True Horror: no acting!

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) was such a phenomenon that its sequel, BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2 could afford to be set “in the real world” and regard that first film as if it was an actual film phenomenon in their world – a world in which everyone from Roger Ebert to MTV’s Kurt Loder are talking about that film.

The five 20-somethings at the center of this dumb plot – retracing the steps of Heather Donahue from the BLAIR WITCH film – live in a world where tourists overwhelm the Burkittsville woods out of curiosity and obsession with the film; where the irritated locals and sheriff try to tell tourists “it was only a movie”; where grifters sell twig figures and piles of rocks, to continue the mystique; where truly the most horrifying thing – is the acting.

Jeffrey Donovan leads this pack of unconvincing day-players into the woods, as a profiteering tour guide. Erica Leerhsen tags along as a supposed “wiccan” (the word that actual witches like to call themselves – although even the terminology “actual witch” is a misnomer, because – no such thing; establishing their bona fides with, “Blessed be” as if that proves they worship Beelzebub). Stephen Barker Turner reads his lines like he’s seeing them for the first time; his girlfriend, Tristine Skyler, suspected of being a witch herself, gives a performance that indicates she’s got either dark powers or mild indigestion. They’re both doing some sort of “supernatural research” themselves – in essence, their own Blair Witch Project (ain’t I quaint?). And Kim Director goes along for the ride because she’s “psychic” or something, garbed like a Goth, but looking like Eddie Izzard. (“Have you got a flag?”)

These five non-entities spend the night in the woods where Heather’s infamous footage was found, and in the morning, discover that all their camera equipment and research notes have been shredded. As Kim Director says, “These things look like they were BITTEN through!” putting so little effort into that line-read, it made me question why she chose acting as her profession. Skyler also experiences a miscarriage, and needs to be taken to a hospital. Which diluted the dread immediately.

I mean, isn’t this the forest from which there is no return? And the gang simply – drives outa there. Gone is that claustrophobia of being trapped in some dimension that won’t loose its grip. Onto the hospital and then onto Jeff’s house in the woods (a veritable warehouse/mansion with multiple levels, just for the sake of getting people alone in their respective spaces), where strange occurrences make everyone doubt their sanity, in the end supposedly succumbing to what we presume to be the Blair Witch curse of not getting any more work in feature films.

Visiting the last resting place of their careers.

Artisan Entertainment pushed out this dreck on the heels of BLAIR WITCH’s worldwide box office of $248 million (on a budget of $60,000!), doing exactly what the grifters in the movie are doing with their twig figures – trying to cash in on the latest fad. Zero creativity with the story, characters, direction, set dressing, dialogue – everything! It’s simply a B-movie hoisting itself on the cachet of another more creative, successful property. BLAIR WITCH was also a unique viewing experience that could not, and should not, be replicated, for the simple fact that its existence is predicated on the ambiguity of its reality. If another movie is made in the same shaky-cam vein (under the same banner), it will reek of venal replication. (See: BLAIR WITCH 2016.)

Joe Berlinger (known for his documentaries) co-writes and directs. I guess this just isn’t his wheelhouse, as he doesn’t know how to make it look NOT like a Hollywood movie. Supposed pitch black night in the woods is lit like a studio, with source-less reflected light coming from behind trees and paths way in the background; when two characters are in bed, there is a small wash-light illuminating their heads as they speak in this supposedly pitch dark night. This kind of stultifying convention only comes with being stalled in documentary mode. And Carter Burwell writes the score. Which is ironic, because in good movies, this unconventional composer’s scores lend an eerie, otherworldly air, and yet in this witchypoo setting, his music evokes nothing.

Movie ends with the police (led by curmudgeonly Lanny Flaherty) questioning the 20-somethings, without lawyers present, about the murders they were involved in, and showing them footage of their murders on their own cameras (that they committed while possessed, they claim). But why are the police doing this, as if they’re trying to convince the suspects of their own guilt? Homicide detectives just need to ARREST suspects, not prove to them why they are being arrested! This convention comes down to us from Peter Falk’s COLUMBO days – the detective outlining the process of the crime to the criminal, as if it’s part of police procedure, when in fact, it’s a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME. It’s the most idiotic part of an idiotic movie, and– ah, I get it: the cops are also possessed by the Blair Witch!

END

If the comedy isn’t there – Force it.

There was no show, there was no idea; it was really based on nothing, except a name that made everybody laugh.
— Steve Carell.

Who knew that a pointless, ignorant, non-sequitur, idiotic utterance by the 45th president of the United States could be turned into a pointless, ignorant, non-sequitur, idiotic Netflix show?

For that is where SPACE FORCE originated and that is what SPACE FORCE is.

Created by Steve Carell and Greg Daniels specifically to rag on the moron american president’s wayward musing on creating a “sixth branch of the armed forces” to defend space, SPACE FORCE does more harm than any other unfunny show on TV today, because it glorifies ignorance. Because it glorifies one particular man’s ignorance – that man who holds the lives of 330 million Americans in his hands, if not the futures of 7 billion Earthlings, with the nuclear codes at his reprehensible fingertips.

And the show’s target audience won’t even get the gag.

The dumbo president of the United States and his braindead supporters, whom this show is satirizing, are too oblivious to comprehend they are being made fun of, and it will be regarded by them as vindication that A SPACE FORCE IS VALID. Because any publicity is good publicity. And see? – our fantastic idea is on TV – it MUST be good!

The series has distilled the premise of SPACE FORCE to utmost simplicity: get “boots on the Moon.” Which translates to: Get a military strike force on the Moon, because China is already there, and we’re going to be as juvenile as possible in fighting for that territory which has no known beneficial resources, and no profit incentive. Because America.

Headed by the incompetent General Mark Naird (Carell), the series follows his daily tribulations in getting the agency up and running smoothly while butting heads with his superiors and his science advisor Adrian Mallory (John Malkovich).

Dumbo Donald is never seen and his name is never mentioned – the bitchbaby is referred to as POTUS, and that moniker is mentioned frequently. The branch itself is hastily put together based on the mundane “space force” speculation the real life POTUS made in mid-2018, and its existence is regarded as a joke by the other branch generals (Patrick Warburton, Noah Emmerich, Jane Lynch). (Note: Dumbo Donald is SUCH a lazy conman that the new U.S. Space Force – which was “founded” in December 2019 – is actually a renamed version of the Air Force Space Command founded in 1982 by Iran-Contra traitor Ronald Reagan. So the baseline premise of this show – everyone running around like headless chooks in a “new” department – is bullshit. All the personnel should simply be doing the same non-sequitur jobs they’ve been doing since Reagan gutlessly designated an armed forces branch for “space warfare.” In essence, Dumbo just RENAMED as existing department – just so it could be called “his” creation. It’s the same thing he’s done with the U.S-Mexico border wall. It’s already there, but Dumbo wants to pretend like HE built it, so repeats the lie enough times until it’s truth to 36% of dumbo Americans.)

Naird is fashioned on Michael Scott from the American unfunny version of THE OFFICE. He’s an ignorant blowhard that denigrates intelligence and thinks he’s the smartest person in the room even though he is totally unqualified to do his job. Sound familiar?

Steve Carell is trying way too hard to Be Funny. Shouting, making faces, forcibly trying to squeeze gags from a script where no gags can be squeezed, choking past the point of constipation to deliver deliver deliver on a script that gives him nothing to deliver. Though they keep his character boneheaded for the most part, there are small lapses where they afford him lucidity and the occasional ‘Murrican speech. Because let’s face it, to create a character as starkly ignorant and evil and un-American as the actual Dumbo Donald wouldn’t hold many fans (except that calcified 36% of asshats who support him, through pussy-grabbing to murder).

Steve Carell ponders whether any man needs this many phallic symbols.

Lisa Kudrow is Naird’s wife; she seems dissatisfied in their marriage – unless that’s her usual inadequate acting performance – and halfway through the episode she is suddenly being visited in prison by Naird. Couldn’t be bothered to find out why (too painful after watching three drab episodes and clicking through a few others to verify the whole enterprise is unpalatable).

Malkovich’s casting is trying to draw in people like myself, who will put eyes on this maniac no matter what dung he’s stepped in. Grand performance. Wrong dung.

Anne Hathaway lookalike, Diana Silvers (the new It Girl since MA, 2019), is Naird’s smug trope Millennial daughter.

Lackluster productions like these always make me sorry for the people who DO pull good performances: Two standouts are Jimmy O. Yang as Dr. Chan and Tawny Newsome as pilot Angela Ali (although by Episode 7, the writers turn her into a shrike for awhile, to bud a romance between her and Chan).

Carter Burwell (BEING JOHN MALKOVICH) composes, far below his abilities. Most Burwell-scored movies, I pick up on his evocative style and recognize his rapturous intangibility before I’ve seen the credits. But this music, it’s not cinematic or soul-stirring in the least. I noticed nothing. We all want to work on projects we believe in, but sometimes, we just need the work.

The first outro title card: “In Memory of Fred Willard.” Coincidentally, Willard was in a low-budget comedy called SPACE FORCE in 1978. From low budget to lowbrow, Willard cameos as Naird’s dad in three episodes (Eps 1, 2 and 7) and injects some actual laughs into the dire proceedings. His hands badly shaking, his mind still a comedy funhouse, it’s tragic that his swansong had to be this excrement.

Satire has to stretch farther than the reality it is satirizing, but when your TV show cannot come within morbidly obese distance of the pointlessness, ignorance and non-sequitur idiocy of the real life Dumbo Donald administration, your satire has failed. The confusion and disorganization exhibited by Naird’s Space Force team is nowhere near the confusion and disorganization exhibited by the real life white house, who couldn’t even find the light switches when they took over the joint. When a fictional TV show cannot match the stratospheric levels of dumbass, felony and treason of the reality, it reveals what a hot mess the actual 2020 american government truly is. And that just makes us madder.

Maybe 10 years ago, SPACE FORCE might have been able to make these jokes (if some less malicious idiot had blurted it at a press conference – cough – W) but in the idiocracy of today, it’s a terrifying documentary.

The close-minded, incurious, ignorant Naird, risen to the rank of 4-star general through brown-nosing the administration, wants to launch their first satellite against all his technicians’ advice; he personifies the piece of dogshit they are lampooning by NEVER LISTENING TO SCIENTISTS and making decisions NEVER based on empirical evidence, but on benefitting his political position – and we are meant to find him funny when there is a sitting U.S. president who fires federal scientists who do not promulgate his sociopathic ramblings as truth?

Noah Emmerich is General Kick Grabaston. Is that really funny when the grab-ass president of the United States has sexually molested over 49 women and is not in jail for one of those rapes and assaults?

Ben Schwartz is the Space Force publicist, who tells Naird, “I never get involved in whether people are telling the truth or lying. I mean, those words carry very little meaning to me.” Again, is that really a joke when the real life president is telling the citizens of his country, who are waiting to hear factual methods on how to stay alive during a pandemic, to inject disinfectant to cure a virus?

The nods to the Dumbo Donald admin are constant, as in Episode 7, when entrepreneur Edison Jaymes (Kaitlyn Olson) sells Space Force her “Skinny Fuel” which is supposedly more efficient than regular rocket fuel, yet she won’t reveal the science behind it. How does she sell it? She sycophants herself to Naird to get on his good side, and he blindly buys the fuel and loads his rocket with it – because she praised him. (Sound familiar?) Here’s the clincher: Naird discovers that it will blow up his rocket (meaning: egg on his face – for being scammed with the fuel and his rocket blowing up), so surreptitiously replaces the Skinny Fuel with regular fuel. The launch is a success, and Naird whispers to Edison the switch was made “off the books.” Which means for all intents and purposes, her fuel worked. When in fact, it is dangerous and could get people killed. This means she will tout this launch on her resume to other buyers as evidence that her fuel is safe. This convoluted matrix of harm is not just in this fiction – it is out here in the world.

Because America.

In a world where the dumbo president lies to reporters that he is taking hydroxychloroquine – a malaria drug – to cure a virus that he doesn’t have, then tells reporters a week later that his regimen of taking it is over, because he doesn’t want to continue the lie – this is the world in which this scam rocket fuel episode is being aired. You really find this funny, Steve?

This is not smart satire. This is just dumb enough that Dumbo Donald and his cronies and supporters will use it as evidence that scientists are full of shit, and that going with your gut is RIGHT. We can’t place the blame anywhere except at the feet of Carell and Daniels as writers, producers and star.

Carell and Daniels are not even writing jokes by Episode 2, just transcribing actual dialogue from meetings that NASA and other space agencies must have had with Dumbo Donald. When China sabotages the launched satellite, amongst Mallory’s team of scientists gathered to brainstorm solutions, there’s Naird shouting out imbecilic fantasies in his unmitigated ignorance and insisting his baby ideas be taken seriously over the technical solutions of the scientists. Naird is actually asked by Mallory: “Why do you distrust scientists?” After his word-salad answer, someone points out his discrepancies, and he simply snouts them down – “SHUT UP!” Funny? No. Reality? Yes.

The final scene of Episode 2 at last skews the character away from the orange sphincter, as Naird, who has been awake 24 hours, goes home to find his daughter struggling with trig homework and stays up to help her, against her pleas that he get some rest. That helping hand is something Dumbo Donald would never offer—hang on! Naird’s daughter is in her late teens, slim and hot, so in the spirit of Dumbo Donald, Naird is actually cultivating that daughter’s panties—

To everyone who just groaned (Awww, that’s gone too far!) *I* am simply reporting what Dumbo Donald ACTUALLY DOES. *I* wasn’t the pervert who said “I would date my daughter if she wasn’t my daughter.” Who said that again? I wasn’t the pedophile who held my daughter in a photo when she was 15 like I was embracing a concubine. I wasn’t the lecher who touched my daughter’s hips in public like I’m used to touching them as I take her roughly from behind. Which adulterous, incestuous, unindicted co-conspirator to obstruction of justice did all those things again?

The ten Season 1 episodes of SPACE FORCE are Low Earth Orbit drudgery. If Dumbo wins a second term, this show will unfortunately be picked up for further Seasons, as the filmmakers think they are sending a positive message about the negativity of the Dumbo administration. All we can hope for is that the elections are fixed for the Other Guy this time round, and that any further SPACE FORCE plans will burn up on the launch pad.

END

Signage Pwnage.

After a murder investigation goes cold, the mother of the murdered girl purchases advertising on THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI to turn up the heat on the local sheriff, by reminding the town of his neglect:

RAPED WHILE DYING

AND STILL NO ARRESTS?

HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?

It’s not a murder mystery, it’s not a cop drama, it’s not about racial tensions; it’s a story about love. Yes, really.

The love of a mother for her murdered daughter.
Writer-director Martin McDonagh (IN BRUGES, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS) leans into the story immediately, as a woman (Frances McDormand) drives past three disused, decrepit billboards, missing panels, shrouded in morning fog, on a lonely stretch of country road. She visits the advertising agent (Caleb Landry Jones) and buys the space. We find out the woman is Mildred Hayes, whose daughter was murdered seven months ago, with no killer found. The billboards “keep it in the public eye, focus their minds on the case…”

The love of a man for his family, and his recognition of another’s love for her family.
Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) is a tragic sympathetic figure, walking the line between placating Mildred and the reality of the long-gone killer. And he has cancer. His solution to spare his wife (Abbie Cornish) and their kids the pain of seeing him deteriorate, would go hand in hand with his decision to secretly aid Mildred in keeping those billboards up.

The love of a damaged deputy.
Willoughby’s deputy is a racist sadist named Dixon (Sam Rockwell), the walking id of the department. He is the first to see the billboards – in reverse order; a great storytelling device. In his extreme attempts to nullify the billboards and their owner, we discover he harbors a devotion to Chief Willoughby that borders on homosexual. In a moment of blind rage, Dixon throws the advertising agent out a two-storey window. Yet when he reads Willoughby’s final letter to him, our tears will flow for Dixon. It is not – as we thought – a letter of chastisement, but of love: “Hate never solved nothing, but calm thought does. Try it for a change. No one will think you’re gay. And if they do, arrest them for homophobia. Won’t they be surprised?” Dixon finds he had the belief and love of a man he admired, and it affects him profoundly, so much so that his last act – or what he thinks will be his last act – is an act of love, as he protects the cold-case file of Mildred’s daughter, by throwing it from his burning body.

Though there is an explicit theme of “anger begets anger” (voiced by many characters), it is ironic then that the many acts of love blindside us.

The love of a man who saves his bully.
Peter Dinklage (GAME OF THRONES) plays the put-upon town midget, who holds a torch for Mildred, and who is regularly taunted by Dixon. It is he who arrives first to aid Dixon in a conflagration. (His inclusion in the tale gives it that IN BRUGES flavor.)

The love of a man who forgives his assailant.
The agent, thrown out the window by Dixon, is shocked to find Dixon sharing his hospital room. Instead of using the opportunity to avenge himself on the helpless Dixon – he quietly brings him an orange juice.

With so many acts of love passim, we realize there is no reason to portray Mildred’s family life in flashback as idyllic. No Kodachrome moments, as Mildred wages open battle with her rebellious daughter (Kathryn Newton), who at one point screams, “I hope I get raped on the way!” as she storms out of the house. Mildred’s ex-husband (John Hawkes) is no better, as a wife-beating redneck who left her for a 19-year-old (Samara Weaving). Mildred’s long-suffering son (Lucas Hedges) seems the only balanced family member.

Mildred herself is not painted as a rational hero. Her solution to locating her daughter’s killer is undeniably fascist – databases and “every baby born listed on it,” and if there is a match for a murder, “simply kill the person.” Talk like this, whether sarcastic or serious, tells us there will never be an answer to her billboardic prayer. Yet we can still conjure sympathy for Mildred, as she brings new flowers to the billboards every day – and when the boards go up in flames from a mysterious arsonist, her soul-stricken gasp reminds us that not only were they a prod to law enforcement, they were the shrine, the last memento of her daughter’s existence.

Frances McDormand would win the Golden Globe for Best Actress. Sam Rockwell, who should have won Best Supporting Actor for GALAXY QUEST (1999) or MATCHSTICK MEN (2003), or Best Actor for MOON (2009), at last nabs a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in this film. Now others become the supporting actors to watch: the formidable character actor Zeljko Ivanek as a deputy, imperious Clarke Peters as the new Sheriff. Each performance in this movie is an integral cog in an exceptional ensemble.

McDormand plays the tragic mother with a very distinctive look: overalls, bandanna, short hair tied back, no makeup. Though it works for the story, it’s disconcerting that only by bowing to male tropes can a woman be regarded as “strong.” The opposite end of that spectrum is the searing hot woman who uses her allure to ensnare men, which is also an incorrect rendition of “strong.” It’s a much bigger discussion than we have the time for here – just mentioning it because I’ve seen so many excited women praising this “strong” woman, when they’re only praising her “masculine characteristics.”

The tone of THREE BILLBOARDS constantly flits from somber to black comedy, although I don’t think it is quite as successful in the comedy department as McDonagh’s other truly black comedy, IN BRUGES. When taken out of context, in trailers, some scenes spark with comedic energy (for example, Mildred kicks a boy in the nuts, then kicks a girl in the cunt – it’s funny because it’s rare!), but in the context of the story, this act illustrates Mildred’s frustration and isolation; the kids getting their comeuppance is not funny, it’s satisfactory. Then Mildred swears outlandishly when driving past a live TV reporter – it’s funny because it’s a blooper! – however, she is merely reminding the reporter that the real story (her daughter’s rape and murder) is far from over. It strikes us that rape and murder is not funny, but tragic.

Yes, there are instances of anger begetting anger: Dixon’s bitter man-mom (masculine Sandy Martin), coaxes Dixon to “get to Mildred through her friends”; the priest (Nick Searcy) comes into her home to petition against her billboards: “If you hadn’t stopped coming to church, you’d have more understanding of people’s feelings” – to which Mildred reminds him of the clergy’s boy-fucking proclivities; the dentist talks ominously of “Willoughby having friends in town,” while he moves in on her mouth with a whizzing drill – which Mildred grabs and redirects through his thumb; Mildred’s ex-husband hasn’t got a kind word for her current life or choices; and Dixon himself is unwitting victim to Mildred when she unleashes her anger through Molotov cocktails.

To answer your question, No, THREE BILLBOARDS (filmed in Sylva, North Carolina) is not based on a true story, McDonagh inspired to write it upon seeing billboards relating to an unsolved murder in some southern American state.

Movie includes the song Walk Away Renee (originally performed by The Left Banke 1966; The Four Tops 1967 cover is here) – such a classic sound that brings us into another era, and finds some resonance with the movie: “And when I see the sign that points one way…” / “Just walk away, Renee / You won’t see me follow you back home…”

The conclusion of THREE BILLBOARDS might be comparable to NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, with no satisfactory wrap on the murder mystery. But it never was about the murder; it is about redemption, not revenge or even justice. It’s not about catching the killer – it’s about the repercussions of putting up those titular billboards, and how that act redeems a few souls, not least, Dixon and Mildred.

Many viewers comment on wanting resolution on whether Dixon and Mildred followed through on their vendetta. If you read the movie carefully, you’ll realize it is telling us that all these people are inherently “good” and only needed to discover that within themselves. With that in mind, we might conclude that Mildred and Dixon found some kind of internal peace while in the act of moving forward to “enact justice,” and probably turned back around and had a beer with Dixon’s Sasquatch mom.

END

Faking Porn, Fart 2.

Somewhere along the way, the tween girlie movie series TWILIGHT transmorphed into the painfully overwrought “THE TWILIGHT SAGA,” like there was something extremely important happening between all these vampire models standing around doing nothing and all these werewolf models standing around doing nothing with their shirts off.

So we arrive at the conclusion of author Stephenie Meyer‘s series, fully titled, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 2. There’s no real import or meaning to the title, but it takes up a lot of syllables, which in the minds of tweenies and weenies who haven’t yet read any real authors, makes it sooo grown up, like, totallyyyyy.

Bella (Kristen Stewart) is now a newly-created vampire (a newborn) and she and vampire hubbie Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) have birthed a bouncing baby CGI monstrosity, which they name Renesmee (played by a real life Mackenzie Foy after she grows out of  computer diapers). Jacob (Taylor Lautner) is still hanging around the Cullen vampire residence like a dog fart after lasagna.

The usual crepuscular cast of Cullen vampires stand around and share line-reads (Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz). Meanwhile, vampire Maggie Grace (known for being TAKEN a lot) sees Bella’s child from afar, and thinks it is a human child that has been bitten and turned into a vampire (which is a sin, as the King James Bible tells us in St. Paul’s Letters To Dracula). She reports to Senior Vamp Dude, Aro (Michael Sheen, leader of the Volturi, which in Latin means “heavy mullet”), who is just waiting for a reason to kill something so that the movie can allow everyone to stop standing around and doing nothing.

This non-issue is what the movie turns on. All it takes is for someone to say to Aro, “Bella is the mother, and Edward is the father, even though we know he looks kinda gay, but trust us, he had The Sex with that brunette chick.” But a battle brews, and so the Cullen clan spend the better half of the movie “recruiting” sympathetic vamps from around the world who will “stand witness” for them, and say what I just said above. Torturous scenes of vampire models standing around pledging their allegiance to not making the movie interesting in the least. I swear, if these people didn’t have super-speed and occasionally run in fast-motion, there wouldn’t be ANY action in this movie at all! (And when they stand around, I find it hilarious that they always stand in pairs, coupled-off and each couple facing each other, like 14-year-olds at a house party scared that someone is gonna move on their boo. Hmm, I guess, exactly like their demographic!)

“You wanna have more of that Pretend Sex?”

Speaking of sex, again the movie goes to great lengths to tease youths with slow motion shots of Bella’s naked elbow and Edward’s nude hip bone, before cutting away to them covered in a bed together or in a field of flowers wearing clothes, implying that they did something that only your bigger brother does with cheerleaders. What it is, you’ll never know…

Which raises the whole “baby” question: Since when can vampires have children?! So their sperm and ovum still work like living tissue even though they’re undead? Which means vampires can theoretically overrun the world. Because they’re immortal. The TWILIGHT-heads are gonna counter with, “But she got pregnant as a human, and he ‘turned’ her (bit her on the bum) as she was giving birth, so the baby wouldn’t kill her on the way out.” Sound medical procedure. Which still means his seed is living tissue that carries genetic code; which means that vampires can still take over the world if they used this method on thousands of women.

You lost me at vampire sperm.

Movie opens with a montage of Bella discovering her powers, keeping her thirst for human blood and her acting in check. Instead of a nearby human, she kills a puma about to pounce on a deer, to slake her blood lust – oh, good decision! The predator-to-prey ratio is so low in these parts precisely because of numbskulls like you, who think that killing the puma is noble due to being raised on nature documentaries that paint the predators as “evil.” The millions of expendable deer deforesting the vegetation around here thank you, vampire maiden!

She arm-wrestles Kellan Lutz and wins because – woman empowerment. She can generate a mental shield that protects her loved ones from harm, while another vampiress generates shocks like Electro, while others just make up powers as they go along, because – vampires, yeh. She stands glistening in the sun: “I was born to be a vampire.” Sure, honey.

The art of Looking Menacing While Standing With Your Boo.

I must say, though, Stewart looks absolutely gorgeous here. No more the winsome pouty lass with the irritating pause-acting, she has lost her baby-fat and blossomed, with lush eyelashes, luscious waterfall tresses, desire-brown contact lenses, full cupid-blood lips, her straining A-cups propped up by a B-bra creating an hourglass figure, and even her acting has improved vastly, maybe up to the level of Shatner-adjacent.

But narration was a bridge too far. During the recruitment montage, Stewart narrates like she’s about to hiccup, with a passion reserved for GPS directions, expositing every character’s backstory and special power. Are we watching a movie, or listening to the audiobook?

Jacob, who is still somehow hanging around due to his insipid excuse of “imprinting” on both Bella and Renesmee, reveals his hairy ass to Bella’s father Charlie (Billy Burke), who was unaware he was in a movie series about vampires and werewolves until now. He comes to visit Bella at the Cullen residence, sees their freaky CGI baby, asks her what’s wrong, to which she answers ‘nothing,’ then drives out of the movie forever.

“Whoopsie! I’m a thriller!”

After nothing continues to happen quite a lot, the Volturi, led by pale-faced Aro, march to battle, all dressed like Michael Jackson. The Cullens and their allies are ready, all standing in the snow in couple-pairs, so that Aro won’t make a move on their boo.

Remember, these people are empaths and psychics and are endowed with other powers far beyond human reasoning and imagination, which means they all didn’t have to put on their sports bras and come tramping out here in the snow in the first place; Aro could have sent a trusted aide to mind-meld the relevant info and bring it back to him. But no. Here we are. The conclusion to the most anticipated Young Adult series in history. And it ends with – nothing happening.

Alice Cullen (stunning Ashley Greene) holds Aro’s hand – and there is a massive, pitched, badly-staged skirmish, where legends die and heroes fall. This is it, folks! It doesn’t get any more exciting! The final grand battle of Twilight! Destiny bellows and fates collide, and—-

Alice releases Aro’s hand. Oh, it was just a vision. “After what happened here today, they’ll never forget.” Uh, but nothing happened. In the distance, we see the breaking dawn… Oh, I get it! It all makes sense now—wait—

What?

END

Breaking Wind, Fart 1.

The two-part laborious conclusion to the most trivial love story ever told, TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN PART 1, opens with a wedding sequence, exactly like the one in THE GODFATHER, with two small differences: it’s not about New York Crime Families, and it’s not good.

Edward the Vampire (Hayden Christensen doppelganger Robert Pattinson) and Bella Swan the Human (mind-numbingly unwatchable Kristen Stewart) marry. So why is Jacob the Werewolf (Taylor Lautner) still doing his third wheel impression like a fart that won’t dissipate? Hey dude, why are you hanging around? It ain’t romantic, it ain’t manly, and it sure as hell ain’t “imprinting” – that pathetic rationalization you’ve given to your doe-eyed whining. I won’t stoop to stating the obvious here, because everyone over 15 knows what Jacob wants – and it’s not to be Bella’s “friend.” What he wants starts with ‘f’ and rhymes with fuck.

Edward and Bella travel to an exotic location where they proceed to have pretend sex in the surf by the light of the silvery moon. Oh yes, here we go– CUT TO: The Next Morning. Whaaaaat?– After young boys and dumb girls have been waiting 3 whole years to find out How To Have Tween Sex, director Bill Condon and writers Stephenie Meyer and Melissa Rosenberg deny them this small favor? Sucks to be virgins, don’t it, kids?

The bed is shattered, which means they either had:
a) a violent lay,
b) a bad carpenter,
c) a sharknado,
d) Ikea,
e) termites.

She proudly shows him her bruises from coitus, which means he’s doing something right, yet every time she reveals a bruise (like the juvenile practice of showing off your hickeys at school), his meager acting skills register some kind of remorse. The next day, she is with child. Because that’s how babies are made, kids. You see, when a man loves a woman, he puts his…

… and then a monstrous baby grows within two weeks, threatening Bella’s life because she’s still only a human. Though she begged Edward to “change her” during their dry-humping courtship and though he should have transformed her into a vampire before impregnating her, I guess logic has nothing to do with anything by this time in the film.

Proven by the fact that the werewolf clan speak of being “threatened” by the birth of Bella’s hybrid-spawn, the likes of which would apparently topple empires and crack planets. How? Dunno. But “the tribe must be protected.” Uh, okay, guy, run through the forests naked some more and that’ll fix everything. The werewolves discuss the birth conundrum by mind-talking amongst themselves while growling. The meaning of Stupid just went up three notches.

In one of the best comedies of the year, Bella becomes emaciated and lies dying in the vampire clan’s cottage, a basketball shoved up under her dress to make it look like she’s pregnant, while the vampire clan stand around like teen models blowing a lot of hot air, while Edward mopes about with his Tragic Acting Face No.7 and Jacob hangs around like a wet dog smell.

At one point, the vamps give Bella human blood to drink because they discern that “the baby is thirsty.” Jacob, in the room, though as usual with no reason to be, wisecracks, “I think I’m going to be sick.” This, from the guy who mauls intestines and bowels while on all fours covered in fur.

Bella eventually gives birth to a bouncing baby demon. Jacob, as usual, is at the birth with no reason to be, looking up her dress. Bella starts dying in a rush. And the primary thing on both Jacob’s and Edward’s minds is the promise that Edward made to Jacob – that if Bella dies, Jacob can maul Edward’s intestines on all fours. Right, the woman you both “love” is dying in front of you, and the only thing you can think of is each other. The Native Americans have a word for that: fagalas. Surprisingly, Jacob is the first to give Bella mouth-to-mouth. Well, not so surprisingly: three years he’s been waiting to blow in her mouth – while Edward looks on wondering whether to act like a man and beat the shit out of him, or just act.

Insufferable Kristen Stewart lost a lot of weight for this role, and by movie’s end, on her death bier, she looks skeletal (which means she must have missed at least two meals) – but don’t go counting Oscars yet. Losing incredible amounts of weight doesn’t make you RAGING BULL. She’s still insufferable, just skinny and insufferable.

It’s a cliffhanger folks, so you’ll just have to wait and see whether Summit Entertainment sues Bella for breach of contract by dying in this film even though she was contracted for one more TWILIGHT movie. (Oh, I guess it’s not such a cliffhanger after all…)

END

The Book of Duderonemy.

All The Dude ever wanted was his rug back.
–The Dude, THE BIG LEBOWSKI.

Thus it begins. Two low-rent thugs mistakenly terrorize shiftless stoner Jeff Lebowski (aka The Dude) instead of the rich mark they were meant to threaten, also named Lebowski. They pee on The Dude’s rug for good measure, precipitating the rug’s demise. That rug really tied the room together. And by Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Dude shall have restitution!

Jeff Bridges brings a breezy effortlessness to The Dude that is the heart, soul and hash pipe of this culture-gasm called THE BIG LEBOWSKI. He doesn’t just “make” the movie – he IS the movie. They say John Wayne was tilting towards Rooster Cogburn all his life. The same is true of Jeff Bridges subsuming himself in Jeff Lebowski, nay, The Dude. No matter how many more films Bridges may make in his lifetime, he will forever be remembered as The Dude, or His Dudeness, or Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

El Duder Cuker

And he can claim to his grandchildren that he once did a whole movie in his pajamas.

The first three viewings of THE BIG LEBOWSKI will wash over you before you realize it even has a plot, as you wallow in the headrush aura of Bridges playing The Dude as if these lines are just occurring to him as the camera rolls.

Set in the art-and-porn surfer-bowler underbelly of Los Angeles’s Venice Beach locale, by the fifth viewing, you will realize there are other actors sharing the lens: John Goodman as The Dude’s high-strung Jewish gun-toting, ex-war vet, bowling buddy Walter (“I don’t roll on Shabbos!”), Steve Buscemi as their mousy sidekick Donny, whom Walter has no patience for (“Shut the fuck up, Donny!”); David Huddleston as the Big Lebowski of the title, the billionaire whom the low rent thugs should have visited. If they had, we wouldn’t be here right now, with a revolution of in-gags and cult quotables.

Comes Philip Seymour Hoffman mewling in the middle background as the billionaire’s liege; Julianne Moore as Maude, avant-garde, elitist artiste who re-kidnaps the Big Lebowski’s rug after The Dude takes it as restitution for his own demised centerpiece; Tara Reid as the billionaire’s trophy wife Bunny Lebowski, who is the person actually responsible for the whole mess leading to the micturating on The Dude’s rug…

Ben Gazzara makes a cameo, as does Sam Elliott’s Mustache, bringing Sam Elliott with it as The Stranger, narrating in that baritone velvet, “The Dude abides.” (That mustache recently insured Elliott for a million dollars with Lloyd’s of London. It knows it just wouldn’t look the same without him.)

And there is John Turturro as rival ten-pin bowler, the ball-tonguing, ambiguously-Mexican The Jesus. Not pronounced “Haysoos” and not just “Jesus” – The Jesus.

A plot happens while no one is looking: a kidnapped girl (“They’re gonna kill that poor woman!”), a cut-off toe (“You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me”), a porn king (“Mr. Treehorn treats objects like women, man!”), a ransom drop gone horribly wrong involving Walter’s underwear (that’s the ‘horribly’ part), and some nihilists led by Peter Stormare and Flea (“We believe in nussing, Lebowski. Nussing! And tomorrow we come back and we cut off your chonson”). But the plot itself is merely McGuffin, in the parlance of our times, wending its way like a stream of consciousness film noir pulp novella only to prop up the cannonade of one-liners, white Russians and a nice marmot.

Dude-splaying.

As convoluted as the story gets, it threatens derailment at every turn with subplots and left turns: an hallucinatory dream featuring a Kenny Rogers song from his days of dropping acid (Just Dropped In), tracking the thief who stole The Dude’s car (“Is this your homework, Larry?”) and Julianne Moore making men uncomfortable, saying “vagina.”

When The Dude recovers his stolen car, he pops some sweet Creedence in the tape deck, and some old, familiar lyrics (“Doo doo doo, lookin’ out my back door”) take on a new timbre, as they conspire with the context of the film and kinda sound like: “Dude dude dude, lookin’ out my back door…”

Being a Coen Brothers film, things don’t always go as expected: someone dies, someone conceives, and someone just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in.

Is it the best film ever made? The reviewers will revile, the purists will pule, the Church of Lebowski will effuse. One thing is certain: It’s good knowin’ he’s out there; The Dude. Takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners.

The Dude abides.

END

From Duke to Dude.

They went and done it! Remade TRUE GRIT (1969). I can understand how John Wayne purists would blanch at any actor attempting his legendary dirt-talkin’, eye-patched, whiskey-guzzlin’, six-shootin’ role as Marshal Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn. It’s like remaking DIRTY HARRY without Clint Eastwood.

But they went and done it anyways! And like one of those rare comets we feel privileged to witness as it blazes triumphantly across our skies, writers-directors The Coen Brothers have done the purists, the Duke, and the Western art form damn proud.

In 1995, Jeff Bridges played the real-life gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok in WILD BILL, all calamity gunfire and startling mullet; 15 years later, he’s Rooster Cogburn. In any estimation, fictional Rooster’s shoes are harder to fill, because Rooster was The Duke’s iconic, Oscar-winning role. How dare The Dude – lovable though he is – even try to pull this off?

Well, this new TRUE GRIT, adhering more closely to the Charles Portis novel than the 1969 film, boasts every aspect better than the original! Them’s fightin’ words… Not taking anything away from the dambusting 1969 movie, the acting is better here, the production design oozes 1880’s authenticity, the language feels Wild West weathered, the staging of every scene is more dramatic, the cinematography is eye-delight, the soundtrack (by Carter Burwell) evokes a fiercely Western pathos that Elmer Bernstein’s faux-MAGNIFICENT SEVEN themes failed to evoke, and the hero scenes are amped up to meaty proportions.

Poffy Cogburn

Jeff Bridges gargling car oil as Rooster was the final nail in the original’s coffin. Disheveled, rambunctious, gruff and gritty, we can almost SMELL him in his grimy long johns when Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) wakes him to set out on a manhunt for her father’s murderer. At the perfect weathered age, fat but not gross, his eye-patch on the OTHER eye, constantly smoking, drinking and rambling, his violence sudden and decisive, Bridges makes the character his own, stepping “vuhry” lightly on Wayne’s broad shoulders.

Told through the eyes of educated, strong-willed, 14-year-old schoolgirl Mattie Ross, TRUE GRIT follows her and Rooster – the most ruthless marshal she could hire, a man with “true grit” – as they hunt down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin in another of his small but effective roles).

Matt Damon is the loquacious Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (pronounced “La Beef” for some esoteric comedic reason) who joins the hunt for Chaney, but for a much bigger Texas ransom. The constant squabbling between LaBoeuf and Rooster provides humor dredged from the most unlikely situations; at surprising moments, there is sudden levity, a lot of it to do with the delivery of the actors and the colorful (not expletive, but descriptive) language.

Barry Pepper is almost unrecognizable in the Robert Duvall role of sooty-faced Lucky Ned Pepper, his drooling mandibles twisted from a wound inflicted by Rooster years ago (much better makeup than Duvall’s clean scar). Like all modern “revisionist” Westerns, Pepper is not intrinsically evil, and follows a code of conduct, even if that be merely honor among thieves; we feel these men were forced into their villainous roles by the vagaries of social disparity and politics.

Even Rooster is no saint. Not only is he an incorrigible drunk, not only do stories circulate of his inordinate viciousness, we meet him on a court stand, testifying to a recent killing; he is painted almost as a sadist who uses unreasonable force on perps, with a history of impulsive shootings, ex-marriages, bank-robbing and riding with unsavory characters. He is one wrong kill away from being an outlaw himself.

When Mattie first meets him, he tells her, “Don’t believe in fairy tales, sermons, or stories about money.” He’s a cynic who just wants to collect the bounty on Chaney.

He boasts to Mattie of a time he put his reins in his teeth on horseback and charged seven men with both guns blazing. It’s much better foreshadowing than the original, so that when that rock god scene arrives, we feel that thrill up our leg like Chris Matthews on the night Obama got elected.

The story does not pull that obvious annoying character arc on us, with the rugged marshal becoming soft in the girl’s presence and the marshal in turn showing her how to be hard. There is a subtle, poignant message that many might miss if they’re here for just blood and guts and drinking car oil.

When all the baddies have been smoked, there is an almost anti-climactic epilogue, when Mattie gets bitten by a snake and Rooster desperately rides Mattie’s small horse with her to get to a doctor. Miles fly by. The horse dies. He shoots it unflinchingly against Mattie’s weeping pleas, then carries Mattie, puffing and stumbling against his weight and age, risking his own death to eventually come upon a cabin, where he collapses to the ground, firing a single shot to alert the occupants within for help… And we wonder: what has TRUE GRIT got to do with this midnight ride across moonlit plains on a dying horse? And we realize: that is the true measure of this man’s grit – not only can he gun down people brutally, he will ride down a horse and then enburden himself for the life of this little girl.

As good as TRUE GRIT 2010 is, it lacks the sociological punch of the original, because in 2010 we are used to young women fending for themselves. And the bloodthirstiness of Mattie in single-mindedly wanting Tom Chaney dead at her hands is not as shocking as it was in 1969 when it wasn’t “proper” for young women to behave that way.

Not demeaning the Coens’ efforts at all, but TRUE GRIT is a straightforward story about vigilante justice; what holds it back from being a “great” movie is that it lacks any kind of irony or self-reflection; there are no startling twists, rather some good story surprises, and though each man killed has a colorful history, this well-produced tale is simple and linear. And because it is a remake, it lacks the revolutionary bent of its predecessor.

Well, the only bit of irony I can find is that the word “dude” in the Old West meant a city slicker vacationing out west, a fake cowboy (hence the modern term “dude ranch” to denote a fancy-pants resort styled after a rugged Wild West homestead). So though Jeff Bridges somehow manages to mine nuances of that most beloved character of his and insert them seamlessly into his successive film roles (the drunkenness and scatterbrains go so well with Rooster), the fact he is so starkly authentic playing a rugged cowboy originally brought to life by THE American Cowboy means he is anything BUT – The Dude.

END

When Aunties Collide.

Aren’t all lesbians secretly pining for a good hard one?

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT is a new species of homo erectus. It’s a gay-themed movie that doesn’t crow gayness all over its leather chaps; it can afford to be non-offensively mainstream like few other gay-themed movies because its homosexual couple is female – but in going mainstream, it also takes on mainstream traits which it could have done very well without.

The two teenage children of a lesbian couple in 1970s Southern California seek out their sperm donor and bring him into their family dynamic, causing untold High Maintenance freakouts.

Lisa Cholodenko co-writes and directs this brilliantly-acted, well-made movie with the best intentions, but gets lost somewhere between “Lesbians Are People Too” and “Men Are Pigs.”

It is refreshing to see the lesbian couple, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore (Nic and Jules), in a grounded, normal relationship, and not fisting-up for lesbianism, not in battle-cry over LGBT rights, and not in trauma over their community ostracizing them. They have one child each, both from artificial insemination from the same sperm donor. Mia Wasikowska is Nic’s 18-year-old daughter, Joni, and Josh Hutcherson is Jules’s 16-year-old son, Laser. The household is a loving, supportive environment and everyone is quite well-adjusted. Thus in becoming so mundane, the film leans toward advocating for The Nuclear Family. And there’s the paradox:

A gay-matriarchal family, by definition, is NOT a nuclear family (that Post-War family unit defined by its “nucleus” of father, mother and children), but if the sociological and psychological ROLES of father (butch Nic), mother (feminine Jules) and children are being fulfilled, then for all intents and purposes, they are a Nuclear Family. But this movie – by its existence – advocates for a redrawing of family lines.

Mark Ruffalo – like every man, used for sperm and then discarded.

Mark Ruffalo is the sperm donor Paul, and he is brought into the mix to – we presume – stir the stew, to shake the foundations of rutted American hubris; to introduce into this Nuclear Family a modern rethink on what constitutes a Family Unit. (Ruffalo has definitely become an under-the-radar Tom Hanks, an all-round charmer, with the added dark sexuality that Hanks never possessed.)

He does shake foundations, creating a male figure for Joni to latch onto, for Laser to look up to, for Nic to resent (as a usurper of her family unit) and to provide Jules (Julianne Moore) with something she obviously desperately craved, that her lesbian lover could never give her – a good hard Ruffalo.

But Ruffalo is simply shaking the foundations of THAT FAMILY UNIT, not the audience’s perceptions. Instead of commandeering a brave new stance on introducing a sperm donor/blood father into the Nuclear Family – no matter the indiscretions and trauma he brings – Cholodenko opts to make Ruffalo seem unbalanced and needy in the third act and by the end, instead of including him in some ambiguous future for the family, he is erased out of the script unceremoniously.

Nic’s last words to him as she slams the door in his face, “If you want a family go out and make one of your own!” Gee, that was kinda “straight” of her…

Which means the conventional Nuclear Family is clung to, in this supposedly revolutionary film, as solidly as in the most blithering romantic comedies and White American sitcoms.

And that’s totally gay.

Usually, Julianne Moore’s acting chops and overall presence do nothing for me; but in this film, somehow, I find her performance as Jules exceptional. She shines as a fully rounded character; even the ginger freckles all over her body don’t irritate me.

As Nic starts to take her for granted, Jules turns to Paul for approbation and her comedic affair with him is pitch-perfect, including very raunchy sex scenes, until it starts to intrude on Nic’s concept of the Nuclear Family.

Gay cinema that tries to appeal to wide audiences suffers the same fate as straight cinema that tilts at that same demographic – it usually chickens out and turns to vanilla crap (see POFFY SEZ Back To Brokeback sidebar). THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT is not crap by any means, but it is also not “brave” like – for example – Woody Allen’s WHATEVER WORKS, where one of the female characters ends up in a three-way relationship with two husbands. And don’t gay women object to the fact that Jules can be turned so easily and passionately to the Ruffalo?

This movie was a perfect opportunity to introduce an option to the close-minded Nuclear Family – adding to the many real life options that are in existence as we speak – but chose to flee like a Republican mortally terrified of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Carter Burwell’s beautiful melodies thread their way through the film. Speaking of music, this film is not to be confused with The Who film of the same name, and I find it slightly insulting that writer-director Lisa Cholodenko would title her movie THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT without including The Who title song as source music some-frickin-where.

Now THAT’S totally gay.

END

“Pleased to meet you – hope you’ve guessed my name…”

Killer me saucy.

A farcical heist movie, with quirky characters, sharp, dark storyline and dialogue so delicious you can feed your cat with it.

It’s not describing a suave Bond-type; the title of this movie is literal – but easier said than done. THE LADYKILLERS follows confidence man Professor G.H. Dorr (Tom Hanks in the sauciest, most enunciated performance of his career) who assembles a cadre of inept thieves to rob a casino via an underground tunnel dug from an old lady’s rooming house; when the old lady (Irma P. Hall) discovers the heinous activity, she must be disposed of – but which of the five miscreants has the minerals to off her?

THE LADYKILLERS is a remake of the 1955 movie of the same name (starring Alec Guinness), and though it is established through dialogue that Oprah and Montel Williams are contemporary figures in this story, it might as well still be the 1950s. Joel and Ethan Coen write and direct this modern day old-fashioned tale, actually improving on the original in story, tone, characters, humor and directorial finesse.

The tone is set in the opening scenes: an a cappella choir harmonizes a gospel dirge, while a garbage scow dolefully floats its refuse into a clotted bay; dissolve to a Sheriff’s office standing resolutely alone on a deserted and dusty small town street; within, the deputies snore at their desks… Old Marva Munson (Hall) appears, ranting about some neighbor’s boy she wants arrested; the deputies have heard it all before and pay her no mind. Many might fall for Hall’s larger-than-life performance as the movie-stealer, but she’s a reg’lar ole cantankerous black lady trope – no, the best part of this movie is undoubtedly…

Tom Hanks, whose sneaky-twitchy performance as the scheming Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr Ph.D is so deliciously eeevil, so mysteriously Southern, so unhinged loquacious that it is something quite against his usual grain. Even Alec Guinness in the original – who had all the prosthetics and overacting to turn his character into something unique – opted to remain quite staid and simply slapstick. Though Hanks’s accolades stretch for miles, here he earns them, his every gesture a cheeky exercise in verbosity, deception and misdirection. When he inquires of the feisty, devout Marva about his “ensemble” hiring the root cellar to indulge in “music that has been composed to the greater glory of God,” his pointy beard veritably leaps off his chin in devilish mendacity.

The Gang consists of: J.K. Simmons as Garth Pancake (explosives), Tzi Ma as The General (tunnel king), Ryan Hurst as Lump (muscle), and Marlon Wayans as Gawain (inside man). The farce is played with broad performances reminiscent of Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy vignettes. The Coens’ darkness filters through when the plan goes awry and an unplanned explosion causes Marva to discover the robbery, precipitating Prof. Dorr’s ignominious decision to kill the old lady.

Each of the gang attempts the task, while trying to double-cross each other and remain alive against each others’ double-crossing, the garbage scow unwittingly playing a major role in the comedic atrocities.

The story holds together very satisfyingly and – unlike some of their other films – the Coens find a humorous rhythm to the killing off of their sociopathic characters, rather than sudden shocking deaths that alienate their audience.

As far as feeding the cat, it has the last laugh with Garth Pancake’s dismembered finger, as the Coen Brothers (FARGO, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?) do that voodoo that they do so well.

And after all the verbal gymnastics by Hanks, the funniest line is from Wayans, when Simmons holds in an attack of Irritable Bowel and explains to the gang, “IBS!” to which Wayans replies, “You be what?”

END

… and to lay before the newborn king, they brought gifts of gold, bling and jockstraps.

KELLY’S HEROES without the ragtag.

War is not just Hell. In THREE KINGS, it is confusing as Hell.

Four American soldiers behind enemy lines on a mission; they’re not here to fight a battle, they’re here to rob a bank.

If the plot sounds familiar, it is KELLY’S HEROES for the morally ambiguous generation. THREE KINGS is a stunning, ferocious black comedy; heavy action, heavy emotion, heavier incongruity, as a troop of American soldiers in Iraq attempts to steal Saddam Hussein’s gold.

March 1991. “The war just ended.” That’s Iraq 1, Bush 1. Troops don’t know what to do with themselves; they have no orders, they have no clue. Everything is not as clearly defined as WWII, where “Ze Chermans” were the unequivocal bad guys. This is Father Bush’s idiot war of choice (as opposed to Iraq 2003, Bush Jnr’s idiot war of choice).

Across a flat expanse of desert, an Iraqi appears in the distance, and an American soldier calls to his distracted peers, “Are we shooting?” No one knows.

During a roundup of Iraqi prisoners, a map is pulled out of an Iraqi soldier’s butt. Soldiers Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) and Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze), led by cynic soldier Archie Gates (George Clooney), formulate a plan to go AWOL for half a day to steal what’s on the map – Saddam Hussein’s gold bullion stash – under the pretense they are distributing it to the wronged people of Iraq.

Nothing goes as planned.

And nothing is as it seems in this hell hole waste land: they attack the location on the butt map – no gold; they notice civilian Iraqis clustering around a well – soldiers in disguise guarding a subterranean vault; the gold bars are not in sturdy roadcases – they’re in cheap tourist suitcases; a gun battle is a few strategic shots, not sexy slomo spraying of bullets; they shoot up an oil tanker – it is full of milk!; sinister Iraqis garbed like STAR WARS Sand People rescue Archie (Clooney) and his crew and lug the clinking gold bars to a safe haven underground; like Viet Nam, the hostiles look like the friendlies, so no one knows who and when to shoot; and the press and military alike have no idea why they are there, exemplified in the miscast Nora Dunn (SNL) as a self-serving reporter and doofus Jamie Kennedy as her military liaison.

And so the movie goes, every single scene filled with strange actions and reactions. The four soldiers stumble on a group of hostage Iraqis, led by Cliff Curtis – over their avarice, they find their souls; realize they must help these people… then steal the gold.

Director David O. Russell tells us via opening text: “The makers of THREE KINGS use visual distortion and unusual colors in some scenes in this film. They intentionally use these unconventional techniques to enhance the emotional intensity of the story line.” Shouldn’t that be something us little green reviewers tell you?

Spike Jonze warbles the tenuous thematic link: “We three kings be stealin’ the gold…”; Ice Cube loves playing soldier in his ‘flage – at least all his guns are legal now; Clooney is decisive as a pouncing lion, and Marky Mark somehow finds an excuse to get his shirt off (even if it’s Iraqis ripping it off to torture him).

The torture scene is also a confusing revelation to all those inculcated to believe Middle Easterners are one-dimensional sadists, as the torturers cover their eyes while electrocuting Barlow (Wahlberg). The interrogator asks, “What is the problem with Michael Jackson?” At first, big laugh – then the biting indictment behind the question, “He is the King of Pop of sick fucking country. A black man make the skin white and the hair straight – and you know why? Your sick fucking country make the black man hate himself. Just like you hate the Arab and the children you bomb over here.” The interrogator describes his family’s death, with the roof falling in on his son, “Can you think how it must feel?” We almost ally with the Iraqis during that scene. Until we see Marky’s abs.

In the most amusing cultural flashpoint, Archie invokes, “George Bush wants you to unite against Saddam!” This was back in the day when the Bush name could incite fevered excitement in Iraqis. Last time that’ll ever happen…

END