Matt’s Week in Dork! (8/17/14-8/23/14)

    Not a heck of a lot going on in the realm of Dorkness this week.  Just a bunch of movies.

Lo:  Not at all what I was expecting…and not really my kind of thing.  A low budget horror comedy.  Kind of handled/written like a play.  I guess they’re going for a sort of Faust thing (which they reference a bunch).  It’s got some funny bits, but overall, the humor felt a bit too college writing class for my taste.  The acting has that feel, too.

Rango:  A wonderful homage to Spaghetti Westerns, as well as a meditation on the nature of heroes and their quests, Rango is far more than a simple kids film.  Sure, there are lots of clever references for adults to pick up on, but there are also deeper lessons that will help children and adults grow.  This is the best sort of family entertainment.

Scanners:  With a look and feel similar to that of Cronenberg’s Rabid, this look at good intentioned science gone horribly awry is pretty cool.  I like how, similar to British horror/sci-fi films of the 70s, everything is accepted.  Nobody questions the existence of Scanners (a new race of psychic mutants).  It just is.  They are.  Then the movie rolls on.  Psychic warriors, corporate conspiracy, weird science, and yes, the ascension of a new Humanity.

The Expendables 3:  I’ve said it before, and sadly, I’ll probably say it again.  Don’t make violent action films PG-13.  And don’t make sequels to R rated films PG-13.  It didn’t work with Aliens VS Predator.  It sure as hell didn’t work here.  Though not as bad as I was expecting, this sanitized actioner lets you focus more on the dreadful acting and script.  Without all those body parts flying by to distract you, you can almost smell the smoke from the brains of these meatheads when they’re trying to remember their moronic lines.  That gives the movie its own charm, frankly.  Antonio Banderas is far and away the best part of the movie.  He’s awesome.  The rest?  Meh.  And Ronda Rousey?  Wow.  She’s impressively bad.  So uncomfortable in front of the camera, she can’t even act ‘standing around’ right.  Yikes.

The Hundred-Foot Journey:  There’s nothing especially challenging or game changing about this movie.  It’s a very cute, very nice romantic film.  It’s funny and warm, and it’s sweet.  If you’re in the mood for that sort of thing, check it out.  The cast is charming, the locations pretty, and the food looks great.  A good companion to Chocolat, The Big Night, or this year's other big food-porn film Chef.

Cowboys & Aliens:  I like Weird Westerns, and this mash-up of alien invasion film and classic Western makes for a fun viewing.  It looks good, moves at a good pace, and features plenty of nice genre bits.  If you like a little weird mixed in to your Western, check it out.  I feel like this would pair well with Valley of Gwangi or maybe John Carter.

Duck Soup:  Well, now I’ve seen a Marx Brothers movie.  Did I like it?  Well, I liked parts of it.  But the film is a jumble.  The plot is, at the very best, secondary.  It primarily serves as a frame to hang various bits and gags on.  Some of those bits and gags are funny, others are…less so.  Groucho is fun to watch do his fast talking retorts and insults.  Chico has a kind of gutter charm.  Harpo is as annoying as I’d always assumed he’d be.  And Zeppo doesn’t seem to have much to do.  It’s all nonsense, and as such, I suppose it’s fine.  Not my cup of tea, but fine.

I Love Maria:  Pretty good practical effects bolster a too zany comedy script.  The film is goofy, the humor broad, and the English subtitles (only option) are nearly gibberish.  A very, very young Tony Leung makes you wonder how he became such a fine actor.  Director Tsui Hark gives a surprisingly good performance.  But the movie sinks under the weight of its silly parts.  By the end of it, I didn’t care who did what or who made it out alive.  I was just glad the antics wound down.  Not horrible.  But not recommended.

Fa Meg Pa, For Faen:  There are a million reasons I’m glad to be a dude.  Watching this movie about a young woman, living in the sticks, trying to deal with budding sexuality is an awkward, painful reminder.  The movie is cute, but so darned painful to watch.  Alma doesn’t always make good choices, but she makes the kinds of bad choices kids of her age do, with sometimes hilariously stupid results.  This is a realistic comedy, not the wacky antics of the American Pie series, or similar.  Everything here feels like it came from a real place in the filmmakers’ lives.  There are plenty of pitfalls for young men, don’t get me wrong.  And I think this movie even handles a few of those pretty well, if from the outside.  Artur does something powerfully stupid and tries to play it off like it didn’t happen.  Yet, he’s not shown as a one-note jerk.  The performances are good, even though many of the actors are not professional actors.  A good movie for those who like less gross-out in their teen comedy...Not that there aren't some gross things; they're just not handled in as childish a way as one expects from most contemporary comedies.

Only Lovers Left Alive:  The script has far too much ‘oh so clever’ references and nods, delivered with too obvious a wink or elbow jab.  And yeah.  I get it.  Blood means drugs.  It looks nice, and the cast is good.  There’s not much of a story, really.  And while I didn’t dislike watching it, I instantly forgot about it.

    On Saturday night, we got together for our graphic novel club, where this month’s reading was Beasts of Burden.  The book was pretty good, if not great.  But the gathering was spirited and fun.  Everyone seemed to be on, and in good spirits.  It was a good night, sitting around with a wonderfully diverse bunch of brains.

-Matthew J. Constantine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Brad

Matt’s Weeks in Dork (6/22/14-6/28/14 & 6/29/14-7/5/14)

    It’s been a busy couple of weeks, which is the reason for the combined weeks.  Good stuff, but not much related to the Dork Life.  Without more rambling…

(6/22/14-6/28/14)
Children of Paradise:  Beautifully produced, and filled with excellent performances, I found this movie interesting to watch, but ultimately not all that interesting.  There’s a lot of old-world charm, some sinister goings on, and a cast of colorful rogues.  Some very good bits keep you going through some of the longer dry spells.  I’m sure there are meanings and interesting aspects of the film I didn’t catch or understand.  Taken only on its surface, it was just OK.

    Thanks to the Alamo, we got to see Bill & Ted on the big screen.  Of course, I saw it on the big screen when it first came out, redefining my life, dude.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure:  One of my favorite films, and a weirdly defining one for me, this weird 80s comedy is totally silly and totally weird.  It’s also most triumphant.  Two dumbasses travel through time and meet a random assortment of historic figures.  Then crazy stuff starts happening.  This is one you’re either on board for, or it’s not gonna make a lot of sense.  I love it.

Girl Happy:   Not one of the better Elvis movies, it’s charmingly awkward, but not especially memorable.  Few particularly good songs.  It doesn’t suck, but it’s not one of the good ones.

22 Jump Street:  They made a sequel?  Boy did they.  Throughout the film, they continually have a great deal of fun having a go at themselves for doing a sequel in the first place.  Like the first film, this one is super silly, with plenty of dumb humor, lots of gross-out jokes, and the impossibly charming antics of Channing Tatum.  Few actors have turned me around as much as The Tatum.  But he’s won my heart, like he has millions of my fellow citizens.  If you haven’t seen 21 Jump Street (the movie), go out and do so.  Now.  Come back to this one later.

    I came so close to bailing on Transformers.  Not only was it a work night, but I was already crazy tired.  And I had an opportunity to go on a date with my lady.  But, I’d said yes, the tickets were already purchased, and I’m a dumbass.  I made the wrong choice.

Transformers: Age of Extinction:  One of the worst films I’ve sat through in 2014, the movie is most guilty of THE cardinal sin.  It’s boring.  Some movies feel like they can’t stop ending (see The Return of the King).  The movie felt like it couldn’t stop beginning.  An hour and a half into the film, and we were still being introduced to new plotlines.  Not twists in the original, but totally new lines for the story to go down.  And none of them were especially good.  Marky Mark was a step up from LeDouche, but he’s not that great.  And he’s as Texan as JFK.  The girl playing his daughter makes me long for the plastic dolls they had in the earlier films.  And that surfer dude?  Holy nuts.  I kept wanting to see him stomped on.  There’s so much awful dialog, it’s hard to pick just one thing wrong.  But there’s a speech near the end of the movie (the end that seemed like it would never arrive) where Optimus starts spouting this circular logic BS that sounded like something Deepak Chopra would put on a greeting card about knowing who we are and why we’re here…Good sweet crap, it was terrible.  The movie is dumb.  Not just dumb.  Boring.  It’s better than part 2.  Probably on par with part 3 (which was awful).  Not as good as part 1.  Wow.  Sad.

Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World:  The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria find themselves in a weird future, where a conniving politician is plotting to take over the world.  The twist?  The politician looks identical to the Doctor.  OK.  It’s not the best premise.  But I quickly got into the story and the various people working with and against Salamander, the charming but deadly would-be master of the world.  What’s crazy about this one is that about half way through, there’s a reveal, and the story takes on a whole different dimension that I did not see coming.  And it’s kinda awesome.  Anyway, not an amazing story, but a good one.  And I really enjoyed Troughton as the Doctor.  I hope they’ll uncover more of these old stories.

Shaolin Intruders:  I like the plot twists, and some of the fights are pretty good.  But this is very much a mid-level Shaw Bros. film.  It’s fine.  It’s watchable.  But there isn’t a lot to make it stand out from the pack.  In the mood, and you haven’t seen this one?  Go for it.  Otherwise, there’s a lot better flicks to see.

    I started watching Masters of Sex.  Three episodes in, and I’m loving it.  Great cast, great story.  I haven’t read the book it’s based on, and I know precious little about Masters & Johnson.  But I’m fascinated, for sure.

Fallen Angels:  The sort of (spiritual) sequel to director Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express, Fallen Angles features more manic pixie people, voiceovers, and fisheye cinematography.  While I enjoyed it, and enjoyed the overall vibe of the film a great deal, it never reached the emotional levels of Chungking Express.  It’s OK, and if you’re a fan of the first, it’s worth checking out.  I was a little disappointed to see Karen Mok doing her crazy, screaming, semi-comic performance.  I prefer her serious work, probably because her voice is so grating when she gets wacky.

(6/29/14-7/5/14)

    On Sunday morning, I cracked into Black Science, another sci-fi comic from Rick Remender.  Pretty good stuff.  I’ll be looking forward to the next volume.

MirrorMask:  This was one of those movies where the trailer was popping up forever on rented videos and the like, but which seemed to always be ‘coming soon.’  I don’t know how long it did take to get released in the States, but I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that it was more than a year, maybe two.  It seemed like it, at any rate.  So, when it was finally released, I was pretty excited to see the film…but it isn’t actually very good.  A few interesting ideas and a few interesting visuals pepper a darned boring bit of re-hash kid adventure story.  Echoes of much better movies reverberate through the whole thing.  It’s not a bad movie.  But it’s instantly forgettable.  I remember being very disappointed when I finally saw it for the first time.  This second viewing, many years later, has not changed my initial reaction.

Inkheart:  A watchable and fun, if largely empty kids’ fantasy film, I think Inkheart suffers greatly from coming out during the Harry Potter craze.  Too easy to compare, too easy not to live up.  I imagine I’d have dug the film a good deal as a little lad, but while it’s not something an adult would likely find annoying to watch with their kids, it’s not something an adult is likely to find compelling, either.

Age of Consent:  An artist returns to the homeland of his youth in Australia, where he intends to rediscover his passion for painting.  There he meets a colorful cast of locals, including the desperate to escape Helen Mirren in her film debut.  Considering the sleazy title and the subject matter, this is a surprisingly cute and almost chaste film.  Sure there’s nudity and talk of sex, but it’s not what I was expecting.  Michael Powell was a heck of a director and James Mason is always charismatic.  And you can see why Mirren would go on to be a star.  Not just because of her amazing and oft bare body, but because of a genuine talent and charm.

FDR: American Badass:  The best history film of all time?  Maybe.  Super cheesy, lowest of the low budget, goofy in the extreme, and wonderfully tasteless, American Badass is everything I hoped it would be.  Nazi werewolves giving FDR the polio?  That’s just the beginning.  Must be seen.  Must.

Maleficent:  I like the basic story of this movie, several images, and most of Angelina Jolie’s performance.  The script, however, is horrendous.  The actual dialog that is coming out of the actors’ mouths is like the Disney equivalent of a bad 80s action movie.  Compared to the recent Alice in Wonderland or Oz: the Great and Powerful, this is Citizen Kane.  But the ingredients for a solid, epic fantasy film were all there.  They simply didn’t come together, and that falls largely on the script.  Also, those comic-relief fairies were atrocious and needed to go.  Not just because the CGI on them was awful and terrifying, but because they’d have been annoying whatever the case.

Snowpiercer:  I don’t mind recycling ideas if they’re done well.  This movie has some really good bits, but is overall pretty disappointing.  There are plot twists; but they’re obvious.  There are a couple good action scenes, but a lot of motion-sickness inducing shaky cam, too.  I was so happy when there was an extended slow-motion sequence so I could steady my eyes for a moment and not need to turn away.  Many of the characters feel like they’d be interesting if we spent any time with them, but the movie jumps from one action bit to the next too quickly to give a crap about anyone involved.  Part of the pleasure in this kind of science fiction is the exploration of the strange society that forms in the wake of some tectonic civilization shift.  What is life like in a giant, constantly running train with a severe class-based society, surrounded by a hostile, freezing wasteland?  Interesting question.  Unfortunately the movie spends almost no time on that, throwing a couple quick factoids that are supposed to earn our sympathy and interest.  And then there’s the ever present mystery of the man who runs the train.  What’s he gonna be like?  Oh, boring and obvious.  Nuts.  I don’t want to sound too negative (though I can tell I have).  The movie isn’t bad.  It looks great (when the camera holds still long enough for you to notice).  There are some cool sequences and some cool ideas.  But it could have been much, much better.  Much better.

The Sign of the Cross:  Getting past the historic inaccuracies (the cross wouldn’t be a Christian symbol for almost three centuries), this movie is unfortunately kind of boring.  Oddly enough, the best stuff in this Christian martyr porn is the risqué sexuality.  From the milk bath, to the lesbian dance, to the naked women in the arena, it was the sexuality that kept me from tuning out completely.  It wasn’t the acting or the script, or the cow-eyed dullness of the religious zealotry.  Some cool sets add a bit, but not enough.  Easy to skip this one.

    Friday morning, I read Planetoid and Prophet, two sci-fi comics I’d had sitting around for a while.  I enjoyed both quite a bit.

Doctor Who: The Mind Robber:  Another OK story from the Troughton years.  I like some of the visuals, and a few of the concepts are rather weird.  At the end of the day, this isn’t my type of story.  Yet, they made it work.

    Saturday morning, I watched another disk of Masters of Sex.  Boy howdy, I enjoy this show.  I love the cast.  And a character that felt like she could easily become another Betty Draper (of Mad Men), has turned out to be as compelling as any other on the show.  Bravo.

The Lunchbox:  I found this film fascinating to watch and the characters all charming in their way.  However, I can’t help but notice cultural references flying fast and furious over my head.  India is a place I simply don’t get, and this movie heaps more on the pile of confusion.  Still, the budding correspondence romance between a lonely housewife and a surly office worker is cute.  Irrfan Khan is a charming dude, even when he’s playing a jackass.  The film also makes me want to have some home cooked Indian food.  Some of the stuff in those tins looked really good.

Lonesome:  A movie on the cusp of so much.  It’s a silent film, with some talkie scenes.  It’s black & white, but with some color tinted bits.  Featuring effects and some nice location shooting, the movie works more as a time capsule than as a film.  The story is simple and cute, but fairly forgettable.  But the costumes, the manners, the activities, etc. all sing 1928.  The movie is alive and roaring with that 20s spirit.

-Matt