than the sunsets and explosions.  The comedy comes from the back & forth banter between Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, & Murhpy but this sequel is an action film first solidifying the Bruckheimer/Simpson formula that would go on to bust blocks with Bad Boys, The Rock, and even Pirates of the Caribbean.   It's a slick flick, and a lot of fun, but it's certainly not as refreshingly humorous as the original.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World:  Edgar Wright's bombastic celebration of all things geek - video games!  comics!  anime!  music!  movies!  manga!  hair dye! - is also our generation's answer to The Graduate.  Michael Cera is another lovelorn misanthrope struggling with his apathy when Mary Elizabeth Winstead's roller blading Amazon literally steps out of his dreams to wreak emotional as well as physical havoc.  If Scott Pilgrim wants to get with this beauty he must battle & defeat her League of Seven Evil Exes.  This brilliant structure centered around Street Fighter kombat allows for one hilarious gonzo encounter after the next; the highlights being Chris Evans's skater stunt team and Brandon Routh's telekinetic, vegan douche bag.  You probably have to be of a certain age to appreciate the surreal landscape, but for those folks in the know, Scott Pilgrim vs The World is a biting mockery of our pop culture obsessed lives.  Love & Self Respect may be the answer, but can you achieve such goals while swamped in the imagination of others?  At the very least, Scott Pilgrim proves that Edgar Wright is more than just a Cornetto man, and he's probably the most visually enticing director to land under the umbrella of Marvel Studios.  Forget Avengers 2 and Batman vs Superman, Edgar Wright's Ant-Man is certainly the most fascinating superhero film of 2015.

Trance:  "Bring it to me."  A second viewing of Danny Boyle's latest sealed my appreciation for this neo-noir.  Trance begins as one of those long-con mindbender movies, but as the screenplay works its way to the end, the film reveals itself not as an M Night Shyamalan twister concerned with plot-flipping but a villainous deconstruction of character, proud in the onion its peeled.  The film has heists, gangsters, amnesia, violence, and quite possibly the most interesting Femme Fatale I've experienced (neo or otherwise).  And the fact that this Femme Fatale is played by Rosario Dawson, an actress I've adored for years but who never seems to get the right part, is a real treat unto itself.  This is not Kiss Me Deadly or Chinatown.  Trance is very much a Danny Boyle film, shot with vibrant digital photography and crafting a style decades removed from Sam Spade.  Boyle may have gotten more acolades for his last couple of Oscar baiters, but for my money Trance is the most exciting film he's made since 28 Days Later.

Welcome To The Punch:  I was hoping to follow one dashing James McAvoy scumbag with another, but unfortunately, this Cops & Robbers saga is nothing more than a long snooze.  Mark Strong is a gangland daddy drawn out of the underworld when his son catches a bullet.  It's McAvoy's job to bring him in, but when the boys in blue reveal themselves to be the true villains, the two rivals must team-up John Woo style.  'Course Eran Creevy is no 90s era John Woo, and the action is nothing more than quick cutting and smokescreen i.e. boring.

A Boy and His Dog:  You know how critics (and know-it-all bloggers like myself) will say, "They don't make movies like that anymore?"  And often times you can just simply dismiss that as the bullshit it truly is.  However, with A Boy and His Dog, that annoying sentiment is most certainly the case.  In fact, the real answer is that there is only one A Boy and His Dog.  In the year 2024, World War IV granted the Earth the Nuclear Wasteland it always feared.  It lasted four days and by the end of it all, the only occupations in existence were marauder and rapist.  Unless you're a telepathic dog, then you also have the option of being a female hunter.  That's right, A Boy and His Dog is the story of Don Johnson's rapist and the dog who helps him get his prey.  It's an ugly, mean, angry film.  A movie that could have only come from the mind of science fiction writer Harlan Ellison, and its a miracle that character actor LQ Jones managed to bring it to the silver screen.  Jones had directed only one other film before this, and would only direct an episode of The Incredible Hulk after this.  It is a masterpiece of the genre.  Yes, yes, yes A Boy and His Dog is the precursor to Mad Max and a half dozen other Apocalypse stories.  But this is not anti-hero cinema.  Don Johnson is an evil little shit.  But he's the product of our ignorance, our need for war.  Sure, it's all very hippy dippy, but you gotta respect the rage behind the pen and behind the camera.  Watching the special features on the Shout Factory bluray, you get an understanding of the massive quest it took to get the film adapted, and I am so excited for all the new fanboys this disc will certainly create.

--Brad

A Fistful of Summer 2013! (Brad's Picks)

That's it folks.  Summer's over.  Back to school.  So what grade do we give 2013's Blockbuster Season?  I'm thinking a big, dud of a C.  As always, when April pushed into May, my heart was filled with joyous anticipation for the titanic tent poles Hollywood was churning down their production line.  I like all kinds of films, from the smallest micro budgets to the embarrassingly corpulent Baytrocities.  I vote YES on Proposition Transformers 4!  And with 2013 offering Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, Fast & Furious 6, Pacific Rim, The Lone Ranger, Man of Steel, and The Wolverine my fanboy hard-on was throbbing with an intensity not felt since...well, last Summer when The Avengers & The Dark Knight Rises ruled my soul.  And frankly the films leading into these Blockbusters only ranged from the "Ok" to the "Pretty good."  I needed a great crop of Extravaganza to feel solid about this cinema year.  Oh well.  Of the bloated behemoths listed above, only one movie makes my Fistful of Summer list.  They weren't all bad - heck, some were pretty good - but, nearly every flick this year has left that bitter taste of disappointment on my tongue.  None more vile than...

Star Trek Into Darkness.  It's been nearly three months since my last viewing, and JJ Abrams's So-Damn-Dumb sequel still manages to enrage this Trekkie.  And that's just annoying.  I hate being that asshole.  Rereading my angry, incoherent review of the film all I can do is shake my head at the fanboy cliche Into Darkness brought out of me.  I'm actually looking forward to rewatching the film so that maybe, just maybe, I can find something positive to say about that mess.  Is it truly the worst Star Trek film as voted by Trekkies?  I don't know about that...Star Trek Nemesis has to be the nadir of the franchise, but it's nice to know that I'm not alone in the disappointment.   Does it's lackluster display at the box office mean the end of this lens-flared crew?  Probably not, but I smell new director and budget cuts in the Enterprise's future.  And that's a good thing.

I think the biggest shock this summer was how much I enjoyed The Lone Ranger.  *crickets*  Have I lost you?  Did you immediately click away at the very idea of a positive word thrown Jerry Bruckheimer's way?  Of course not, you're still reading just to see what insanely idiotic thing I'll type next.  After all, how could I possibly hate so hard on Star Trek Into Darkness when I had so much damn fun watching The Lone Ranger?  I don't have a good answer for you.  The Lone Ranger is an absolute train wreck, but I found myself riotously laughing as men had their hearts eaten from their chests, and bandits squealed in joy at the possibility of duck foot rape.  What the hell was Disney thinking with this one?  It's a horror show, but it's also so damn weird that I found it utterly compelling. If you want to read more of my absurd Lone Ranger praise than click on over to my Daily Grindhouse review.  If it wasn't for this past weekend, The Lone Ranger would have certainly made this Fistful of Summer.

Finally, before we get to the Top 5, I just wanted to reiterate how the Blockbuster failed to excite this year.  Again, I enjoyed Pacific Rim, Elysium, Furious 6, & Man of Steel to a degree, but all fell short of their source material.  Cinema is failing too often to reach beyond simple nostalgia, and that's worrisome.  There are going to be fewer and fewer billion dollar returns like The Avengers.  The bubble will burst.  Wishful thinking?  Summer 2015 will bring us Star Wars - Episode VII, Avengers 2, Batman vs Superman, James Bond 24, Pirates of the Caribbean 5, Jurassic Park 4, Independence Day 2, Warcraft, Assassins Creed, The Fantastic Four reboot, and a new Terminator.  Will the world show up, or are there gonna be a lot of unhappy suits in Hollywood?  I sense some duds, or at least a batch of films that cost too much and make too little.  Or maybe that's all bullshit.  Maybe, after 34 years, I'm just finally hitting blockbuster fatigue.  

I certainly needed more protein in my diet, and this year I made more of an effort to hit the art theaters for those hipster, indie darlings.  Richard Linklater's Before Midnight, Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing, Jim Rash & Nat Faxon's The Way Way Back, Quentin Dupieux's Wrong, and a slew of VOD offerings gave some much needed respite from the Summer drought.  Still, I'm not an art house goon, and none of these tiny pictures could quite crack my Top 5.  So, shall we get on with it - 

5.  You're Next:  Possibly one of the most twisting cinematic experiences I had this year.  I just watched it this past Tuesday in a completely empty movie theater, and it took me from an exhausted seen-it-all horror aficionado to a hand clapping, seat jumping, school boy.  You're Next has been languishing on the Lionsgate shelf for a couple of years now, and I was sick of hearing about it six months ago.  Not to mention that the marketing for the film makes You're Next look like just another home invasion flick a la The Strangers or Funny Games.  And for the first twenty minutes, it's just that.  The Animals creep along the woods, the kills are fairly ordinary...then Sharni Vinson gets her hands on a meat tenderizer.  You're Next shifts a bit; the plot opens up, and suddenly the film is a whole lotta fun.  This is not some brooding slasher, it's a very 80s, kick-ass chick movie.  Not too many of those around anymore, and I can't help but feel that You're Next gets everything right that the Evil Dead remake gets wrong.

4.  Iron Man 3:  The First Mega Movie of the Summer is also the only Blockbuster to land on my top five.  Forget Avengers - Age of Ultron, Iron Man 3 is the real sequel to last year's Marvel Masterpiece, and even if it doesn't quite reach the heights of that Super Group, director Shane Black still delivers the finest entry in Shellhead's trilogy.  The intergalactic destruction brought down on New York City had lasting effects on Tony Stark; his panic attacks deliver a level of humanity to the character in the same fashion his alcoholism did in the comic books (we'll just have to settle on this PG-13, family friendly affliction).  Black manages to bring his wit & banter with him, a mean feat not yet accomplished by any of the Marvel Studios henchmen.  It's not Lethal Weapon, but there is enough of that flavor to invigorate the franchise.  Ben Kingsley's The Mandarin also happens to be the most surprisingly entertaining villain of the Super Hero genre, even if Guy Pearce's wronged scientist is a bit of a dullard and the film's revelations leave ignorant geeks to rage on the message boards.  Marvel continues to build its universe, and I'm still giddy for more.  Thor, Cap, The Guardians of the Galaxy - I'm all in.

3.  This Is The End:  The first film this year that left me 100% satisfied was this silly, stoner deconstruction of celebrity.  "Deconstruction."  That's probably giving the film too much credit.  This Is The End is just too damn funny to ignore.  Seth Rogen & Jay Baruchel play themselves, a couple of dimwits who use their good fortune to gorge upon Carl's Jr, video games & pot.  When Rogen drags Baruchel to James Franco's party the sky opens up and Revelation hits - the good get zapped up to heaven, and the bad are left behind to battle demon dogs as well as each other.  This film is bananas.  The entire cast has a blast destroying their personas; Danny McBride is exceptionally reprehensible, taking to the new rules of Thunderdome like a cannibal duck to water.  This Is The End is dumb, gross, and ignorant.  And I loved every second of it.

2.  The World's End:  And now for something completely different.  Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, & Nick Frost reteam to take on the Apocalypse but from a very British perspective.  The World's End still has plenty of silly, but whereas This Is The End often succeeds with stupidity, Wright's screenplay wins on childish wit.  There is a difference, a small one maybe, but it's enough to push one film over the other.  Several themes and in-jokes are carried throughout the Cornetto Trilogy, but the key ingredient has to be plutonic love.  I might still prefer both Shaun of the Dead & Hot Fuzz, but after a second viewing I think The World's End displays the strongest on-screen friendship yet.  It's a broken relationship, five friends that drifted apart years ago, but when Simon Pegg reaches a breaking point, the draw of his high school memory pulls the more successful chums back together.  A high school reunion involving an epic pub crawl through their home town.  Of course, as movies have taught us over and over, you can't go home again.  Especially when the body snatchers have set up shop.

1.  Only God Forgives:  Before the Summer started I postulated that at year's end this film was going to land on top, and as I write this, I seriously doubt any other film of 2013 will topple this beast from super stylist Nicholas Winding Refn.  Self-fullfilling prophecy?  Naw.  Refn just makes the slick & awful kind of films I love.  But don't confuse this Shakespearean battle between Heaven & Hell as another Drive.  Those looking for a recreation of 2011's cool zen Michael Mann'er will be sorely disappointed.  Only God Forgives is a deeply painful exploration of self-hate mixed with heavy handed gobs of MacBeth & Oedipus Rex that nearly ruptures from symbolism overload.  It's easy to see why some dared to Boo at the Cannes Film Festival, or why those craving more dreamy Ryan Gosling would reel back in disgust. Thai Boxing, Karaoke, Uzis, Samurai Swords.  A lot of nifty elements can be found within the frame, but the film is more concerned with terrible redemption than video game versus combat.  Certainly not for everybody, but Only God Forgives left this viewer completely satiated in a Summer season doused in mediocrity.

--Brad

Brad's Week in Dork! (8/18/13-8/24/13)

It feels like it's been a month since my last entry - that's because it has! Man oh man, no excuses...except to say that my San Diego Comic Con vacation was so epic and amazing that I've been suffering a massive bout of postpartum depression. It was only a week long pregnancy but the birth produced a bouncing beastly joy baby that's consumed my every waking thought.  This year's Comic Con was so extreme and wonderful that I cannot even put it into the proper words.  I really should do a separate blog post on the adventure, but I fear that too much time has past for any of you to give a good god damn about how wonderful my life has been.  I will leave you with just this - a photo I snapped from the front row of Hall H....

That's right, Sam The Man giving yours truly the stare down.  Absolute chills.  And that is only one of hundreds of photos I took over the course of the weekend.  I saw all the amazing panels you've already read about, scored a sackful of exclusives including the Magnitude Admiral Akbar bust, and participated in the Doug Loves Movies podcast, in which special guest star Leonard Maltin competed on my wife's behalf.   Third year in a row, and it was the best one yet.  I've been in a daze ever since, and for whatever reason I lost focus on ITMOD.  Thankfully, Matt has been watching & doing a bunch of crazy dork stuff and he's been keeping this blog going while I was drifting in the clouds.

Art by Monica Marier

Well, I'm back now folks.  This being the tail end of the Summer Blockbuster season, I spent a lot of time in the theater.  Finally found a film I'm comfortable calling the Best Movie of 2013 - Only God Forgives is a monster.  And quite possibly superior to Drive which won my heart a couple years back.  Don't believe the snobs and the haters, Nicholas Winding Refn's latest is not to be simply dismissed by the critics.  It's a depressing, oppressive winner.  Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, & Nick Frost brought their Cornetto Trilogy to a close with The World's End, and even if it is the weakest of the three, the film was an absolute highlight of the summer.  Seeing all their films back-to-back at The Alamo Drafthouse was easily my favorite theatrical experience of the year.  More on that later.  And, yes, the 18th was my Birthday and I decided this year to tie it into my annual Shat Attack Movie Party.  For a full rundown on the nearly 24 Hours of Shatner Viewing check out Matt's Week in Dork.  Spiders, Whales, & Tommy Guns Oh My!  Another rip roaring success.

Only God Forgives:  An absolutely punishing film.  Nicholas Winding Refn's second collaboration with Ryan Gosling is a mean spirited film draped in the mood of David Cronenberg's body horror, fogged with David Lynch's absurdity, and housed within the long corridors of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.  Like the best of Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese, Only God Forgives is somehow both homage and wholly original.  A greek tragedy centered around an Oedipal complex and a quest for revenge, Ryan Gosling has sinned his way into impotence and only Vithaya Pansringarm's angel of vengeance can release him from his miserable existence.  With it's nearly mute leading actor, it's meticulously composed frame, and shocking outbursts of violence (although surprisingly tame in the gore department) it's no wonder the box office did not embrace this terse melodrama.  And unlike Drive, the Urban Outfitters crowd will find difficulty in embracing the cool of Gosling's murderous demon.  This is not anti-hero cinema, despite a close resemblance to the Frankenstein monster and a killer Cliff Martinez score.

Kick-Ass 2:  Three years ago, I really enjoyed Matthew Vaughn's Kick Ass. Coming off of Layer Cake & Stardust, the director seemed to revel in the mean-spirited vitriol of Mark Millar & John Romita Jr's  wannabe Alan Moore comic book. It's a superhero deconstruction that seemed more concerned with punishing its ignorant fanboys than elevating them to their obsessions. However, with Vaughn's departure the sequel is plopped into the lap working stiff Jeff Wadlow (Cry_Wolf, Never Back Down) and the result is a heartless hunk of wood. From nearly the first line of dialog I was cringing at the performances. Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Chloe Grace Moretz are embarrassingly lifeless. Christopher Mintz-Plasse reads like a High School Musical audition. The film's soundtrack is cobbled together from the previous outing and a Wal-Mart club mix. Utter dreck. The violence is amped but the camera is rammed into the action, shaking uncontrollably, and fogging any sense of choreography.  There might be a little life in Jim Carrey's Colonel Stars & Stripes, but he's barely in the movie and his departure is almost as unceremonious as his entrance.  A real summer snooze.

The Flashpoint Paradox:  Alternative timelines are always fun. Of course, this particular story is based on the tale that spun DC Comics down the New 52 rabbit hole of mediocrity (the positive spin) and confused nonsense (the negative spin).  So I've got some bitter feelings to work through before I can ever fully embrace this adaptation. The basic gist is that anti-Flash (aka Professor Zoom) travels back in time switching key events that pit Wonder Woman's Amazons against Aquaman's Atlantians, all the while Lex Luthor's pitiful humans are caught in the middle. Superman never landed in Smallville. Bruce Wayne was shot down in crime alley instead of his parents. A topsy turvy world that's a lot of fun, but lacks the depth of DC's greatest animated adventures (New Frontier, The Dark Knight Returns).  And next on the DC docket is Justice League - War, an animated spin on The New 52's Justice League.  Not interested.  DAMN YOU FLASH!!!!

The Ultimate Justice League of Extraordinary Graphic Novel Book Club (Year 2, Meeting 3):  This month's Graphic Novel was my pick, the first three volumes of Fatale by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips. If you've been following this blog at all than you know that I consider Fatale to be the single greatest comic currently being published on a monthly basis.  Unfortunately, the group and I had to beg to differ.  With the exception of my incredibly intelligent co-dork Matt and my very beautiful wife, the rest of the gang did not seem too impressed with Brubaker's noir/Lovecraft mashup.  There were a couple "OK"s & the rest supplied some shoulder shrugs.  Oh well.  Art is subjective and all that.  The books certainly provided for some interesting discussion centering around Josephine's proactive nature or lack thereof, and I came away this month more in love with Fatale than before.  It truly is a masterpiece and I cannot wait to see where Brubaker & Phillips leave this story.

Fatale - Death Chases Me:  The first volume bounces back and forth from the present day to 1950s San Francisco as Nicholas Lash tries to uncover a supernatural mystery involving his dead uncle and a seemingly immortal woman.  It's a rather brilliant kernel that finds a magical reason to explain the Femme Fatale cliche.  Put simply, Raymond Chandler strained through HP Lovecraft's nightmares, and it's everything this fanboy has ever wanted to see on the page or screen.  You've got Nazis, Cultists, Demons, Cops, Journalists, Dames, and Corpses.  It's the kitchen sink, baby.

Fatale - The Devil's Business:  The events of the first volume send the demon siren Josephine into a LA LA Land seclusion.  It's now the 1970s and Los Angeles is suffering from a cocaine blizzard, Hollywood cultists, and snuff films.  A junkie wannabe actor ekes his way into the wrong party and suddenly he's battling Hell's Army and falling under the hypnotic gaze of Josephine.  Like all the men that fall upon her path, the junkie's future is instantly damned and serves simply as a reminder to our Femme Fatale that her existence is all consuming.  Meanwhile, the present day Nicholas Lash suffers hellish nightmares involving tentacled men and attractive owls.  What's it all mean?  Nothing good.

Fatale - West of Hell:  With the third volume, the mythology of Fatale is blown wide open and, of course, it creates more questions than answers.  In 1930s Texas Josephine meets the Lovecraft stand-in,  Alfred Ravenscroft.  His pulp stories seem to hold the answers to Josephine's visions, and her encounter with him launches her dead-end quest through World War II.  We also meet Mathilda of 1286 France and Black Bonnie of 1883 Colorado, two lovely creatures similarly cursed with the siren affliction.  Their stories offer glimpses at the blood magic at the center of this horror, and the Good vs Evil forces pulling the strings.  And finally, we're given the sad story that brought Josephine & GI Walt Booker together.  Maybe he's not the human monster we once thought?  West of Hell is the volume that sealed the deal on my love of Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips.  There is grand mythology supporting this dirty noir.

Out of Sight:  On Tuesday, Elmore Leonard passed away due to complications after a stroke.  The man was an absolute hero of mine and his books sent me down a path of crime writing I have yet to depart.  I was lucky enough to attend a signing of his some years back, and he was an absolutely gracious man while he snarked at my Mr. Majestyk one sheet.  I remember asking him if he would ever get back to Western's and he simply stated, "No money in it."  To celebrate the man there is only one movie I could have chosen.  Out of Sight is the film that forever proved the truth of George Clooney's charm, and it's one of a fistful of movies to properly capture Leonard's crackerjack characters.  Smart and slick crooks right alongside the painfully boneheaded. Jackie Brown might be the best film pulled from a Leonard novel, but Out of Sight is the closest film to properly deliver the tone - that balance of comedy and drama. Clooney is Super Cool TNT, even when he's hanging around dolts like Steve Zahn's vision impaired Glen or Don Cheadle's glass jawed Snoopy. Out of Sight made crime cool again; without it there certainly wouldn't be a Justified tv show or an Ocean's 11.

Lord of Illusions:  "I was born to murder the world." Clive Barker's third and final film as a director is an underrated genre mashup supported by four performances from actors never again given material this weighty or as against type. Scott Bakula is an exceptional Sam Spade stand-in, and he carries the supernatural shenanigans with Humphrey Bogart's dry acceptance. Kevin J O'Connor, who is normally regulated to the comic relief sidekick persona, is exceptionally sad as the fallen magician but he also manages to evoke dreadful power. Famke Janssen was simply born to be the Femme Fatale; she's pure sex & danger. And Daniel Von Bargen might just be the proudest, shiniest, tubbiest lump of evil to ever Charlie Manson the silver screen. Lord of Illusions is the Chinatown of horror, a neo-noir caked in Barker's special brand of perversity that never got the audience it so rightfully deserved. I'll just have to take comfort in the knowledge that in the Fringe universe Bakula & Barker made a killing with a whole slew of Harry D'Amour detective stories.

Photo Courtesy of The Alamo Drafthouse Facebook Page

The Blood & Ice Cream Shaun Off @ The Alamo Drafthouse DC:  On Thursday night, The Wife & I met up at The Alamo with our friends Matt (you know him), Paul, & Lindsey for the Cornetto Trilogy screening.  I've seen a lot of great movies on the silver screen (Sweet Smell of Success, Lawrence of Arabia, 2001 A Space Odyssey, The Monster Squad), but the key ingredient that transformed this showing into my all time favorite theatrical experience was The Shaun-Off Raffle.  To participate all you needed was a white buttoned up shirt, a red tie, and some red on you.  One quick trip to Target and The Wife & I were cosplaying (a first for me).  

And dammit, can you actually believe I won the raffle!  I can no longer say that I never win anything because I walked away from The Cornetto Trilogy with a free Mondo print of Shaun of the Dead signed by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost.  Just look at that photo above, I am completely gobsmacked.  I'm still flying high from the win, and as I type this I'm staring googly eyed at the Tyler Stout beauty hanging on my wall.  Just too cool for school.

Shaun of the Dead:  "They're a bit bitey."  Nine years ago I attended a sneak preview of this film and when I walked out of the theater I remember saying to a friend that we had just experienced an instant classic.  Having now seen it a dozen or so times, I still feel that Shuan of the Dead is one of those rare perfect films.  On one hand it is an expertly crafted parody of the George Romero zombie movie, and on the other hand it's a heart wrenching story of both romantic & parental love.  Simon Pegg is the ultimate fanboy hero, he gives all boob tube losers like myself hope of an apocalypse makeover.  It's never too late to get your shit together.  In the last ten years we have seen countless cash grabs into the zombie subgenre, but only Shaun feels like a proper addition to the world originally populated by Romero.

Hot Fuzz:  "If we bashed your head in all sorts of secrets would come out."  Next on their hit list, Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg target Michael Bay's 'splosions but with a good dose of Wicker Man small town creepy.  Simon Pegg is Nicholas Angel, the Dirty Harry of London banished to the dreary boredom of the midlands.  But of course this Supercop will uncover a town wide conspiracy involving a Serial Slasher, Timothy Dalton's absorbingly smug grin, and a gaggle of dimwitted coppers.  The pacing blunders a little, but you'll forgive an overlong running time after a Kaiju climax boggles your brain.  Hot Fuzz doesn't quite get the love blessed Shaun of the Dead, but you would be sorely ignorant if you dismissed this very british ribbing of an American Summer Blockbuster staple.  

The World's End:  "That's why I drink from a crazy straw!  Not so crazy now!"  The genre mashing of this film is not as clear or as clever as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but it succeeds due to the camaraderie between friends.  Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, & Eddie Marsan are a great batch of chums, and their banter is some of the most lovable & cantankerous we've been given in The Cornetto Trilogy.  Pegg's Gary King is easily the most depressingly gloomy character he's played so far, and likewise, Nick Frost's Andy is his most layered lout yet.  Frost's transformation from stiff upper brit to smashing pink Hulk awards the film's greatest laugh.  WWF Smackdown Champion.  I dare not ruin the climax of the movie, but it is certainly a masterstroke.  I only wish it happened fifteen minutes earlier cuz I just wanted more of that samurai insanity.  Sure, it's my least favorite film in the series but it's also one of 2013's finest films.  Cheers.

Paul:  "Three tits - Awesome!"  It's simply unfair to compare this film to The Cornetto Trilogy.  There's just something magical about the Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost combo.  Take one away and it's just not the same.  That being said, the Pegg & Frost duo in any film is worth your attention.  Much more sophomoric and silly than their other efforts, Paul appeals to that dimmer side of my brain.  Seth Rogen is daft and dumb and wonderful as the little green man taunting our heroes across the American west.  Pegg & Frost are exceptionally sweet in their plutonic love, and the genre references are fun enough for nerds everywhere.  Not a classic, but it gets the job done when there is no more ice cream to devour.

--Brad