Matt’s Week in Dork! (3/10/13-3/16/13)

    I have absolutely NO idea who I managed to fit in so many movies this week, because I was really busy and I know I spent a lot of time not watching movies.  I know I was having trouble sleeping, but that doesn’t add up.  Anyway, considering how danged tired I am and stressed out, it was a pretty good week.

I need a hug, too.

    On Sunday night, I caught Life in the Year 2030 on NPR.  It was dealing with a bunch of stuff I’ve been reading about lately, including autonomous cars.  It also dealt with ‘smart’ clothing that could do more frivolous things like change color, but could also do things like protect people from getting malaria or keep them warm when it’s cold.  And there was stuff about robots.  Can’t wait for robots.

Nemesis:  Oh, Albert Pyun, you terrible, terrible genius.  Pyun is kind of a master of crappy movies.  He embraced cyberpunk like few others, making flicks like this and Cyborg, among others.  His movies get right into the genre, even when they manage to botch all the things that make movies ‘good.’  This film, for example, has an awful script and what seems to be intentionally awful acting you don’t normally see outside of The Asylum or a George Lucas film.  Like, it’s REALLY bad acting.  And not just because poor man’s JCVD Olivier Gruner can’t speak much English.  Most of the cast can, they just don’t.  Not in any natural way, anyway.  But in spite of it all, Nemesis is kind of a blast.  Lots of shoot-outs.  Lots of running around.  Nasty old environments.  Weird characters.  Bad cyborg effects.  Awesome.  There is an interesting question of gender in Pyun’s films.  I don’t know what his thing is, but he features a lot of women who dress like men, men with classically female names and vice versa, and other odd bits (like the female body builder in the three sequels to Nemesis that all have this film’s leading male character’s name with no explanation).  Is he getting at something with it all?  Or like much of his work, is it just random and accidental?  I don’t know.  I don’t really care.  Just something I noticed.  I can’t believe this movie doesn’t have a blu-ray two disk special edition.  I actually had to get a bootleg, recorded form VHS version, because as far as I can find, it has never been put out on DVD (this needs a 2 disk, digitally remastered, unrated director’s cut!).

Double Trouble:  “Seventeen will get me 20.”  It’s not Elvis VS. Elvis like the movie poster implies.  Instead two dames want to get a ride on the E Train, but he’s a busy cat.  Unfortunately, one of them is a touch on the young side and he (rightly) tries to run the other way.  Comic misadventures and a tour of Europe quickly follow.  And all the while, some weird dudes are trying to knock off the young girl.  It’s enjoyable enough, but totally forgettable.  The girls are cute, but not especially captivating.  The songs aren’t up to snuff (it’s bad when the best one is a reworking of Old McDonald’s Farm).  I guess it’s worth a watch, but it’s no classic, that’s for sure.

Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell:  “I hope you go insane with loneliness!”  The final chapter in the series starts out in a snow covered landscape with a Blaxploitation waka-waka guitar setting a crazy tone.  Man, this series is nuts.  A sure fire sign that East and West were doing a heck of a job influencing each other.  The Lone Wolf series is as much Spaghetti Western fantasy as samurai film.  Over the top everything.  Music, acting, blood, and style.  Dropping Night on Bald Mountain into a 70s style rock tune?  Crazy.  Who would have thought, watching the first film, that we would see a massive, James Bond movie type, ski battle raging through the snowy mountains?  Maybe it was inevitable.  It’s a weird ending to the series, and I would say not really a satisfying one.  I’m not sure why it ended here.  Did tickets stop selling?  Did actors want to move on?  Whatever the case, it doesn’t feel finished.  The movie does; the series doesn’t.

The Golden Compass:  “There will always be free thinkers…and heretics.”  You can make dozens of Christian themed movies and not hear a peep, but one movie based book with an atheist bent (the script leaves out 99% of that aspect of the book), and suddenly, Christians are being persecuted, and Hollywood is holding the whip; the End Times are upon us, and movies are a tool of Satan.  It must be exhausting, trying to find more ways to be offended and oppressed.  No wonder religious people tend to be so humorless.  Though visually impressive and well cast, the script sadly misses much of the novel’s better and more interesting elements.  Scientific inquiry in the form of dashing adventurer Asriel (Daniel Craig) battles the stodgy orthodoxy of the Magisterium.   Nichole Kidman plays the diabolic porcelain doll who embodies the hypocrisy and villainy of blind traditionalism.  I’d have liked to see a better adaptation, and I’d certainly have liked it to have been successful enough to see the rest of the books adapted.  If memory serves, the movie also ends early, dropping the book’s climax.  This makes its financial failure all the more frustrating.  Half of me thinks the movie’s PG-13 rating has more to do with the Christian crusade against the film than any content.  In fact, the only reason I could see for any rating stronger than PG is a sequence where a bear gets its jaw punched off.  That’s pretty brutal.  But I don’t think it’s enough.  It’s a PG movie.  Generally fine for the family, if occasionally scary (but no more so than most classic Disney or other family films from before the 90s).  It could be much better, but it’s still a pretty good family friendly fantasy adventure film.

The Thief of Bagdad:  “Fling him to the ape!”  This silent epic starts slow, but becomes quite the effects filled spectacle.  The sets are amazing and some of the effects would have been passable in movies up through the 80s.  The creatures are nuts (underwater spider!) and the stunts are wild.  Douglass Fairbanks is filled with smarmy bravado that is partly charming and partly off-putting.  He just seems like such a jerk in the first part of the film.  But he’s got personality, that’s for sure.  The princess is kind of a dud, but her various servants are more charming and more interesting.  Not the best silent film I’ve seen, by any means.  But it’s very good and entertaining.  Sort of a Summer blockbuster kind of thing.

South Bronx Heroes:  “If I want you to talk, I’ll throw you a peanut.”  Everybody keeps stabbing everybody.  This relentless view of human misery and crime is grueling and pointlessly sad.  Really crappy movie.

The Black 6:  “Hey man.  Watch out for the goat.”  They may be from different football teams, but the Black 6 can agree on their love of motorcycles, and their hatred of jive turkeys.  Six cool dudes ride wherever the wind takes them, being chill and helping out, and enjoying life (most of all, no hassles).  All they want to do, now that they’re back from the ‘Nam, is spread ‘peace and love, brother; peace and love.’  But honkies and crackers are looking to cause trouble.  This is one of the better ultra-low budget blaxploitation films I’ve seen.  It looks to be financially on the level with Brotherhood of Death, but a better film.  There were a few words, I’m assuming racial slurs, that I didn’t get or hadn’t heard before.  That’s something.

The Black Gestapo:  “Afternoon, black gentlemen!”  Either I was in a really, really different place 10 years ago, or I’ve been mistaking this for a different movie.  ‘Cause a) I thought I disliked it, but I have no idea how that could be true and b) I didn’t remember any of it.  So, I’m guessing I was just wrong about having seen it, and I’m glad that’s been rectified.  It’s crazy over the top.  Great bad dialog.  The characters are weird and extreme, from the wild-eyed Che wannabe second in command who puts together a cracker-killing death squad, to the laidback, sunglass wearing, racist crook, to the semi-gay crime lord.  And the ending.  Dang, man.  So glad I watched this (again?).

Velvet Smooth:  “Later, Papa.”  Oh, man.  This is LOW budget.  Bad writing, worse acting, horrifying clothes, porn sets, crappy music.  Charming.  There are a lot of extended, not especially inspiring martial arts fights.  The kind where people probably got hurt, because they weren’t choreographed very well.  I was reminded of some of the stuff from Black Dynamite.  I love when the you can see the recording microphone aimed at the actors from below the camera.  It adds a little something to conversations to have a white tube pointing at whoever’s talking.  This is also the second movie in a row (the first was Black Gestapo) to feature a friendly fire, accidental throat-cutting by one bad guy against another.  That’s odd.  The finale is pretty good.  But again, this is bargain basement.  Kind of like if the crew behind Land of the Lost decided to do a blaxploitation film.

Disciple of Death:  “No doubt, we all shall meet again… …In HELL!”  This Hammer wannabe fails on every level, except to produce a few unintentional laughs.  The villain is so hammy, the rest of the cast so amateurish, and the almost rap like way the music is mixed, it’s hard to do anything but laugh.  It’s like the UK equivalent of Ed Wood saw a random Hammer film and said, ‘I can do that!’  He was wrong.

Doctor Who: Time & the Rani:  Ugh.  An inauspicious beginning to Sylvester McCoy’s tenure.  Lots of clowning, Mel, the Rani pretending to be Mel (terrifying), goofy green bird people, that new ultra-electronica opening music.  With Colin Baker, I think they were trying to recapture some of Tom Baker’s style.  With McCoy, I think they were trying to go for something of a Patrick Troughton thing; more the loveable vagabond clown, less the slightly mad trickster.  Man, I wish Mel could have spent more time screeching like an injured bird.  ‘Cause that isn’t terribly annoying.  Ace can’t get here soon enough.  And while I think the Rani was conceptually interesting, like the Master, she ends up being so foppishly, scenery-chewingly evil as to be more silly than scary or cool.  The bat creatures had potential, but they don’t work.  I think if I were a BBC exec, watching this story, I’d be thinking about cancellation, too.  I’ll say this about the episode.  Some of the effects, especially some of the composite images, where models are combined with live action, are pretty good, and show some of the places effects could have gone, if the show weren’t so close to its end.  The CG animated opening featured ground breaking technique, but I don’t like it very much.

Silent Hill: Revelation:  “I know the Darkness is coming.”  I’ve been saying for months that the entire reason this project even happened is that someone realized Sean Bean lived through the first film, and that could not stand.  I’m probably one of like 8 people who actually enjoyed the first Silent Hill, and I was very surprised they even bothered to do a second.  I’ll give ‘em this, they don’t screw around waiting to get into the action.  It’s pretty balls-out weird from the beginning.  And everything is sort of taken for granted.  Not a lot of effort trying to explain why reality is broken, or what there are monsters or what have you.  It reminds me of the Hellraiser films, especially the more mind-messing Hellraiser II and the later Nightmare on Elm St. films.  In fact, the whole movie felt very 80s.  It’s really strange.  So, does Sean Bean manage to slip through the cracks again and defy the odds by surviving?  I’ll never tell.  Is the end of the movie a bit of a cop-out?  Yes.  But I enjoyed it far, far more than I expected.

    Thursday night took me away from my comfort zone when I visited with friends Paul and Sarah, and got to hold their new baby, Joseph (totally named that because it’s my middle name…totally).  I haven’t been around kids very much, even when I was one, babies even less.  And, it’s true, I have a lump of coal running my body instead of the more traditional blood pumping muscle known by some as the heart.  Still, it’s a danged cute baby.  His rubber face makes some fantastic expressions.  I can’t imagine the soulless little monster I’d spawn.  Handsome, sure.  But that Thomas Ripley sort of handsome.

    Friday night was the latest meeting of the Justice League of Extraordinary Book Club, where this month’s selection was the hard cover collection Blacksad.  It was an odd meeting, as I think it was the first time everyone was pretty much on the same page.  Everyone liked it.  Everyone liked the art.  We basically just talked a lot about the various things we liked about it.  And there was some question of why fish would still be animals in a world populated by anthropomorphized animals.  A good meeting.  Just oddly agreeable.

Monster X Strikes Back: “‘Guilala hot cakes’ are selling like hot cakes.”  Attack at the G8 Summit:  Super goof-tastic, I guess this is a satire.  A giant monster from space (‘cause of those dang Chinese!) attacks the G8 Summit, and with the instigation of the American president, all the world leaders decide not to run, but to stand and fight.  Ace reporter Sumire, of Tokyo Sports Daily is gonna get a scoop.  Each daring and well thought out plan that somehow manages to fail, leads to more comic weirdness.  Usually I’m not a fan of non-English comedy because I miss too many cultural references and what is funny is lost on me.  I think I get most of the jokes in this movie…they’re just not that funny.  The inspirational, worshipful dance is very impressive, though.  I assume everyone will be doing it someday.  And I have to admit that I saw some things I never thought I would, like a giant kaiju god sodomized by a nuclear missile.  That was something.  I can only speak to the English speaking actors, but dang, they’re bad.  I assume the Russian, German, French, etc. are on par.  Though the Russian guy seems like he might actually be an actor.  It seems pretty clear the casting call went out for any Western actors they could find.  Heck, the UK rep has an American accent.  But holy smokes; almost every woman in the movie is either super cute, or smokin’ hot.  The array of translators?  Yowzah.

Lady Snowblood:   On a cold winter night, a baby is born; a mother dies.  Thus opens Lady Snowblood, another Japanese samurai-type film about vengeance, betrayal and murder.  20 years later, that baby is a beautiful woman with a sword in her umbrella, killing her way to satisfaction.  Welcome to Japan in the 1890s.  Another blood-soaked film in the tradition of the Zatoichi and Lone Wolf and Cub movies.  It too features some strange uses of music that gives it a fascinating vibe, even when the film itself isn’t amazing.

Doctor Who: Paradise Towers:  “Hail Pex.”  Sylvester McCoy is considerably less annoying in this story.  Mel is just as annoying as ever.  The super-80s, 2000 AD/Judge Dredd nightmare future world is weird fun.  Episodes like this are so off the wall.  Lots of creepy and strange characters, garish colors, disturbing behavior.  The two old ladies…Yikes.  Pex.  Pex, man.  If only he could have joined the Doctor.  Pex and Ace would have made one serious badass pair of companions.  Look out Daleks.  I really enjoy the set design.  I mean, it’s super simple, but effective.  This is just all around a better story than the first.  The guest cast in this one is quite good.  The DVD features an alternate score which was dropped and given to a different composer.  Frankly, I kind of prefer this alternate, original version.  It was interesting that the writer for this arc was in part inspired by the J.G. Ballard novel High Rise.  That is a novel I became aware of through a book about cities in science fiction, and took me years to track down (I don’t think it was even printed Stateside until recently).  When I’d read the original description of the book, I’d been reminded of some stuff from my youth, including this very Doctor Who story.

Black Pearl (aka 10,000 A.D.: The Legend of the Black Pearl):  “When you are feeling most lost and disheartened, smoke this.” Even if our world ends, society collapses, and eight thousand years pass, I don’t think dreadlocks or tongue and eyebrow piercing on a skinny white dude will ever be acceptable.  Though the fact that the movie opens on our Burning Man cast-off getting the crap kicked out of him, only to be saved by a Veronica Mars look alike makes more sense.  Brad Pitt wannabe hippie-warrior Jesus seems to spend his life a day late and a dollar short.  Maybe he should try washing his hair.  My hat is off to the people who made this movie.  It’s beautifully shot and goes for it, balls out, heart exposed.  And it absolutely looks silly as hell a lot of the time.  Hippie, New Age, martial arts, Native American, Hawaiian (?), and mumbo-jumbo of every sort.  But it doesn’t mess around with trying to be mainstream or approachable.  This film has more heart in it than a dozen big budget films.  Sadly, it doesn’t have any more brain.  It’s kind of like a whole movie set in that nasty future from Cloud Atlas, or some post-Fall science fiction setting from the 60s, but filtered through a couple New Age books with crystals and dreamcatchers and paintings of wolves.  I don’t know who I would suggest this film to.  I’m sure there are people who would like it, but I only have one person in all my circle of friends to whom I’m going to recommend it.

Cowboys and Aliens:  “What kind of man goes around blowing up another man’s cows?”  Science fiction has had a long tradition of mixing with the Western.  Singing cowboys have traveled to the center of the Earth; rustlers have captured T-rexes; and they’ve all gotten mixed up in time travel too many times to count.  Not to mention how many times they’ve been exported to other planets.  This time, an amnesiac, an ornery old cattle man, a bar tender, a mysterious woman, a Native chief and a bunch of others are set upon by kidnapping, gold loving aliens, and they aren’t gonna take it sitting down.  Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford are perfect Western actors, handsome but grizzled with steely stares and barely checked rage.  The aliens are weird, the effects pretty good, and the action well handled.  It is an unabashed mix of sci-fi action and classic western.  And Olivia Wilde…Dang.  She’s weird looking, but in the best way.  Is this an amazing, world changing movie?  No.  But it’s solid entertainment.  Harrison Ford should be in more Westerns.

    My landlord installed a new fireplace thingy, so for the first time ever, I’ve got a working fireplace, which is fun.  I’ve found that I suck at fire.  Still, it’s cool to have.  And as this winter doesn’t seem to want to let go (I think it’s usually in the 60s or more by this time here, but the 30s and 40s won’t stop), it’s nice to have options.

-Matt

DORK ART: Tyler's Stout's Attack The Block & Drive

Head on over to Slash Film for a nifty little interview with Mondo artist Tyler Stout.  There he discusses his new gallery show as well as the two prints seen above.  The Drive image is cool, but the Attack The Block is astonishing.  It's been too long since I've watched that flick; seriously needs a revisit.

--Brad

Movie Review: Moon

    With virtually no money, Duncan Jones and his crew created one of the best science fiction films in…well, ever.  It’s virtually a one man show, with star Sam Rockwell giving a virtuoso performances as Sam Bell, the lone operator of a Moon based fuel mine.  With the help of his trusty robot Gerty, he monitors four great machines that collect fuel to send back to the Earth.  But his three year contract is coming to a close, and he’s really, really ready to go home and be reunited with his woman and child.  This simple premise sets the stage for a classic Heinlein/Clarke style science fiction film, with dashes of Outland, Silent Running, 2001 and more.

    In a time when massive budget films frequently squander the amazing potential in science fiction, this movie came out of nowhere.  First time feature director Duncan Jones worked within what is a shockingly low budget for a theatrically released film, to create a beautiful, crisp, cracking tale.  The same year that the bloated, empty headed and empty hearted monstrosity Avatar crapped its way into multiplexes, this movie (roughly a 60th of the budget) quietly slipped past many people’s attention.  But this is the stuff.  This is the kind of movie that comes along too rarely (though they seem to be gaining in frequency).  Hovering in the lower budget region is giving opportunities for voices in a more substantive type of science fiction.  Solaris, Gattaca, Robot and Frank, The Fountain, and more are looking back to classic science fiction literature of the 50s and 60s and giving it a modern spin without the need to dumb everything down or blow everything up all the time.  Though the trailer reveals certain aspects of the film (like two Sams on screen at one time) I’m going to try to avoid too much detail on the story.  Suffice to say, this movie deals with a few scientific speculations, including some ethical quandaries about how we treat each other, our machines, and how we'll deal with sending people to work in space.  Like the previous film in this series of reviews, Gattaca, it avoids the condemnation of technology or scientific advancements that is more typical.  Instead, it looks at the dangers of the abuse of technology, and the cruelties of humans against other humans.  What is a person?  When do we have a duty to treat a thing like a being?  This holds true for Sam, but also for Gerty, who works as a kind of follow up, or response to Hal.  He (it) is the mellow voiced machine that monitors our human hero and helps maintain his living space.  Can a machine be trusted in a post Hal world?

    Moon is an absolute must for any genre fan.  But beyond that, it’s a well scripted, well acted piece of drama.  The fact that it takes place on the Moon should not pigeonhole it as a movie only good for nerds or dweebs (though we like it, too).  Some of the circumstances may be outside the realm of many people’s lives but the emotion certainly isn’t.  I don’t want to give away too much in my review, so I’m going to keep it short.  Do yourself a favor and make the effort to find this film and see it.  The music alone is worth the price of admission.  Clint Mansell creates yet another evocative score that manages to be at times rousing, sad, and haunting.  Remember that it was made on roughly five million dollars, in a day when thirty million is considered ‘low budget’ and many TV shows have budgets or a million dollars an episode.  Using practical effects, models, AND computer effects, they created a more effective, more believable, more ‘solid’ setting than many effects-heavy movies with much higher budgets.  And this was all done by a first time film director, not some well established titan.  It should be an inspiration to young filmmakers and veteran filmmakers who still have some of that youthful spark.  And it should shame purveyors of flashy trash like the Transformers movies or Avatar.  Necessity is the mother of invention, and low budget cinema has always been the place to find the most inventive and interesting stuff.  It’s where the visionaries are able to run with their passion and make things you can almost never see in bigger budget, mainstream film.  Make the effort.  See it.  It’s worth your time.

-Matt

"Try To Have Fun!" - Kick Ass 2 Millars In Your Face

I like the first movie.  I'd say I even love Nic Cage's channeling of Adam West in the Batman/Punisher cross, Big Daddy.  And I certainly appreciated how mean spirited the film got at certain points.  However, I certainly don't enjoy Mark Millar's comic book source material.  The original book is rather boring and its sequel is hateful, but not so special.  The below trailer seems to be following a lot of that book's plot.  Giant Russia Beasts, Captain America wannabes, and The Mother Fucker himself.  Jim Carey seems inspired by Cage's wacky voice and has adopted one for his own.  It made me smile.  But Chloe Moretz doesn't sound right at all.  Too self aware, forced.  Acting like acting.  She's certainly no Al Swearengen.

--Brad

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

The March to Summer has begun.  Can't you taste the buttered blockbuster blitzkrieg?  With the Friday release of Sam Raimi's CG Candyland, the 2013 spectacle movie is upon us and I'm rather appalled by these early offerings.  Don't get me wrong.  I can't wait for Summer.  Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, Pacific Rim.  These are popcorn films I'm seriously craving.  But first we have to wade through the wannabes like Oz and Jack The Giant Slayer?  No.  It's bad enough I had to suffer through the Icon disappointments of The Last Stand, Bullet To The Head, & A Good Day To Die Hard.  Not to mention the castoff dreck like Texas Chainsaw 3D & Gangster Squad.  I get it.  We need time to digest the year end Best Of films.  Sure.  January.  Suck it up Hollywood.  But once February rolls around and March hits, I want to be seeing good quality filmmaking.  Or at least one or two solid entries.  Now, I know what you're saying (and what Matt is happy to echo), "Brad, you don't have to suffer through all this subpar cinema."  Well, yer right.  I don't have to.  But I love to anyway.  The movie house is my church.  I want to be nowhere else.  And now that I'm the happy owner of a Movie Pass, I've got my ankles in it and I'm chowing down on the New Year muck.

So....saw four flicks theatrically this week.  That's the most I've done since the New Year began.  Dead Man Down, Jack The Giant Slayer, and Oz all disappointed.  None quite terrible, but sometimes the middle-of-the-road pictures are the most painful.  The happy news is that the first film I saw on the big screen this week also turned out to be my favorite film of 2013 so far.  It didn't quite hit me like The Grey did early in 2012, but it was thrilling enough and when facing Lovecraftian blackness, a sliver of light can feel like the sun.  Steven Soderbergh might be claiming retirement from the movie making business, but I sure hope he realizes the error of his ways sooner rather than later.  His last three films (Magic Mike, Contagion, & Haywire) were heaps of funky HD joy and his latest, Side Effects, is even better.  It's slick, twisty, and well acted.  Plus, another cool score from Thomas Newman.

So if 2013 isn't going to bother giving us the proper fresh entertainment we all deserve on the big screen than I guess we gotta look to the small.  Took the plunge into the Neflix timesuck known as House of Cards, whipped through the second season of HBO's Game of Thrones, and rediscovered some serious enthusiasm for a John Carpenter classic.  Managed a few comics, but outside forces kept getting in the way of a proper sit down with the funny books.  I have a feeling that the four color form is going to rule next week - so many good books to get through and I haven't even started this month book group selection yet.

House of Cards:  Not sure this show is right for me.  Politicians behaving like assholes and committing diabolical acts of scumbaggery?  What's so new about that?  Granted, Kevin Spacey is devilishly fantastic as Congressman Underwood, especially when he's plotting to camera and Michael Kelly as his right hand goon is properly menacing.  However, I really hate the female characters.  Kate Mara's descent into journalistic prostitution was wasn't just disappointing it was downright predictable and boring.  Robin Wright Penn's narrative collapse is little more than hateful window dressing and Constance Zimmer's bitchy coworker turned bitchy partner in crime is just icing on this gender garbage dump.  I enjoy watching villainous protagonists as much as the next person, but I'm not seeing anything new or original in House of Cards.  Still, look at Spacey's glare to camera.  There is a little joy in his monologuing.

Thunderbolts #5:  Ok.  First off.  I really hate that cover above.  What the hell is The Leader doing?  Is he about to 8 Mile his way outta the Thunderbolts posse?  It just looks ridiculous.  That being said, I'm still loving the silly heck outta this book.  Daniel Way is having a lot of fun with these morally corrupt loners.  Sure, I don't really buy how Red Hulk got them all together in the first place but now that they're here and we've got The Punisher & Elektra making out in the blood splattered woods of Kata Jaya - I am happy.  And I'm seriously loving the Preacher stares Steve Dillon is putting on Frank Castle's face.  Some of you out there in Internetland don't seem to appreciate him on this book, but I'll be sad to see him go after this first arc.  The man can put hate on a brow like nobody else in this business.  I hope he finds more weird work over at Marvel.

Uncanny Avengers #4:  A bit better than last issue.  Rick Remender's caption writing still needs some readjusting, but I dig the plotting.  Opening the issue on the infamous Summers plane crash gives an extra bit of oomph to Havoc as Avengers leader, and the Days of Future Past-like flash forwards are perfectly comic booky.  The Red Skull logos on the Sentinels' faces brought a great grin to this long time comic book fanboy.  And the final 90s throwback splash page?  Damn.  That's goofy.  Cool.  And I want it on a poster.  This issue also marks the end of John Cassaday's run.  It's a real shame.  I was hoping for a massive hardcover volume of his work here, but now I'm going to have to settle for a puny four issues.  The loss of him on art takes a good chunk of the books epicness, and I'm curious to see if replacement killer Daniel Acuna can deliver the goods.  Uncanny Avengers started out as the flagship book of Marvel Now and has slowly become little more than a blip on the landscape.

The Walking Dead - Season 3 "Clear":  From the beginning, this show has suffered from serious acts of narrative decompression.  Padding.  We're nearly at the end of the third season.  Rick's crew should be gearing up, if not already embroiled, in a full on WAR with The Governor and the rest of Woodbury's henchman.  Instead the audience is given yet another distraction from the overall story.  Granted, this was a pretty good distraction.  Rick, Carl, & Michone return home in search of weapons.  There they encounter Morgan, whom we haven't seen since the first episode of the first season.  His son is dead.  He's lost his mind.  He's a mirror for Rick's possible future.  The man is batshit crazy.  You know, like Rick is on occasion.  He craves death.  Of course, Rick & his moral high ground can't grant him his death wish.  Meanwhile, Michone & Carl go hunting for memories of a world before walkers.  It's solid stuff.  Something I might have enjoyed 3 or 4 episodes into the season and not 12.  Let's get on with The Governor dammit!  Time to kill Andrea already!  But I'm tired of bitching & moaning about The Walking Dead.  I'm going to keep on watching (at least until the third season is finished), but I'm no longer going to unleash my complaints on this blog.  I'm sick of it.  I sound like an asshole when writing about this show.  It just frustrates me too damn much.  So no more episode reviews.  The next time I write about this show it will be a Season 3 recap, and hopefully I loved it.

They Live:  You know the drill - Rowdy Roddy Piper has come here to kick ass and chew bubble gum.  By this point in my life, I must have seen this flick thirty times.  The first time I watched it, I liked it okay - nowhere near as good as The Thing or Big Trouble in Little China, but infinitely superior to later Carpenter flicks like Ghosts of Mars and Vampires. Over the years it's become a background kinda movie. As I do dishes, laundry, or clean the apartment. And that's how I started my week. They Live in the background. But once Piper got the glasses and the bubble gum chewing started, and the epic Keith David bum fight erupted, They Live just couldn't continue in the background - it had my full attention. It's a lark. A goof. But it has painful truth too. And it will probably hold truth forever - these problems are not going away. Get your own pair of sunglasses and choose kicking ass over chewing bubblegum.

The Sweeney:  "We're The Sweeney shit, and you've been knicked." The film has a little bit of the original show's cockney charm, but as much as I love Ray Winstone (especially, savage, fat, beastly Ray Winstone), this theatrical remake lacks any kind of originality and bears closer resemblance to Training Day than its source material.  I want to see The Sweeney cracking the heads of hoods and not fending their freedom from Internal Affairs. I want doors bashed down. Bare knuckle brawls.  And sweet 70s suits. This is just another cop program in a field of cop programs.  Basically, a waste.

Justified - Season 4 "The Hatchet Tour":  Possibly the best episode of the season so far.  Raylan finagles his way into the car transporting Hunter to the pen.  After a little detour to Wynn Duffy's trailer and a team-up with Sheriff Shelby, the three find themselves speeding to the residence of Lee Paxton where Patton Oswalt's Deputy Bob commences to siege the house with the contents of his go-bag and a hefty machine gun.  Plenty of comedy peppers an episode that is otherwise steeped in painful family history.  With his father now dead, a couple of old timers offer the son a new light on Papa Arlo's past acts of violence.  Wars aren't necessarily ignited over dogshit.  But will Raylan ever be able to see Arlo as anything other than a criminal?  Doubtful.  And oh yeah, the mystery of Drew Thompson is revealed!  So happy to see it not held back until the final episode.  Now this season is going to barrel towards its climax, and it might not be as bloody as last season's "Slaughterhouse" but I bet you it's going to be ten times more soul crushing.

Side Effects:  Best not talk too much about this one. It's one of those flicks where the less you know the better. The film opens on streaks of blood smeared across an apartment floor, red foot tracks passing near beautifully wrapped presents - up front you know it's not going to end well. Now what leads these characters to this bloody mess is a Hitchcockian thriller filtered through a Law & Order procedural. Rooney Mara will get all the press from this flick, and she is excellent as the mentally cracked bride, but I was ecstatic to see Jude Law blasting his way through his character's downfall. Law might have drifted out of favor post-Sky Captain, but he's an actor worthy of an epic return to the big screen. And Stephen Soderbergh need not retire.  As stated earlier, his last round of entertainments have been exceptionally small bits of character work, and I dig his digital eye.  The man just shoots classy.

Hellboy in Hell #4:  Mike Mignola's first mini-arc in this epic ongoing series comes to a close and like the previous three issues, it is exceptional.  So glad to type those words.  After the insane revelations of The Storm & The Fury, I had some serious doubts as to whether Mignola had anything left in his trick bag.  Plus, sending Hellboy to Hell felt a little gimicky.  Curse my eyes for ever having any doubts.  Hellboy is still reeling after his encounter with his brothers and his possible attack on Lucifer, but most of this issue revolves around ex-Witchfinder, Sir Edward Grey explaining big red's current role in the royal hierarchy.  Yes, Mike Mignola found a way to complete the Beast of the Apocalypse narrative.  The Right Hand of Doom melancholy has been with this comic since the beginning; the idea that it could all be over seems somewhat preposterous.  And I'm pretty darn sure someone is going to come looking for Hellboy's hand sooner or later.  Sir Grey pretty much alludes to such, so yeah, this really isn't a conclusion to The Beast as much as it is a pause in programming.  And if all that wonderful bizarro denouement wasn't enough, Hellboy in Hell #4 also offers some pretty badass revelations involving the Witchfinder.  Here we see Edward Grey's final moments on Earth and his passage into the underworld.  Damn cool.  I say this all the time, but if you are not reading Hellboy than what the hell is wrong with you?

Game of Thrones Season 2:  So I didn't love this season as much as the first.  Why?  Well, no Sean Bean.  Obviously, the House of Stark is just not going to be as interesting with these kids spread out all over the five kingdoms.  I'm not saying their stories suck - they're just not as complicated as Papa Stark's struggling foothold on the North.  His son Rob is barely around in this season.  He's got some boring dopey Florence Nightingale love story for his arc.  The legless kid is mostly scrambling in the dark.  Sansa Stark definitely has the most tortured plot with her horrifying engagement to the epically evil King Joffery (and seriously, Jack Gleeson is an amazing monster - he just has to say three words and I want to cave his skull in).  I'm guessing Arya Stark is eventually going to transform into the show's badass, but she's mostly wandering this season.  And don't even get me started on bastard John Snow, he's a drab bore.  Mother of Dragons, Daenerys Targaryen, is off in the desert getting chapped for the majority of the drama.  She deserves better.  So, Season 2 really lives & dies with Peter Dinklage.  As the hand of the king, Tyrion Lannister excels in this backstabbing political thunderdome, but there is no way it can last.  Rise, Fall, sword to the face.  I also appreciated the little bit of magic we got this season.  This is a Fantasy after all.  Dragons.  Witchcraft.  White Walkers.  Smoke monsters.  More of that in Season 3 please.

Age of Ultron #1:  2013's first big Marvel event is here.  Brian Michael Bendis has bee teasing Ultron's great triumph for years, and now it's finally a chromium foiled reality.  And I don't know what the hell is going on.  The first issue drops you into another crazy ass post-apocalyptic world - this one involving Ultron's sweeping takeover of planet Earth.  The heroes have fallen.  Of course, not all of them.  The first issue sees Hawkeye popping arrows into the throats and sockets of Hammerhead goons, crashing into a Super Villain safe house and rescuing a tortured Spider-Man.  But is this the Peter Parker Spidey, or the Superior Doc Ock Spidey?  Since Bryan Hitch had to start drawing this book eons ago, who the hell knows, but that question just reminds me how much I detest Dan Slott's current run on Spider-Man.  It's too early to tell if this book is going to kick ass or disappoint (like nearly every Big Event of the last five years), but I can certainly tell you that Hitch's art is amazing and I could look at his devastation splash pages all day long.  And I love Ultron.  He's a mad doctor robot bent on world domination.  What's not to love?  So I'm in for this badboy.  Till the artist switch halfway through anyway.

Jack The Giant Slayer:  Can't say I hated it. Can't say I liked it. This is just one of those films that exists. Maybe some five year old will see this one day and loose their tiny excitable mind, but I doubt any kid past the age of reason will give two shits about Bryan Singer's remake. And it got me thinking. Other than The Usual Suspects, has Singer ever directed a film that truly engages my emotions? There are moments in Superman Returns that bring a lump in my throat. His two X-Men films have a glimmer of pure comic book joy. And I kinda dig Tom Cruise's historic snooze, Valkyrie but it's rather dull in its a-b-c narrative. I think Singer is nothing more than a journeyman - not the type of artist to illicit passions. But whatever his intentions were for Jack The Giant Slayer the resulting movie is a lumbering mass of misguided adventure. Nicholas Holt is struggles as its hero. Ewan McGregor is cashing a paycheck. Ian McShane pops up as a reminder of the Deadwood myth. If there ever was an audience for this movie it was decades ago, and if there was a way to harken back to those Ray Harryhausen glory days, this bloated but feeble fairy tale most certainly is not it.

Dead Man Down:  I kinda love the Hitchcock set-up. Noomi Rapace witnesses neighbor Colin Farrell choking the life outta an angry bald man. She records the murder. Blackmails him into committing another murder. Strangers on a Train from the hateful morality behind the original Girl With A Dragon Tattoo.  Unfortunately, Dead Man Down is all bark no bite. Nearly every moment in which the threat of violence occurs is quickly stalled by lamebrain character interference.  Noomi's scarred beautician is more mope than femme fatale, and Colin Farrell's vengeance seeker never quite reaches the proper rage levels, and his final assault on Terrance Howard is missing the sick killing glee the plot deserves. Dead Man Down should be a rough watch, but in actuality it's a tame puppy. 

Oz - The Great & Powerful:  Sam Raimi. Twenty years ago, the man could do no wrong in my eyes. Evil Dead. Evil Dead 2. Army of Darkness. Darkman. Those four films have earned him permanent residence in my heart. But since then, it's all peaks and valleys; his Hollywood grab films have never quite connected with me. The Quick & The Dead. A Simple Plan. The Gift. Drag Me To Hell. Those films have their moments. But the Spider-Man trilogy. That's a cartoon world I have little enthusiasm for anymore. His ram-o-cam theatrics seem hamfisted in the blockbuster, and even if its cute to see POV fenceposts and deadite witches barreling through this Disney behemoth, the man just doesn't seem like the right fit for these cinematic gobstoppers. And James Franco...your wrinkly smiles are emotionless and distracting. Where is your wonder. You're in OZ dammit. I want awe from you. Instead, Franco delivers vacant pothead gawks. Michelle Williams at least seems to be at home in the flashback performance, and Rachel Weisz knows how to ham. But at the end of the day, Oz The Great and Powerful is a pre-summer dud.

--Brad