New Year, New Logo (Part 3)

As you can see, the logo at the top of the page has changed once again. It’s the fourth banner featured at Awesomely Shitty. This stunning artwork was brought to you by Chaz the Silencer, the same genius who created the site’s second banner. He’s obviously a rock star, a sex god, and a pillar of humanity. Be sure to check out his blog to pay the man some respect. I really like this logo for a few reasons. First, the colors are fantastic. Second, it is unique and funny. And third, it features an example of something awesome and something shitty (with the shitty thing getting destroyed): Conan the Barbarian and Lucky Star. Well, I hope you like it, too, because you’ll be looking at it for at least a year. Hopefully, Awesomely Shitty will continue to be your go-to place for the worst reviews on the Internet in 2013!

Lessons Learned from The Wicker Man (AKA Oh No, Not the Bees!)

A picture of Cage running with a blank stare on his face perfectly encapsulates this movie.

The 2006 instant classic The Wicker Man starring Nicolas Cage has quite a few valuable lessons to teach us. Here’s a list of the things I took away from this thought-provoking cinematic masterpiece.

1) You don’t need good acting when the dialog is this amazing - Seriously, the dialog is stellar. It’s so goddamn good, they could have filmed the pages of the script and it would have been just as exciting. For example, in the very first scene, a waitress asks how a customer is doing. He answers, “Sorry, my mind was wandering” to which she deftly replies, “If I ate one of those burgers, I’d totally be in a trance, too.” Hilarious! A few moments later, Cage’s cop character pulls someone over and he asks, “You know why I stopped you?” The driver says, “Yeah.” And – scene! Amazing! Are we sure this movie wasn’t directed by Hitchcock?

2) It’s best to be as literal as possible - Cage gets a letter from Willow stating her daughter Rowan has been missing for 2 weeks. He talks to another cop, we have no idea who he is, but presumably he’s Cage’s boss or something. He explains the letter and says he is going to the island of Summersisle to investigate. The friend asks, “Who is she? An ex-girlfriend?” Cage answers, “No, we were engaged.” That’s right. Not an ex-girlfriend, an ex-fiance. How can we expect to live in a functional society unless we are being as literal as possible? I, for one, applaud Cage for being completely specific. If we don’t abide by the rules, then we are living in anarchy.

3) Drinking is good for you - Cage drinks mead almost immediately after stepping onto the island. What we didn’t see were all the deleted scenes where he got hammered on mead. In fact, Cage was probably drunk on mead the entire time he was filming The Wicker Man. How else could he have turned in such an inspired performance? Substances must have helped him along the way. And to be completely honest, drunk on mead is the only way to watch The Wicker Man.

Looper Pooper

Sup, bros? I saw this totally rad movie over the weekend called Pooper. And by totally rad I mean it gave me the same feeling I have when I chug too much Jager and have to puke.

All my bros in film reviewing land had the exact same things to say about Pooper: “mind-bending”, “smart”, “scintillating”, “smart”, “creative”, “exciting”, “smart”, “very smart”, “high-concept”, “intelligent”, and “smart.” While my bros out there really liked this movie, I’m still wondering if they thought it was a smart movie. It’s hard to tell. In fact, I just typed “smart” so many times, it doesn’t even look like a real word any more. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

The Only Show On NBC is The Biggest Loser

That is one fat logo.

I swear to god, every time I’m scanning through the channels and come across NBC, it is invariably airing an episode of The Biggest Loser. It’s another one of those reality TV shows where someone gets eliminated every week, a clone of Survivor. Instead of featuring people losing weight from starvation on an island, it features people losing weight by exercising.

They get the biggest fatties, I’m talking about the fattest of the fat. The people your mom told you not to point at and make fun of, but you do anyway. Every time I’ve watched this show, it’s 2 painful hours of watching sweaty fatties do pushups and run on treadmills and talk about how courageous they all are for exercising. Great job, fatties. Personally, I think it seems way more courageous to eat McDonald’s and Dairy Queen and drink 64 ounce sodas every day and risk a slow, painful death by diabetes. But then again, this is an American TV show, so I guess to Americans exercise is hard and therefore courageous. 

Sucker Punch, Cedar Rapids

Sucker Punch

The vivid artistry and the subtle nuance of metaphor truly comes alive in this piece.

This is one of those big-budget movies that is so bad it defies explanation. After watching it I had to rethink some of my previous “shitty” verdicts. Keep in mind this didn’t prompt me to change any of my past verdicts, but this movie is so fucking bad, it made me seriously reconsider the definition of “shitty.”

Written, produced, and directed by Zack Snyder, this 2011 “film” is one of the smelliest turds Hollywood has crapped out in a long time. Eschewing all plot, logic, and character development for flashy visuals, the movie stumbles along from action sequence to action sequence until it reaches a laughably idiotic finale. Below is a list of reasons why this movie sucks so hard:

• Entire production filmed against a green screen
• Waife-like beautiful women are all experts in weapons and martial arts.
• People casually walking away from explosions or collapsing buildings.
• Giant samurai robots.
• WWI-era steampunk German zombies. (yes, you read that sentence correctly)
• Using WWII-era planes to fight medieval-fantasy orcs and dragons.
• Girls getting the shit beaten out of them, crashing through buildings, etc. and not getting a scratch on them.
• Weird flying mecha in the aforementioned WWI-era setting.
• Fighting hordes of non-descript robots.
• Tons of slow-mo action, punctuated by brief super-fast action, to be brought back again to more slow-mo action.

The mish-mash of genres, settings, and action styles must have seemed like a ZOMG AWESOME idea to Snyder, but it turned out horribly. It looks more like a shitty video game than a movie. And the storyline is just about as good as one you’d find in a mindless button-mashing PS2 game from the early 2000s. I especially like how the girls only enter the “fantasy world” when they start dancing. OH MAN I CAN’T WAIT TO KICK GERMAN STEAMPUNK ZOMBIE ASS BUT FIRST I JUST GOTTA DANCE! I also like how the “fantasy world” is actually already within another “fantasy world.” So we go two layers deep, like Inception, but without any coherence or good plotting. I also like how Jon Hamm is slumming it for some reason at the end of the movie. The acting is horrible, the special effects gaudy and overused (i.e. every second of the movie), there are huge gaps in logic in every aspect of the story, and the plot is just all around clunky and terrible. What do you expect when Snyder co-wrote it with Steve Shibuya, who has no other writing credits, and his biggest previous work was as Production Assistant: Effects Unit in Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

Probably my favorite part is that this run-down shit-hole mental institution’s only inhabitants are young, thin, incredibly attractive 20-something girls. Could someone please point me in the direction of this psychiatric facility so I can apply for a job? Thanks.

Verdict: Shitty

Cedar Rapids

The crazy mofos of Cedar Rapids.

It’s unfortunate that, a lot of times, smaller movies don’t get the proper distribution and advertising they deserve. They may get a limited run at an art-house cinema, and then get lost into obscurity. One of those movies is the 2011 film Cedar Rapids. It was on the 2009 “Black List” – a list of the most liked unproduced Hollywood screenplays. Previous entires on the list include 50/50, The King’s Speech, and Juno.

Fortunately, Cedar Rapids didn’t stay on the Black List for long. It is a very funny movie about a small town insurance salesman named Tim Lippe (played by The Office’s Ed Helms), who gets sent by his company to the annual convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. To Tim, Cedar Rapids is the big city. He has never left home before. He wants to stay on the straight-and-narrow, as his company is eligible for the prestigious ”Two Diamond Award”, which they have won the previous four years. If he screws up and they don’t win the award, he’ll be out of a job.

Complicating matters, the hotel is overbooked and salesman are forced to double-up their rooms. Tim gets roomed with the brash and rude Dean Ziegler (played by John C. Reilly). The bulk of the movie features Tim’s downward spiral as he loosens up, starts to drink, gets wasted, cheats on his girlfriend (played by Sigourney Weaver) with Joan (played by Anne Heche), hangs out with prostitutes, sings Karaoke, uses meth, and tries to bribe his way into winning the coveted award.

Raunchy comedy is certainly nothing new, but Cedar Rapids has an indelible charm, and an absolutely hilarious cast, all of whom are acting at the top of their games. It manages to be funny, totally inappropriate, charming, and crude all at once. It is skillfully directed and written. It is a comedy that should not be missed by anyone.

While people are out laughing at drek like That’s My Boy, The Dictator, or Mirror Mirror, they are missing out on movies that are truly funny. I hope more people discover Cedar Rapids, because it has a lot to offer.

Verdict: Good

Ga-Rei: Zero

Coming from 2011, and consisting of 12 episodes, Ga-Rei: Zero is an anime prequel to the manga series Ga-Rei by Hajime Segawa. I don’t read manga (mostly because I’m illiterate), so I had no idea what to expect going into this.

The Ministry of Defense has a secret unit known as the Supernatural Disaster Countermeasure Division, whose job it is to defend Japan from all sorts of paranormal bad guys. The first episode shows a unit killing some deadly monsters, and that first episode was incredible. The characters were really interesting, they were all mature adults (rare for an anime), and they seemed to have an intriguing back story. Plus, the animation was outstanding. This had to rank up there with some of the best single-episode animation quality of all time.

And then, once the unit returns from their successful mission, they get slaughtered. SURPRISE! The characters I just invested a half-hour in all got murdered. TROLLING! What remains is some mysterious teenage girl with a katana, who killed them all. That intriguing back story? Never mentioned again. It was just a way to further troll the viewers into thinking these characters would be important, just to extract shock value when they suddenly died.

Black Butler, Blue Exorcist

Black Butler

This is the gayest anime I have ever seen.

You know you’re in trouble when you start a new anime, and the first episode is filler. This whole show is filler. As far as I can tell there isn’t any story. It’s just about some really effeminate rich kid and his incredibly flamboyant butler. 99% of this show focuses on them homolusting after one another, prancing around and acting extremely gay. They pretend to not be gay, but their gayness brims to the surface every second of every episode. Their gayness completely envelopes the series into a nauseating mess of unwatchable shit. This show is gayer than Descendants of Darkness and that show had characters who were openly gay. This show is an insult to anyone who appreciates good acting, good storytelling, good characters, good pacing, good directing, and good taste. Hell, it’s an insult to homosexuality. It’s like a teenage girl’s idea of what it’s like to be gay. “LOL LIKE OHMYGOD THEY ARE TOOOOTALLY GAY THEY WEAR THIGH HIGH LEATHER BOOTS AND FRILLY FRENCH CLOTHES AND STARE LONGINGLY INTO EACH OTHER’S EYES AND GET REALLY CLOSE WITHOUT KISSING JUST TO BUILD SEXUAL TENSION LOL!” Black Butler should be classified under the genre of “hate crime.” By the way, why is it titled Black Butler when the butler is white? Oh, and did I mention it’s incredibly gay? Yes that’s right, gay. Gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay.

Verdict: Shitty

Blue Exorcist

The assholes of Blue Exorcist

You’d expect Blue Exorcist to be nothing more than typical shonen trash. And guess what? You’d be right. Blue Exorcist, while entertaining, offers up absolutely nothing that the tired genre hasn’t already seen. The protagonist (his name doesn’t matter because he is just like every other shonen series protagonist) is an irresponsible oaf who carries an untapped power. Unbeknownst to him, he is the son of Satan and is filled with all sorts of demonic powers. Wouldn’t you know it, this is revealed to him in the first episode, and he decides to fight on the side of good. He immediately enrolls in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry True Cross Academy where he learns how to be an exorcist. There he meets a bunch of stock secondary characters that no shonen series can do without. Also, his younger brother turns out to be an exorcist too, and is ZOMG SO AMAZING THAT HE IS THE PROTAGONIST’S TEACHER ZOMG! *sigh* Throughout his training, the protagonist battles all kinds of monsters, and eventually has to face off against his daddy Satan. During the final battle, which lasted several episodes, I kept wondering: “Where are the real exorcists? You know, the school’s teachers or the people from the Vatican?” Apparently, they don’t give a shit about fighting the world’s greatest threat, the Devil. They figured they could leave it up to some students. Fortunately, the protagonist and his brother fend off Satan and the world is saved. The End. Oh wait, no, not before they have one final battle with a demon who inhabits motor vehicles. What the fuck? The only thing that stood out for me in this show are the number of moles characters have. The brother had three moles on his face. The protagonist’s mother had four moles on her face. Whoever did the character designs for this clearly has a mole fetish. While Blue Exorcist has good animation quality and is mildly entertaining to watch, it ultimately should be relegated to the cookie-cutter shonen garbage bin.

Verdict: Bad

Moneyball, Alias Season 3

Moneyball

Moneyball? More like money... um, sorry, no joke is coming to mind.

I thought this was going to be a porno. Look at the title. Money-ball. Anyway, this movie was actually pretty good even though it wasn’t a porno. It is based on the idea that you don’t need to waste a lot of money getting the biggest sports stars (usually the biggest assholes, too) in order to have a winning team. You hire the guys who have consistent stats, who aren’t flashy but have good fundamentals, and eventually you win games by sheer statistics. This appeals to me, because it means you don’t need those narcissistic fuckos who think they are King Shit of the sport. I hope those guys will eventually get paid less because of this. But probably not. We’ll continue to throw ourselves at the alter of sports celebrity. “LOL BUT BRIK TEHY ARE SUPAR TALENTED THEY TOTALY NEED TO MAKE $7.5 MILLION A YEAR TO THROW A BALL LOL!” *sigh*

So, the movie told an interesting story, and definitely a unique one in the vast field of derivative sports films. Brad Pitt turned in a strong performance. The directing was good. There was humor in the right places. The only thing that didn’t work was the treacly, forced “heartwarming” relationship between Pitt and his daughter. It was like some producer was yelling: “THERE ISN’T ENOUGH HEART IN THIS MOVIE! WE NEED TO HAVE HEART! SOMEONE GET A TWEEN AND HAVE HER PLAY A GUITAR! THAT WAY PEOPLE WILL KNOW THIS MOVIE HAS HEART!” Aside from that misstep, it was a good movie, and is worth checking out.

Verdict: Good

Alias season 3

Alias season 3 cast.

While seasons 1 and 2 delivered fairly consistent entertainment, season 3 took a nosedive into a giant pool of shit. The plot was nonsensical. Sydney goes missing for 2 years and has amnesia of only those two years she was gone. Yeah, cause that’s how amnesia works (not). The initial focus is to figure out where she was and what she was doing. Of course, the CIA unquestioningly welcomes her back (yeah, right), and immediately starts sending her out on dangerous missions (yeah, right). Eventually, the writers got bored/confused by this plotline, and just ended it halfway through the season when an old guest star shows up and says, “LOL SYDNEY I KNOW WHERE YOU’VE BEEN FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS AND NOW LET ME EXPLAIN EVERYTHING TO YOU IN THE MOST BORING WAY IMAGINABLE INSTEAD OF TREATING THE AUDIENCE TO SOMETHING INTERESTING AND THEN WE’LL ALL COMPLETELY FORGET ABOUT THIS STORYLINE LOL!”

The remainder of the season makes no sense. Vaughn’s wife Lauren turns out to be a double agent who isn’t field trained, and then suddenly is a bad-ass on par with James Bond. Lauren and Sark head up the bad guys’ U.S. field office (which apparently has no other members), but then suddenly they are both answering to Lauren’s mom who is also a villain (and kills her senator husband) for no discernible reason. Things get more and more ridiculous: Jack IM-chats with Irina and tells her he loves her even though she is an internationally wanted criminal and up until this point he wanted to kill her, Jack helps Sloane fake his own death, Sloane may be Sydney’s biological father but that plot point is dropped almost immediately, the Rambaldi stuff makes no sense, the Lazare stuff makes no sense, Senator Lindsey is good one moment and then bad the next, all of the Triad stuff from season 2 is never resolved, and worst of all, the primary focus of the season is a love triange between Sydney, Vaughn, and Lauren. Lame. This is one of the worst seasons of any TV series I have ever seen. In the first episode of season 4, Vaughn said, “Last year sucked!” Yes it did, Vaughn, yes it did. Apparently, the writers were well aware of the giant shit they took.

Verdict: Shitty

Classically Shitty: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Hilarious? Were there jokes in this movie? I must have missed them.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of those “classic” movies you are supposed to like because film-fags said so. But it’s awful. I can’t think of a single redeeming aspect of this movie. Sure, it has George Peppard of A-Team fame, but that doesn’t enhance the movie. Maybe if halfway through Mr. T burst through a brick wall, gold chains glittering, a machine gun blasting, bullets ripping Holly Golightly’s flesh into threads, the movie could have been cool. But that didn’t happen, so it’s a piece of shit.

The actual breakfast at Tiffany’s is the first scene of the movie. But it’s so vague you have no idea what the fuck is happening. Holly stands outside the store some time before it opens and eats a pastry. That’s it. That was the breakfast at Tiffany’s. Well, the breakfast outside Tiffany’s at any rate. I guess you could end the movie right there. It would be preferable to the non-stop shitfest that follows. And believe me, it is a shitfest. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is boring, has shitty dialogue, a retarded protagonist, and it’s incredibly racist, too. It really has it all. 

Fifty Reasons Why 50/50 Sucked

I'm not going to waste my time listing 50 reasons why this movie was terrible because I don't need that many to argue my case, but it sounds catchy, so just go with it.

This movie had all the elements, in theory, to be awesome. It had a decent cast, i.e. Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It had balls jokes in the trailer. Finally, it was written by Will Reiser, who had something to do with Da Ali G Show, which led me to believe it might be decent. I was prepared to be inspired by the heartwarming story of JGL overcoming cancer, while giggling at poop jokes made by Seth Rogen. I was sorely disappointed.

The overarching reason I hated this movie was that it tried to show something “true-to-life” in a way that got the details of real life completely wrong. (If you get the details wrong, it pulls me out of movieland and back to reality, where I am then free to judge mercilessly.)

Take the oncologist he sees, for example. The doctor has absolutely no people skills and won’t even look JGL in the eye when he’s talking to him. He only knows how to use extremely complex medical terminology that JGL can’t understand, and on top of all of that he brings JGL into a swanky office, with a desk between them, instead of, oh, I don’t know, an EXAM ROOM like most docs use, to diagnose him with the tumor. I know it’s popular in society to hate on doctors right now for having no empathy or compassion, because doctors are huge assholes who don’t give a shit about their patients, they go into it just to get rich and to have a personal stripper on speed dial, but come on. Think it through. What person would go through four years of medical school, incurring 6 digit debt, followed by 3-11 years of slave labor training just for the money? And explain to me how after that 3-11 years of patient contact (not counting the 2 years in medical school) a person manages to escape without any people skills whatsoever? Hollywood just pisses me off with their portrayal of the medical community in general, and 50/50 did no better than most other films out there at capturing reality.

Jumping off of that, how exactly was his therapist a doctor? She introduced herself as doctor, then proceeded to say she was working on her dissertation and was under supervision (but where the hell was the supervisor) and oh shit, her office was awfully nice for a student. I’m pretty sure (positive, because I’ve seen one) that they just cram “students” or “residents” or whatever into any small crevice available, with old piece of shit furniture and no A/C controls, and you’re lucky if you get a window. I can guarantee that your supervisor would be present with your first patient. They don’t just let you run with it on your own, if they did they’d be personally responsible if that patient hurt himself or someone else. Luckily, JGL just decided to call her up and ask her out ON HER PERSONAL CELL PHONE NUMBER THAT SHE GAVE HIM!!!!!!!!! This probably does not outrage you as much as it does me, but I am married to a psychiatrist and you Never. Give. Out. Your. Personal. Phone. Number. Not to patients. Don’t do it. Horrible idea. They WILL call you, at all hours of the night, for emergencies like “I can’t sleep unless you give me more Xanax.”

Ok, enough with the ranting on the medical stuff. Let’s move on.

I really hated JGL’s character in this movie. He was totally spineless before the tumor literally ate up his spine, so honestly I didn’t give a crap if he got over cancer or not. I couldn’t sympathize with him. He let his girlfriend walk all over him and cheat on him with a stinky hippie; his friend had to bitch out his girlfriend for him because he didn’t have the balls to do it himself (did he also have cancer there?). At the end it seemed like somehow the cancer taught him to be more assertive, but if anything cancer would beat you down even more. I don’t buy that his growing tumor also magically grew his self-confidence.

The entire idea of a comedy about cancer is flawed to begin with. It’s an oxymoron. There’s nothing you can say to make cancer funny. Was I supposed to be lol’ing when JGL’s old man friend passed away (in the span of a week, when he previously looked perfectly healthy)? Was I supposed to be LMFAO when he was getting chemo? I just don’t get how the two fit together, and from what I saw, they didn’t. One of the only funny things in the movie was when he shaved his head with the balls trimmer, but the outcome was that JGL had a buzz cut, and all I could think after that was “JGL looks really ugly with a buzz cut.” JGL isn’t exactly the sexiest man in Hollywood, but I can usually fantasize about making sweet, sweet love to him during his movies. Like in Inception, where he was exceptionally well dressed during the entire film, had witty dialogue, and oh yeah, he had hair. 50/50 really cock-blocked me on this one.

Now my head smells like your balls.

I can’t write this review without mentioning the dog his cheating girlfriend gave him, Skeletor. WHAT THE FUCK? Did you see that dog? Did they starve that dog on set just to make the name Skeletor more fitting? I get that greyhounds are lanky dogs, they are runners, blah blah blah. But you are NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE ALL OF THEIR BONES. If you can, they are too skinny. Someone should call the ASPCA or PETA or something on them. I can’t find a picture to prove my point here but I remember being completely disgusted in the theater. A little ribs showing is one thing; seeing hip bones is absolutely too thin and I distinctly remember seeing hip bones.

I really wanted to like 50/50. Comedy about inappropriate subjects is right up my alley. But while the movie had some funny moments, overall it just didn’t feel real. I could never get sucked in to the movie’s world and get lost in the story. They made too many mistakes, in my opinion, for the movie to have any real heart.

Verdict: Shitty