The Revenant

“Oh my god, that movie was so crazy,” said Mrs. Brik as we walked out of the theater.

Crazy is a pretty good way to describe The Revenant. It’s a movie about surviving under the most intense conditions. But it’s not just about survival. It’s also about revenge. Leonard DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a man who struggles to stay alive while tracking the man who ruined his life.

The plot is pretty straightforward, and there isn’t much to it other than a basic revenge premise. What sets this movie apart is the setting and the performance from the lead actor.

The Wolf of Wall Street, Blue Ruin

The Wolf of Wall Street

This movie trolls you right out of the gate. Matthew McConaughey shows up as the head of a big Wall Street firm, and positions himself to be Leonardo DiCaprio’s mentor. I was all pumped for some sweet, sweet McConaughey/DiCaprio action, but it turned out to be a bait-and-switch. McConaughey disappears completely. DiCaprio takes center stage as the loathsome central character. What follows next is a completely tiresome, three-hour-long masturbatory fantasy. DiCaprio engages in illegal activities to make himself the king of Wall Street. He and his compatriots party hard and often. There are probably a hundred scenes of them banging hookers and doing cocaine. Now, I’m as big a fan of cocaine and hookers as the next Hollywood executive, but once or twice would have been sufficient. I didn’t need to see it over and over again. The SEC investigates and eventually busts DiCaprio, but they don’t show up until the final hour of the movie. An entire hour of worthless party scenes could have been cut, and nothing would have changed. The only interesting part of the film is near the beginning when DiCaprio discovers he can get rich suckering people into buying Penny Stocks. Otherwise, nothing of interest happens. Other than the tits. Lots and lots of tits.

Verdict: Shitty

Blue Ruin

I like my revenge movies like the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic, Commando. I don’t like them to be about boring, mopey homeless guys. Blue Ruin is about a boring, mopey homeless guy who goes on a killing spree. He murders an ex-con, a dude who served time after killing the homeless dude’s parents. The dead con’s family takes the fight to the homeless guy’s family. The homeless guy, in turn, decides to kill all of them. But don’t mistake this for an action-packed thrill ride with cool explosions, shootouts, and hilarious one-liners. No, the boring, mopey homeless guy acts sullen as he trudges his way through a dreary life. The pacing is languid, and the tone is brooding. There’s very little here to entice a viewer, and the story is entirely forgettable. Good production values are about the only thing this movie has going for it. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Verdict: Bad

The Way Way Back, The Great Gatsby

The Way Way Back

We’ve all been under water?

The Way Way Back tells the story of 14 year old Duncan who is stuck on a summer vacation with his mom, her boyfriend Steve Carell, and his sister. The sister and Carell both hate Duncan. He acts like a whiny turd, so I don’t blame them. At first, I thought the lead in this movie was going to be even worse than that loser from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Actually, for about the first third of the movie, he was worse. Not only was he super-emo, he sulked around without even speaking and acted like a brat. Fortunately, once he got a job at the local water park, and had some “cool lessons” from Sam Rockwell, things started to pick up.

The beginning of the movie was painful. Duncan is an absolute bore to watch on the screen with all his moping around. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? We aren’t given any reason to. We know nothing about him other than the fact that people dislike him. That’s not a good enough reason, Hollywood. Maybe everyone hates him for a reason. Maybe he’s the head of a neo-Nazi cult in his high school or something. You can’t have your lead character be a sad-sack and expect us to have sympathy for him just because. Anyway, like I said, things get a lot better once he starts working for Rockwell at the Water Wizz theme park.

Django Should Have Left the Chains On

Django is off the chain. Get it? Anyone? Hello?

Middle-school drop-out Quentin Tarantino brings us his newest film, a Western-inspired adventure through the South complete with his trademark dialog, excessive violence, and bizarre sense of humor. The movie begins with the date, 1858, and a statement, “Two years before the Civil War.” That would be true if the Civil War began in 1860. But it began in 1861. Maybe if Tarantino hadn’t dropped out of Middle-school, he would realize that 61 – 58 does not equal 2.

Django Unchained tells the story of Django, a slave who becomes a free man. The majority of the film is his quest to free his wife Broomhilda from slavery, as well. In doing so, he teams up with a bounty hunter and goes under-cover, so to speak, in order to accomplish his goals. At its heart, this movie is a revenge tale, an outlet of anger against slavery at the hands of white oppressors.

Awesomest/Shittiest Things of 2010

It seems like every year brings nothing but 365 days of non-stop shit. Awesome things are much harder to come by. It would have been a piece of cake to write a top 10, top 20, or top 500 list of shitty things that happened in 2010. Choosing just a few was quite a challenge. An even greater challenge was finding an equal number of awesome things from this year. With a little bit of scrounging, I realized that there were some cool things that happened in 2010, after all. This list is the best and worst things of the year, as I see it, which means it is 100% right. If you disagree with any of them, you’re 100% wrong. So here you have it, a list of the awesomest and shittiest things of 2010.

Awesome

1. Large Hadron Collider – It’s the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. From smashing atoms it is expected to help answer some of the universe’s greatest questions from the Big Bang Theory to the Mystery of Oprah’s Fluctuating Weight. It had countless delays but finally got up and running this year. Scientists are already using it in the hopes of analyzing Dark Matter. Doomsday-nutjobs predict that the LHC will atom-smash its way into the complete destruction of the universe. Sweet!
2. Inception – It’s actually pretty rare for Hollywood to make a good movie, let alone a great one. This film had it all. From cast to music to action to directing to plot, this movie shines in every department. It is a rare and wonderful thing when a movie doesn’t dumb itself down to pander to the billions of mouth-breathers who will inevitably watch it. I suppose it’s rare because movie studio execs are mouth-breathers, too. While the story about dream-stealers wasn’t particularly confusing if you actually paid attention (most people didn’t), it was innovative enough to draw you into its world. It was intelligent, with overlapping dream sequences, and fun, with the incredibly entertaining rotating hallway scene. Director Christopher Nolan worked on this for nearly a decade, and his love for it and detail to attention really shines through. Probably the best movie of the year.
3. Goldilocks Planet – Scientists discovered a planet about 20 light years away which, like Earth, has all the right factors to sustain life. Better yet, scientists hypothesize that there are many more planets like it in the universe, meaning there could be a lot of aliens out there. Hopefully, they are all super hot and look exactly like humans except for weird shit on their faces just like in Star Trek. Can someone say alien porno?
4. Russian Spy Ring – Earlier this year the FBI busted a Russian spy ring that was operating in the U.S. Some of them had been spying for Mother Russia since the mid-1990s, while others came on board later. They had spied on various facets of the U.S. government, and had a complex, covert means of communicating with Russia. They were eventually caught, and traded back to Russia in a large-scale prisoner exchange. Best of all, one of them was definitely supermodel material. There’s nothing like a beautiful Russian agent to bring out those James Bond fantasies in all of us.
5. Winter Olympics – It always seems like the Winter Olympics is the ugly half-sister of the super-hot Summer Olympics. This year, however, things were different. People were genuinely excited for the games, and I found myself watching it often. For some reason, everything was captivating from Snowboarding to Speed Skating to Bobsleigh to Country Cross Skiing. Yes, that’s right, even Cross Country Skiing was awesome. I had always remembered it as some boring guys doing a leisurely snow-walk across a flat surface. What I saw this year was a bunch of totally crazy dudes racing full force through a mountain of snow with a couple of skiis attached to their feet. It was hardcore, and they looked like they were putting way more energy into it than any Summer Olympics track star. I will definitely be tuning in to the Winter Olympics in the future. It is the ugly half-sister no longer.
6. Psychic World Cup Octopus – Paul the Octopus lived humbly in Germany. During the 2010 World Cup, he had accurately predicted all of the winners of 8 matches, including the final round. Food (a mussel) was placed in two boxes, each with the flag of a country. Whichever mussel Paul ate first was predicted to win the match. And he never got one wrong. The undefeated octopus was indeed psychic. Now all I need to do is kidnap the little guy and take him on a roadtrip to Vegas.
7. Flight Attendant Quits – Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater quit in a blaze of glory that I certainly hope to live up to someday. When a passenger gave him some attitude, he decided he had enough. He used the intercom to let loose a tirade of four-letter words, grabbed a couple of beers, and commandeered the emergency escape ramp to slide out of the plane. There are very few things more awesome than cursing at someone and downing some booze while you’re at work.
8. Daft Punk – This is by far the most talented electronic music group working today, and probably of all time. This year Disney made a smart move by allowing them to do the entire soundtrack to their movie Tron: Legacy. It only makes sense to have a electronic soundtrack populating a computerized world. It’s rare for such a perfect match to happen these days. Apparently, one of the two robots of Daft Punk stated he was heavily influenced by the visual aesthetic of the original Tron film. I guess that means things have come full circle. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack fucking rocked.
9. Colbert Testifies – For some reason, Congress decided to call Stephen Colbert to testify in front of a House of Representatives subcommittee on illegal immigration. Apparently Congressmen don’t watch TV. Either that or they are completely retarded for thinking that Colbert was going to give earnest testimony. And why would a TV comedian be qualified to testify on such an issue? They wouldn’t, but that gives you an idea of how in-touch with reality U.S. politicians are. Colbert appeared in character and immediately showed anyone who watched it what a farce the whole thing was. He kicked things off early with this line, “As you heard this morning, America’s farms are presently far too dependent upon immigrant labor to pick our fruits and vegetables. Now the obvious answer is for all of us to stop eating fruits and vegetables. And if you look at the recent obesity statistics, you’ll see that many Americans have already started.” And later, “Because my great grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of  the Atlantic Ocean to see this country overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That’s the rumor, I don’t know if that’s true, I’d like to have that stricken from the record.” And finally, “For one thing, when you’re picking beans, you have to spend all day bending over. It turns out – and I did not know this – most soil is at ground level. If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we make the earth waist-high? Come on, where is the funding?” It takes a lot of balls to walk into Congress, who is 100% serious and 100% stupid, and make fun of them right to their faces.
10. This blog – rules.

Shitty

1. Bristol Palin – The evil spawn of Sarah Palin has already had more publicity than any vapid, obese teen mom should. The biggest insult to humanity in 2010 was subjecting us to her antics on TV’s Dancing with the Stars. For the love of god, who would want to watch her ineptly gyrating on stage week after week? And I really do mean week after week, because she lasted until the final episode. Making matters even crazier is that her bitch mom forced her to go on DWTS because she “owed” it to her after she caused her to lose the 2010 election. Yeah Sarah, I’m sure the fact that you quit your first term as Governor, and you can “see Alaska from my house” had nothing to do with it. If you didn’t think it could get worse, well it does because Bristol is also the only contestant on DWTS history to actually gain weight! Yes, all those hours of dancing must have been off-balanced by the extra Big Macs and Twinkies she shoved in her face every night. Finally, her dancing was so awful a Wisconsin man made national headlines when he was so enraged by Bristol’s terrible dancing that he blasted his TV with a shotgun, resulting in a standoff with police. You see, Bristol, look at what you’ve done. I think you “owe” it to us to never appear on TV again.
2. iPhone4/Steve Jobs – The iPhone 4 was supposed to be like the Jesus of telephones. It could perform miracles and come back from the dead. It could do anything… except make phone calls. Apparently they changed the antenna so that when you held the phone a certain way, the calls would get dropped or not go through at all. Fan-fucking-tastic engineering, Apple. Of course when people started complaining, the incredibly humble and consummate everyman Steve Jobs told people, “Just avoid holding it that way.” Thanks, Steve, next time I make a call I’ll try to avoid holding the phone with my hand. Asshole.
3. 3D – Will this trend please, please die already? It worked well enough in Avatar, but only because director James Cameron essentially built a whole new 3D camera rig from the ground up. Of course it still gave me a headache while I was watching it, but it was OK for just that one movie. Unfortunately, now everything is in fucking 3D. Most of it is shitty post-converted 3D, which means it wasn’t filmed that way, so it looks extra terrible like The Last Airbender. It seems like every movie is being made in 3D now, and Hollywood is charging extra for the ticket prices. It’s a shitty gimmick that allows them to continue to get away with weak ass stories and shitty acting. Hey Hollywood, how about this for a gimmick: make good movies for a change.
4. U.S. Republican Party – To quote Obi Wan Kenobi, in Capitol Hill, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Never before have I seen a group of people so adamantly opposed to doing absolutely anything. For the last two years, Republicans have cockblocked every bill brought to Congress by Democrats simply because they were brought to Congress by Democrats. That’s right, they opposed everything simply out of principle. And we aren’t talking heavily partisan politics here, we are talking bills that would do things like help decrease the world’s supply of nuclear weapons. Yeah, we can’t have enough of those. (Eventually they did pass that one, but only after bitching about it for months ahead of time.) Republicans, however, are amazing in their ability to use Jedi Mind Tricks on the American public. They brainwashed everyone into thinking that lowering taxes on the richest citizens (while not giving a fuck about anyone else), and effectively decreasing the flow of revenue into the government, would somehow decrease the giant deficit. Bravo! I am genuinely impressed. Democrats are idiots, too, because they essentially just laid down and allowed this shit to happen to them despite having control of Congress with a super-majority. Nice going, dipshits. I think that the Republicans should attempt to do something in order to get things moving along in the U.S, and Democrats should stop being such pussies. If nobody does anything, then how do they expect anything to change? On the bright side, former Republican Congressman and world-class asshole Tom Delay, was convicted of money laundering in 2010. So at least we have that to smile about.
5. Bieber Fever – It’s not Justin Bieber that I have a problem with. To me, he’s like… eh, whatever. What pisses me off are his ridiculously obsessive, moronic fans. They actually remind me a lot of Twilight fans. While Twilight fans are sickening, obese, middle-aged housewives who fantasize about dreamy guys who don’t have sex, Bieber fans are sickening, obese, pre-teen/teenage girls who fantasize about an androgynous guy who probably hasn’t developed pubic hair yet. His songs aren’t that good, yet they flood the radio. As a teenage generic love-song factory, he was rightly given a multi-episode guest starring role on the TV show CSI. Yeah, that makes sense. His performance was… hilariously amazing. And now Bieber fever has catapaulted him to star in his own movie Never Say Never, which of course is a movie about his life. Ah, I can’t wait to see all the arduous trials, his long slow struggle through his career, and the sage wisdom he accumulate over all of his 16 years.
6. Kesha – The fact that this bitch can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t write coherent songs, is drunk 99% of the time, isn’t attractive, and can still be a major music star is the reason why I have shunned popular music. Since she can’t sing she just pseudo-raps or “sing/talks” throughout each track with heavy auto-tuning to make up for her wailing voice, which is akin to the cry of a dying cat. Her songs are horrible, but the music industry wants them to be hits, so they just force radio stations to play them over and over again until they eventually become hits. Between her braindead “music” and Kanye West getting credit for rapping over Daft Punk’s hard work (i.e. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger), the music industry should just burn in hell.
7. BP Oil Rig Leak – This one seems like an obvious choice, I realize that. But it doesn’t make it any less shitty. For months oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. Nobody seemed to give a fuck, and the oil kept coming and coming. And of course it happened to New Orleans, who seems to have still not quite made it out of the Hurricane Katrina clusterfuck. Poor New Orleans seems to be a magnet for bad shit. Pretty soon Bristol Palin will fly down there to dance for them, causing their next natural disaster. At the very least the oil leak seemed to have a decent resolution. Unfortunately, Obama seemed to care about this as much as Bush did about Katrina. It’s not like Obama was going to personally dive underwater and plug up the leak, but he could have at least pretended to give a shit.
8. Full Body Airport Security Scanners – There’s nothing better than having a creepy, bald-headed, nude photograph taken of you at the airport for TSA to drool over and inevitably jerk off to. I’m glad that this is what airport security has come to. Either have a public naked picture taken of you (With bonus radiation zapped through your body!), or get a public groping instead. Decisions, decisions. Benjamin Franklin said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I agree with him, and people who complacently agree to be scanned should go fuck themselves.
9. Jay Leno/Tonight Show Debacle – Last place network NBC made a great move earlier this year by firing Conan O’Brien from his 6-month-long hosting stint at The Tonight Show and replacing him with former host Jay Leno. Conan put up a fight, and NBC went straight to a child-like tantrum by threatening to block Conan from appearing anywhere on TV for the next three years. Leno, of course, was backing NBC’s decision, so he looked like a complete tool. Soon, everything went entirely to shit, and NBC fired Conan. Conan fought back with his last week of shows by spending exorbitant amounts of money, just to stick it to NBC as a final “fuck you.” So now that Leno is back as the host of The Tonight Show, how did it all work out? Well, The Tonight Show has the worst ratings in the series’ history, NBC is still the last place network, NBC’s jackass president resigned, and Conan’s new show on TBS is getting better ratings than The Tonight Show. You see, NBC? That’s what you get for being douchebags.
10. Any blog that isn’t this one – sucks.

Well, the year 2010 has given us plenty of awesome things, but way more shitty things. I suppose every year is like that. Let’s see what happens in 2011. I’m sure there will be no shortage of shit that will piss me off.