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

Brad's Week in Dork! (2/23/14-3/1/14)

I spent most of this week ticking off the last batch of Oscar Nominees, feverishly anticipating Sunday's Super Bowl.  I was perfectly content with my adequate consumption of the Major Nominees (12 Years A Slave, Gravity, August - Osage County, etc), but after I got wind of my friend Lindsey's plan to burn through ALL nominations, I kicked it up a notch.  Best Picture?  Best Actor?  Forget that.  Let's go crazy with Best Makeup, Sound Mixing, and Original Song!  Knocking out Bad Grampa & All Is Lost first thing, I spent most of the week working through the Animated Feature category.  The Croods, Despicable Me 2, Frozen, The Wind Rises.  Boy.  None of them really interested me during their initial releases, and I wouldn't have bothered if not for The Academy Awards.  Frankly, the only 2013 animated films I cared about were Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2 (TACOZILLA!) and Escape From Planet Earth...yeah...well, you know...Shatner.  The less said about Monsters University, Planes, and the decline of Pixar the better.  Hell, 2014 is already looking brighter thanks to The Lego Movie, but let's cross fingers that How To Train Your Dragon 2 & The Box Trolls deliver this goods this year.

But as much fun as I had hopping back and forth from the Angelika to Landmark's Bethesda Row, my favorite theatrical experience of the week (and the best damn movie I watched) was the Alamo Drafthouse's Tough Guy Cinema screening of Streets of Fire.  Nice to see a crowd show up for Walter Hill's hyper stylized rock & roll fable, and as many times as I've fallen in love with Diane Lane's Ellen Aim, this was the first time I was utterly hypnotized by her opening performance.  Just wow.  One of my regular cinematic rants is how Jessica Alba totally fails as Nancy in Sin City, and watching Lane own that crowd and that camera just absolutely accentuated Alba's Frank Miller failure.  Diane Lane is astonishing in this movie.  So great to see this 80s oddity again, and I really need to track down a high def copy cuz Streets of Fire is a Once-A-Year-Watch for sure.  Easy to see why this is one of Matt's Favorite Films.

Jackass Presents - Bad Grandpa:  Like other Jackassy productions, there are a few cheap laughs to be found here, but how many times can you watch an asshole get kicked in the balls before you've had enough?  Somewhere Bob Saget is screaming, "NEVER!"  I do not like the candid camera format, tricking simpletons into gross-out scenarios is the lowest form of humor.  And I don't care how many dolts get fooled by Johnny Knoxville's latexed face, Bad Grampa has no business earning a Makeup & Hairstyle nomination.  Under the scrutiny of HD cameras, Grampa's mug looks like fat, sweaty putty.  It's not like the Oscars are free from W-T-F acknowledgements, but it hurts a little to see such a base concept receive encouragement.  Am I just a middle aged fuddy duddy?  Maybe.  But I'd rather watch a million subpar South Park episodes than witness Knoxville's stretched-out scrotum.

All Is Lost:  I very much enjoy watching the process of survival.  I love how this film has the confidence to trap its audience on the boat, and reveal character only through the tiniest bits of detail.  It's a great performance experiment, and All Is Lost succeeds with tension in ways that Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity stumbles about in cheap symbolism.  However, as I watched this late at night (or far too early in the morning), I found myself drifting around the halfway mark.  Not locked down in the theater seat, as each attempt at life fails, I lost interest in the hell this Old Man had created for himself. Maybe I do need a Wilson to talk to, or maybe an interior monologue.  Such concepts would certainly weaken the craft on display, but I just never fully engaged with Redford's plight.  Or I could have simply not been in the mood.

The Croods:  This one surprised me a bit.  Quest For Fire, but "For Kids!"  Nicolas Cage certainly works as the chromag dad terrified to venture out beyond his cave.  His voice lends an enthusiasm to his character in ways we haven't seen from him in a long, long time (about three or four Direct-to-DVDs ago).  Continental Drift forces the clan to explore their backyard, and it's a beautiful nightmare of owl-wovles & piranha-birds.  If you're at all familiar with the whacky, nonsensical design of the Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs films then you'll be happily equipped to handle the absurdity on display in the Land of the Lost.  The themes of curiosity & fear are simple, but important to the young audience, and The Croods is easily the most inventive looking film of the Animated Feature nominations.  A classic?  Naw.  But you know...fun for the whole family.

Despicable Me 2:  I do not care about Steve Carrell's Gru or his Good Dad/Bad Guy routine.  His story of romance and world domination holds zero interest.  But those minions?  They are just too cute for words.  I hate myself for loving them so much, but a ten second dream sequence in which one yellow fella falls head over heels for Kristen Wiig is abso-freaking-dorable.  And Isaac Washington Minion!!!  I want that toy now.  The rest of the movie?  Whatever.

Frozen:  This one suffered from the hype machine.  After weeks of friends, family, and co-workers telling me this is the best film Disney has released in ages, I was bound to finish Frozen with a lackluster spirit.  The film is pretty enough.  I dig the sibling love story.  The snowman character isn't even that annoying (shocker!).  But the film felt rushed to me.  Blinked and it was over.  I was disappointed when the real villain revealed himself, and the songs were Broadway light.  I should have seen this opening weekend, but with the world going ga-ga for Adele Dazeem, the contrarian in me wants to champion The Croods or The Wind Rises instead.  Not terrible.  It's on par with Tangled.  Good enough.

The Wind Rises:  "The Dream is Cursed."  I am not a worshiper at the alter of Miyazaki.  I've enjoyed a few of his films in the past (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away), but I've always felt a little alienated by the anime aesthetic.  Jingoism?  I've always feared that.  I like my cartoons Don Bluth.  Gasping Characters, Big Eyes, and Speed Lines?  No thanks.  American animation certainly has its own batch of annoyances, but my mind has remained shut on Anime & Manga since my 12 year old self first encountered it with Vampire Hunter D.  But I'm trying to grow.  Thanks to books like Gon, Domu, Lone Wolf & Cub, I'm more willing then ever to embrace Japan's greatest export.  Not to mention the sad fact that American Animation refuses to pull itself out of Mother Goose storytelling.  The closest we've come to exploring mature stories in the medium are Pixar's Up & Wes Andreson's Fantastic Mr. Fox.  Utterly pathetic.  The Wind Rises claims to be Miyazaki's farewell film, and I hope he sticks this landing as its a perfect sendoff.  Not the magical fantasy we've come to expect from the filmmaker, this film is a pseudo biography of airplane designer Jiro Horikoshi.  Doing his best to ignore the moral quandary of selling beauty to the military, and witnessing his art transformed into killing machines, Jiro battles apocalyptic nightmares and a doomed romance.  Filled with dread and sadness, I really enjoyed the dreamscape Jiro shares with Italian engineer Caproni; their conversations in regards to the airplanes military destiny contribute the film's greatest narrative meat.  The not-so-rom-com that occurs halfway through never seems fully realized, but there is enough misery there to complement the film's gloomy inevitability.  Not quite enough to make me a believer, as a fan of animation, it's obvious that I have to look outside my borders if I want to experience tales beyond fuzzy animals.

Streets of Fire:  When Ellen Aim (the breathtakingly badass Diane Lane) returns to her hometown for a rock show extravaganza, she's targeted by Willem Dafoe's Black Leather Motorcycle Club.  Kidnapped and dragged into the depths of retro 80s hell, Rick Moranis & Michael Pare assemble a squad of rock & roll weirdos (groupies! motowners! rockabilly bartenders, a lesbian, maybe!) to raid the biker bar and declare sledgehammer warfare.  As ex soldier Tom Cody, Pare delivers his super sincere one-liners with all of his acting might, and follicaly challenged facial hair.  He manages to bounce back & forth from the laughably ridiculous to the totally cool, something that only seems possible in that childhood decade.  The out-of-time reality and skyscraper performances condemn Streets of Fire as a cult favorite, but it's a Kool-Aid I don't mind drinking.  From the uber masculine mind that brought us 48 Hours, Southern Comfort, Extreme Prejudice,  and The Warriors, director Walter Hill was the master of the generational gem.  Streets of Fire is a rootin' tootin' crowd pleaser for stunted youth everywhere.

Rocky IV:  When I came home from The Alamo, I wanted to continue that thrill of 1980s cinema, and in my mind no other movie sums up the Reagan Era better than Sylvester Stallone's bombastic franchise killer.   Follow-up films were bound to fail after Rocky IV crushed communism's super science, resulting in the Berlin Wall's collapse.  Using the power of Montage (30 minutes worth in a 90 minute movie!), Rocky trains faster, harder, and beardier than his Giant Evil Foreign counterpart, avengers the death of Apollo Creed, and secures the love of his family through staged violence.  Plus, Paulie marries a robot!!!  Did the 80s produce better movies?  Raiders of the Lost Ark?  Blade Runner?  Raging Bull?  NOOOO!  It does not get better than "I Must Break You."  Case closed.

Omar:  Why are all "important" films so dang sad?  Watching through this year's nominees it's obvious that The Academy only has room in its heart to mope.  My quest for total Oscar domination brought me face-to-face with a lot of tragedies, and the Foreign Film category practically delivered me into a state of despair.  Omar is the story of a Palestinian revolutionary caught between his freedom fighter responsibilities and the love of a comrade's sister.  But as tensions build and plans result in death, imprisonment, more death, more imprisonment, and more death, I started to see Omar as less of a message movie, and more as a thrilling crime saga staged against the West Bank.  Think Donnie Brasco with the added bonus of systemized hatred.  I didn't leave the theater weepy as I did with Broken Circle Breakdown or The Hunt.  Instead it was a sensation more akin to surviving a James Ellroy novel.  A good time?  Actually...yeah.

The Invisible Woman:  After the boiling violence of Coriolanus, director Ralph Fiennes tackles the burdensome lust of every college professor's favorite novelist.  Having produced a litter of children and grown tired of his wife, the wandering eye of Charles Dickens lands on a supposedly talentless young actress.  They strike up an affair for some reason, causing a stir amongst the London press, and a not-so-secret shame for their family.  The film looks nice.  I suppose it earns its Wardrobe nomination.  Screenwriter Abi Morgan certainly frames the story in an intriguing fashion, and Fiennes pulls fine melodrama from his actors.  But the story left me cold.  I never fully understood the actions of the characters, nor did I ever really care.  The best I can say is that for thirty seconds or so while the film played I contemplated pulling the dusty Dickens off my book shelf.  But the moment passed.

The Book Thief:  I hated this movie.  A Hallmark Holocaust Adventure brought to you by the voice of God and John Williams's token Oscar nomination.  A young girl learns to read while Nazis burn books in the streets and hatred sweeps the nation in the most offensively banal depiction of World War II I have ever experienced.  I think it's all well and good to remember the horrors of the past.  In fact, it's deadly important.  Our society needs films like Schindler's List & 12 Years A Slave every decade or so as a reminder of human nature's horrific capability.  But The Book Thief delivers its message with about as much passion as an after school special.  It feels like a checkmark in a high school history class.  Infuriating.

Anchorman 2 - Supersized R Rated Edition:  Simply fascinating.  The narrative is the same.  Ron Burgundy travels to the big city unleashing the hell of the 24 hour news cycle upon our hapless society.  But half the jokes are different.  Improvised comedy is both wonderful and terrible.  You film one scene thirty different ways with thirty different lines, and suddenly you can cut thirty different films.  Or at least two solidly different films.  But I preferred the original Anchorman 2.  Maybe because it's jokes were better, but probably because it was my first experience with the script.  I still managed to laugh my ass of here, but the Supersized edition fascinated/perplexed me more than anything else.  A great bonus feature, but was it worth the second price of admission?  Still working it out.

--Brad

Dork Art: The Almost Supermen

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

--Brad

A Fistful of Product Placement! (Brad's Picks)

Show of hands, how many of you out there in Internetland are actually excited for The Internship?  Probably the same folks who are still waiting on that Wedding Crashers sequel.  Well, it's been eight years and Vince Vaughn hasn't appeared in anything worth your time.  At least Owen Wilson has Midnight in Paris and The Darjeeling Limited.  So this weekend's release of The Internship & The Purge marks the most lackluster release date of the summer; we're all just biding time till Man of Steel, and you're just going to see Furious 6 again anyway.  The only thing of note about The Internship is that it's one big commercial for Google - suck it Bing!  And it got me thinking about my own favorite bits of product placement throughout cinematic history.  The Ninth Gate proved the importance of Shell gasoline.  Captain America won the war thanks to Harley Davidson.  And we all recognize that Back to the Future was jsut about Marty chugging Pepsi.  But the below hidden commercials are the ones that had the most effect on me.  I saw these movies and I immediately hit the ABC store, the fast food chain, the gun shop, and the gas stations to get me a little taste.  U-S-A!  U-S-A!  U-S-A!

5.  James Bond's Favorite Scotch (Skyfall):  Trapped on Silva Island, James Bond is forced to partake in a deadly game of William Tell.  Before he takes his shot, the villainous Raoul Silva presents a glass of Macallan as Bond's favorite brand.  It's true!  At least if you've been paying attention to this latest outing.  Bond's already taken a splash of Macallan earlier in the film, and even Judi Dench's M gulps the brand.  Skyfall certainly worked on me.  After stepping out of the theater I found a 16 year old bottle for my own pantry, and I'm still saving up my pennies for the 1962 vintage seen in the shot above.  Give me a few years, it will be mine.  Sucker born every minute.

4.  White Castle Sliders (Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle):  After smoking some serious chiba, Harold & Kumar venture out into the night for an epic quest for White Castle's teeny tiny burgers.  But at every turn they are denied the greasy confection.  By the time this film completed its epic quest my mouth was watering, but growing up in the hell of Northern Virginia, there are no White Castles to invade.  To this day, I have never eaten at a White Castle.  It's on the bucket list.

3.  Taco Bell (Demolition Man):  Sylvester Stallone awakens in the utopian garden of San Angels in the happy, joy-joy year of 2032.  He discovers a saccharine future in which profanity has been outlawed, physical contact frowned upon, and Taco Bell is the only restaurant left standing after the devastating Franchise Wars.  I know what you're thinking, "Sounds good to me!  Burrito Boxes for Everybody!"  But the Taco Bell of the future is not simply dedicated to various wraps of ground beef.  They've finally branched out into proper fine dining.  What's my boggle?  Nothing, as long as I can still scarf a heap of delicious, powdery Doritos Locos Tacos.

2.  "The Most Powerful Handgun In The World" (Dirty Harry):  I'm not a gun guy.  Never gone to the range, never had the desire......well, that's not entirely true.  Movies can warp my brain.  Die Hard, Red Heat, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Terminator, Robocop.  I watch a few fictional assaults and I get to craving the NRA.  But no movie has me contemplating fire power more than Don Siegel's Dirty Harry.  The urban nightmare surrounding Det. Harry Callahan is in desperate need of a vigilante clean sweep.  It's a world impossible to understand without your Smith & Wesson at your side.  It's wrong-headed, angry, and totally captivating for a peacenik like me.

1.  "That's One Big Twinkie" (Ghostbusters):  Armageddon is coming.  New York's psycho kinetic energy is rising astronomically, but how do you describe that impending doom to your latest Ghostbuster recruit?  With Hostess, of course.  I fear to describe to you how grotesquely gluttonous I become when I hear Egon describe the 35 foot long, 600 pound yellow behemoth.  Every time it sends me running to the gas station down the street.  Alas, Hostess has gone the way of the dodo.  But I'm told that the recipe survives, that one day another devilish company will produce the spongey delight.  We can dream.

--Brad

Brad's Week in Dork! (2/3/13-2/9/13)

I started this week out strong.  Finishing off the Shaft trilogy with its greatest entry, basking in the 80s nostalgia of Walter Hill's Bullet To The Head, and having my brain melted by the two part Dark Knight Returns animated movies.  Then the flu hit.  And I was done.  From the midweek point I was a sleepy wreck of a human.  My Blaxploitation marathon was put on hold, and all I could do was drift through a few episodes of Rome and pick at Richard Stark's The Black Ice Score.  But the beast didn't stay with me long, and I was back to my usual dorky activities before the week was over.  Thank goodness.  I'm done with that nonsense for 2013.

Shaft in Africa:  "Cat named Shaft ain't gonna be bad with a stick."  For some indiscernible reason, the tribes of Africa travel to New York to recruit P.I. John Shaft in their war against the white slave trade.  After being drugged, tortured, and sexually teased by an African princess, Shaft agrees to travel to the dark continent and go deep cover as a champion stick fighter.  This film is beautifully bonkers, and it's everything this franchise never should have become, but somehow the once-upon-a-time NYC Street Soldier turned International Man of Mystery completely works.

Bullet to the Head:  Don't fool yourself.  The 80s are dead.  Walter Hill might be the director on this picture, but this is not the same man who helmed 48 Hours or Red Heat.  He's doing what he can, there is a taste of former glory - And that's enough.  Stallone is a brick.  And he can act where Arnie most certainly struggles.  I love watching him wield axes and punch knives through skulls.  The problem is Sung Kang's goodie two-shoes detective.  He never gets down in the muck with Stallone.  He whines and shirks at the violence.  For this film to truly take hold of its 80s Action Pride, Kang needed to match badass with badass and, unfortunately, he shrugs more often than pulling the trigger.  He's more sidekick than partner and the result is an unnecessary presence.  Still, there is that Walter Hill flavor.  Stallone is a killer.  No shine.  I certainly appreciate that.

Batman - The Dark Knight Returns Parts 1 & 2:  "Gotham City Belongs To The Mutants!!!"  These two animated films represent a geek miracle as equally significant to last year's blockbustering Avengers.  Frank Miller's revolutionary classic always seemed like an impossible adaptation - from it's abrasive politics to its downright cheerful brutality.  What producer in his right mind would touch it with a ten foot pole?  And what studio would allow it the light of day without some serious fine tuning?  Well, in a post Christopher Nolan world, Warner Brothers knows they have nothing to loose and Bruce Timm finally gets his chance to preach the graphic novel gospel.  The first film is fun enough.  Peter Weller's old man Wayne is a beast of character, having stewed in rage for ten years, his Batman returns to the deathwish streets of Gotham with a new thirst for bone breaking justice.  He finds a new Robin, takes on a mentally crippled Two-Face, and goes twelve rounds with The Mutant Leader.  But it's the second film where geeks around the world will loose their collective shit.  In part 2, we get Michael Emmerson's kill crazy Joker & the Tunnel of Love slaughterhouse.  As the Clown Prince of Crime blasts one innocent bystander after the next and thrusts his blade over & over into The Dark Knight's stomach, your mouth will be dropped.  You have never seen a Joker like this.  And you've never seen Batman's anger so perfectly detailed in a wad of spit.  Then you have Ronald Reagan's Superman.  What a tool.  His final (and I mean FINAL) confrontation with Batman is the most epic brawl we've seen in superhero cinema.  I love Nolan's Dark Knight films, but these two animated outings are perfect.  Sure, I miss the noirish machismo of Frank Miller's narration but after a few minutes you'll get over the loss.  The Dark Knight Returns is essential Bat-Viewing and I can't understand why the internet has not exploded with the proper praise.

Black Samson:  "There goes a righteous dude.  He keeps all the honky mother fuckers off the street."  Yep, there is not a more earnest hero in all of blaxploitation.  Rockne Tarkington is a man of many dashikis - he's a lion tamer, a street fighter, and a responsible owner of a respectable topless bar.  When the mob saturates his neighborhood in smack, Black Samson unites the community against the white faced devils and the resulting block war is a fist pumping crowd pleaser.  William Smith as the vein popping racist henchman is utterly fantastic in his depravity, and he makes the perfect foil for Tarkington's impassioned crusader.  It's savage villainy versus calm & cool kendo artistry.  Black Samson is simply a good night out at the movies.

Alex Cross:  I find the popularity of Tyler Perry to be absolutely perplexing.  I don't get the Madea films, and I certainly don't understand his appeal as a leading actor.  As Alex Cross, the all knowing and irritatingly pompous Detroit detective, Tyler Perry is a stern faced block of wood.  If Rockne Tarkington is the ultimate example of impassioned earnestness than Perry is on the opposite end of the righteousness spectrum.  Frowny faces and dead eyes do not make a badass.  Not to mention that the narrative is all over the place.  In one frame a character can be completely out of his mind with rage and in the very next frame he can be totally serene.  It feels like three separate scripts edited together.  Sure, Matthew Fox seems to be having fun as the serial killing cage fighter cum wannabe artist, but the rest of the film doesn't know when to just accept its b movie status.  I can't remember if this film was successful or not, but we gotta put a stop to this franchise immediately.  Morgan Freeman couldn't make it work so please don't bother.

The Black Ice Score by Richard Stark:  After suffering the banality of the Jason Statham film I found myself drawn back into the violent world of Parker.  Written six years after the original novel, this is the eleventh book in the series and yes, Parker has softened a little.  He's got a woman.  He's got something to loose.  When political thugs from the African nation of Dhaba contact Parker for a job, he takes the heist not for the money but cuz his lady might find it noble.  That sounds more damaging to the Parker character than it actually is, Donald Westlake makes the scenario work within Parker's ideology, but The Black Ice Score does feel lightyears away from books like The Hunter or even The Jugger.  Not a highlight in the series, but it got my juices flowing again and I'm already on to the next book.

The Invisible War:  Still working my way through the Oscar nominated docs and this film gave me a powerful wallop.  Filmmakers Kirby Dick & Amy Ziering interview dozens of men & women who were raped while serving in the military.  Their accounts are so prevalent and horrifying that it is hard for my brain to even wrap itself around the tragedy, of both the violent acts as well as the military's seemingly blind eye towards them.  I'm still processing the stories - the resulting anger, pain, frustration, and the expanse of the crimes.   It seems so unbelievable.  But I don't necessarily doubt it...it's just so messed up.  I don't know...the film hurt to watch.  Just damn sad.

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine Season 7:  We finally did it!  The Wife & I worked our way through DS9 and when we past through the other side of the wormhole, the little lady was a true believer in The Emissary.  And with good reason.  This is the single greatest season of Star Trek.  With an endate in place, the Next Generation off the air, and Voyager stumbling around the Delta quadrant, Deep Space Nine had full rein of The Federation toybox and the producers of the show took full advantage.  While Captain Benjamin Sisko recovers from the murder of Jadzia Dax, the villain Gul Dukat finds his own religion in the flames of the pah wraiths.  The Dominion War consumes the season but their seemingly unstoppable evil shows signs of weakness as The Founders fall victim to the cold war tactics of Section 9, the Federation's black ops devision fronted by the delightfully arrogant William Sadler.   The last several seasons have been plagued with seriousness, but like all Star Trek, the writers still find time to be playful - but it actually succeeds in DS9 with its Romulan Baseball and James Darran's swinging Vic Fontaine.  Season 7 of Deep Space Nine really does feel like the beginning of Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, and it teases the mind for the possibilities of a modern day Star Trek show.  Where No Man Has Gone Before?  How 'bout long arcing narrative storytelling.  Make it so.

--Brad