The cast getting Mooned.

…and we thought ARMAGEDDON was devoid of science.

MOONFALL is Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster– I mean, disaster movie. This movie has less science in it than THE CORE. And THE CORE has NO science in it.

The Moon de-orbits toward Earth, and only a conspiracy theorist can save the day! Thanks for giving conspiracy asshats a platform, Roland!

John Bradley is the conspiracy nut, KC, whose wildest theories about the Moon being a megastructure built by aliens are proven true, as he garbles his nonsense at astronauts Brian (Patrick Wilson) and Jo (Halle Berry), who apparently are the only two astronauts who can perform this mission – even though Brian was dishonorably discharged from NASA and Jo is a NASA director! See, now that’s how you write Drama, kids – send people who are damaged and unqualified to do your technical tasks.

The nutcase plot continues, as a renegade A.I. within the Moon has disrupted its orbital trajectory, and must be stopped by doing something-something McGuffin bomb switch. So Brian, Jo and KC Nutjob commission an old, disused Space Shuttle and fly up there (because you can do that in times of Moon de-orbits).

Okay, let’s accept the hollow Moon (which is a Dyson Sphere built around a white dwarf star—which is a physics impossibility within a body the size of the Moon, but I said we’d accept it, so let’s move on with our suspension of disbelief hanging by a cat-hair) – but then story elements don’t make sense even within the established rules of the movie: for example, the renegade A.I. (which is simply one of those overdone CGI ‘bot swarms) is drawn to electronics and tech equipment, so Brian smashes the McGuffin switch with which they were going to blow it up, to stop the A.I. swarm from tracking them… but what about the spaceship they’re in that is FILLED WITH ELECTRONICS?! Later, that McGuffin bomb switch is just fully reconstructed and functioning again, with no threat of the A.I. following them because – we’re on page 85 of the script and need to wrap this in 5. No one fixed it. It was just there ready to go. Fixed presumably by some GOOD Moon Aliens. And then these Good Moon Aliens fix the astronauts’ malfunctioning ship. And that’s another thing–

When their only form of transport is destroyed, the three astronauts are ostensibly stranded inside the Moon forever. But they don’t seem all that broken up. And soon their ship is simply magicked back into perfect shape by the Good Moon Aliens. Which begs the question: Why can’t the Good Moonies simply magick the bad A.I. off their megastructure? Too much to ask of magic who cares fuck you?

Just one scene tells us all we need to know about the stellar level of STUPID displayed by co-writer/director Emmerich, once again, going against the very rules he cites. Someone at NASA mentions the Moon’s shrinking orbit will soon be at the Roche Limit, which is the minimum distance a satellite can approach its primary body before being torn apart by tidal forces. They state the limit as 17,000 kilometers (Dr. Becky Smethurst actually works out the math to prove this is an incorrect distance, but let’s say it’s correct for the sake of this argument). Then the Moon starts scraping the tops of skyscrapers – well within 17,000 kilometers, wouldn’t you say? – and retains its spherical shape, not affected in the least by the physics forces of the Roche Limit that should be tearing it into a ring of rocks around Earth (like Saturn). Which proves they only cited Roche because it sounded science-y, not because they knew what it was. Like George Lucas making Han say, “It made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs” not having the slightest idea what a parsec is.

And if the Moon is so close it’s grabbing up schoolkids and buses and lakes, it should just SLAM into Earth at that point, gravitationally drawn to the Earth-Moon barycenter (the center of mass that both bodies are orbiting, a point in the Earth-Moon system that is inside the Earth). Nope. Just children holding onto lampposts to avoid being lifted off the ground like the surrounding semi-trailers and cows. I think Roland Emmerich has confused the Moon with a twister.

When KC sacrifices his life to blow up the renegade A.I. not only are we pummeled with a “christian” ending (where he meets his dead mother and they start their new “life” housekeeping the Moon), but the Moon also floats back up into space, like some kind of helium balloon. Does ANYONE on this production, which obviously has no Science Advisor, have the slightest clue on the staggering amount of energy required to drive the Moon back into its original orbit? Nothing short of a star exploding on the Earth’s surface would give the Moon the required escape velocity… Einstein spinning in his grave after giving us E=mc2, only to have it spat in his face with horrific, bloated, ignoramus pigslop like MOONFALL.

The human interest stories are cringe-able – featuring Charlie Plummer, Michael Peña and Donald Sutherland, to name a few of the actors Roland conned into this movie – the equivalent of watching humans run between Godzilla’s feet as he battles another daikaiju. Inconsequential to two planetary bodies on a collision course, yet, like the idiotic practice of astrology, or the pseudo-science ravings of conspiracy nutjobs, the filmmakers try to con we viewers into believing that planetary orbits actually DO revolve around the insect destinies of humans after all.

Soundtrack is by Thomas Wanker. Yup, that’s about right.

END

Diamonds are endeavor.

A megalomaniac designs a satellite to harness the sun’s power. And James Bond is there to rain on his parade.

Cold Open Pretty Orange Explosion Zone: James Bond 007 (Pierce Brosnan, in his 4^th and final turn as the superspy) surfs some rad waves into North Korea (reflecting the tenor of the times, no more Russians), infiltrating diamond dealers, led by General’s son Col. Moon and his lieutenant Zao. They blow Bond’s cover, and he hovercrafts (!) and fights his way to a dead-end, killing Col. Moon in the chase. We are always wondering why villains don’t just shoot Bond immediately, but now we can understand a revenge motive, as the General imprisons Bond and tortures him until he looks like Gandalf after a bad day in Mirkwood.

Opening titles slam in with Madonna’s Die Another Day, which is very catchy, but washed out with insufferable auto-tune that makes me wanna smack her in the mouth, for which she would thank me. Hey, it’s Madonna. The lyrics, “I’m gonna close my body now…” make a lot of sense over the montage of Bond being tortured and closing his body off to suffering. Graphics of naked women on fire and naked women made of ice – to presage the plot of the movie…

Bearded bloodied Bond is eventually traded back to MI6 for Zao (Rick Yune), who was obviously captured after the Pretty Orange Explosions, which gave him the oomph Bond gimmick  – diamonds burned into his face. When Bond is released by the General for the trade, he sincerely thinks the Koreans are going to shoot him in the back, and Brosnan really sells it. Gone is the smug, gone is the suave, here is a man readying himself for nothingness.

But Bond is far from home free – matter of fact, he is home-imprisoned – as MI6, like any government, doesn’t trust its captured agents, so keep him locked in quarantine, with M (Judi Dench) rescinding his 00 status. (There is a heated exchange over Bond’s cyanide pill, which he apparently “got rid of years ago.” Does this make him a good agent or a bad risk? Was he so over-confident about his powers of not breaking under torture that he thought he’d never need it?) He says he was set up in North Korea, so, abandoned by his people, he must go it alone to find the mole.

Berry as Jinx: ass ass in.

So it’s that old premise: Bring the hero low. Find the mole that ruined his life.

One of the funniest scenes of any Bond movie is surely Bond walking barefoot into a swanky hotel in his soaking hospital togs and Gandalf-beard, shirt open on wet torso, after escaping the MI6 facility and swimming the bay, telling the concierge, “My usual suite, please.”

Bond starts tracking Zao. Onto Cuba, where he meets the plain-bordering-on-ugly Halle Berry as she exits the sea (in obvious homage to Ursula Andress in DR. NO, except not so deformed). Suddenly she’s dry. Bond meets her. Suddenly she’s wet again.

Berry is Jizz—sorry, Jinx, and she’s as smug as Bond (because this was that odd time in the world when people were telling Halle Berry she was all that), though I don’t know why – she’s not even a quarter as pretty as Bond. Nice side-boob though. Jinx is also some ass– I mean, also some kind of assassin. The dynamic of an adept female spy working alongside Bond worked so well in TOMORROW NEVER DIES they do it again, with Jinx. She’s no damsel in distress, and Berry does a great job of selling the strong woman who’s every bit as badass as Bond.

Jinx is under the command of Michael Madsen, whose sudden appearance in the MI6 office alongside regulars like Colin Salmon, made me think HE was the mole (brand new face in the office, and a star to boot; from RESERVOIR DOGS in 1992, in the space of just the decade till 2002’s DIE ANOTHER DAY, amassing over 60 credits! He’s like the modern day Lyle Talbot!)

Written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who both started with THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, and would go on to write all the Daniel Craig era films), directed by Lee Tamahori (the brutal ONCE WERE WARRIORS, 1994), we once again feel the vignette-to-vignette nature of this Bond adventure. As with most of the convoluted plots of the Bond series, you can never quite work out the intricacies – but you always get the objective of each vignette.

Bond traces Zao to a DNA facility in Cuba. Jinx is there too, destroying files of herself. This place is one step beyond Witness Protection – it constructs new identities through “gene therapy” – reshaping your face completely. Zao escapes both Bond and Jinx. And Bond traces him to a London diamond merchant, Gustav Graves (the excellent Toby Stephens, smugger than Moore and Brosnan put together); a fencer, parachutist, knight, adventurer, whose oomph Bond gimmick is that he doesn’t sleep.

Gustav is constructing a satellite that can re-direct the sun’s golden beams on farmlands, or concentrate golden beams into destructive blasts. And he calls it… Goldeneye—no wait, that was copyrighted three films ago… damn! It woulda been perfect! (He calls it Icarus instead… does it bode well for anything if it’s named after the hubristic young mythological Greek who flew too close to the sun and died?)

I don’t know who’s cooler: the Black James Bond or Mr. White.

Bond touches tips with Gustav in a ferocious swordfight, well-staged through common rooms and libraries of this grande olde British club. Madonna cameos as a fencer; her accent cameos as British. When asked to bet on the Gustav-Bond fight, she demurs, “I don’t like cockfights.” It’s funny because she’s a slut.

Rosamund Pike is Miranda Frost, Gustav’s right-hand woman, young and smooth and ice-queen, turning down Bond’s advances. Until she sleeps with him. Oh, we can use the excuse that she’s a double-agent, but we all know it’s because in a Bond film, sexism wins.

Bond, back in the begrudging good graces of M, visits Q (John Cleese, now entrenched as the Quartermaster due to the tragic death of Desmond Llewelyn; sadly, Cleese would not continue into the Daniel Craig era). He previews an invisible car and, for a hot second, as his legs are refracted through the invisible car, we get an unintentional taste of The Minister of Silly Walks! Or maybe that was a sly wink?

Next insane location: an Ice Hotel. These things DO exist – which is a wonder in itself, constructed for tourist seasons and melted months later – but never in the fancy fashion of Gustav’s Ice Palace from this movie, a wholly impractical construct with hedonistic frills no sane ice hotelier would attempt). Jinx is there too!

We discover Gustav is actually Col. Moon whom Bond “killed” in the Cold Open Pretty Orange Explosion Zone, altered through gene therapy, Moon snidely admitting that Bond was his English character-model: “That unjustifiable swagger, those crass quips, the defense mechanism concealing such inadequacy…”

Bond: “So you live to die another day?”

It’s racism so deep we hardly see it. The plot twist required Bond to have a connection to the diamond dealer/sun king, and not realize it. So couldn’t they make this guy another Asian? At the least, an ambiguous Easterner? Instead of going all the way to WHITE MAN? Now I happen to be a fan of this particular white man (mostly because he looks like Clint Eastwood), but we can’t shake the feeling the movie is implying that another Asian guy would not have played well because all Asians look alike. Or – the filmmakers might think the audience would automatically regard him as the villain, because we opened with the North Korean villains. Thing is: we regard Gustav as the villain anyway, through his smugness and Bond’s suspicions, so… how do we get to kumbaya from here?… Do tell us, filmmakers!

The main annoying aspect is still the talking-not-shooting syndrome of all the bad guys. Or the shooting madly at the heroes when they’re running away, but as soon as the heroes give themselves up, the shooting stops. Frost says, with a sword at Jinx’s neck, “Drowning you didn’t seem to work. We’ll have to try something more to the point!”– Shutup with the puns and SKEWER HER!

For all their stupidities, Pierce Brosnan’s Bond films are enjoyable diversions, consistent in their tone and production design. It is during Brosnan’s tenure we see the upheaval in special effects technology in movies, reflected in the use of computers within the storylines of the movies themselves. As computers become more prevalent in this series of movies, so too does Computer Graphic Imagery in the production of the films. GOLDENEYE used that big green writing on computer monitors; by DIE ANOTHER DAY, we have digital readouts, modern-looking screens, virtual reality and holograms.

There’s a thug named Mr. Kil, a laser watch and laser guns, an invisible car, a ring that shatters glass, the villain’s solar suit that looks like Iron Man, a rocket car that races the satellite’s sun beam and – Bond para-sailing across rad waves with icebergs. Movie Maniacs, if you stayed for the gene technology that could change an Asian guy’s face into Nearly Clint Eastwood, you can suspend your disbelief for the parasailing.

I think it was more that Asian/Caucasian plot twist that alienated this movie with Bond fans than the parasailing, which was a dumb surface reason. By replacing the Asian guy with a Brit, the film lost our investment of emotion. It suddenly felt like it was forcing us to invest in a character which we should have a connection with – but which we don’t because – he’s not that character that we met for all of two minutes in the cold open, which we never had the chance to connect with anyway. It’s off the chain batshit. So we feel as lopsided as the airplane that flies through a Goldeneye sunbeam with Bond and Jinx and Frost and Clint Eastwood dressed like Iron Man.

A final scene finds James entering MI6 and laying Moneypenny (Samantha Bond) across her desk for a sensual pumpi—a hologram! Moneypenny’s fantasy… Still, it was kinda nice that both these characters got to makeout in this last turn for both of them.

Bond ends this caper with diamonds and Jizz.

END

Dong-fu.

Baba Yaga’s Bogus Journey.

Faster than a speeding Bourne, more powerful than a Transporter, able to leap Chuck Norris in a single bound. Look! Up in the sky – it’s a Bond, it’s McClane, no, it’s – JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM! The unkillable killer returns in the undisputed Heavyweight Champeen Boys’ Movie of the Summer!

If JOHN WICK 2 was “an art film first, a combat film, second,” then PARABELLUM is an out-of-the-closet combat film first, a social justice pander, second, and an art film way, way third. The world-building is expanded, the focus is narrowed, and the vaginas are coddled. The hitman “business” is fully explored, but in doing so, John Wick himself is unintentionally downgraded to a small mote in a universe he once dominated.

Following directly on the heels of its predecessor, PARABELLUM finds Wick running in the rain to escape the consequences of his excommunicado status, for spilling blood on the consecrated grounds of the Continental Hotel. And as every assassin on Earth attacks him for the $14 million bounty on his head, Wick claws his way to a meeting with the instigators of these underworld rules and penalties – the High Table – to ask forgiveness, and a way back into the unholy hitman fold.

Keanu Reeves returns as John Wick, legendary hitman. But the dynamics are all skewed. In the original JOHN WICK (2014), Wick was a feared Legend on the hunt, in JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 (2017), the first half saw Wick as a Legend on the hunt, but the second half was the Legend being hunted; now in CHAPTER 3, Wick is unequivocally the Legend being hunted. Every hitman who once spoke of him in reverent awe (“He once killed three men in a bar with a fucking pencil!”), is trying their hand at besting this godkiller, who now seems merely a mortal fighting for his life.

Of course, the makers of PARABELLUM (writers Derek Kolstad and Shay Hatten, and director Chad Stahelski) understand the concept of removing everything from the hero so that his rise will be all the more powerful, but in flensing Wick of his halo, they have also de-boned the mythos, the fear, the baba yaga…

Equu-fu.

Ian McShane reprises his role as saucy Hotel Continental manager, Winston, who begrudgingly excommunicates Wick, because he considers Wick a friend. Lance Reddick is again stolid concierge Charon, who once again takes in Wick’s dog while Wick sorts out business. Laurence Fishburne returns as Bowery King, bringing his ghetto cred and overacting. Angelica Huston is The Director, a high-ranking leader from so far back in Wick’s past she calls him by his birth name; Wick brings her totems that ensure she will help him find passage to the High Table.

Halle Berry is fellow hitman, Sofia. Obviously old friends with Wick, she shoots him in greeting. Yes, Berry’s first shot in the film is her first shot at Keanu – hitting him in the shoulder of his armored jacket. Did she know it was armored? If so, why shoot? If she didn’t know it was armored, was she trying to kill him, and if so, why did she shoot only once? It makes zero sense. Until you realize it’s just another emasculation device: to establish Sofia as “equal” to Wick, they had to make her “dominant” first. That’s just how it is in this gutless double-standard society.

Wick presents Sofia with his “marker” – a medallion that marks a past favor (he delivered her daughter to safety from the underworld). He seeks a favor in return – guide him closer to the High Table. This scene makes Wick look unprincipled, because he is relying on the same protocols he disparaged in the previous movie. When D’Antonio wanted a return favor from Wick, Wick blew off D’Antonio’s marker, citing he was “out of the business.” But now Wick uses this exact same device to call in a favor – in a business he wants no part of. Halle accepts, because Keanu is sexy with that three-day growth an’ all.

The inclusion of Berry dilutes the movie’s dynamic even more. Up to this point, Wick is undisputed master at his craft of flopsy-haired Keanu-kwon-do. But for the sake of SJWs everywhere, Sofia is presented as a female Wick (because sisters are doing it for themselves, right?), and when Wick and Sofia storm a High Table stronghold with that same combat style, every time the camera focuses on Berry, we wonder why we’re here. Because the focus has always been on Wick’s wondrously inventive moves – and he’s way over there out of focus. It’s not called WICK AND SOFIA – why do I care how proficient Sofia is? Pandering to social justice snivelers, Sofia also owns two cute Alsatians that she brings into battle, that always go for the balls. Oh yes please! Now that we’re here, we might as well go all the way with the emasculation metaphors… When Sofia eventually disappears from the plot, I breathed a sigh of relief and took my hands off my groin.

Bitch-fu.

Speaking of ladies—er, or maybe men, Asia Kate Dillon (who in real life identifies as “non-binary”) authoritatively transmigrates into the Hotel Continental one day, introducing herself—uh, himself—uh, itself, as The Adjudicator. Representing the High Table, she/he/it declares Winston’s Continental “deconsecrated,” further doling out punishment to Bowery King, The Director and anyone else who offered succor for Wick during his excommunication. It thickens the plot, while addressing, subverting and causing sexism all at the same time.

Saïd Taghmaoui is chilling as the Elder that bestows on Wick a terrible penance. Again, Wick seems intent on getting back “in,” to the point where his sacrifices outweigh his reasons for being “out.” He says he wants to stay alive for the memory of his wife, which is almost as weak sauce as George Lucas’s, “She lost the will to live.”

Of course, you don’t watch a JOHN WICK movie to assess its plot points or rate its sexism – you watch it to marvel at the combat, and PARABELLUM’s plot jets us from one combat scene to the next. Though each combat scene is as interesting and unique as possible (gun-fu, motorbike-fu, horse-fu, mirror-fu, LGBTQ-fu, etc.), the very fact there are so many scenes of combat does become tiresome. The hand-to-hand training and expertise is on full display, with each scene framed in an artsy swirl, yet sometimes our inner voice wants to yell at Wick’s assailants: “You guys ever heard of sniping?”

Only in the last gun-battle does Winston restore a semblance of Wick’s mystique, “And Mr. Wick – do what you do best: hunt.” Keanu uses his exact same lines from THE MATRIX, to proclaim he needs: “Guns. Lots of guns.” And it’s a welcome return to the dynamic displayed in the very first battle in the very first WICK movie, when those masked intruders stalked Wick’s home, and he took them out with the Mozambique Drill and sit-on-my-face-fu.

Even so – this battle is a paradox: Winston asks Wick whether he wants to remain Baba Yaga – the Boogeyman – for eternity, or whether he wants to live in peace outside the business. Wick chooses peace over baba yaga – then goes baba yaga on his assassins. Now, I don’t mind that Wick wants to leave the business – that’s been the Prescribed Hitman Movie Plot for decades now – but you can’t quash “legend”; you can’t just send out a memo saying, “Don’t call me Baba Yaga any more, pretty please.” What does Wick hope to achieve by killing every High Table assassin except becoming a bigger Baba?

Style-fu.

That’s when Winston quotes the Latin adage: “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (“If you want peace, prepare for war”).

PARABELLUM is brought to a shark jump conclusion when The Adjudicator pronounces Winston “re-consecrated” on the strength of irony (i.e. since he armed Wick to annihilate all the High Table soldiers it must prove how devoted he is to keeping his hotel a sacred landmark. Uh, wha–?). Irony, or editing for runtime? And Winston’s solution to ensure John Wick returns for a snatch at the High Table is utterly haphazard, unconsidered and foolhardy, yet played to look canny. Put it this way: the only way Wick survives a fall like that is if he is the Coyote from Roadrunner cartoons.

I guess the upcoming JOHN WICK: CHAPTER FOUR proves conclusively that John Wick is the Coyote from Roadrunner cartoons.

END

Serious Actors Seriously Acting.

Disgusting Inappropriate Filthy Hilarious Hellspawn Godsend.

Specifically designed to make you call your Congressman and complain, MOVIE 43 will offend, distress, embarrass, infuriate, ejaculate, and give you anal warts.

Not your average ensemble cast movie where everyone is trying to be more serious than their peers in order to win that Golden Globe, MOVIE 43 takes its A-Listers, jams them into gross-out vignettes so funny that you will miss half the raunchy dialogue from laughing so hard… and gives them anal warts.

A bedraggled Dennis Quaid pitches a movie idea at studio exec Greg Kinnear. We launch into a series of vignettes that are supposed to be this movie – returning intermittently to this throughline where Quaid becomes so desperate with the obsequious Kinnear that it turns into a hostage situation, Quaid trying to extort funding out of Kinnear at gunpoint. Seth McFarlane, Will Sasso and Common also squeeze into this storyline.

Meanwhile, the R-rated vignettes bludgeon us with dialogue as sharp as the boxcutters used to hijack the 9-11 planes (too soon?), over insane little plots so deformed they will make Republicans rethink their views on abortion (too mongoon?).

1) Kate Winslet on a blind date with Hugh Jackman the Chinballian (well, that’s actually the species name for the alien from MEN IN BLACK 2 – but you immediately get the picture, right?). And everyone in normal society is quite nonchalant about Hugh’s hairy naked scrotum and testicles hanging where his Adam’s apple should be. Everyone except Winslet, who makes the ooweh! vomit sound, so she’s aces in my book.

2) Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts home-school their son, giving him all the alienation, bullying and loneliness required from school life; mum Naomi schooling him in his first awkward high school kiss. It would be awesomely hot if it weren’t awesomely wrong. And awesomely hot anyway.

3) Anna Faris, after a year of dating boyfriend Chris Pratt thinks it’s time to move to the next phase – being pooped on. Not “shitting” – you shit on a whore, as J.B. Smoove points out – but you “poop” on someone you love.

4) Emma Stone and Kieran Culkin (so much more street cred than Macauley!): vital, urgent teens at a checkout counter, who need to be inside each other if only they could curb their vital, urgent hate for each other.

5) The iBabe – a naked hottie robot that plays music, with the fan to keep her circuitry cool located in her “vagi-port.” Aasif Mandvi and Kate Bosworth try to explain to clueless CEO Richard Gere why the iBabe company is fending off so many lawsuits from young boys getting their fingers chopped off.

6) Robin the Boy Wonder in full costume (Justin Long) tries to speed-date, with the specter of Batman (Jason Sudeikis, also in full cosplay) lurking around every corner. “He makes me wear this outfit!” whines Robin, as Batman cockblocks him with Lois Lane (a smoking hot Uma Thurman) and Supergirl (Kristen Bell), who apparently has mungabush.

7) Chloe Grace Moretz (oh my God! Truly the most beautiful woman in the world right now!), has her first period on a date with young Jimmy Bennett (growing up in front of us on film; remember him as Young Kirk in STAR TREK 2009?), while older brother Christopher Mintz-Plasse goes bananas trying to find something to suffice as a tampon. Then insouciant father Patrick Warburton walks in and proves why all men are pigs.

8) Gerard Butler as a Leprechaun captured by Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott, who want his pot of gold. What a potty mouth on that tiny fucker!

10) Stephen Merchant (THE OFFICE) and Halle Berry on a first date, playing Truth Or Dare. By the time Merchant surgically turns into an Asian man on a dare, it’s probably gone too far…

11) Coach Terrence Howard in a 1959 film about the First Negro High School Basketball Team, assuring the desperately scared black team, “You’re black, that’s why you’re going to win.” “You mean we gotta give 110%, coach?” “Not 110% – 50%, 3%! And you’re still gonna win!” “You mean if we follow in the footsteps of the lord?–” “No, not the lord! They’re white, you’re black – this is basketball!” As an example of why they are destined to win, Howard asks one of the boys to take out his foot long dick and wave it around. If only that scary white team wouldn’t come into their locker room and taunt the poor Negroes with their pasty skin and small dicks…

12) In the grandest Looney Tunes tradition of combining mischievous cartoon mascots with live action, Beezel the cartoon cat despises Elizabeth Banks getting between him and his master Josh Duhamel. Beezel will do anything to crush kill destroy Banks while he wanks to pictures of Josh in a bathing suit. But then, don’t we all wank to pictures of Josh in a bathing suit?

There’s nothing deep in MOVIE 43 (except maybe one of those foot long dicks); written, and directed by various teams, each working on their own vignette, it’s constructed purely to destroy liberty and sobriety. An overwhelming undertaking, my question is, Who oversees the whole shebang? Each vignette even had its own editor and producer, so who was at the top of the dirty pile cutting this all together? Oh, and my other question is, Will there be a sequel – and will MOVIE 44 be blasphemous enough to burn off these anal warts?…

END

The Wolverine Show, Part VII.

Wolverine goes back in time to unify the X-Men of the disco past to stop an event that brings into existence giant robots called Sentinels, who are systematically wiping out X-Men of the dystopian present. It’s a heart-gripping, tension-filled, magnificent, sprawling epic – that doesn’t make one lick of sense!

Pofftique

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is the highly anticipated filmic version of a classic 2-issue X-Men comic thread, involving time travel, the extermination of Humanity and the extinction of X-manity. But I don’t see why there was such anticipation, because the Days Of Future Past story, from The Uncanny X-Men issues 141-142, is not well constructed, and reads like a 1960s BATMAN TV episode, with garish costumes, lots of punching, embarrassing dialogue and big dumb villains (the Sentinels and the Brotherhood of Mutants, led by Mystique). The Sentinels in the comic are made of metal, so they could have easily been destroyed by an old gay man (i.e. Magneto); the Brotherhood are straight from Adam West’s wildest, melodramatic, talky-villain dreams.

The DAYS OF FUTURE PAST movie on the other hand (written by Jane Goldman, Simon Kinberg, Matthew Vaughn, and directed by the man who brought the X-MEN movies to life, Bryan Singer), has taken every squandered idea from the comic and fleshed it into a layered, thrilling epic that exists in a world we are familiar with (rather than one populated with so many characters wearing SCREAMING YELLOW). Note that the writers of the comic (Chris Claremont and John Byrne) are not credited. Nor should they be; although worthy writers, their dated ideas feel like being kissed by your parents in front of your school friends. Plot holes are closed off, action is deadly serious; what might have been a bucking cosplay tyrannosaur is reined in with hefty dialogue scenes, touching interrelationships and Wolverine’s butt in place of Kitty Pryde (who is bland in the comics and the movies). Most importantly, instead of garish costumes, everyone’s wearing a disco inferno.

The movie sentinels don’t fall into that trap of being easily defeatable; they are now made of a polymer substance, augmented with mutant DNA, enabling them to take on each X-Man’s powers and use it against them. It’s a completely specious rationalization, but again, in this universe, at least it explains why even the most powerful mutants cannot defeat them.

The cast from both X-MEN and X-MEN: FIRST CLASS are all here: James McAvoy as young Professor Xavier (who spends his first few scenes as Eric Stoltz in PULP FICTION); Michael Fassbender as young Magneto. That guy takes it sooo seriously. I said it before, and I’ll say it again, not as joke or pun, but fact as cold as steel: Fassbender is magnetic! Even Ian McKellen, having done three movies as the character, never owned Erik Lensherr as maliciously-deliciously as Fassbender. Whenever he’s onscreen, it’s like watching a somber Nietzschean treatise on moral ambiguity. With Ian McKellen, it’s like watching Dr. Smith from LOST IN SPACE. And the myriad, creative ways Fassbender utilizes the Master of Metal’s awe-inspiring powers! When I grow up, I wanna be Magneto!

Nicholas Hoult in a large role as blue-furred Hank/Beast; Shawn Ashmore is Iceman with a beard; Daniel Cudmore is the cool steel Colossus; Lucas Till makes a cameo as energyboy Havok; and Jennifer Lawrence and her chubby cheeks return in the lead female role as naked blue Mystique.

The plot revolves around Wolverine convincing the disco X-Men to stop Mystique killing the man who invents the Sentinels, the bane of X-Men. So you can see the conundrum: Mystique is doing what any X-Man in their right mind would do. But now this wolfie guy is telling us counter intuitively that the killing of the inventor of the Sentinels will fast-track their creation, rather than stop it. Oh, and he sez he’s from The Future, so everything he sez is true…

Awesome Little-Person-with-Big-Voice, Peter Dinklage, is Bolivar Trask, who creates the Sentinels to combat the “mutant threat.” He tells congress “homo neanderthalis was completely wiped out when homo sapiens arrived on the scene. So too would be the fate of homo sapiens now that homo superior had arrived.” Meanwhile, Wolverine is still walking around as a homo erectus.

Speaking of erectus, can they make Mystique and her pussy-jitsu any more of a walking orgasm for the sake of 13-year-old boys? Not only is she 23-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, distinctly attainable to 13-year-olds were they to become rich entrepreneurs in the next 10 years, her martial arts technique involves mostly open thighs, jiggling titty and a zealot’s commitment to camel toe.

And there are some peachy new mutants to splice our DNA: Warpath (Booboo Stewart, whom we presume gets so mad over people calling him names that he “goes on the…”?), Bishop (doing the channeling-energy thing that The Bacon did in the last movie), Blink (with a cool teleporting power), Sunspot (who is basically the Human Torch redux – who’re you “superhero creators” trying to fool?), and the absolute coolest cat of all – Quicksilver (Evan Peters, who is basically The Flash, but played like a champion ADHD, with a madcap rescue scene that will guarantee he gets his own spinoff movie).

Wolverine (for the seventh time, ladies and gentlemen, Hugh Jackman, who looks like…well, a superhero) is sent back in time through the scientific process of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) putting her hands on his temples and Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) watching and licking their lips like two dirty old men. When he arrives back in time, his muscles are already pumped, his adamantium is gone (a few good sight gags of these realizations), Nixon is the president, his nemesis Stryker is but a military lad, and his bellbottoms are pimpin’. The focus soon skews to the incredible powers of Quicksilver (being totally speedy), Mystique (being totally naked) and Magneto (being totally Fassbender). And like all time travel movies, it is artfully written that what they were trying to stop happening, happens anyway through another unforeseen pathway.

Of course, the overarching mistakes of this movie are the time travel anomalies (if we take the Laws Of Time Travel as being those laid down in BACK TO THE FUTURE all those centuries ago). But then, this movie – like any blockbuster – was not written to comply with Time Travel rules, but written to comply with Hollywood Screenplay Rules – and when held up to those rules, it’s absolutely brilliant! Heroes, villains, romantic repression, sexy bodies, world at stake, ticking clocks, character arcs, foreshadowing and payoffs… you couldn’t ask for a better example of modern screenplay construction.

Superhero movies, though they have become their own art form, are still not perceived as containing the inherent gravitas of non-superhero dramas, so we forget what great actors populate them. Jesus! Look at the talent: Shakespeare vets Stewart and McKellen, the great McAvoy and the magnificent Fassbender, the man-nificent Jackman, the small-man-nificent Dinklage, the women-ificent Jennifer Lawrence and Halle Berry (and all of the principals have won Best Actor awards in some form or other, Oscar, BAFTA, AFI, Globes, etc.).

The story just doesn’t make any sense, is all…

You see, it didn’t matter in the present whether everyone died or not – in fact, most of them die – but the movie treats the Present like a parallel timeline with the Past, but it’s not – it’s successive: the Present happens after the Past has been acted out, or after the past has been reshuffled. So why are the Present Kitty, Professor X, Magneto, and a host of new Wikipedia entries, depicted as making some kind of last stand as if Wolverine’s mission had to end for their Present to be saved? Let’s face it, as soon as Wolvie was sent back, their Present should have changed.

I mean, all that Wolverine had to do was stop Biff giving the Almanac to himself in 1955, right?

You mean the Present was not changed one jot after disco Magneto cut loose a football stadium, flew it through the air and dumped it on the White House lawn? At least 1,000,000 lives would have been skewed with that single event – not just ticket holders contacting the booking company to get their money back, but the players’ lives, the insurance companies of the game, insurance companies of the site, White House contractors hired to remove the rubble; traffic detours; water and power re-routed; a family goes without food, a baby dies that would have won Gold Medals; a woman doesn’t make it to the hospital on time to birth a baby that discovers the cure for AIDS, etc. The ramifications and concatenations would be literally endless. That’s just one event – the stadium gag – but these disco X-Men rove around smashing, flying, breaking, bashing, shooting, unmindful of the millions of time pathways they are deviating due to Wolverine affecting everything and everyone who orbits in his vicinity with his intrusive presence and whip-tanned butt.

And not even a sliver of the Present changed until that one last decision by Chubby Cheeks on whether to be or not to be?

Where’s Doc Emmett Brown when we need him?

END

Cloudy with a chance of Atlas.

CLOUD ATLAS is six incredibly evocative movies mashed together to make one incredibly annoying one.

It’s bolder than most movies, bigger than most, intelligent and well-produced, with epic sweep across past, present and future societies, with grandiose performances, seamless effects and what seems like a million hanging threads – until we realize CLOUD ATLAS is only espousing one thread: reincarnation.

Yep, that’s the word for it. No matter the euphemisms of “future selves,” “past lives,” “human connections” and “Shirley MacLaine” – they’re talkin’ reincarnation here. And ATLAS shows us very explicitly, in bold statements, the interactions between “souls” and their future selves. Albeit in a most confusing manner, flipping back and forth in the timestream like a guy on the couch with a remote control. And we see the same actors appearing throughout this mind-boggling chronicle, no matter the timespace, country or planet, all as different characters, but as the same soul…

If this doesn’t make any sense – keep reading. And it still won’t make sense.

Movie Maniacs, be prepared to not know what the fookin hell is goin on in the first half hour of this giant film. You will see Tom Hanks onboard a slave ship slowly poisoning Jim Sturgess, Halle Berry as an investigative reporter digging into a company run by Hugh Grant (in an excellent conniving role as a dirty CEO), Jim Broadbent being threatened by British thug Tom Hanks, Halle Berry as an offworlder infiltrating Hanks’s tribe, Hugh Grant as a face-painted cannibal killing Jim Sturgess, brilliant young Brit Ben Whishaw (SKYFALL) as amanuensis (tabulator) to Jim Broadbent’s cantankerous composer, Doona Bae as a pseudo-clone in servitude rescued by Jim Sturgess in heavy Asian makeup, and on it goes… featuring (also playing many characters) Susan Sarandon, David Gyasi, Keith David and Hugo Weaving (we can never mistake his Agent Smith hiss no matter the poundage of makeup he tries to hide under).

Each of the story threads is uniquely excellent, with edgy concepts (cannibals, clones, gay composers) and invigorating dialogue (although Hanks’s hybrid vernacular in the post-apocalyptic vignette – resembling the kids’ speech in MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME – was annoying, for being too esoteric and unclear), but trying to shotgun all of these stories at us with editing that would make an MTV director’s head spin, sullies the execution. It spells the ruination of all of them.

And the fact that all the characters play various sexes and races, and are usually caked with heavy prosthetics, is also distracting. We find ourselves at first sighting trying to figure who is behind the putty-face, instead of paying attention when it is needed most. And who gave the go-ahead for the Caucasian actors to fake Chinese eyes? Is that just plain dumb or just plain racist?

Directed by Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski (from the novel by David Mitchell), CLOUD ATLAS is a script continuity supervisor’s worst nightmare. Of course, all the tales interconnect, but in the most tenuous way possible. Many times, it is simply a case of someone living along the same timeline as someone that lived previously.

For example, Hanks keeps running into Halle in the most inauspicious ways, always finding a little lust in his heart for the total stranger with the pearbottom pants. Hanks also has many run-ins with Jim Sturgess’s many characters. (Hanks seems to be having the most fun with the multiple roles, most of his characters extemporizations on his saucy Professor Dorr from THE LADYKILLERS 2004 – buck-toothed, balding and sinister.) Jim Broadbent would yell jokingly to folks at a retirement home, “Soylent green is made of people!” – and in Doona Bae’s ascetic future that classic Charlton line attains a horrifying, meaty reality.

The annoying element of CLOUD ATLAS is not so much the premise that lives/souls can re-exist, but that it is given such metaphysical weight (“…death is only a door”), when the concept of continuous existence could have skewed more towards the scientific. (I’ll explain in a moment.) All the characters at some point ponder The Butterfly Affect – how their small actions might weigh on the larger canvas of Humanity (called Unanimity in the future): “The consequences of an individual’s life rippling through eternity.” “…our lives are not our own – we are bound to each other. With each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” (Intriguing concept, echoed in IRON MAN 3 when Stark ponders every man “creating his own demons.”)

But the concept of continuance is easily grasped, and more sensible, if we approach it like Carl Sagan.

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos.

The DNA in you has been circulating in the human animal since humans were animals. Continuance. Right there in front of us. And when we die, all the base elements that we are composed of are literally absorbed back into the Earth (or into the atmosphere if we are cremated), to be used in other organisms birthing, eating, shitting and screwing. You may not “return” in human form, and you may not “return” in a human at all. But you return. Make no mistake. The elements have nowhere else to go except to circulate on the planet. Quod erat demonstrandum. It ain’t supernatural.

And if you haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about – wait till you see the movie.

END

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to your every bondage and discipline need.

Mutation Elation.

They gave superheroes a new reason to be super.

X-MEN is the sometimes brooding, sometimes kick-ass, mostly campy filmic incarnation of a Marvel Comics series that added a new dimension to “super” heroes. It doesn’t quite outline the first generation of Professor Xavier’s “X-Men” but it comes close enough to raise the hairs on our bushy berserker sideburns.

In Bryan Singer‘s X-MEN, the internecine struggle between mutants of two differing ideologies reaches a zenith when Magneto (who hates humans) tries to turn the populace of New York into mutants via a big special effects machine, and the X-Men (who protect and pity humans) are there to stop him in their tight black leather.

Poffesor X

Unlike regular superheroes who were from off-planet (Krypton, Thanagar, Asgard) or whose powers came from outside forces (an intergalactic lantern, a radioactive spider, gamma rays), or who were just righteous bros in fancy panties (Batman, The Punisher, Iron Man), the Uncanny X-Men’s powers came from WITHIN; “cursed” with mutant genes, they each exhibited various powers that placed them beyond the pale of homo sapiens. Creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (1963) had hit upon an umbrella reason behind “super powers” that could be applied to any powers at all – no more need for contrived “origin tales”! He can grow more arms if they’re lopped off — uh, how? He’s a MUTANT – that is all ye know and all ye need to know. And this rationalization became so popular that it embedded itself in comicdom’s consciousness. It needs no explanation in mainstream media. My bushy sideburns leap for joy.

Within this new rubric, an irony – being mutants, these heroes were reviled by “normal” humans, even as they protected those humans from threats, the main threats coming from other mutants. An undercurrent of bigotry infuses every X-Men episode, inadvertently mirroring societal ignorance.

And director/co-writer Bryan Singer has reverently brought all these facets to life in X-MEN. It helps to have an almost perfect cast.

Sir Patrick Stewart, eternal Shakespearean, born leader, calm as stones, is telepathic Professor Xavier (aka Professor X); his brains are his brawn; from his school for mutants, some rise to become X-Men, defenders of justice, humanity, and low gas prices for the JP-7 fuel in their guzzling X-Jet. From his snazzy wheelchair, he Makes It So.

 

Famke Janssen, square-jawed Euro supermodel, is Jean Grey (aka Marvel Girl in the original 1960’s comics); another telepath, in this movie still honing her abilities, which include hotness in tight spandex and not being able to wipe Toad’s jism off her face.

Halle Berry, salubrious milk chocolate, is weathergirl Storm; sunny with a chance of bad dialogue.

James Marsden, Teen Model mannequin, is laser-eyed Cyclops; in the comics, the tactician leader of the X-team, here, a vanilla love interest for Jean, and occasional eye-juice ejaculator. Oh, he does get to give some orders, but only after Wolverine says it’s okay.

Shawn Ashmore is Bobby Drake (aka Iceman, here an Ice BOY), trying to woo his chick Rogue without actually touching her. As if mutated virgins don’t have it hard enough…

Young Anna Paquin is baby-faced Rogue (what the–?! I know, I know, fanboys: Rogue doesn’t officially enter X-Man canon until 20 years after their inception, but here she is the brunt of the plot). Her mutant power sucks… the life force out of others. She cannot touch anyone without incapacitating them as their powers flow into her. Which gives the term “unsafe sex” actual meaning for the first time in its revenue-coined history. Rogue is immediately drawn to Wolverine’s musk, and uses her life-leaching-touch thingy as an excuse not to tongue Bobby Drake.

“Not so fast, Bub. You didn’t read the “claws” about pissing me off!”

And then there is Wolverine. Australian beefcake Hugh Jackman is the mysterious Logan (sporting “Wolverine” dog tags) with adamantium skeleton and triple-claw swagger. The X-MEN movie is about Wolverine. Really. No matter the movie title and the fact that this jampacked movie brings so many comicbook heroes to life, a conscious dramatic decision was made to make this feral scrapper with the shrouded Special Forces history the focus of this X-MEN movie.

Consider: Wolverine/Logan is given all the nuances of character that only lead roles boast, while all the other heroes are merely shallow tropes. It is his throughline that is resolved (trying to discover his past); it is his power struggle with the purported “leader” Cyclops (for primacy and the girl); it is his heroic action that saves the day; he is the only character with a redemption arc. It is Wolverine whose eyes we are seeing through as he wakes in a strange environment (the X mansion), it is he who speaks for the skeptic in all of us when Xavier introduces the X-Men with their code names “Storm” and “Cyclops” (Logan: “What do they call you? Wheels”?); he and Magneto are the only characters with “introduction scenes”; and let’s face it – though surrounded by models, he’s the best lookin’ mutant for miles.

We meet Wolverine doin’ what he does best: scrappin.’ We don’t so much meet him as drink him in: shirtless, boozing, chomping a cigar as he takes down a contender in a filthy pub cage match. And the most amazing part: his hair! How did they smoosh it into that pointy-v we know and love from his brutal graphic novel adventures? When he snikt’s his adamantium claws out, it is in the best gunslinger tradition, holding off two men on either side of him. Then he saunters out of the bar with his v-shaped mullet all sassy. Except for his over-6-foot frame, Hugh Jackman is EXACTLY how we envision Wolverine. Not since Christopher Reeve as SUPERMAN has there been casting so awe-inspiring, so pitch perfect, so like-a-glove. An adamantium-clawed glove.

Film actually goes against canon in making Logan so touching. When Rogue is trying to run away, he consoles her: “Give these geeks one more shot. The Professor understands people like us.” Which only makes her untouchables ache for him even more.

There is no Angel and no Beast (two of the original X-Men), but there is — Magneto.

 

Sir Ian McKellen, also Shakespearean giant, also Japanese garden calm, is iron monger Magneto/Erik Lensherr. Now we know the comicbook Magneto is a muscly maroon mantoy, but even the visual miscasting of doddering Sir Ian cannot impede him taking the metal-bending role to the delicious limits of Dr. Zachary Smith and making it his very own, at one point tut-tutting Wolverine, lamenting, “Oh, dear boy…”

Loquacious, regal, crafty, the only mutant to use his abilities to their fullest tactical extent, Magneto is the morally ambiguous “bad guy” who mistrusts humans, especially Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) who wages congressional war on mutants. Magneto’s plan is not so much evil as vengeful: to mutate every human in New York to make them realize there is nothing to fear from mutation. Through him, we feel the analogies to Nazi Germany and modern-day Amerikan Republicans: “Women and children, whole families destroyed simply because they were born different from those in power.”

Magneto may be old, but he’s an Old Dog; what can we make of his right-hand man being a right-hand svelte blue nude chick? Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, wet dream, working blue, is shapeshifter Mystique. What better use for your right hand?

Rounding out the evil cabal are the appropriately named Tyler Mane as liony Sabretooth and Seth Green look-alike Ray Park as the tongue-twisting Toad (he was Darth Maul in PHANTOM MENACE)

The opening scenes of X-MEN are powerful, almost sinister, deadly serious and set a tone for the movie that the movie itself cannot match. A YouTube comment says it all: “If the whole movie was like this, the movie would have been epic.”

In these opening scenes, we see a young Erik Lensherr in a concentration camp discovering his latent powers over metal. And we meet shirtless Wolverine like Eastwood with claws. Then it gets progressively campy. Magneto turns Senator Kelly into a water puddle (an aqua-man, if you will – or if DC Comics will let us); the X-Men mill aimlessly through Act Two, where we discover most of them can’t act too. There is a magnificent display of Dr. Smith’s telekinetic powers over police cars and bullets, and the final ill-contrived climactic scenes illustrate how limited the writers’ imaginations are, as all these beings with various super powers stand around and get their butts kicked.

The final “showdown” is laughable, as the X-Men debate how to get fifty feet up the Statue of Liberty’s arm to rescue Rogue: “Storm, can you fly me up there?” “I don’t have that kind of control!” “Don’t take the shot – you might hit her!” “Jean, can you steady him?!” “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” Eventually Cyclops takes charge and gives orders on how to do it. And Wolverine agrees, so they do.

END

Muttonchops sauteed in body oil.

X-eunt in X-asperation.

Action without heart. Spectacle without logic. Brawn without brains.

Director Brett Ratner balances on Bryan Singer’s shoulders, attempting to hold up the mutant world Singer so reverently rendered in X-MEN (2000) and X-MEN UNITED (2003). But he falls off – and helms X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, the third in the x-franchise, with as much reverence and talent as Bryan Singer’s shoe.

X-rated cameltoe.

Poffclops

Ratner and screenwriters Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn feign respect, drawing in the fanboys (with teaser ads featuring edgy photography and magnificent visuals, like Angel’s breathtaking wingspan; dangling the reunion carrot of the five original Uncanny X-Men members – for the non-mutant readers, these are Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Angel and Beast; giving us tastes of legendary idioms, when Bobby Drake eventually goes fully Iceman for a few seconds, or Beast exclaims, “Oh my stars and garters!”) – but then tumble off the grid completely, as they kill off half the main characters, never show the original five onscreen together, twist legacy into dramatic cliché and fulfill the worst fears of intelligent moviegoers. LAST STAND is not a case of “more of the same,” but too much of the same; a runaway George Lucas effect.

Forgetting that “He who sips from many cups, drinks of none,” Ratner loads this 104-minute movie with so much content that it implodes under its own weight.

The government has isolated an antigen from scary Cameron Bright (playing Leech, a mutant who negates the powers of other mutants) and markets it as a “mutant cure,” drawing mixed reactions from mutants. Magneto (Ian McKellen) sees it as usurpation of mutants’ very souls, whilst some, like Rogue (Anna Paquin), who cannot touch anyone without draining their life-force (and whose pink x-bits have been quivering for man-flesh since she met Wolverine back in X-MEN) see it as an opportunity for some Jagger-like satisfaction.

While Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) insults everyone back at the mutant mansion of Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Cyclops (James Marsden) wastes his 3 minutes screen time weeping like a bitch over dead Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). The blue-furred, Presidential Mutant Diplomat, Beast (Kelsey Grammer, perfectly cast), attempts to find the right spin for the antigen campaign, whilst boy-band member, Warren Worthington III (aka Angel, played by Michael Murphy, doing Jay Mohr), uses up his four seconds of wingspan screen time to make good on the startling trailer and fly out on the cure.

Before anyone can say “mutant overload,” Jean (with her long, luscious, burgundy wig slightly crooked), has returned from the dead as Dark Phoenix, had Cyclops for lunch and is hot for some Wolverine on toast.

Magneto scorns Mystique (Rebecca Romjin) after she sacrifices her mutancy for him, and proves to be quite the playa, no sooner dumping the blue babe than hooking up with a Dark Phoenix.

Now this is the kind of X I like…

If all this seems confusing, rest assured, it is. LAST STAND makes little attempt at explaining relationships, superpowers or logic (except for a flashback which finds the two Shakespearean veterans, McKellen and Stewart, amusingly wrinkle-free, meeting Jean as a child, exploring the complexities of their association) and is unapologetically for fanboys who have continually sacrificed the love of a good woman for plastic-bagging their comicbooks in chronological order; ironic, considering the film-makers themselves don’t display much love or knowledge of these characters.

And Cyclops! Oh, Cyclops! I have never condoned the dismissive treatment of the Uncanny X-Men’s prime member. In the comics universe, everyone respected his authoritah – but the first two Singer movies demoted this master tactician, group leader and masculine love-interest for Jean Grey into a metrosexual strip-o-gram. We tolerated his film deficiencies because the films themselves lauded the X-Men legacy. With LAST STAND, Cyclops’s pussified ousting is unconscionable.

Screen becomes clogged with superbeings who only figure how to utilize their powers as the plot denotes, otherwise stand around doing nothing.

Only Magneto and Wolverine ever use their powers intelligently, Wolverine usually with his shirt off; alas, his action scenes are all too brief (and how does his tank top heal its holes when he is stabbed?). Magneto’s power is truly awe-inspiring and the vaunted Golden Gate Bridge sequence is remarkable.

The themes of this movie – offering homogeneity to those who feel alienated and forcing homogeneity on those who wish individuality – are lost amongst the movie’s many plot-holes and poorly-directed action. For example, why was the government transporting Juggernaut, Multiple Man and Mystique without first shooting them with the antigen? Well, so that Magneto could rescue them, of course.

That look you get when all the cool x-characters are taken…

And why does Wolverine try to stop Phoenix being shot with antigen? This would have eradicated her nihilistic death-persona and left behind a supermodel. Instead, whilst the world is being sucked into her destructive vortex, he opts to kill the Dark Phoenix (with his shirt off). Seems he’d rather have a dead Phoenix than a live Jean Grey.

Economically, the X-MEN franchise has fallen victim to its own plotline: in order to recoup its astronomical budgets, it needs to homogenize its product; in doing so, it kills off impact and integrity, thereby risking lesser income through inferior product. This will be the last collective X-Men production; the future of the X-Men lies in their spinoffs. Already, WOLVERINE has stalked into pre-production.

Yet the marketers force-feed us a cliffhanger, just in case: while Storm (Halle Berry) assumes matronly duties at the mutant school; while Beast presses White House flesh; while Wolverine insults someone and Angel flies high on CGI; while the cured Rogue and Iceman make the beast with two backs in the nearest broom closet, two sidelined Shakespearean veterans slyly find their mettle once more…

END

Pussy Galore.

Halle Berry brings her cat scratch fever to bear upon corporate villainy and meddling-cop lovers alike in CATWOMAN, with the style of an Egyptian priestess oozing Western sadomasochismo; a puss in boots by any other name.

Strictly Felis silvestris, no doggy-style for this feline.

Poffy-whipped

The MPAA prove beyond a doubt that they are so blunt-skulled as to be astonishingly unaware of that thing called “innuendo,” in rating this vibrating dildo of a movie a mere PG-13.With a character name gooey enough to warrant slapping the screenwriter responsible for it, Patience Phillips (Berry) is the browbeaten employee of a cosmetics company owned by Laurel Hedare (Sharon Stone – need more evidence for Pure Sex? A woman renowned for her clam-shot!) and her British (and therefore villainous) husband. Overhearing corporate high crimes being plotted, Patience is “killed” by Laurel’s goons.

She is “resurrected” by a cat breathing on her… though it may be hard to believe that the movie’s four screenwriters could concoct nothing more plausible, it is revealed that this particular feline has been spitting up hairballs since Cleopatra’s reign and has “chosen” Patience for her… uh, latent nymphomaniacal abandon, it would seem – to be the superhero/antihero for Generation Y.

And before your head explodes over the idiocy of the premise, let’s put it all in purr-spective (sorry!). In a superhero-conscious society, where a guy can be bitten by a radioactive spider and then walk up walls, or where a guy from a technologically advanced civilization like Krypton (with fashion sense that has not advanced beyond 1972 Gay Mardi Gras – candy-apple-flaming underpants over sky-blue leggings? – girl, puh-lease!) can be accepted with straight faces, this “cat-breath” contrivance is almost rocket science.

Being brought back to life encourages Patience to dress like a slut, put on makeup enough to embarrass a prostitute, walk like she’s left the Anal Intruder lodged deep enough to kill a mule deer, and fight crime.

Sensually clobbering bad guys and good guys alike, in her quest to beat out Jenna Jameson as the World’s Biggest Whore, Catwoman uncovers Laurel’s plot to Take Over The World via the diabolical tool of women’s makeup! (Yes, four screenwriters…) Prompting her into using her whip (insert joke here), getting down on all fours (take down trousers here), licking people (touch oneself here) and using double entendre like she’s getting paid by the pun (slap the screenwriters for ruining it for you).

Talented comedienne Alex Borstein (MAD TV, FAMILY GUY) plays the unfortunate cliché Fat Chick “Friend of the Hot Chick” (bane to clubbers the world over). But in Hollywood parlance, Fat Chicks are as far removed from real-life clubber cock-blockers as Lesbos is from San Francisco, these plump sidekicks quivering with instant publicized arousal whenever a human male hoves within farting distance. And – in a movie that squeals its emasculation with Berry’s every half-naked pirouette and erotogenic self-licking display – Benjamin Bratt plays The Chick.

Catwoman’s identity is nailed by Detective Bratt – soon after he nails Patience – and she is jailed (framed by Laurel Hedare) – in a skintight tracksuit that screams Prison Porn Scene; payoff being Patience’s sensual sliding act through the cell bars, as that badass tracksuit hugs her bad ass… oooh yeh! Do it slow for the dirty old men in the audience with their 13-year-old daughters role-modeling themselves after this flirt-crazed, exhibitionist sex-kitten.

Where is your god now, MPAA?

Though many would criticize this piece of trash for its dizzying editing, embarrassing dialog, banal storyline, distractingly-ludicrous special effects or wafer-thin characters, it is the underlying HYPOCRISY in “empowering” Womankind by simultaneously exploiting them that belittles the film’s aspirations.

And the rest of those things don’t help.

Not that it had too many aspirations, its main deal being securing thousands of soft-porn moments for Berry, hard-selling this product to drooling consumers waiting for a nipple shot which would never come. (Let’s face it, though: we saw Halle’s naked ta-tas in SWORDFISH and they were nothing to write home about.)

The film’s slippery grasp of its Woman Empowerment theme only served to highlight that women can’t have it both ways: if being forward about their sexuality is Empowerment, they should not stymie men being forward about theirs – yet any sexual signal from a man is considered Sexual Harassment at the woman’s prerogative; and if this movie represents a coup for women’s primacy, then it cannot possibly represent misogyny – yet the same factions who laud this as a blow to male supremacy will also whine about its feminine exploitation!

In the film’s final standoff between Catwoman and Laurel Hedare, it becomes obvious that the two most masculine beings in the story are women (business-wise and physically), the film-makers falling into the same paradoxical trap that all Woman Empowering rhetoric must claw its way out of – that women do not seek equality, but rather usurpation of Man’s role, thereby making them as slanted towards the preeminence of their sex as the men they rally against. (The unfortunate corollary is that in overcoming men on their own turf, they must adopt the traits of men – and “butch” and “macho” should be adjectives reserved for gay guys.)

With every man in this movie emasculated and pussified (Bratt seems decidedly put-out that he must pretend to nurse a wounded shoulder to keep him out of the movie’s climactic catfight), estrogen runs rampant as those 13-year-olds cheer the denigration of the gender that grants them these double standards in the first place.

It is those same double standards that the MPAA hypocritically defer to in granting this film its pornographic liberties.

Because Life, much like this movie, is all about the pussy.

END

Hot women in faux-leather with bottled ‘do’s, piloting aircraft – funding problems just disappear.

X-traordinary.

In X2: X-MEN UNITED, the two factions of warring mutants we met in X-MEN (2000) unite against a common enemy: homo sapiens. And all genetic babbling breaks loose…

Pofferine

The “good” mutants (the ones tagged with the X-Men epithet) are Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Wolverine, Iceman and Rogue (joined by additional cast, Nightcrawler and Colossus); the “bad” mutants (actually, “misunderstood” mutants) are Magneto (Ian McKellen), Mystique, Pyro and Lady Deathstrike.

The opening scene with the teleporting Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) infiltrating the White House is filled with badass promise (his “bamf” teleporting sound effect is especially bamfy!), and X2 delivers in action and production values, and almost-perfect casting, but is ultimately felled by its PG-13 rating and desperate need to have as many mutants as possible suck all the oxygen out of the screentime.

(Unfortunate that X1 and X2 are now associated with these mutant movies, instead of their original references: Bell’s X1 aircraft, piloted by Chuck Yeager, the first documented to break the sound barrier in 1947. Never forget that, young-uns! Successive X-numbers denoted successive prototypes.)

Brian Cox is William Stryker, a military madman who gets the president’s okay to wipe out mutants in society. There is a subplot regarding his role in “creating” Wolverine, which is never resolved – unless you count Wolverine neck-chaining him to a helicopter while a tsunami bears down on him “resolved.”

Though much of the casting fits our preconceptions absolutely, we weep at what they’ve done to Cyclops (James Marsden), whose role is disconcertingly minimal, as it was in X-MEN. Comicbook Cyclops/Scott Summers was always the undisputed Leader of the group, exuding a patriarchal air amongst the very first x-youngsters to the present. Movie Cyclops exudes all the presence of a day-player, or some guy in a bar in Miami in an episode of GIRLS GONE WILD.

Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) is also abused somewhat. Firstly – that hair – not working, honey! Gone are comicbook Jean’s cascading, volcanic-red, lava-locks (too 80s for this modern film? – but no worse than the Animé cartoon hairstyle she now sports); will it have to come down to an episode of VH1’s 50 AWESOMELY BADDER HAIRDOS to acknowledge this soccer mom abomination? And before we know it, Jean is gone. In a dramatic high-point, sexily holding back a wall of water while simultaneously powering up the X-Jet, she is sacrificed; a device which had to occur for Jean’s overwhelming Phoenix force to achieve illimitable psionic freedom. (Somebody stop me sliding into geekery!…) In essence, in just two movies her character traverses an arc which took decades of comics to develop.

Movies unfortunately do not have the luxury of comicbook shelf-life; plots that were developed over thousands of inter-connected comics must necessarily be composited into a few films, before the franchise goes to pot with new directors, unfamiliar and unlikeable cast and widened demographic mundanity. i.e. it always ends up G-rated, with scenes of soldiers crawling out of exploded military vehicles to prove that they are still alive.

The film unflinchingly supplies each major character with an interesting arc; an almost insurmountable undertaking, considering the plethora of varied roles and interlocking story lines. Director/co-writer Bryan Singer and writers (Zak Penn, David Hayter, Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris) have done an incredible job, full tilt boogie – even day-player Cyclops gets his moment to kick butt and take names – but is ultimately taken down by a chick – girly-man style! And unfortunately, we only get one brief moment to see Colossus go full steel.

Before I go on, I must clarify: this is an excellent movie, well-filmed, well-written, well-acted – and hey! Wolverine! (Hugh Jackman) – ’nuff said! But it is not without its illogicities.

An example: Rogue (Anna Paquin) is sucked out of the disabled X-Jet and Nightcrawler bamfs out and retrieves her, bringing her back onboard safely – excellently illustrating his power’s utility – BUT – well, he’s back in the out-of-control X-Jet! Why not bamf to the ground instead, Isaac Newton? Matter of fact, why not individually bamf everyone down to the ground? This is the quandary that writers of superhero films must face: all these beings put together make up a formidable force and if they logically reasoned through any predicament, nothing could ultimately harm them.

When Wolverine barks, “Don’t we have any weapons in this heap?”, the full portent of his question hits us when Storm’s (Halle Berry) eyes go white, readying to bring the thunder – they’re ALL Lethal Weapons. Yet here is another mis-use of power from that same scene: Couldn’t Storm (who has just conjured more twisters than there were in the movie TWISTER) conjure a mighty updraft to float the X-Jet safely to earth?; couldn’t Jean (who has just utilized her telekinesis to explode a missile) also float the jet down safely?; couldn’t Iceman (still Ice-BOY here, Shawn Ashmore) create a slide of ice?; the potential list of ‘saves’ goes on – yet, it’s Airport ’75 up in that converted Blackbird and Our Man Charlton ain’t nowhere in sight. Instances like these really make you wonder whether you ARE on the Right Side, rooting for these insensate clowns, when the ostensible Bad Guy – grandiloquent Magneto – is the only one with any brains, balls or mutant clout to actually save the jet.

The DVD commentaries infuriate with their naivete: cast and crew misuse and completely misunderstand the word “evolution,” continually saying “evolve” where they should say simply “develop,” illustrating an utter ignorance of this world-shaping concept. Evolution is a process by which mutated genes, if they enable an organism to better adapt to its environment, are “selected” and passed on. Less-adaptable organisms are leached out of the pathway of Life vis a vis “natural selection.” Not being an essay on Evolution per se, this skeletal description will have to suffice to illustrate the ingenuousness of terms like “character evolution.”

The DVD also bludgeons viewers with the unsubtle message of tolerance. As if the raison d’etre of this movie is to promote tolerance and not to make sinful amounts of exploitative cash. By exploiting a minority existing in fantasy, they audaciously attach this analogy to world problems, and then pretend they care. The fact that this movie issues from one of the most insular, in-tolerant places on earth – Hollywood – makes that “message” all the more hypocritical and straight-up shameless prevarication.

The X-Men’s tolerance theme has nothing to do with why this film was made – the current rash of superhero movies is not being voraciously consumed faster than they can be made because audiences wish to imbue themselves with spiritual elevation; no, superhero-mania is the latest fad in a long line of film fads – remember all those war movies after WWII?; all the westerns of the forties through sixties; the cop films of the seventies; slasher films of the eighties; the genres of “baseball,” “family,” “romantic comedies,” et al. Superhero films now join the carousel of bankable corporate products – because the generation who grew up enamored with comics is now at an age where they are making the major business decisions in the world. So please – spare us the faux-philanthropy and get on with entertaining us for our cash.

More Wolverine and Colossus please!

END