"You're Smelling What I'm Selling!" - R.I.P.D. Trailer At Least Has James Hong...

Slash Film references Men In Black in their trailer post, and I can't help but agree with them - RIPD looks like a big steaming pile of Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones wannabe comedy action.  I really don't like hearing the Rooster Cogburn voice coming out of Jeff Bridges during all this awkward Heavenly Kid banter.  And frankly, I still haven't forgiven Ryan Reynolds for his part in the Green Lantern abomination.  At the very least, RIPD supplies everyone's favorite David Lo Pan (James Hong) with a little work.  I loved his bit part in Safe last year, and maybe he'll get a few moments to shine in this misguided comic book adaptation.  And who knows?  RIPD might reveal itself to be a fun, goofy time out at the movies.  Not holding my breath though.



--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (12/2/12-12/8/12)

    Work continues to dominate my time.  Though I’m reading a couple really good books right now.  One on the Byzantine Empire and one the autobiography of the pretty awesome Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  And Friday boosted my Dork cred with another meeting of the graphic novel club.


Lincoln:  This epic of American history manages to make many of the names from the history books seem a bit more like real people.  Though still holding Lincoln up as the wise old god, passing down justice and always on the right, it is a bit less one-sided than most portrayals.  Not nearly as maudlin as the trailers would have you believe.  But getting past the cynicism, the film is uplifting and sweeping.  The cast is excellent, and the relationship between Lincoln, his friends, his opponents, and the common man is very powerful.  An array of ‘that guy’ actors lend support to the stars, and they bring their most excellent facial hair.  Good stuff.

Anna Karenina:  Highly stylized, even more than Joe Wright’s work normally is, this lavish production is beautiful, but perhaps a bit too concerned with visual flair than with story or character.  The actors all do a good job, but at the end of the day, Anna is a horrible, flip-flooping, self-involved bitch, and her boyfriend is a vacuous pretty boy.  It’s hard to feel for them, as they crush and destroy everything and everyone around them in the name of their empty passion they mistake for love.

Hugo:  I still find this a bit odd.  It starts out as a fairly typical kids’ adventure film, set in a train station some time after World War I.  There are hints of mystery, the magic of books, that sort of thing.  But then, about a half hour in, it takes this turn, becoming a tale of movies and the love we have for them.  A broken old man in a run down old toy shop is more than he seems, and a boy with noting left is driven to find out the truth.  For any film buff, this movie is a must.

Immortal:  This movie is certainly visually interesting.  Sadly, the script is absolute garbage.  The characters make choices and say dialog that doesn’t seem to have any logic.  The world created is interesting, but so vague that it’s nearly impossible to feel grounded enough to care about anything or anyone.  Egyptian gods, alien incursions, mutant red hammerhead sharks, a girl with blue hair (got to have blue hair), and lots of CG people.  You can kind of tell that writer/director Enki Bilal used to write comics that appeared in Heavy Metal.  It has that European comic feel (beautiful but stupid).  I can’t recommend the film if you’re looking for a good story.  But if you want to turn your brain off for a while and enjoy some interesting imagery, go for it.

Men in Black 3:  “You’re distressing.  Everything about you upsets me.”  It’s the sequel that nobody was asking for.  The boys are back.  Somehow J doesn’t seem to have come to terms with the nature of his job, in spite of more than 10 years passing.  The time travel gags are actually pretty funny, though.  And the 60s aliens are cool.  The villain, Boris, is genuinely disgusting.  The script was a heck of a lot more clever and the story more interesting than the second film.  All in all, a pretty entertaining film.

Dark Shadows:  Finally, Tim Burton had a chance to redeem ten years of spitting on his early success with a franchise nearly tailor made for his style.  With Dark Shadows, he could embrace the Hammer Horror vibe he reached for in Sleepy Hollow and run with it, ramping up the Gothic dread and mystery.  Or, he could do a crappy Adams Family rip-off.  Set in “Maine” (seriously, it’s totally not the England!) in the 1970s, I genuinely think this could have been something…other than crap.

Killing Them Softly:  Ouch.  This is a collection of sad bastards, dumbasses, and scumbags.  They all get together in the ugliest city outside of OCP occupied Detroit, to screw over, smack down, or murder each other.  And all while being depressing, awful people.  And the Ray Liota beatdown has to be one of the most horrible things I’ve seen.  He’s so sad, and gets so much kicked out of him.

The Package:  The Cold War is winding down, and an old soldier gets wrapped up in a conspiracy to keep it going.  A trip to The Fugitive’s Chicago and a team of crack character actors are needed.  Everything looks good and depressing as the chess board takes shape.  There’s really nothing especially good about this movie, but it’s a fine bit of action/espionage fluff.

Life of Pi:  Wow.  If you’re looking for vacuous pap, the kind of garbage some ‘spiritual healer’ might blather on about on Oprah, then you’ve come to the right place.  This is the ultimate expression of the idiocy, ‘it doesn’t matter what you believe (what silly, made up BS, that is) so long as you believe something.’  And as that ultimate expression, it is about as vapid and useless as it gets.  Basically a kid wanders around and stuff happens; he’s on a boat with a tiger and stuff happens; then he’s not on a boat and stuff happens.  Or not.  So warm up the drum circle, pop on the Shadowfax cd, spark up a doobie, and just let the universe flow, man.  And if the mumbo jumbo chicanery of the story isn’t condescending and trite enough, you can always watch the Richard Dryfus wannabe, hipster author listen with exasperated, ironic but sensitive interest to Yoda…I mean adult Pi tell his Grandpa Simpson stories (“I was wearing an onion on my belt!”).  Twelve years ago, Ang Lee made one of my all time favorite films, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.  Now he’s making something worthy of latter day M. Night Shyamalan.  What happened, dude?  You used to be so beautiful.

The Campaign:  “I crapped GOLD.”  Featuring the best baby punch I’ve seen in film, this goofy political send-up has its moments.  The jealous dogs crack me up.  Everyone seems to be having a good time being silly and saying stupid stuff.  But it’s not quite as tightly scripted or consistent as I’d have liked.  Worth a watch if you’re in the mood for some stupid comedy, but it’s not amazing.

    I watched another disk of Winds of War, this one dealing with the attack on Warsaw and the aftermath.  There are some interesting characters, for sure, but most of them drift in and out of the story for only the briefest of times.  The main cast is kind of drab.  Even Mitchum’s character has little to do but stand stiffly and look disapproving.  It’s just interesting enough to keep watching, but not much more.  And I watched another disk of Magic City, which is starting to grow on me.  The characters are becoming a bit more interesting.  I’m just hoping that at least one of the big ‘problems’ gets resolved by the end of the season.  I like Danny Huston, but his snarling ogre villain is too obvious and too pointlessly evil to stick around, and I’m hoping one way or another, he’s out of the picture in the finale.  We’ll see.

    Friday night, Lisa and Brad hosted another night of the Justice League of Extraordinary Book Club.  This time up, The Avengers: Children’s Crusade.  Opinions were split, with some people really enjoying it, and others totally hating it.  I fell on the hate side, as you’ll see in my full review.  We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the massive array of characters and any motivations they might have had.  And trying to figure out the good guy/bad guy ratio.

Gambiiiiiiit!!!

-Matt

A Fistful of One Too Many! (Matt’s Picks)

    Men in Black’s third outing may be great.  It may be a breath of fresh air in a series nobody was excited about.  But I doubt it.  My guess is it’s a dead horse that is getting unfairly abused.  In that spirit, we’re looking at some of the movies that took a franchise one step too far.  Doesn’t mean the franchise wasn’t eventually redeemed with a further film.  But at least for a time, they went too far.

5.  Battle For the Planet of the Apes:  Look, I enjoy the heck out of this movie.  But seriously, it’s a giant step down in quality from the previous films.  And after the fantastic, brutal explosion of revolutionary violence that was Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, this made-for-TV quality whimper was a sad out for the series.

4.  Hellraiser 3:  The first two films are interesting, with lots of potential.  They don’t live up to that potential, but they’re pretty good.  The third film is goofy, with the lamest cenobites of the franchise, and it’s generally boring.  There are some potentially cool bits that don’t get explored.  It’s a total letdown.

3.  Conan the Destroyer:  Conan the Barbarian is one of the best fantasy films ever made, a grand action movie, and just f’in cool.  And while it didn’t get the details right, it managed to capture the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s amazing stories.  And then Destroyer.  Wacky humor, silly villains, Grace Jones, and Arnold plays Conan as though he suffered some kind of debilitating brain injury.  Everything wrong that the general public believes Conan is about is sadly present in this sequel.  It has a couple good scenes, but this ain’t Conan.  Not at all.

2.  Superman 3:  You know what doesn’t help?  Adding Richard Pryor.  I don’t much care for the Christopher Reeve Superman series, but the third film is an exercise in poop-made-film.  It seems fairly clear that they had a script which featured a computer tech character.  Then they cast Richard Pryor in that role, went back, and re-wrote it to feature him MUCH more prominently.  And it’s garbage of the highest order.  Anyone who says Superman 4 is the worst of the original films is probably an idiot.

1.  Lethal Weapon 3:  Good sweet crap, one of the worst danged movies I’ve ever watched 50% of in fast forward.  SOOOOOOO flipping boring.  So unfunny.  So unactiony.  I enjoyed the heck out of the first two films, but this one KILLED it for me.  Never even bothered with the fourth film.

-Matt

Brad's Week In Dork! (5/20/12-5/26/12)

A lighter than usual week for me, there were still a few rather nifty highlights.  Back at the AFI Silver, Matt & I caught Chinatown on the big screen.  Roman Polanski's wannabe noir has always been one of my favorite films and getting the chance to see a living print on Sunday was a real delight.  The only bummer was that the theater was not packed, and they relegated the screening to their smaller theater # 2 while the Avengers of Old British People i.e. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel played in their main hall.

The other two films I caught on the big screen were Battleship and Men In Black III, but I both film were rather disappointing-which is saying something cuz I wasn't expecting much from either flick.  I mean how could anyone expect anything of quality based on a board game, right?  

And with all the Dark Knight Rises posters and banners popping up on the internet this week I found myself surprisingly purchasing the new Batman - Knightfall omnibus from DC Comics.  It's a beast of a book and it's wonky writing for sure, but it was a fun nostalgic trip back to the goofy 1990s.

MOVIES OF THE WEEK!

Chinatown:  "Well, to tell you the truth, I lied a little." Chinatown is at once a tribute to film noir and a continuation of the genre; Jack Nicholson is a smartass P.I. with a reputation, grabbing cash from the product of infidelity that leads him down the rabbit hole of corporate and government treachery. Faye Dunaway is the damaged goods damsel and John Huston, the smiling chomping dragon. As the plot unravels and the obvious becomes less obvious, Nicholson discovers even further depths of futility that even his hardened gumshoe knew not possible. A painful, brutal tale handled artfully by both Roman Polanski and Robert Towne. Maybe not in my Top Ten films of all time, but it's right there in the Top 20.

Battleship:  Despite some potentially wonderfully terrible lines of dialog like "Chicken Burrito her" and "Mustard done got run over by a garbage truck," Peter Berg's Battleship takes itself way, way, way too seriously and is far too much in love with itself to be any kind of fun. Taylor Kitsch continues his streak of attaching himself to doomed properties and sucks up the screen as a slacker sailor forced into action as light sensitive alien mech suits invade Hawaii for some god forsaken reason. Prepare yourself for loud whirring sounds, sparks, sparks, sparks and crash boom bang boring nonsense. Maybe, just maybe, if the script had a sense of humor or at least a wink to Michael BayAwesomeness than you could chuckle at the ridiculous board game turned multi million dollar blockbuster, but as is, Battleship is just an embarrassment.  And long.  And boring.  Sunk.

Jack's Back:  1988, 100 years after Jack The Ripper terrified the city of London, a series of copycat murders spring forth under the neon lights of Los Angeles. James Spader plays twin brothers caught in the middle of the killings with Robert Picardo's mama's boy police detective hypnotizing his way to the truth. Director Rowdy Herrington would go on to direct the 80s cheeze classic Road House, but Jack's Back is a rather weak rip off of the much superior Robert Bloch short story "Your's Truly, Jack The Ripper." Still, Spader is fun in the duel roles, especially the slimy naughty brother.

The Two Jakes:  Fifteen years after Chinatown, Jack Nicholson returned to the hanky panky world of private detective JJ Gittes and decided to step behind the camera when original director Roman Polanski simply knew better. The neo noir style is gone despite the addition of unnecessary pulpy narration and the flat eye of cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. Honestly, The Two Jakes is not a terrible film. It's just no Chinatown. And when your first film was so damn good, you really have to have a fantastic narrative to justify your existence, but try as he might Robert Towne fails to elevate the poisoned past plot.  This sequel is better left forgotten.

Top Gun:  Once a staple of my childhood, Top Gun now seems to slog through its fighter school plot of ass hole pilots trying to out-jackass their fellow students by spiking volleyballs, chewing gum, and causing nearly catastrophic aerial "look at me!" stunts. Tony Scott obviously loves mounting his cameras onto planes and I remember the dog fights looking fairly badass on the big screen, but trapped inside the television, the fight choreography fails to sizzle. And the relationship between Cruise and McGillis is completely lack of romance no matter how much shadowy lovemaking montages they splice together.

Men In Black III:  It's been fifteen years since Will Smith originally got jiggy with the shadowy organization known as the Men In Black and its been ten years since Agents J & K took down the abomination that was Laura Flynn Boyle. And was anyone looking for a third outing? Not me. And for the most part, this sequel feels worn-out and tired, even when it's thankfully not relying on worm aliens or talking pugs. The time travel plot involving Josh Brolin's young Agent K is kinda fun with his dead-on (and dead pan) Tommy Lee Jones impersonation but there's also plenty of missed historical opportunities and flat jokey jokes.  Jemaine Clement does a pretty good Tim Curry as the one armed baddie Boris The Animal and Alice Eve stands around looking pretty. Michael Stuhlbarg steals the show (as usual) as the fifth dimensionally challenged being at the center of the alien murders. Men In Black III is a solid way to kill an afternoon, but I would not shell out for nighttime (and especially not 3D) prices.

COMICS OF THE WEEK!

Batman - Knightfall Volume 1:  The 90s Epic that pit crime lord & wannabe luchador Bane against Bruce Wayne's sick & sniveling Batman. The first volume of Knightfall is a massive tome weighing in just over 600 pages, and only towards the end, after The Bat has been broken and Wayne has awoken from his coma do we get any sense that Bats is any kind of a badass. For most of this story, Wayne is on the verge of collapse. Even before Bane busts all the loonies out of Arkham, he's got the sniffels. Just taking down C List villains like The Ventriloquist and The Mad Hatter is a challenge let alone the main rogues like The Joker or Scarecrow. Honestly, seeing every issue conclude with an exhausted and frowny faced Batman is rather annoying. Especially when the mantel has to be passed to Jean Paul Valley's god crazy Azrael and this new bling bling Batman takes on Bane's underworld with such ease. Bruce Wayne is tougher than this book gives him credit. It tries too hard to justify Bane's reign over Gotham, slighting the character of the billionaire vigilante; transforming the icon into a mental weakling.

Still, it's fun to revisit this media orchestrated event. And there is a glimmer of an interesting creation in Bane, the anti-Batman. I can easily see Christopher Nolan molding this oh-so-90s idea into a brutal brawl for The Dark Knight Rises, and I really hope the final Nolan film takes its climax cues from Knightfall's conclusion. BREAK THE BAT!  And I gotta admit,  I am looking forward to venturing into volume 2 (&3!) of Knightfall. Jean Paul Valley is a serious loon and even if I don't quite understand what Wayne was thinking when he gave the suit over to this nutter, it's fun to see this razor clawed Batman beat the maniacs of Gotham to a bloody pulp.

Batman - The Court of Owls:  Collecting the first seven issues of The New 52 Batman, The Court of Owls doesn't necessarily retcon everything we've come to know about the caped crusader (this is still Bruce Wayne, the revenge?/justice? fueled vigilante, caretaker of three acrobatic wards), but it definitely has some fun with the history of Gotham. A John Doe murder sends Bats through the mirror darkly of historical conspiracy, involving a legendary court of manipulative high society bird brains and their unstoppable Talon assassins. Writer Scott Snyder takes full advantage of former Spawn artist Greg Capullo's slick and violent style, plunging The Batman into the sewers of Wayne's psyche. And his Owls creep me the hell out. I appreciate how this first volume doesn't neatly conclude the plot and even promises further exploration of Gotham's secret history as Batman & company will most definitely face off against an armada of fresh rogues. Man, it's nice to not just have another Joker punch up.

--Brad

A Fistful of One Too Many! (Brad's Picks)

Tonight, The Wife & I will be hitting up a midnight screening of Men in Black III.  It's been a decade since the last film and I'm not really sure anyone out there (including the two of us) is all that excited for the third installment.  That second film after all was unforgivably terrible.  I only saw it the once, but it killed any kind of enthusiasm built from the original silly Will Smith (& straight man Tommy Lee Jones) vehicle and I've nearly blocked the visual of Laura Flynn Boyle's groaning plant lady completely from my brain.  It still lurks like a repressed childhood trauma.

That Second Film was definitely unwelcome and probably went one film too far into the franchise.  Can the third film redeem the MIB saga?  Doubtful.  Still, I'm slightly curious to see Josh Brolin's Tommy Lee Jones impersonation and I'm always down for Rick Baker creatures.

It begs the question, what other sequels went where no audience cared?

5.  The Two Jakes:  I just watched this the other night so it's freshly scarred my mind.  The Jack Nicholson directed sequel to Chinatown lacks the noir style of the original, plopping in narration where none is needed and looking horribly flat with that bland 90s lighting.  It's not a terrible film, but where most people site The Godfather Part III as the most heinous sequel to a perfectly contained masterpiece, I'd say The Two Jakes is really the MOST unnecessary sequel in cinema.  That being said, the below films irritate me to an even greater extent cuz it's hard to muster the energy against The Two Jakes since it's just sooooooo easy to ignore...forget.

4.  Rocky V:  After the ridiculously 80s Communist Assault that was Rocky IV, the franchise grinds to a halt with this fifth entry pitting a brain dead Rocky against punk protege Tommy Gun.  Instead of battling it out in the land of the unfree with a must-breaking titan, Rocky takes the fight to the back alleys of the U.S. of A. and slaps a boy around for a bit before the credits roll.  It's just so damn dull after The Wall tumbling climax of part 4.

3.  Alien - Resurrection:  Some might argue that Alien 3 is the one film too many, but there are bits and pieces to that prison break that I enjoy quite a bit.  And truth be told, there are a couple of moments or ideas in Resurrection that I like as well.  But as a whole, this infamously Joss Whedon scripted sequel induces more groans than chills, and when the Newborn rears its ugly ass head at the climax I want to punch the TV screen.  Those stupid blinking eyes and cooing whimpers!  Argh!  It may be a beautiful butterfly, Brad Dourif but I just want to crush it like the gross bug that it is.  And Winona Ryder, yer no Bishop.

2.  Batman Forever:  Christopher Nolan might have saved the Bat saga for the fanboys, but nothing will ever remove the taint left behind by Joel Schumacher's Day-Glo nightmare.  Yes, yes, yes, Batman & Robin is even worse but don't doubt for a second that Batman Forever is a good movie.  Say what you will about the Tim Burton films, but once Tommy Lee Jones' Two-Face starts to cackle your eyes will go wide with disbelief and you'll be praying for Danny DeVito's penguin army.  And yeah, Jim Carrey.  I hate you.

1.  The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions:  When they were first released, I tried real hard to love The Matrix sequels.  But after a few rewatches, I just couldn't keep lying to myself.  The first film was a nifty sci-fi actioner that mixed some trippy 60s science-fiction novels with a little classroom zen.  But the sequels are way in love with the banal philosophy.  And man, all that CGI-Fu does not hold up these days.  But you could possibly forgive the doughy fisticuffs if the plot was not so pseudo-religously lame.  It might have been fun to see Neo go from hacker to god in the first film, but watching the god plunder about in parts 2 and 3 pretty much kills any kind of tension.  And it's all just so dang smug.

--Brad