Quick Review: Ant-Man

 Ant-Man is a tricky situation when it comes to reviewing the movie itself, but in the wake of my Fantastic Four review, I feel like it provides a much needed contrast. What Ant-Man had, going in, that Fantastic Four didn't, was a level of expectation on the part of much of Marvel fandom. Maybe not even Marvel fandom, but Edgar Wright fans to be certain. Ant-Man was, by Wright's admission, a passion project, and his very public departure from the film left Marvel and Kevin Feige with a serious PR mountain to climb. Ultimately, it turned out to be more of a molehill, or - wait for it - an anthill. At least for me; there's still some debate about what is vs. what "could have been," and I think that's going to last a lot longer than the "Fox won't show my Fantastic Four, which was a great movie" Twitter war.

 I get the easy jokes directed at Peyton Reed, who was hired to come in after Wright left the film (rumor has it over story changes mandated by Marvel's "creative committee"). Reed directed Yes Man and isn't considered to be much more than a puppet of the studio who hasn't made anything since Bring It On that you've heard of. For me, he also made Down With Love, (a movie only I seem to like) which nearly landed him the Fantastic Four gig the first time around, and would have fit in with the 60s vibe that Down With Love is an homage to. But anyway, visionary Wright out, hack Reed in - that's the narrative you can still see in reviews for Ant-Man. But then there's the tricky part, because the Ant-Man that is turned out to be pretty good.

  There are a few different factors in play that help Ant-Man: one is that is dispenses the "origin story" pretty quickly and integrates it into the narrative in a way that keeps everything moving forward. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is a thief, recently released from prison, who can't get his life back together. He can't get a job because he has a criminal record, so he can't provide alimony payments to his ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) which complicates his ability to have any leverage to visit his daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson). Also standing in the way is Maggie's new husband, police officer Jim Paxton (Bobby Cannavale). This could be played very heavy handed and one sided, but there's a surprising effort to be balanced and not make Maggie or Paxton out to be antagonists. They want what's best for Cassie, and Scott is a thief.

 Like most ex-criminals, he goes back to his old habits to make ends meet, teaming up with his partner Luis (Michael Peña) and his new gang: Kurt (David Dastmalchian) and Dave (T.I.), who are working on a heist of "some old rich guy" who has a safe Scott might be able to crack. Unfortunately, when he breaks in, the only thing Scott finds inside is a suit, which he takes anyway. The "old rich guy" is Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and he wanted Scott to steal his Ant-Man suit, because he needs him to use it for a particular heist involving Pym Industries. His former protégé, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) has advanced the shrinking technology that Pym hid from his company (and S.H.I.E.L.D.) and he needs somebody to make sure Cross doesn't sell his work to the military (or worse). Pym's daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly) wants to do it, but Hank refuses, for personal reasons.

 The narrative of Ant-Man moves at a brisk pace, with Scott learning how to use the suit and become the new Ant-Man while also planning the heist. There's even time for the reveal of why Hank won't let Hope take the suit, which allows you not only to shrink but also to be able to control ants. It gives you increased power because of the reduced size, so Scott becomes "like a bullet" and has to meter out how hard he hits someone, as not to kill them. Rather than front load Ant-Man with this, Reed / Wright put it in the middle of the movie, and it never bogs down the film. It also helps that Ant-Man is balances comedy with superhero shenanigans in the same way that Guardians of the Galaxy does. It's never too silly or too serious, although Peña pushes it sometimes. Surprisingly, though, not in the rapid cut flashback/monologues he uses to very quickly get exposition across to Scott.

 The special effects are pretty impressive, considering that most of the film is from a very tiny perspective - the sequence where Scott shrinks in his apartment and falls through the floor to a neighbors party downstairs is quite good. His terror at nearly being stomped on while people are dancing and trying to navigate his way out (he doesn't know how the suit works) takes a fairly normal situation and makes it fun for the audience. Also kudos to the de-aging team for making Michael Douglas in 1989 not look like Arnold Schwarzenegger's body double in Terminator Genisys. It's a nice touch and gives the scene with Howard Stark (John Slattery, back from Iron Man 2) added gravitas. It makes sense why Pym would choose a thief over the Avengers, and why he'd have no second thoughts about sending Scott in to steal something from one of "Howard Stark's old warehouses". Of course, the warehouse turns out to be the New Avengers Facility, where Scott runs into Falcon (Anthony Mackie in an amusing cameo). The scene is mostly designed to set up Ant-Man's role in Captain America: Civil War, but I'll allow it because Mackie and Rudd make the scene entertaining. There's a much better use of foreshadowing later in the film, with a very quick reference to Spider-Man (now back in the MCU).

 If there's one thing that really elevates Ant-Man over most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and I'm mostly talking about the Disney releases), it's the scope. Appropriate to its source, it's scaled back, smaller, but not simply because Scott shrinks down to ant-size. The trend, at least since The Avengers, has been to have a giant fight at the end of the movie involving something in the sky that's going to destroy the planet / our heroes / etc. Seriously, just take a look at the finales of Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and even Avengers: Age of Ultron, where they're trying to keep an entire city from crashing down from the sky and killing everybody. Airborne battles are, it would seem, the thing that Marvel loves the most. There are even variants of it in The Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four because, you know, if the formula works, overuse it.

 Ant-Man, on the other hand, sets the climactic battle inside of the bedroom of Scott's daughter, and most of the final battle with Yellowjacket takes place on a Thomas the Tank Engine train set. Reed frequently cuts back from the action to actual scale so you can see what it would look like to normal people. It's mostly for comedic effect, but for this film, that technique works just fine. Ant-Man acknowledges its somewhat goofy premise without ever demeaning what Scott (or Pym) can do while in the suit. When he goes sub-atomic to stop Yellowjacket at the very end, the risk implied with doing so (involving the original Wasp) isn't treated like a joke. There's a fine balance between being silly and diminishing the movie overall. How much of that was Wright, how much was Reed, we're probably not going to know. Wright retains a writing credit, and by many accounts the first half of the film is almost exactly what he wrote. Increasing Evangeline Lilly's role as Hope (to set her up for future films as the new Wasp) is allegedly what pushed Wright away, but she didn't seem to overshadow Paul Rudd or Michael Douglas to my eyes. The only problem Ant-Man really has is the same one Marvel has struggled with since Iron Man: having an interesting villain whose name isn't Loki. Corey Stoll is mostly wasted as "angry scientist villain who is mad at Hank Pym for some reason and becomes Yellowjacket".

 In a perfect world, we might know what Edgar Wright's Ant-Man looked like, and while I'm not happy about his departure, there is some solace in knowing that the version of the film we did get is still a lot of fun. I'd go so far as to say that I enjoyed Ant-Man more than Age of Ultron - a movie I've tried to write a review for repeatedly since May* - and am looking forward to watching it again. It has some of the problems of MCU movies, but eschews many of the "same old, same old" story structures in favor of a more character based narrative. While I wasn't crazy about the villain, Rudd, Lilly, and Douglas made for a fine combination, and I'd be happy to see more of their adventures outside of the increasingly unwieldy "crossover" films. As shoehorned in as it seemed, I actually liked the thieves, mostly because the chemistry between the four of them makes it entertaining enough to overlook the fact that Scott doesn't really need them to get into Pym Industries near the end. Reed also somehow made me feel bad for an ant, and not only that, but one with a terrible pun for a name. Good job.

  More importantly, since I brought it up in the first paragraph, whatever happened between Wright leaving and Reed taking over, the end result is less disjointed than in Fantastic Four. Without looking it up online, I didn't take a mental tally of "which part of the film came from which," and more to the point, I wasn't thinking about it at all. Instead, I enjoyed Ant-Man, Frankenstein-ed as it is. It has the benefit of being altered before cameras started rolling, but the mixture of original vision and studio mandated chicanery doesn't show in the same way it does with Fantastic Four. We're never going to see the pure, unadulterated versions of either film, but at least with Ant-Man I know there's one out there I would see again.




 * While in aggregate, I did like Age of Ultron, every time I sit down to think about it, or to focus on specific points, the draft ends up becoming a fanboy-ish critique of "Whedon-isms" throughout the film. They aren't so bad in their entirety, but when I have to address things like "well, I was born yesterday" or the party scene, it begins to feel like nit-picking. The fact that a HYDRA soldier actually says "no, it wasn't" after Iron Man shoots them and says "good talk," kind of annoys me. Anyway, the short review is that it's a fun movie that suffers from trying to set up too many parts of Phase 3.

Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2013: The World's End

 I mentioned somewhere in the "middle" recap that This is the End was probably the funniest comedy I'd seen in 2013, but The World's End is the smartest. By a mile. The final chapter in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's loosely connected "Cornetto Trilogy" may not be as consistently hilarious as Shaun of the Dead or as audaciously violent as Hot Fuzz - which is not to say it isn't still frequent with the belly laughs and contains some serious carnage - but it's easily the best thought out of the three, the most thought provoking in its themes, and the most heart felt in its relationships. If, for some reason, you haven't made The World's End a "blind buy" on DVD and Blu-Ray (I know you didn't see it theatrically, because the numbers bear that out), do it right now. I'm going to spoil the ever loving hell out of The World's End, and I'd rather you see it without knowing where the movie is going.

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 I'm Warning You! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

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 Back? Wasn't that great? Yes, it was. If you just went ahead and skipped to the next paragraph, shame on you. I told you to watch it and you didn't, and now you're just going to have to see it knowing everything. But because you cheated, you'll be able to watch The World's End armed with some of the cleverly hidden easter eggs and thematic set-ups and payoffs that come from seeing it more than once. And you'll be seeing it more than once, cheater.

Okay, so here's a quick recap for the cheater: Gary King (Simon Pegg) is one of those guys who never quite got over the "glory days" of high school. In fact, his adult life is so underwhelming that the cajoles his old friends Oliver "O-Man" Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), Peter Page (Eddie Marsdan), an Andy Knightley (Nick Frost) to join him in reliving a pub crawl they started, but never finished: The Golden Mile in their hometown of Newton Haven. The guys don't want to do it, but some stretching of the truth gets them all back in "The Beast" (Gary's car from high school), and they find themselves being dragged along by the ne'er do well as they try to finish a pint at The First Post, The Old Familiar, The Famous Cock, The Cross Hands, The Good Companions, The Trusty Servant, The Two-Headed Dog, The Mermaid, The Beehive, The King's Head, The Hole in the Wall, and finally, The World's End. But Newton Haven isn't the way they remembered it, at all. With only Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike) to help them, but guys are in for a long night, one they'll be lucky to survive, let alone drink through.

There are many place I could start with The World's End, but let's deal with the science fiction element that makes it part of the "Cornetto Trilogy" (Zombie movie, Cop Movie, Science Fiction Movie). I had the good fortune of seeing The World's End with a friend of mine who didn't know anything beyond the Golden Mile premise, so when the film takes a turn while Gary's in the bathroom, it caught him completely off guard. And that turn? Well, it's robots.

  Robots. Yep, getting that right out there, even though the replicants (?) don't like being called "robots," and the aliens behind the machines replacing humans in Newton Haven have (arguably) the most peaceful take-over planned in all of science fiction film. But it's not to be, of course, because humanity has a right to want not to be civilized in the galactic picture. In that way, one could argue that The World's End is a middle finger from mankind to the end of The Day the Earth Stood Still, with roughly the consequences that Klaatu promised as a result. It is, in essence, the pawns rebelling against a benevolent world-creator (well, mostly benevolent - all of the characters replaced by robots are fertilizer, which seems a little harsh) to the point that the creator (literally) says "Oh, fuck it."

 What's so very impressive about The World's End is how well structured Wright and Pegg's screenplay is. Like Shaun of the Dead, they lay out the entire story in the prologue, and pack in a dozen other small details that are referenced so quickly you wouldn't be faulted for missing them the first time around. On top of that, not only do all of the names and signs of the bar hint at what's going to happen inside (and have corresponding numbers to the phases of the Golden Mile hidden somewhere), they also reference, in varying ways, the twelve steps of recovery that we don't exactly know Gary is going through until near the end of the film. The last one isn't really covered in the "Signs and Omens" extras on the disc, which will help you if you don't have time to watch The World's End three more times this weekend, but came from another friend of mine who was in a similar situation to Gary.

 And, oh yeah, it's very funny. Put aside the densely layered script, the folding back on itself, the metaphysical subtext of humanity in the universe, and you still have a laugh out loud comedy. I love that Frost and Pegg switched character types for The World's End: Frost the one who has it together and doesn't trust Pegg, the perpetual loser who pushes his likability to the very limits over and over again. If the "Three Musketeers" scene in the trailer made you chuckle, wait until you see how they alter the phrase "rob Peter to pay Paul" and the shit-eating grin that Gary closes the scene with.

 However, it's not Pegg or Frost, or even Freeman who walks away the VIP - it's Paddy Considine. Admittedly, I'd seen less of him than Freeman, Marsdan, Pegg, Frost, and even Rosamund Pike, but he has some of the best lines, many of the best reactions, and ends up with the most to do in the story. The World's End is centrally about the fractured relationship between Gary and Andy, and the event that drove them apart, but Steven's longtime crush on Sam is the heart of the movie. I keeps Andy and Gary alive in the end, and Steven is the final vote that saves humanity (or dooms them, depending on your reading of things).

 That, in turn, brings us to the ending, which turns The World's End from science fiction film to my second favorite sub-genre (behind anthologies): Post-Apocalyptic Cinema. This seems to be a point of contention for some people, because it's such an abrupt left turn for the movie, but thematically it fits perfectly with what everybody in the story wants. Gary gets the gang back, Andy's with his family, Steven and Sam are together, Robot Oliver is basically the same (with a Wilson-esque head), and Robot Peter is pretty much where he started. Yes, humanity is without technology, and communication across long distances is almost impossible (until Kevin Costner comes to the rescue, we can assume), but they seem happy. Humanity continues, on their own terms.

 I'd like to mention that while I wasn't impressed with the characters in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the staging and filming of fight choreography that Wright honed in making that film pay off in spades during The World's End. The fight scenes (and there are a few) are dynamic, with fluid camera work that manages to shift from one character to the next without ever losing a sense of geography in the (basically identical) pubs. The poor robots and their blue blood (?) are torn asunder, bashed, smashed, cracked, and beaten to pieces repeatedly, and Wright covers it all in a way that might not have been possible had he not made Scott Pilgrim. So bully for him.

 Even though we're neck deep in spoiler territory, I'm not going to tell our cheaters about the surprise characters in the film. I will say that in keeping with the tradition started in Hot Fuzz, there's another James Bond in the film, but I won't say who, nor will I tell you where the other cast members from earlier "Cornetto" entries appear, although most of them do. The World's End, of the three films, benefits the most from re-watching, and is an easy call to put in when you have friends over. Like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, it didn't light the box office up, which is a shame, but since I gave Scott Pilgrim fans so much grief for saying the same thing, I won't lament it. Let's hope it has a long life on home video, just as its predecessors have. King Gary would want it that way.

Retro Review: The YAD Archives (Part Four)

 Preamble shamelessly copied from last week's post:

 Welcome back to another edition of the Blogorium's Retro Review. Today we're going to continue looking back at a series of reviews written for defunct online magazine You're All Doomed. Previously we took a look at reviews from 2005 and at the output of guest blogger Professor Murder. Turning the wayback machine a little further, let's take a look at a few more movies from 2004.

 Once again, a bit of a disclaimer: these reviews represent a proto-Cap'n Howdy and accordingly they don't look like what I write today. They're shorter, tend to make logical leaps and assume the audience will simply follow, and sometimes contain erroneous information because I was more interested in getting reactions out unspoiled rather than fact checking and researching before and during the writing process. I am, however, leaving them untouched in order to represent the original material.

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Shaun of the Dead: A Romantic Comedy. With Zombies (if you will)
4.5 stars out of 5

Shaun of the Dead is nearly perfect entertainment. Unless of course, you have a weak stomach or hate zombies. Then it's just very good. As I write this, it becomes very difficult to explain why SotD is so wonderful. Is it that every character is three dimensional? Is it the nods to Romero's "Dead" films? Is it the presence of the star of "Black Books"?

Why don't the ads do this movie justice?

This is a question I do feel I can address. See, the ads I saw on tv flew in the face of every great thing I'd heard about it. The jokes looked obvious and stupid, the "scares" were neither frightening nor interesting. Even the celebrity blurbs sounded cheesy (I'm sorry Peter Jackson, really I am, but Cabin Fever was not the best horror movie of 2003 or any other year.) So I went in with a grain of salt, expecting to be sadly disappointed in another over-hyped "indie gem." Imagine my shock when in the first five minutes I was laughing. Not chuckles, but outright laughter, which led to sustained belly aching laughs as things really got rolling. Even the scenes they show you on tv, like when Shaun and Ed are singing and the zombie joins in, are funny. Seriously. Yes, taken out of context, they look terrible. When you realize that Shaun and Ed are very drunk and may well be the only people in London that DON'T know the dead have risen... I don't know. It's hard to explain.

Needless to say, just go see it. I've already told everyone I know that it's fucking hilarious and they'll love it. And if you have an aversion to gore or "horror" movies, then you'll be just fine until they lock themselves in the pub. Really. The title of this review doesn't lie. If you do like zombies, then you ought've seen it already, so get out there and watch it!

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5 stars (out of 5)

Charlie Kaufman. Michel Gondry. Kate Winslet as good as she's been since Heavenly Creatures. Jim Carrey as good as he's ever been. Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, David Cross. A true joy from beginning to end. Heart breaking and true. As good as they come, folks. Get it while it's fresh.

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Coffee and Cigarettes
3.5 (out of 5)


It isn't difficult to digest this movie. In fact, the title alone tells you everything that can be expected. Jim Jarmusch takes small groups of people (for most of the vingettes, two) and provides them cigarettes and, well, coffee. However, let me clarify something here. This isn't improvised, or at least, most of the conversations aren't. Too many little phrases and moments echo each other to be an accident (in particular, keep an eye out for musicians who double as doctors, nikolai tesla, and the shady nature of celebrity.) While Coffee and Cigarettes is slight, the segments are never too long to grate, and the really good ones make up for the lesser bits.

To wit:

-Cate Blanchett is a standout playing herself and her cousin, as are Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan in the same beat.

-The White Stripes discuss Jack's Tesla coil while Cinque Lee looks on (Lee, having appeared in an earlier segment with his sister Joie and Steve Buscemi)

-Iggy Pop and Tom Waits test each other and discover the diner's jukebox doesn't play either one of them.

-Bill Rice and Taylor Mead muse about the late seventies and champagne
and, in what's probably the most heard about segment, The Rza and The Gza offer Bill Murray helpful tips of losing that smokers cough (they also refer to him exclusively as "Bill Murray".)

See what I mean? There's really not a lot after the movie ends, but it's a pleasant hour and a half, and even if the Tom Waits / Iggy Pop scene goes on for far too long, and Roberto Benigni is almost impossible to understand in his scene with Steven Wright, well, it's entertaining enough. Jarmusch fans should enjoy it well enough, and most other people weren't planning on seeing it anyhow.
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I Heart Huckabees

4 Stars

I Heart Huckabees may be as difficult a review as I've ever had to write. This is the type of film best experienced, not unlike Being John Malkovich, Bubba Ho-Tep, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If any of those movies turned you off when you read it, I Heart Huckabees probably isn't for you. There's no exaggerating on their part when Fox Searchlight calls it "[an] existentialist comedy", because it's both a parody and the essence of existentialism on celluloid. The film wanders around and throws high concept after high concept at the audience with little concern to explain or wait for you to catch up. The cast is uniformly great, including surprisingly good turns from Mark Wahlberg and Jason Schwartzmann, both actors who've had their share of ups and downs in hollywood. Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin are endearing and baffling at the same time, and Jude Law is more than capable of taking the villain character and twisting him around. I'd be remiss to ignore Naomi Watts, who arguably has the most character arc in the movie, and she's totally believable all the way along.

That being said, no less than four people walked out of the movie when I went to see it, and a great deal more complained about it afterwards. This is a movie that isn't in the mood to wait for you, and a lot of people didn't understand why I was laughing so frequently and heartily. This is that type of movie, the sort that does horribly in theaters, but a small, devoted base keeps it alive on video and dvd. I hope. See it, but be warned, you may not like what you see.

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The Day Before Tomorrow

3 Stars


I had such high hopes for this movie. Much like Eight Legged Freaks, I expected to be able to turn my brain off and enjoy some harmless carnage for two hours, then get up and forget about it by the time I got to the car. But then, I forgot, this IS Roland Emmerich we're talking about. Big hearted sap sentimentalist appeal to your inner tree hugger Roland Emmerich. Don't get me wrong, it's fine to express yourself in film, whether you're attacking foreign policy under the guise of alien invasion (Indepence Day) or attracting crass commercial endorsements while destroying New York (Godzilla) or even pillaging William Wallace and placing him front and center in the Revolutionary War (The Patriot). And don't even get me started on Stargate. However, these were all handled with the assistance of Dean Devlin (yep, the asian guy in Real Genius. Seriously, check it out) so I assumed he had a hand in this.

Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy Disaster flicks as much as any filmgoer, maybe more (I do own The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno own VHS, Laserdisc, and DVD) and The Day After Tomorrow delivers on the gratuitous destruction. By the end of the movie, most of America is covered in ice, and millions are implied dead. Plus we see the destruction of Los Angeles and New York City firsthand, and let me tell you, it is grand. Not since George Lucas got off his fat ass to make the prequels has one film abused computers so. Tornadoes, walls of water (remember the OTHER ending to the Abyss? Ever wondered what'd happen if they didn't buy Ed Harris' plea?) rain and snowstorms out the wazoo, characters introduced only to be killed within ten minutes (check out the mostly pointless scene in Tokyo) and hail. Oh, and for no good reason, wolves.

HOWEVER, the carnage is sullied by the persistent eco-friendly message spewed at every opportunity by Dennis Quaid and Ian Holm, plus a cop out ending and unnecessary jabs at the Bush Administration (see: Vice President that clearly is the decision maker, idiot president that dies instead of being evacuated, etc) When President Cheney gives his final address on The Weather Channel, he tells the survivors of the world that they must make radical changes about the way they think in order to move on as a society (not unlike Bill Pullman's address in Independence Day) when shortly before he was belittling the efforts and warnings of the tree hugging climatologists. The movie even goes so far as to recommend ways to curb the impending doom before it happens.

Thankfully, this makes up the beginning and the end, chiefly, and the global destruction is worth the price of being lectured. Plus Jake Gyllenhall found himself a movie to be in that makes money (wise move, guy, those Donnie fans won't be paying the bills forever). If you dig death on a worldwide scale, some mildly interesting action scenes, and more (implied) corpses than a romero flick, check this movie out, but bring some earplugs, and plan to leave 15 minutes early.

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Team America: World Police

3.5 Stars

AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!!

Team America offends the left and the right, and has been held up by both sides as a paragon of their beliefs. The National Review hails it for it's conservative sense of humour and merciless assault on the media elite, and Leftists use it to explain how America is perceived in the world.

Of course, they're both right. And wrong. Team America is an assault on all sides from the middle, people tired of being told they either side with George W. Bush or Michael Moore. (Personally, I think they're both full of shit.) It's also a crude, bombastic send up of overblown Hollywood Action movies, even lifting direct scenes and lines of dialogue from such hits as Top Gun and Armageddon. With puppets. There's even a clever Star Wars joke about halfway through the movie. The violence at first is ridiculous, but by the end of the film, Team America dispatches the Film Actors Guild in so many disgusting and violent ways that you forget you're watching puppets. Okay, you don't, but the novelty that it's one elaborate puppet show becomes irrelevant about halfway in.

The two best things Team America has going for it are Kim Jong IL as the film's chief villain (packing one hell of a surprise in the final moments) and the ridiculous, over the top songs, designed to copy and rip apart THE BIG SONG of action extravaganzas (one song in particular compares the loss of a girlfriend to how much Pearl Harbor sucked) and executed in a variety of outlandish ways. I'll even let Trey and Matt slide for reusing the Montage song from South Park.

I can't give it perfect marks, because it does miss the mark on some jokes, and like any action movie, things can drag a bit. But what works will leave your ass rolling in the aisles.

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Fahrenheit 9/11 / Celsius 41.11

3 stars (combined)

I'm gonna do this quickly, because I'm so fucking sick of these movies:

Both movies alter the same facts to make different points. Both pretend to hold reverence for their subjects and yet rip them new assholes mercilessly. Both don't care about the truth if it gets in the way of their narrative. Fahrenheit is at least a palatable movie, Celsius doesn't want to be a movie, but rather an attack piece. Moore likes to think he's making high art, and he's not, but whatever. Seriously, Celsius is funnier, if only because they try even less to disguise the attack on John Kerry (which is funny, since the cover promises to correct Moore's mistakes) At the end of it, neither one of them has a point, and Fahrenheit only wins out because it's ballsier in scope. Fuck politics, fuck attack ads, fuck these "movies".

Two Reasons I Don't Always Understand Geek Culture

 The Cap'n is, unavoidably, a geek. While I don't always identify as such, it's hard to write on a blog where you adopt the moniker of a demon from The Exorcist and plaster artwork of Dr. Re-Animator and The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman on the page. I try to mix up the content, but let's be honest here: after devoting a weekend to a "virtual" version of a horror film festival I usually host in person, I bounced back with a documentary about what Conan O'Brien did after NBC dropped him for Jay Leno. While I haven't read many comic books in the last year, I still watch movies about them, and am looking forward to Joss Whedon's The Avengers.

 However, I don't always understand my geek brethren; there are things about the internet in particular - the nesting place of the "geek" - that seem counter-intuitive to what people claim they want. Today I'll take a look at two things that don't really make sense to me, especially in a time when "geek" culture seems to be getting everything they want from major studios and television networks. I'd normally do four, but the first two were so long that I thought I'd cut it in half.

 1. "We want to see it, but we're not going to go see it!" - I call this the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World effect, although you could just as easily replace that with Kick-Ass, Serenity, Your Highness, or a dozen or so other movies designed specifically for a geeky demographic. You can't throw a rock without hitting someone complaining about how Hollywood is constantly recycling, remaking, or re-imagining something from the 1980s. Now, it is true that this happens with increasing regularity, in part because people go see these remakes. I mean, why not? They already know the title, vaguely remember the story, and it beats going to see something else.

 The chatter is loud and not necessarily without cause, but then when a project that comes out that ISN'T a remake, re-adaptation, retooling of something we've already seen, or even just not another "reboot" of a series we're invested in, the same geeks crying out suddenly get very quiet about putting their money where their mouths are. I was very, VERY hard on Scott Pilgrim fans in particular because instead of going to see the movie they constantly hyped as "finally, something that isn't like everything else," they instead stayed home and complained about how stupid it was that people went to see The Expendables instead. It's not Sylvester Stallone's fault that you didn't go see you new favorite movie, nor is it Julia Robert's fault with Eat, Pray, Love. I have tried to move away from using Box Office figures as a barometer for anything, but if you read "geek" coverage of Scott Pilgrim vs the World after the first two weeks, you'd think that it was hovering right below the aforementioned films. Nope. Scott Pilgrim vs the World came in behind The Expendables, Eat, Pray, Love, The Other Guys, and Inception. Inception is, by the way, an exception to the rule, although the "it was overrated" chants are getting louder every week.

 Mind you, it's not just Scott Pilgrim: Sucker Punch, a film that caters to geek fetishes, was also widely ignored by its target audience. Serenity, a film based on Joss Whedon's short-lived Firefly, apparently had a legion of fans called "Browncoats" who went to the free screenings the summer before the film came out, and then were so enthusiastic that they didn't go see it again. Or tell their friends to see it. Or tell anyone to see it, even though you'll be hard pressed to find a Firefly fan who won't talk about Serenity until they're blue in the face. So if you're this enthusiastic about a film, this excited for an alternative to the "same old thing," something directed to the very vocal internet, why is it you're happy to let the film die a lonely death in theatres, complain about the films people went to see while you stayed home, and then wait for the Blu-Ray? Eventually they'll stop listening to your pleas, stop catering to your whims, and then you're left with the same old thing.

 Don't believe me? Look at Universal: they're smarting from the Scott Pilgrim debacle, coupled with big losses for Your Highness and modest returns for Paul. Now that Comcast bought the company, they've already put Guillermo Del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness on indefinite hold, and have delayed further development of Ron Howard's adaptation of The Dark Tower series. These are two highly sought-after geek adaptations, and considering how much muscle they have behind them, the reason they've been put into development hell has a lot to do with the "We want to see it, but we're not going to see it" precedent.

Normally, when Guillermo Del Toro wants to adapt H.P. Lovecraft in a big budget, R rated horror film in 3D with the backing of James Cameron and star Tom Cruise, a studio isn't going to say "no" to that. Del Toro is the only "x" factor there, with his critically popular but financially modest films, including Universal's disappointing Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The argument was that Universal was concerned about the "R" rating, but it's not as though high profile projects with an "R" rating haven't performed well for them. The concern seems to be that the geeks clamoring for this film might not bother showing up (again), so why invest that kind of money when the precedent says there's no good reason to?

 The Dark Tower series is even more ambitious: Howard wants to adapt the entire series, split up between films and a running TV series that would bridge the movies. Javier Bardem is virtually a lock for Roland, and yet Universal is hedging about "the budget." Why? Again, because even with someone as reliable as Ron Howard and his long time producer Brian Glazer, there's concern that the people who claim to want to see this (the geeks) might be so fickle that they just won't show up. It's killed potential series before: just look at The Golden Compass, or Push, or Jumper, or I Am Number Four. Relative quality aside, those were designed to be "first chapters" in longer narratives, and they probably will never be. Even the geekiest of all geek properties, Tron Legacy, was met with derision by geeks and Disney is debating how much of a budget cut a third Tron will get, if they make it at all.

 It turns out that "if they build it," geeks won't come. Even if they love it. That boggles my mind. The negativity surrounding "bad" films is understandable to a point, but if you're just going to blow off genuine olive branches from people who speak your language, what exactly do you expect to be on the big screen next time?

2. TV Wasteland...? - We live in a time where television is littered with "geek" friendly shows: zombies, alien invasions, dinosaurs, time travel, super heroes, galactic battlestars, and even a "monster of the week show" that's really just about monsters. Oh yeah, and Doctor Who is back. So is Futurama. And yet, week after week, I come away enthusiastic from another episode of a show I enjoyed only to find the internet is littered with nit-pickers complaining about how that great episode was actually "underwhelming" or "lame." I was just looking to see if I missed some small detail, but instead have to wallow through criticism of the "revelation" that ended season six of Doctor Who (okay, the first half). How The Walking Dead is "boring" or "not what we wanted," etc.There was a television show about THE TERMINATOR, and all people did was complain about it.

 I'll freely admit that the ending of The X-Files and Lost disappointed me, and I've made it clear why, but one of the reasons I try really hard not to critique individual episodes before the show is over is because I like to give the creators the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are making it up as they go along, maybe not. Thanks to the internet, I now know that by the time I get to the end of Battlestar Galactica, more likely than not I'll feel cheated. I didn't want to know that, but shy of never visiting any "geek" site and totally avoiding my friends, it's almost impossible not to be inundated with negativity during a period where networks are actually catering to the audience that shouts the loudest. It's no surprise that shows don't last long when the feedback they see is negative. I'm already worried about Torchwood: Miracle Day, the return of a series I thought was really finding its footing, because the buzz around the first few episodes is not good. Ugh.

 This is hard for me, because I realize that I am essentially complaining about complaining. I'm throwing my two cents into a bottomless pit of negativity, but I just don't understand what's going on here. This is as good of a time to be a geek as humanly possible, and instead of celebrating it, there's a ceaseless echo chamber of backhanded compliments and outright hostility directed at people like us, who grew up watching the same movies we did, and are now trying to represent that point of view for the rest of the world. Now we're at a point where Patton Oswalt (perhaps with tongue in cheek) is suggesting that geek culture "needs" to die so that we can learn to appreciate our roots. The relative quality of films and shows are no longer important, because they all "suck" to people who can shout the loudest. When asked for an alternative, they ask for something and then blithely ignore the result.

 I don't understand you, geeks. I am trying. I thought I was one of you, and I tried to make my own rules clear: there are movies I am interested in and ones I'm not. I'll try to branch out every now and then, and whenever possible not look at gift horse in the mouth. I know that movies like Machete and Black Dynamite and Hobo with a Shotgun were catered to my demographic, and while I maybe didn't love everything about all of them, I try to be clearer than "it just sucks and you suck if you like it." I genuinely wanted to understand what it was about the Saw films that people gravitated towards - it didn't work for me, but obviously they have a strong following. I will ceaselessly sound the horn for films that I think people would really like; films you might not see or know about otherwise. I didn't ask for Scott Pilgrim, so I didn't see it, but I sure as hell was enthusiastic about Tron Legacy and I sure as hell saw it in 3D on an IMAX screen. I backed that geekdom up, and I need to do the same for The Tree of Life soon.

 To close, I don't want to criticize the internet critics, the home of geekdom in its many forms. I just want to understand what's going on here: it's an almost unprecedented time to enjoy having geeky interests, so why is the target audience ignoring it in droves, flooding message boards, and unleashing on people for not doing it for them? 

2010 Year End Recap, Part One.

An important note from the Cap'n: While every review available is included as a link, the placement of the film on these "year end" lists may not appear to reflect the review. As time passes, I have the opportunity to reconsider films, revisit initial reactions, and every now and then, change the way I feel about movies.

Let's start with... The Middle (it's a very good place to start). What you'll find in this list are the films that were solid, entertaining, or did just enough to stay out of the "Favorites" or "Never Again"s. They are listed from "top" Middle to "bottom" Middle, with the films higher on the list being recommended and the lower ranked films coming with a warning. For me, all of the films on this list were worth checking out in one form or the other, so see if anything strikes your fancy.

When helpful, I am providing additional thoughts along with a link to the original review. Films marked with an asterisk (*) indicate a limited release prior to 2010, but in most cases were not given a wide release until last year.

The Town - Ben Affleck's sophomore directorial debut just missed the cut in my favorite films of 2010. If anything, I held back because the loose pacing serves the story well, but does, at times, make the film drag. The extended cut, which is still unseen, may sway things one way or the other, but for now this fine, if languid, heist thriller still comes highly recommended.

Micmacs - I still haven't watched Micmacs with subtitles, but Jeneut's follow up to A Very Long Engagement has a quirky, amusing tone that serves it well. It doesn't quite reach the heights of Amelie or The City of Lost Children, but when the bar is that high, you can't hold it against Micmacs for just being very good.

[REC] 2* - Did [REC] 2 ever come out in the U.S.? Other than absolutely needing to see the first film, this sequel ups the ante in nearly every way, even if it stumbles during a perspective-switching middle section.

Casino Jack and the United States of Money - I never got around to reviewing this on New Year's Eve, but the documentary about Jack Abramoff - not to be mistaken with Casino Jack, the quasi-biopic starring Kevin Spacey - from Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) is a fascinating portrait of the "villain" of Lobbyists. It certainly makes me want to watch Red Scorpion with Dolph Lundgren (a film Abramoff wrote and produced between his run as President of College Republicans and his Too Successful for Its Own Good Lobbyist stint). Aside from an ill-advised opening - which uses footage from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to make the "is it just Jack or is corruption systematic?" argument - the documentary is guaranteed to surprise you.

The Book of Eli - As you know, I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic cinema. The Book of Eli is a good-looking, well constructed take on the genre; its "twist" tends to turn people off, but while it won't change your life, it's a nice distraction.

I Love You, Phillip Morris

Harry Brown* - If not for that final character revelation, I'd put it higher.

Leaves of Grass

American Grindhouse - This documentary takes you on a whirlwind tour of exploitation films, and manages to cram a great deal of information into its 78 minutes. Focusing on one or two types of exploitation films, it manages to cover a lot of ground from "Facts of life"-sploitation, Blaxploitation, "Roughies," Nudies, Schlock, Drugsploitation, Women-in-Prison films, Nazisploitation, heading into the inevitable shift from exploitation films to porn in grindhouse theatres. Includes interviews with Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast), William Lustig (Maniac), Fred Williamson (Boss), Larry Cohen (Black Caesar), David Hess (The Last House on the Left), and John Landis (Schlock), who insists that The Passion of the Christ is closer to a "grindhouse" picture than Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse.

Speaking of which, the next films form their own trifecta of action exploitation:

Machete, The Expendables, and Predators - None of these movies are perfect, in and of themselves. Machete wanders too much from the main character (ala Once Upon a Time in Mexico), The Expendables is so "old school" action movie that most modern action fans don't know how to deal with it (which isn't a fault, per se, but it also totally fails to make any character remotely "expendable), and Predators needlessly grinds its momentum to a halt when Laurence Fishburne arrives onscreen. Still, there's something to like in all of them, and when there is, it's a lot to like.

Pontypool*
44 Inch Chest*

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - One thing I feel I need to clarify is that I didn't hate Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I admire the effort: after watching many of the extra features on the Blu-Ray, I actually respect what Edgar Wright accomplished in adapting Scott Pilgrim. My qualm with the film, the reason I can't side with its legion of fans (or fanatics) is that the film fundamentally didn't connect with me. Nothing about Scott Pilgrim or Ramona Flowers roused any emotional response from me (or, for that matter, any particular intellectual response), and as much as I may appreciate the effort, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World misses the mark where I needed it to hit most.

Tales from the Script*

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - Despite a fundamentally positive review, I can't help but dwell on the fact that Oliver Stone has a little too much sympathy for his characters - something that really kicked into high gear with World Trade Center - and as a result, Money Never Sleeps doesn't really have any bite to it in the end. On its own, that would be no big deal, but when dealing with the sequel to Wall Street, it's a serious hindrance. The use of obvious visual metaphors (the dominoes and bubbles) and too "on the nose" David Byrne and Brian Eno songs also keeps Money Never Sleeps from being higher on the list.


Iron Man 2 - Since May, I've been trying to figure out what I had to say about Iron Man 2. I saw it twice: once in the theatre and once... well, one other time. I have the Blu-Ray and watched part of the film a month ago. It's not that there's anything colossally good or bad about the film: I like that Tony Stark's real adversary in the film is himself, and that there's a level of moral ambiguity in the film so that there is no "bad guy." If you've only seen the advertising, it's wildly misleading: Mickey Rourke has a very good reason for hating Iron Man, Scarlett Johansson isn't a villain at all, and the barely featured Sam Rockwell is a jealous rival weapons manufacturer who really just wants Tony Stark to be his friend. Of course, it does give Iron Man 2 a serious case of "who cares?" No villains, not much in the way of stakes, and the increased presence of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to push ahead the impending Avengers film, in a subplot that could have existed organically in the film without the tie-in. In many ways, it's a better film than Iron Man, but the question is if the focus is less coherent, is the sequel ultimately better?

The Crazies - Apparently, I never reviewed Breck Eisner's remake of The Crazies, which is a reasonably effective "virus" film that expands George Romero's low-budget original and generates some genuine suspense. That said, I tried watching it again, and it doesn't hold up well. For first time viewers, I sense there will be some level of enjoyment, but don't buy it and expect to revisit with friends.

Wrong Side of Town - It's only in the middle because people who read my review need to know they're heading into a surprisingly entertaining BAD movie. I stand by the After Hours meets Commando description, with the caveat that this film is nowhere near as good as either film. Approach if you have a very generous ability to be entertained by low budget action films starring professional wrestlers.

The Other Guys - If the "Unrated" cut makes a difference, I might come back to this. As is, the film is amusing, random, but unspectacular.

Toy Story 3 - I think my review covers why this is where it is, unlike many critics' "Top" list.
The Lost Skeleton Returns Again
Dark and Stormy Night

Crazy Heart* - Trim out 30 minutes, and maybe this would be a better movie.

Dead Snow* - I get why people love it, but the references are so direct and so obvious that I can't share your unbridled enthusiasm. Still, it is periodically very funny.

Hot Tub Time Machine - After the initial shock laughter wears off, the film's flimsy premise shows through, doesn't rise above it's lack of creative mayhem, and totally fails the "second time" test at home.

Dinner for Schmucks - Thoroughly inconsequential. I can barely remember the film, and it's only been four months.

Daybreakers - While I appreciate setting up the premise and sticking with it in a non-ironic, non-jokey way, Daybreakers falls apart halfway through and isn't something I really plan to revisit.

Winnebago Man - What happens when a director isn't talented enough to course correct when his original documentary falls apart? Winnebago Man, an aimless film that some believe works because of the "train wreck" aspect. I respectfully disagree.

Tron Legacy - I can't recommend this poorly written, badly acted, sporadically awfully animated film. At the same time, I was never bored, and we didn't give Tron Legacy the usual MST3k treatment many of you assume we did. Three people went in together, three people agreed the movie was terrible, three people also agreed we had a good time. I can't explain it, try as I might.


Tomorrow I'll be back with "Never Again," the bottom of the barrel. Surprisingly, it's a shorter list than in years past; I only saw ten truly awful movies last year. That's the good news. The bad news is that they all should be "So You Won't Have To"'s, and for some reason not all of them are. Until then...

Blogorium Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I was pretty mean to the vocal contingent of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World fans. Since they make up almost everybody I've ever heard talk about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, you'll have to excuse me for making the leap that they represent the general consensus about Edgar Wright's big budget adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's graphic novels. I came down pretty hard on the reviews that quickly elevated the film as "best movie ever" or "groundbreaking," and I went to town on fans who dismissed The Expendables in order to justify Pilgrim's poor audience attendance in theatres.

So we had to come to this point, where the Cap'n is working on his year-end roundup of films, when the time came to say "am I going to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World or not?" When it came down to it, and when I took the film over to the Cranpire's, we couldn't come up with a compelling enough reason NOT to watch the movie. Going in, I tried as hard as possible to watch the film on its own merits and mentally divorce myself from its acolytes, which I'm actually pretty good at. I assumed that this review would either be a) the Cap'n gloating in the wake of a movie he hated, or b) the Cap'n eating some serious crow.

What happened instead is that neither is the case. I think that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is wildly misrepresented as something it isn't (exactly), and while I find the film to be technically engaging with some fine supporting performances, my central problem with the film itself is less about being annoyed by how "hip" it is and more about not caring about the lead characters.

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a 22 year old layabout dating 17 year old Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) as a means of getting over being dumped by Envy Adams (Brie Larson). Scott is the bassist in a band called the Sex Bob-ombs with Stephen Stills (Mark Webber), Kim Pine (Alison Pill) - another ex-girlfriend - and hanger-around and sometimes back-up bassist Young Neil (Johnny Simmons). He shares a bed with roommate Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin), who has a habit of stealing boys away from Scott's sister Stacy (Anna Kendrick), and Wallace, Stacy, and Julie Powers (Aubrey Plaza) all disapprove of the ambition-less Pilgrim's under-aged rebound relationship.

Things change when Scott has a dream about Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and then meets her at a party. Despite the fact that none of his usual pick up lines seem to work on the perpetually aloof, impulsive Flowers, he somehow wins her over enough to fall in the bad graces of her League of Seven Evil Exes, headed up by Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman). Scott must defeat of each of Ramona's evil exes: Mathew Patel (Satya Bhabha), Lucas Lee (Chris Evans), Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh), Roxy Richter (Mae Whitman), and the Katayanagi twins - Kyle (Keita Saito) and Ken (Shota Saito). In the process, Scott needs to figure out what he wants to do with his life, how to break up with Knives, and if he can survive dating Ramona*.

To describe Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as a "game changer" or "next level shit" actually does the film a great disservice. It's an open invitation for cynics to say "oh yeah?" and sharpen their blades in order to definitively prove its ardent supporters' claims erroneous, but beyond that, the hyperbole robs the film of what it actually is: a very well made synthesis of stylistic and narrative story-telling tricks from a clearly talented young director**. Edgar Wright may not be operating from a wholly unprecedented playbook - as some have claimed - but it doesn't mean he hasn't put together a visually engrossing, fresh-feeling film just because overenthusiastic fans rushed to crown Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as the next wave of filmmaking.

The audience reaction was actually pretty easy to take out of the equation, in part because my problems with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World centered around Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers almost exclusively. In short, I'm not really sure why I should care about either of these characters: Scott is, at best, an admittedly lazy, sort of skeezy user of women who provides his friends nothing, not even companionship. The characters that don't already hate him (like Julie and Kim) seem to simply tolerate him, and despite the fact that he openly admits to cheating on Knives and Ramona, he somehow gets a pass without any kind of character arc. (I should point out that this is not a criticism of Michael Cera, who plays the role well, but the character he's playing. The same applies to Mary Elizabeth Winstead - who I genuinely didn't recognize, despite having seen her in Death Proof and Live Free or Die Hard - below).

Now, this is not to say Ramona Flowers is any better: she's perpetually annoyed and guarded, even when she seems interested in Scott she behaves as though he ought to know the Seven Evil Exes are coming and that - save for the fight with Roxy - she's not going to do anything about it. She abandons Scott, (justifiably) breaks up with him, and tries to duck out in the end after Pilgrim murders her former lovers (which, when one looks at what's really happening here, is precisely the case). If the idea was to have two characters you don't like just barely trying to have a relationship they can bail out on at any time, then okay, but I really don't know why I should be invested in the film.

On the other hand, I did enjoy almost all of the supporting cast, particularly Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans, Alison Pill, and Mark Webber. Even the one note characters, like Anna Kendrick's perpetually indignant Stacey or Aubrey Plaza's eternally pissed Julie, make some impression. Brandon Routh would steal the show as Todd Ingram, the super-powered Vegan bassist of Envy's band The Clash at Demonhead, were it not for two inspired cameos that close out his fight scene (more on that later). Even Schwartzman, who essentially plays "sleazy" with a dash of evil, is a credible "Boss" for Pilgrim to defeat. The "video game" component of the film introduces the villains at an even keel and Wright keeps the film from feeling episodic.

On some level, I can understand how the film's most vocal champions (other than Harry Knowles, who really ought to know better) aren't aware of the numerous cinematic and cultural precedents being used - and I must add, expertly - by Wright in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The film, from its 8-Bit Universal logo opening to its "extra life" final act, is designed to appeal to a specific type of fan: twenty-to-early-thirty-somethings raised on video game consoles*** who listen to indie rock and read comics that dissect the superhero comic books their older brothers read. There's some overlap with film geeks, but it's easy to see how some of these "ground breaking" techniques were mistaken as new.

For example, I suppose most of Scott Pilgrim's audience didn't know that hip hop videos have been arbitrarily shifting aspect ratios for the last five years or so, or the dialogue bridges from scene to scene are easily recognizable in films like Breathless or Singles. Sound bridges have been around even longer, and the on-screen title card / descriptive elements were prominently on display as recently as Fight Club (compare the Scott's apartment layout to the narrator's "catalog" apartment sequence, just for starters). Still, to be fair, I'll give most viewers the benefit of the doubt and assume they went in knowing as much about film history as Knives Chau does about music halfway through the film.

Surprisingly, I'm not as annoyed by the myriad of video game, film, and "hip" music references as I'd expected to be. For example, the Sex Bob-ombs (get it? it's like Tom Jones' "Sex Bomb" but with the Super Mario Brothers Bob-ombs) didn't really bother me, or the fact that characters are named Stephen Stills and Neil Young (oh wait, that's Young Neil; my bad). It's so commonplace in the world of Scott Pilgrim that one eventually tolerates their omnipresence, and occasionally it's kind of clever: for example, I chuckled at the Ninja Ninja Revolution arcade game and laughed out loud when Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins, Jr. appeared as the "Vegan Police" to strip Todd of his Vegan status. Wright doesn't lay on the referencing in such a thick way that it's irritating, and small jokes like a "Gloom Rock" and "Sad Music" section in the record store, or the use of the Seinfeld "theme" elicit a grin.

In the end, I can't say that I loved Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I'm not even sure I liked it yet. I appreciate what Edgar Wright accomplished technically and stylistically, and the momentum of the film keeps the nearly two hour running time brisk. I enjoyed many of the supporting cast, didn't feel one way or the other about the music or myriad of references, and don't regret seeing Scott Pilgrim vs. the World in total. However, I just can't get past the fact that the primary love story is strained at best and wholly unbelievable at worst. Scott and Ramona a simply characters that didn't appeal to me, and regardless of the actors' best efforts, it's hard to really get behind a film when you just don't care.

That's too bad, because I would like to listen to one of the always entertaining Wright commentary tracks, but I'm not positive I'll ever watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World again. At least I didn't like the film on its own merits rather than its over-the-top (and honestly, foolish sounding) fan base. Do your homework, kids, and I suspect you'll still like the movie for what it is, but please stop trying to sell the world a different film than what's there; I think we might be more inclined to "take your word for it" that way.



* There are reviews that claim the film's breathless exposition may be too much for some audience members to follow, which I honestly don't understand. There's nothing difficult about following the characters introduced and how they relate to each other, and several of them are so broadly sketched that it's quite simple to keep up with them after long periods of time.
** I would like to add, at this point, that much of what Edgar Wright is praised for in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World are the same things Quentin Tarantino is constantly derided for by the same people - cobbled together imagery from other sources, intertextuality, incessant homage, and levels of self-reflexivity that border on parodic.
*** Video Game Disclaimer: the Cap'n was not involved in the "console generation," save for visits to friends' houses. Other than my brother's Game Boy, we never had a game system in the house until I was in college, when I brought home a Nintendo 64. The nostalgic love for all things Nintendo and Sega are things I can appreciate, but don't necessarily share.

A Series of Modest Proposals

(or, a nice way of saying "While it's sitting in the PS3, I still haven't watched Harry Brown yet and therefore can't review it.")

Hello, dear readers. The Cap'n has two things going on this week that contributed to a lack of blogging yesterday and (almost) not one today: 1) I'm feeling a bit under the weather, 2) I've been working on applications for graduate school, which are time consuming and while technically "film" related (being those are specifically the programs the Cap'n is applying to), they don't translate to compelling blogorium material. Perhaps, once I'm positive that they have or will not be looking at the blogorium, I'll share with you my "personal statement," which lays out a number of topics I'm looking to expand on here and in an academic setting.

In fact, if I don't actually post the statement itself, I will happily share the topics of study at a point in time other than today. Today I'd like to pose a series of proposals that you may feel free to answer, not answer, or dismiss and answer some question not posed by the Cap'n but you feel I should know anyway. Is it "lazy" blogging? Oh, almost certainly, but the outcome of several of the answers will directly influence future reviews, commentary, news, and pieces like "Five Movies" and "Four Reasons."

Without further ado:

1. While I am on the record that I have no interest in seeing Avatar, I remain on the fence about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. As you may remember, I was, perhaps, rude (to understate it) to fans of the film during its theatrical showing, mostly as a result of their very public outcry against movies people were seeing not called "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World." That being said, I remain a fan of Edgar Wright and have, with a few small exceptions, not heard many bad reviews. I'd like for someone to give me a measured reaction, if possible, and to sell me or not sell me on the film. What works? What doesn't?

2. As I always am, the Cap'n is fishing for recommendations. While I regularly visit DVD review websites in search of something I've never heard of (and have found quite a few that I'll be looking into soon), I also like to turn to the readers and ask them what they've seen lately that they think I should check out. Just because I make it a mission in life to expose others to films they haven't seen before doesn't mean that I have my finger on the pulse of under-watched cinema at all times. Help a Cap'n out, folks.


3. I have seriously been toying with the idea of recordinging and hosting downloadable "rogue" commentary tracks for films that don't have one. While the model is similar to RiffTracks, I don't intend for them to always be comedic. Whenever possible, I'd like to bring in other people who can speak authoritatively about the film or add a perspective on the movie that would be interesting for audiences. If you'd like to see (or hear this) and, more importantly, would like to be a part of this, let me know. I have the initiative, but lack certain key ingredients (like recording equipment).


4. Finally, I'm still looking for a really good title for December's mini-horror fest. Merry Mayhem is the only one I've come up with so far, and I'm not really in love with it. Don't make me turn this into a contest, folks! There could be a prize in it for you!

Blogorium Review: The Other Guys

It's taken me some time to get to reviewing The Other Guys, the new film from Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. Like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, The Other Guys is a pretense for McKay and Ferrell to insert their goofy humor into a specific genre: in this instance, the "buddy cop" film. Unlike 1970s news anchors or Nascar drivers, the Cop film has been explored more than once in the last ten years, which hampers The Other Guys in a way earlier collaborations didn't.

Detectives P.K. Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Charles Danson (Dwayne Johnson) are the big bad boys of the NYPD, constantly getting involved in wild shootouts and destructive car chases. Since they can't be bothered to do their own paperwork, it usually ends up on the desk of Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell), whose partner Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) can't stand. Hoitz made a mistake and shot the wrong person, curtailing a promising career, and Gamble's lack of ambition - and surprisingly hot wife Dr. Sheila Gamble (Eva Mendes) - baffle him to no end. Hoitz and Gamble bear the brunt of abuse from the force, including detectives Martin (Rob Riggle) and Fosse (Damon Wayans, Jr.), but when one of Allen's seemingly inane investigations may involve a massive Ponzi scheme at the hands of David Ershon (Steve Coogan), they might have a big break. If only Gamble and Hoitz can convince beleaguered Captain Gene Mauch (Michael Keaton) to let them investigate, and if they can keep the mysterious Roger Wesley (Ray Stevenson) from killing them both...

There's really not much to say about The Other Guys; of the Adam McKay / Will Ferrell collaborations (Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers), this is going to be the film I revisit the least. That's not to say it isn't funny, but I find that the silliness is toned down in The Other Guys, or directed towards running jokes that only halfway work (hot women are inexplicably attracted to Ferrell's Detective [?] Gamble, or his insistence on listening to The Little River Band to get pumped for cases). The "losing face" midsection doesn't work as well in The Other Guys, in part because it interrupts the mystery and doesn't serve the narrative as well as it does in Talladega Nights or Anchorman.

Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson aren't in much of the movie, but their extended cameos add necessary spice to the beginning of The Other Guys, even if their (SPOILER) deaths don't make any sense, even as a spoof of "Super Cop" movies. It's a convenient and inexplicable way to get rid of their characters, which does open the door for the rest of the story. It opens the door for Rob Riggle and Damon Wayans Jr. to take over, but their roles turn out to be about as incidental as Jackson and Johnson.

On the other hand, there are a handful of running gags that work very well, including Captain Mauch's supposedly unintentional quoting of TLC when giving Gamble and Hoitz advice, or Hoitz's unending grief for accidentally shooting Yankees' Short Stop Derek Jeter. Wahlberg actually benefits the most from the goofy character touches, and his explanation for knowing ballet saves an otherwise directionless scene involving his ex-girlfriend. There's a revelation about Gamble's past about halfway through the film that shouldn't work as well as it does, but Ferrell sells the transformation so well that I didn't mind.

It also helps that McKay and co-writer Chris Henchy have a knack for writing throw away lines that consistently bring the biggest laughs (one involving a hobo orgy and Gamble's much derided Prius comes to mind immediately), and the cast seems to be having a lot of fun. Ice-T's narration was a nice surprise, and while I can't guarantee it, there's a line that comes so close to the premise of Dexter that I wondered aloud if it was an intentional reference*.

It may be that The Other Guys suffers from the inevitable comparison to Hot Fuzz, which deconstructs the "buddy cop" genre with such insight that any subsequent take is going to pale in comparison. The only real new take The Other Guys makes is killing off the supercops early in the film and handing over the detective work to Hoitz and Gamble, who do actually follow a trail of evidence and do actually crack a case - mostly without cheap saves. This is nice, but as the film doesn't go as far afield as one might expect, the exercise is less than exemplary. The Other Guys is, admittedly, light years ahead of Cop Out, a movie I had so much trouble finishing that the Cap'n eventually gave up on reviewing both films at once**.

I also want to mention the end credits, which run alongside graphics on how a Ponzi scheme works, how the economic crisis happened, and who benefited from the taxpayer bailout. This is timely and rather informative, but the film handles it as such a secondary plot point that the graphics seem wildly out of place, even if they inform the "crime" Ershon is perpetrating.

Are you going to chuckle during The Other Guys? Oh yes. There are times when you'll laugh quite a bit, even if it doesn't reach the same sublime goofiness of Anchorman or Step Brothers (there's nothing that comes close to "Boats 'n Hos" in this movie) and the bizarre supporting characters are considerably scaled back (despite fine turns from Mendes, Coogan, Stevenson, Keaton, Riggle, and Wayons Jr.). Considering how much footage from the trailers is nowhere to be found in the film, I sense that there's a much funnier version of The Other Guys waiting in the wings for DVD and Blu-Ray release, so while I'm not necessarily say wait to rent it, there's a good chance the film will step it up in an "Unrated" form. Either way, feel free to check it out.



* it's something along the lines of "a good cop knows how to use his dark side for good, and then he moves to Florida"

** I genuinely disliked Cop Out, a movie that at no point elicited a chuckle from the Cap'n. I don't blame Kevin Smith for the dialogue (because he didn't write the film), but his workmanlike direction does the film no favors, and the performances he draws out of Tracy Morgan, Bruce Willis, and Sean William Scott are frankly pathetic. There's no reason for Cop Out to be as unwatchable as it was; it took me three tries to get through the painfully unfunny "interrogation" sequence.

From the Vaults: Blogorium Review - Grindhouse

(editor's note: the power situation is far from resolved. That being said, I've been slowly working on a proper review of A Serious Man, though I really feel like I should watch the movie again first. The short version is that I loved the movie. I can't help but feel like another go-round would be helpful, as I get the impression that I'm missing something. Like the first time I saw Barton Fink, but more ephemeral. Anyway, enjoy the review of Grindhouse, from shortly after its release)

It occurred to me that while in Cary, the absolute perfect conditions existed to do something I hadn't done in a long time, which was see a movie with Adam and Cranford, in this case the almost** perfect pairing of theatre to movie; Mission Valley and Grindhouse.

That's right, I watched it, and by golly, I liked it. A whole lot. Cranford and I liked Planet Terror more than Death Proof, and Adam really dug Death Proof. We all liked the trailers equally, and agreed we'd go see any of them that became movies.

The easiest way to digest the experience is just to break it down, because it's more than just two 80 minute movies with trailers, it really is quite a package deal to be involved in.

After stock cards for Coming Attractions and "thanks for coming" spots you might recognize from Kill Bill, we get the first trailer, which is

MACHETE

"He gets the women. He kills the bad guys" "If you hire him to kill the bad guys, make sure the bad guys aren't you" "they fucked with the wrong mexican" Machete plays like the Mark Wahlberg movie Shooter that we'd actually want to see. Danny Trejo kills people in four or five different and brutal ways, and then Cheech Marin is a priest who walks around with two shotguns avenging his brother.

Then we get a title screen that involve kittens and the old R rating screen, one that I admittedly had never seen, and then it's time for

PLANET TERROR

I forgive Robert Rodriguez for Sin City. Really, I do. If you're one of those people who really, REALLY liked The Faculty and From Dusk Til Dawn, or you have a real love jones for the Globus / Cannon era of 80's Sci-Fi / Action / Horror movies that ripped the shit off of John Carpenter and George Romero, then hands down this will be your favorite of the films. Not only does Rodriguez play by those movie rules, he also makes fun of them in ways that don't stand out like a sore thumb.

And look at that cast! Michael Biehn (The Terminator), Jeff Fahey (Body Parts), Tom Savini (please, like I need to tell you who that is), Josh Brolin (The Goonies), Naveed Andrews (Sayid on Lost), Bruce Willis, Nicky Katt (Insomnia), Marley Shelton (Sin City), Michael Parks (From Dusk Til Dawn), Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under), Stacy Ferguson (Yes, Fergie), and Rose McGowan (Scream...?)

I saved McGowan and Ferguson for last because it'd make sense for them to be weak links, but damned if Rose McGowan doesn't really steal this movie right out from everyone else. BEFORE the Machine Gun Leg even. I was beginning to feel like the machine gun looked a little dumb in the ads but much like Shaun of the Dead, context really is everything.Fergie doesn't actually have much to do, but she's actually not sucky in the first great Zombie kill scene in the movie. (Or mutants... it's really up for grabs)

Naveen Andrews... man, if you liked him on Lost, he's really something in what amounts to a cameo. He has a particular fascination with a part of the male anatomy that makes his first scene quite memorable.

I could really rave about Planet Terror, but I'll just leave it at this: Jeff Fahey and Michael Biehn play brothers. One is the Sherriff; the other owns a Bar-B-Que place. And the "missing reel" is f'n funny. And a Nouvelle Vague singing "Too Drunk to Fuck" in a scene not to be missed.

At the point that ended I really had to pee, but there was NO way I was missing my shot at seeing the Thanksgiving trailer again. But first was the ad for:

WEREWOLF WOMEN OF THE SS

Easily the most retarded of the four trailers, Rob Zombie stuck every Ilsa, She Devil of the SS movie into one trailer, added Sybill Danning, Tom Towles, Sherri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Udo Kier, and the BIG surprise, Nicholas Cage. Yes, the same Nic Cage I rip into so readily caught me totally off guard when the announced said "AND NICHOLAS CAGE AS..... FU MANCHU!" and Cage does the most ridiculous Fu Manchu impression ever with the fakest looking moustache you're gonna see this year. The trailer is just quick cuts of every nazi exploitation standby ever, and then repeated shots of some werewolf with a machine gun and two naked she-wolves behind him for no good reason.

After that we got a nice ad for some Barbeque place in Texas called Acuna Brothers with random shots of various foods, and then a trailer to help you vomit said food back up:

DON'T

I'm not even sure I can explain the Don't trailer, because it's really dependent on the Voice Over Guy and how he says things like

"If....You're.....Thinking....of....going....in....that.....house..........DON'T"

and something really strange or disgusting happens. Edgar Wright really fashioned an ad for one of those British movies from the seventies came in the wake of Hammer studios collapsing. Really funny in a disturbing way.

(If it helps, you should think of the trailer as a combination of The Legend of Hell House and The Burning.)

and then, there was

THANKSGIVING

Seeing this online was cool, but seeing the Cheerleader / Trampoline thing with an audience is that much better, as were almost all of the fucked up things Eli Roth does in his two minute slasher money shot homage. I would pay to see Thanksgiving right now if he made it. The same goes for Don't and Machete. I might not pay full price for Werewolf Women of the SS, but I'd see it.

I should mention that in addition to being scratchy, losing audio, and film distortions, in between every "reel" of trailers or movies is a few seconds of white space, as though the projectionist didn't cut it properly and left part of the "tail" on, runing the "illusion". As a former projectionist, I got a kick out of that.

Finally, even though I missed part of the credits, there was

DEATH PROOF

Here's what I don't exactly like about Death Proof: There are VERY long stretches in the beginning and middle of the movie that exist only because Tarantino*** wanted to write Tarantino-esque dialogue for women, and had he only done it the first time, I'd be okay with that, because what happens between those yap fests makes up for it.

What I do like about Death Proof: The driving sequences are the SHIT. When Tarantino drops repeated references to Vanishing Point (going so far as to put the car from Vanishing Point in the movie), he'd damn well better deliver on the car portions, and yes, does he ever. This easily could have been Tarantino slobbering over his standby obsessions again, but instead he simply uses the things he loves about Hot Rod movies and slasher films to make a high octane car chase that rivals The French Connection or Ronin. Really.

Kurt Russell really brings his A-Game to Stuntman Mike, a character that's alternately psychopathic and really, really pathetic, and all of the girls in the second half bring it (including Uma Thurman's stunt woman from Kill Bill, Zoe Bell, who plays herself and does some ridiculous car stunts). The ending will probably remind people a little bit of Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill, as that is the spirit it closest resembles, but there's just that gap between the first time Stuntman Mike looks at the camera and winks and the next time he does that really doesn't need to be.

So anyway, Grindhouse is a SEE IT IN THEATERS, because this is meant to be watched with your rowdiest friends in a raucous crowd in the dive-iest theater you can get to late at night. And don't feel bad if you get up and walk around, because almost everyone else in the theater did at one point or the other, including all three of us. Oh, and we didn't need to say shit, if that tells you anything. The experience is half the fun of the show, so check it out.


** The perfect pairing would've been Grindhouse at The Studio, but since that can't happen anymore, Mission Valley is a close second.
*** I should mention that QT has roles in Death Proof and Planet Terror, but you're not gonna care about the Death Proof one once you've seen what happens to him in the first movie.