Predators, Drive Angry

The title of this post could really be read one of two ways. First, Predators and Drive Angry seen separately. Or second, as a statement telling those Predators to go out there and drive angrily. You know, a movie combining Predators and Drive Angry together could be one of the greatest movies of all time. Maybe somebody will figure out a way to edit them together to create a cinematic masterpiece.

Predators

As you all know, the original Predator is an 80s classic. One of the best examples of sci-fi and action. It is such a monumentally important film, it blows away Oscar-winning films by comparison. Unfortunately, the Predator franchise has fared even worse than the Alien franchise in terms of churning out horrible sequels. This movie comes 23 years after the original and rightfully ignores the other movies that came in-between.

A group of modern-day warriors are dropped into a mysterious jungle. The group consists of military-types, mob-enforcers, Yakuza, and serial killers. Each has their own weapon and their own style of killing. They hesitantly team up so they can find their way out of the jungle. What happens next is exactly what you expect/want to happen. Predators start hunting and killing them one by one.

Predators works because it doesn’t try to reinvent the franchise. It just uses the good stuff from the original and expands on it. That’s all. It has the suspense, the build-up, the action, and the bloodiness of the original. Instead of one Predator there are several, and it turns out the characters were sent to an alien world which is a big “game preserve” for the Predators. Their focus shifts from survival to getting the hell off the planet. They expanded the Predator mythology a bit to show there are two types of Predators and they don’t exactly get along. The human characters are able to use this to their advantage in order to resolve the fight against superior enemies in a logical fashion.

Overall, just about everything in this movie works. There is some questionable CGI but it isn’t used too much. A few of the characters should have lasted longer but died too soon (e.g. Danny Trejo). The final battle wasn’t much different than the final battle from the original movie. The action is plentiful but not overkill. The acting is pretty damn good including fun performances from Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne, and Walton Goggins. And it uses musical cues from the original, which helps it to better tie in to the franchise as a whole.

Verdict: Good

Drive Angry

This movie stars Nicolas Cage as a man who literally escapes from Hell in order to get revenge on an evil cult.

Verdict: Awesome

What? You need more than that to justify the verdict? I thought that sentence alone would have done it.

OK, so, Drive Angry is cheesy action cinema at its best. Cage died some years ago. His daughter was murdered by a cult, and that same cult is going to kill his granddaughter as a sacrifice to the Devil. Cage knows all this is going on, because in Hell you see nothing but the suffering of your loved ones. So, he does what anyone would do: escape from Hell in a Buick Riveria (the Devil has good taste in cars), and track down the cult.

What happens next is a series of car chases, shoot-outs, and general mayhem. I was surprised at just how graphically violent this movie is. It doesn’t pull any punches in terms of showing us limbs being blown off, brutal beatings, and even Cage getting shot in the face. Yes, you read that correctly. The goofy, over-the-top violence works in the movie’s favor, firmly cementing in the viewer’s minds that this is a grindhouse movie, and should not be taken seriously. If that doesn’t become apparent to you by the time Cage kills bad guys while having sex, then it never will.

Drive Angry is the perfect movie for that person who loves bad movies. It is a tribute to shitty movies. And the special effects, directing, acting, and editing all are pretty good so you still feel like you’re watching a high-end Hollywood movie. If you’re a fan of action, violence, nudity, and, most importantly, Nicolas Cage, then you’ll like this movie.

Verdict: Awesome

Classically Shitty: Rio Bravo vs. High Noon – Battle of the Most Boring Western

Let’s get ready to rumbllllllllllllle!

After watching two of the worst Westerns I’ve ever had the misfortune of seeing, a sense of morbid curiosity forced me to do some research on them (i.e. read the Wikipedia articles). To my surprise, these two movies are directly related. And not simply because they both suck ass.

In 1952, High Noon (starring Gary Cooper and directed by Fred Zinneman) was released. Everybody hated it, and it only became a “classic” to film-fags looking at it in hind-sight. Contemporary people saw it as an allegory for the Red Scare in the U.S., and was deemed “un-American”. After all, any dissent against the government is un-American and therefore COMMUNISM. At least some things haven’t changed. But I digress… High Noon pissed off enough people that John Wayne and Howard Hawks decided they would make an argument against it, and that came in the form of Rio Bravo which was released in 1959.

High Noon pissed me off, too, not because it was un-American, but because it is fucking boring and moves along at a goddamn snail’s pace. I was too busy struggling against an impending coma to notice all the un-American stuff.

Ouran High School Pimp Club

Ouran’s pimps.

Ouran High School Host Pimp Club is a 2006 “reverse harem” anime. What’s a reverse harem, you ask? Well, a “harem” anime is where one meek, bashful, skinny male loser is surrounded by a boatload of busty, horny women who are all vying for control of the guy’s penis. A constant source of rage is the fact that the guy never gets with any of the girls, usually because he’s a fag.

A reverse harem anime is just the opposite. One female character is surrounded by a bunch of dudes who all want her. Upping the ante is that these anime often feature a lot of man-on-man action in order to appeal to the female viewers watching the show. Apparently, all women are into watching gay sex.

The main character of this anime is Haruhi Fujioka, a 15 year old girl who has just entered Ouran Academy. It’s a school for super rich kids who are completely sheltered and spend most of their days doing rich people stuff like: travelling the world, buying expensive shit, getting no legal reprimand from DUIs, exploiting tax loopholes, yachting, opening up child-labor factories in third world countries, and repressing the poor in order to get rich. But I digress…

I Saw the Devil and He Looked Like a Bitch

I saw the Devil’s pants.

I Saw the Devil is a movie that has a good premise, good acting, good directing, and good production values. Despite having so many good things going for it, it’s a piece of crap thanks to having a boneheaded script. No matter how wonderful everything in your movie may be, if your script sucks ass, your movie will suck ass.

The film takes place in South Korea, and the premise is that a serial killer’s latest victim was a young woman who happened to be the fiancée of a spy. The spy uses his training and advanced technology to hunt the killer. But he doesn’t just hunt him down and murder him. No, his revenge is to psychologically torment the killer, making his life a living Hell. Like I said, great premise. Sadly, the characters act like stupid dipshits, ruining the movie.

Young Adult, Gangster Squad

Young Adult

She has a great life.

Young Adult tells the story of an emotionally stunted 37-year-old woman who returns to her hometown in order to win back the love of her life. Unfortunately, there are several problems. First, she is stuck in the past while everyone else has moved on. Second, she’s a narcissistic bitch that everybody hates. And third, the man of her dreams is already married and is not the slightest bit interested in her.

Charlize Theron plays the ghost-writer of a popular book series aimed at high-schoolers. The series has reached its end, and she is bumbling through life with no idea what to do next. She winds up back in her small hometown. She meets a few people she used to know, but we quickly learn she has no friends. She has no friends because she was a total bitch in high school. Her bitchiness has remained the same. Her development has arrested at the young adult period of her life. Theron’s character is also a raging alcoholic, either drunk or hung over in every scene of the film. She is completely delusional in her belief that she can win her old flame back.

Theron shares a significant amount of screen time with Patton Oswalt, who plays a guy who was nearly beaten to death as a teenager. Despite resistance on both ends, the two of them reconnect in a way. He’s funny and charming, and provides a nice balance to Theron’s completely self-centered character. Fortunately, they don’t reconnect in the usual, cliche Hollywood fashion.

The best part of this movie is its realism. It shows that people who were cool in high school usually grow up to be losers. Those people live in a fantasy world, thinking they are still the shit, while everyone else has learned otherwise. In the end, Theron’s character shows little to no growth. Young Adult is an interesting character study. Not much really happens, but it is completely mesmerizing to watch. It has drama, laughs, and a few uncomfortable scenes, too. Even though it was written by Diablo Cody, this movie stands miles above her usual dreck. You should check it out.

Verdict: Good

Gangster Squad

“Myeah, see, I want the Gangster Squad rubbed out, myeah, see.”

This movie begins with the words: “Inspired by a True Story.”

Gee, I wonder which parts of the story were true? I’d bet they were:

• Two cars ripping a bad guy in half.
• Josh Brolin using a moving elevator to sever a guy’s hand.
• Throwing grenades back and forth between two moving cars.
• Sean Penn saying “You know the drill” and then killing a guy with a drill.
• Babygoose talking in a weird, high-pitched voice.
• Faking out the audience to think Josh Brolin’s family is dead, but SURPRISE they are fine. DERP!
• The squad trying to take down Sean Penn’s operation but doing so without any kind of plan.
• The squad (remember, this is the 1940s) being racially diverse.
• Babygoose going after jail bait Emma Stone.
• Babygoose dumping acid on a bad guy’s crotch.
• Josh Brolin throwing away his gun so he can fight Sean Penn hand-to-hand.
• Sean Penn pretending to know how to fight.
• Nick Nolte croaking his lines like a bullfrog.

Gangster Squad has to be the most accurate movie “inspired by a true story” of all time. Man, oh man, I love movies that are based on true stories. Usually, only one aspect of the movie is true and everything else is made up. Fortunately, I can say without hesitation that Gangster Squad doesn’t have this problem. There is no doubt in my mind that this movie is 100% historically accurate. I would like to use this opportunity to thank The Gangster Squad for cleaning up L.A. for good. Thanks to their efforts, it is a clean, prosperous metropolis without gangs, drugs, or crime of any kind.

Verdict: Shitty

Horse Meat is Horsalicious

“Wilbur, nooo!”

I love a good scandal.

There are all kinds of scandals. Sex scandals, financial scandals, government scandals, and that guy who hates gays but turns out to be gay himself scandals. The crazier the better. And right now, Europe is in the throes of one of the craziest scandals of all time. A horse meat scandal.

Delicious.

It all started in January 2013 when horse meat was found mixed in with frozen beef in the UK and Ireland. Genetic testing revealed as much as 29% of the sold meat was from horses. ABP Food Group’s subsidiaries were found to be culpable in the UK and Ireland. February, in France, a company called Spanghero was caught intentionally selling horse meat labelled as beef. Apparently, they bought the meat from Romania, where it had been labeled correctly, and then changed the label to beef. This seemed like a good idea at the time, because people could unwitting get all the health benefits of horse meat Big Macs.

Person of Interest Season 1

Peoples of Interests

J.J. Abrams is the king of producing entertaining pilot episodes. From the incredibly awesome like Fringe to the good but flawed Alias to the hilariously terrible like Lost, he knows how to put together a first episode. Abrams, however, as a hands-off producer, isn’t the driving force behind this series. That title belongs to Jonathan Nolan, brother of famous film director Christopher Nolan. Jonathan is no slouch in the writing department. He wrote a short story which became the film Memento, and he was co-writer on The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. Of course, when I started Person of Interest, I didn’t know any of this, I just started it, expecting another shitty, by the numbers cop procedural.

Surprisingly, this series offers much more than that. Let’s start with the bad stuff. Yes, the show has a case-of-the-week format. Yes, there are a lot of filler episodes. And yes, it airs on network TV which is usually not a good thing. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about the good stuff.

First, the premise is great. A computer genius named Harold Finch (played by Michael Emerson) created “The Machine” for the U.S. government in the paranoia following 9/11. The Machine is an omnipresent monitoring device the government uses to eavesdrop on everyone via security cameras, email, telephones, GPS, etc. If it finds what it perceives to be a terrorist threat, it passes that information to the government. If some piece of information is considered irrelevant, it ignores it. Finch realized that the irrelevant stuff often led to crimes and/or murders that he had no way of stopping. He eventually teams up with a disavowed CIA agent named John Reese (played by Jim Caviezel) and the two of them try to stop the “irrelevant” crimes.

“Let’s go save some people we are interested in.”

Second, the show kicks ass. Solving crimes doesn’t involve a bunch of CSI-style bullshit lab work. No, it typically features Reese following bad guys and then confronting bad guys. In order to solve crimes, he usually commits way more crimes including armed robbery, arson, kidnapping, assault, and murder. Of course, he is doing all this stuff to bad guys, but it is fun to watch him deal vigilante justice and cause way more destruction and mayhem than if he had just ignored the irrelevant crime in the first place. Anytime Reese throws down with someone, the show is plenty exciting.

Third, the writing is great. Despite having a case-of-the-week format, there are several story threads that run continuously throughout the episodes. Every character has a compelling back story, which is teased to the audience through flashbacks throughout the season. By the end of the season you know more about Reese, Finch, The Machine, and the two main antagonists, but you certainly don’t know everything. There are plenty of mysteries left to be unraveled. The show can also be surprising, as when Reese and Finch set out to stop a crime, they don’t know if the person The Machine has given them is going to be the perpetrator or the victim. A couple of times, the person they are protecting turns out to be the bad guy. It keeps the show more fresh and varied, and offers up a good deal of entertainment.

Time to shoot some interesting people.

The acting is kind of a mixed bag. Caviezel plays his character as a stoic, monotone warrior who would rather kick your ass than mince words. At first this seems to be a drawback, but as the character becomes more fleshed out, you get a sense of why he became that way, and it ultimately works in his favor. Emerson is consistently good as the nerdy and paranoid Finch, and manages to be dramatic and comedic in all the right places. Kevin Chapman, who plays a crooked cop (Fusco), is also consistently good. Even guest stars like Enrico Colantoni (Elias) can bring in pretty great performances. The major weak link in the acting is Taraji Henson (Carter), who plays a sassy cop who is hot on Reese’s trail. The material is beyond her capabilities, and she is completely unbelievable as a police detective. Any time she’s on-screen with someone else, she’s upstaged. She doesn’t have the acting chops to successfully pull off this role. I’ve never cared for her. She was annoying on Boston Legal, and she’s just as annoying here.

My biggest complaint of TV in general is that seasons are too long. With a 22 episode order, and maybe 11-12 episodes worth of ideas, the writers are stuck shoe-horning in 9 or 10 shitty episodes every year. If the networks followed cable’s example, and did 13 episode seasons, the writing of all their series would be much better. With Person of Interest, it becomes obvious which episodes are meant to move the story along and which are written as afterthoughts because they needed to fill an order for a specific number of episodes. The filler episodes are generally weak, and easily skippable. The important episodes, though, are a blast, totally engrossing, and definitely worth watching.

Sure, Person of Interest isn’t revolutionary. It’s not meant to be. But it is a step above the typical procedural dreck that plagues network TV. If you are in the mood for something a little different, with a cool premise, fun action, and good writing, then you should check this one out.

Verdict: Good

The Zen of Spam 3

Maintaining a blog for over four years has its perks. One of the best parts is getting great spam messages in the comment inbox. While most of them are links to porn sites or incoherent gibberish, there are a few comedic gems. I have listed some of my favorites, in no particular order. Read them and meditate. To understand them is to achieve enlightenment.

• F*ckin? awesome things here. I?m very satisfied to see your article. Thanks so much and i am having a look ahead to touch you. Will you kindly drop me a e-mail?

Thanks? a lot for the compliment. I?m very satisfied to see your spam comment. Thanks so much and i am having a look ahead to… TOUCH ME?! Holy shit! I think this spambot is stalking me.

• she is about to masturbate in the bedroom in a hotel room after taking her clothes off when her girlfriend s dude buddy knocks at the door.

Woah, that sounds really fucking hot. It’s like I’m reading Penthouse Forum all of a sudden. Hey, don’t stop there. What happens next? I’ve got my tissues and lotion ready. Don’t leave me hanging!

• Had a wardrobe fitting for the next season of iCarly! Freddie’s clothes are Freddie-er than ever. And I still fit in last season’s jeans!

OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS! ONE OF THE CAST MEMBERS FROM iCARLY READS MY BLOG! SQUEEEE! Ahem. But why does it have to be Freddie? Why can’t it be Carly instead? She’s legal now, right?

Dark City? More Like Dark Shitty

A movie so dark it can barely show us its title.

I had read a lot of great things about Dark City. Apparently, it has garnered a cult following, and film critic Roger Ebert has a raging boner for it. But that’s the thing about cult movies. Usually, they aren’t popular for a reason. Sometimes they can turn out great, like Evil Dead. However, most of the time, they suck ass. Dark City is that kind of movie.

Watching it, you can tell that at one point the script was probably good. It tries to tell a complex tale of an amnesiac who suddenly gains telekinetic powers. There are some genuine high-concept ideas as the film poses questions about the nature of personality and memory. If your memories were given to someone else, would that person become you? Would they retain their original personality? What really defines us as individuals? It’s cool stuff, for sure, but it is handled the same way you would handle dogshit: grab it in a plastic bag and throw it away as fast as possible.

Moonrise Kingdom, Pierrot le Fou

Moonrise Kingdom

Oh wow, they are all such tremendous actors.

Director Wes Anderson is the king of quirky independent movies. Just for that you would think I’d automatically hate him. I don’t because I love the movie Rushmore, which is fucking brilliant. So, I was interested to see his new film, which reunited him with actors he uses often like Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman. I was also excited to see Edward Norton and Bruce Willis.

Moonrise Kingdom is about two kids who run away from home. Unexpectedly, 90% of the screentime is devoted to their fledgling love affair. Of course, it’s all viewed through a quirky lens. It’s romanticized to an unneccessary degree, and is made annoyingly wholesome and cute. It’s unfortunate because that drains all of the interesting bits out like a vampire. The remaining 10% focuses on the attempts of the other characters to track them down. This is where Norton, Willis, and a troop of Scouts come in.

Parts of the movie are fun, such as the early attempts to track them down, and the later attempt at avoiding capture. These are the highlights of the movie. The rest of it features more camping scenes than a Harry Potter movie. The majority of the movie’s heavy lifting comes from the two leads who were both 12 years old at the time of filming. And, wouldn’t you know it, they fucking suck at acting.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “LOL BUT BRIK TEHY ARE JUST LITTLE KIDS SO TEHY CANT BE THAT GOOD AT ACTING YET GIVE EM A BREAK LOL!” I’m sorry, but no. You’re wrong. Some kids can be good at acting. Just take a look at Chloe Grace Moretz or that little bastard from The Sixth Sense and tell me their acting is not light years better than the twats in Moonrise Kingdom. The fact that these two can’t act, and that they dominate 90% of the screentime, nearly ruins the movie. Other problems include woefully underdeveloped characters like the parts played by Willis and Murray.

I’m conflicted about this movie. On one hand I want to like it since it’s so off-kilter. On the other hand, the two leads are such horrible actors that the movie should automatically lose points for that. They don’t get a pass for being kid actors. They were both absolutely terrible. It’s like Wes Anderson intentionally sought out shitty kid actors to put in his movie. Maybe he did. Maybe that’s the point? Who knows?

Verdict: Average

Pierrot le Fou

I’m sure this still from the movie has SUPER DEEP MEANING.

If you aren’t a hardcore filmfag, chances are you’ve never heard of this movie. Consider that a blessing. Pierrot le Fuck is a 1965 French movie directed by Jean-Luc Godard. He became a famous director in this era because he liked to film shit in the weirdest way possible, and people thought he was some kind of goddamn genius for it. Pierrot le Fuck is about a couple of egotistical assholes who abandon their families, steal shit, kill some people, and run around like turd burglars for the entire movie. Everybody dies at the end, too, so — spoilers — I guess. The problem really isn’t the story so much as the directing. I couldn’t fucking stand how it was directed. It was way too cool and hip for a troglodyte for me to understand. Everything about it from the way the actors read their lines, to people staring directly at the camera, to how trendy everybody was, to just about fucking everything irritated me to no end. Godard is more pretentious cock gobbler than innovative director. Obviously, this is only a movie for the hardcore amongst us. The only good thing about it was it had some nudity. That’s it. Pierrot le Fuck can go fuck itself. That would be the trendy thing to do.

Verdict: Shitty