The REAL Quantum Mania.

Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER follows the “father of the atomic bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer, as he gathers geniuses, cockblocks politicians, and bangs mistresses. A breakneck political thriller with loads of intrigue and dramatic flourish, with an award-winning performance by Cillian Murphy (PEAKY BLINDERS) as the titular physicist, who delved into the quantum realm and actually conquered it. (It’s a pity that in this era, kids equate ‘quantum realm’ with the stupid ANT MAN franchise – look here, hillbillies! Here is the man who made leaps and bounds into the theoretical physics of the smaller-than-microscopic world where splitting an atom would unleash the catastrophic energy held within its quantum embrace.)

Matt Damon is General Leslie Groves, whose mission was specifically to develop an atomic bomb (after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, dragging America into WWII); in October 1942, he would appoint Oppenheimer as director of the top-secret Los Alamos facility in the New Mexico desert, code-named The Manhattan Project (because the initial research was done at Columbia University in Manhattan, New York). David Krumholtz is Oppie’s American scientist friend Isidor Rabi, whose excitement at impending success is tempered by the ramifications of their creation: “I don’t wish the culmination of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction.”

After a July 1945 test detonation in New Mexico, code-named “Trinity” (the world’s first nuclear explosion!), an atomic bomb is deployed on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 – and then again on Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945 – that effectively ended the Japanese continuing the war after Germany’s surrender in May 1945.

Then, in a paranoiac frenzy, the American government came after Oppenheimer…

If ever there was a movie that needed title cards introducing its players…

I worship the metaphysical charred ground these titans of physics walk upon, yet I couldn’t latch onto any characters due to the pace of the film. I love the fact that Nolan doesn’t treat his viewers like idiots (avoiding explanations of physics; introducing characters with a minimum of dialogue; not titling the non-chronological timeline), but all these men whose brainpower literally shaped the Earth physically and geopolitically, should be publicized and thrown aloft on the pedestals they deserve to be on.

More blowing up reputations, less blowing up test sites, please.

There are scores of key figures in physics here, including: creator of the atom model, Neils Bohr (Kenneth Branagh); architect of the nuclear age, Enrico Fermi (Danny DeFerrari); father of the H-bomb, Edward Teller (Benny Safdie); creator of the Uncertainty Principle and the best damn meth in New Mexico, Werner Heisenberg (Matthias Schweighöfer); my favorite rebel theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman (Jack Quaid – Hughie from THE BOYS; I didn’t even know who he was portraying until I saw him at a party banging bongos – Feynman’s trademark!); and of course, the man synonymous with science and physics and genius itself, Albert Einstein (Tom Conti, in a beautiful, empathetic performance)…

Failing keeping track of the physicists, to keep our interest, there’s the Hollywood Sex – that’s where the girl is on top, cowboy style. As one of Oppie’s mistresses, it’s commendable that Florence Pugh doesn’t wear a bra during sex scenes (and she is quite game to perform nude surrounded by a table full of clothed men, in one of Oppie’s guilt-ridden fever dreams), but her whining about Oppie being too busy to spend time with her is way missing the mark on why this movie should exist.

More atomic reactions, less jilted women reactions, please.

Matter of fact, Oppenheimer’s famous quote from the Bhagavad Gita – “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” – is narrated during a sex scene. How’s that for irony? (Irony because sex is an act of life – I gotta remind all the MeToo’s and anti-choicers and safe-sexers – not a sentence of death.)

Emily Blunt is Oppie’s wife, Kitty, with a kid who is always crying. So is she. Any wonder he’s away from home doing math so much? She urges him to fight the government instead of taking their accusations lying down, but is unaware of the corner Oppie is backed into. Nonetheless, she is portrayed as tough as a woman can be (in those sexist times when women scientists were kept far from nuclear projects because the radiation would affect their wombs!), as she puts up with Oppie’s mistresses, maybe because she knew that his one true mistress was physics, an insatiable curse that none of those warm bodies could fulfill, not even hers.

Jason Clarke is the Special Counsel at Oppenheimer’s security hearing, determined to label him a communist. Josh Hartnett is physicist Ernest Lawrence, who would refuse to testify against his friend Oppie. Rami Malek is physicist David Hill, who would be Oppie’s savior in the hearing. (Do yourself a favor and look up all these names and their Promethean contributions to the technological civilization we now take for granted.)

The Trinity Test is the most distinctive segment of the movie, detailed with all the wonder and anxiety leading up to it, accompanied by Ludwig Göransson’s (CREED) heart-palpitating soundtrack: wondering if the atomic chain reaction will trigger the Earth’s whole atmosphere into burning? (The chances were not exactly zero.) With everyone unsure of exactly how extreme the blast and shockwave and radiation fallout area would be, we see them donning welder’s goggles, laying face-down on the ground, in bunkers – I’m not sure how many miles away the blast was, but it seems unnecessarily callous how most of them stayed in the open. When the blinding-white explosion happens, there is silence. And then the shockwave hits. And then the radiation strobes into those delicate wombs. And Dumbo Donald republiKKKans are born…

After Trinity, Oppenheimer is hesitant about bombing Japan (i.e., humans), but he hardly has a say anymore. He would rail against further research into the hydrogen bomb, tormented by the paradox of his own making: in trying to stop global annihilation, he himself had created the means.

Movie does not make clear that TWO types of bombs were created at Los Alamos – Little Boy (uranium fission, Hiroshima), and Fat Man (plutonium implosion, Nagasaki).

Movie titles opened with the legend of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods to bring to Man, and how he was tortured for eternity for that deed. So too would Oppenheimer be spiritually tortured for the rest of his life, the reality of the bomb haunting him: hundreds of thousands of civilians murdered and wounded horrifically, skin burning, charred bodies, radiation sickness, Godzilla appearing, etc.

Dr. Serizawa: He’ll kill your allegory.

The original 1954 GOJIRA movie was a scathing retort against the American bombing of Hiroshima. In the movie, Dr. Serizawa laments the WMD he has created to annihilate Gojira, and echoes the sentiment of the atomic bomb’s creator: “If the [WMD] is used even once, the politicians of the world won’t stand idly by. They’ll inevitably turn it into a weapon – A-bombs against A-bombs, H-bombs against H-bombs … adding another terrifying weapon to mankind’s arsenal is something I can’t allow.”

… and then the physical torturing would begin…

From the book by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Vintage Books, 2006), Christopher Nolan has crafted a drama in the style of a thriller where there’s an actual villain we can pinpoint — in the form of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); with some training in physics, he advocated for the next step – the hydrogen bomb – even as Oppenheimer remorsefully vetoed the idea. Oppenheimer would make a fool of Strauss at a public hearing (making the aspiring physicist seem like an errant child ignorant of the Promethean physics forces Oppie was wielding), which would forever eat at Strauss, leading him to betrayal, requesting Hoover’s FBI investigate Oppie for Communist affiliations, which would ultimately get Oppie’s government security clearance revoked.

Robert Downey Jr.: Not going Full Strauss.

Downey has said that he “forgot how to act” in playing Iron Man over the last 14 years, Tony Stark’s personality being so close to his own that he didn’t need to invest much energy in the character; adding he was happy for this role completely removed from Marvel sorcery. Although he has gone deep here, I can’t honestly say he “disappeared” into the role (like a Day-Lewis or an Oldman) – we can still see traces of Stark. (Speaking of Gary Oldman, he is here as President Truman, but you might not even recognize him because – Gary Oldman!)

More physics, less Iron Man please…

This movie’s climax might make it seem like Strauss was the nemesis behind all Oppenheimer’s government tribulations (almost like SPECTRE retconned Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld, when he claimed to be the architect behind all Bond’s pain for the past 50 years), but American paranoia was sky-high, especially with its many disenchanted citizens dabbling in communism. There were other factions or insulted colleagues who would contribute to Oppie’s excision from the inner sanctum, most of them using communism to paint a target on him. Anyone who associated with known communists was regarded a “traitor,” and Oppie’s social circles were loaded with dabblers, including his brother Frank (Dylan Arnold).

The atomic bomb: a *real* death star.

I would’ve loved to have heard more about the construction of the bomb itself, that we see in brief shots: What was that steel sphere in the center? Why are those outer panels shaped like that? How did dropping it ignite the chain reaction to split the atom?

Movie closes with Oppenheimer pondering with Einstein, on how their work has wrought what they feared – the ultimate destruction of Earth, by unleashing real quantum mania.

END

A film that takes us somewhere, yet goes nowhere.

Quentin Tarantino once again brazenly rewrites history in his scintillating homage to La La Land of the 1960s, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD.

Hollywood 1969. Two tales intertwine – one, a tale of an actor and his stuntman, hustling for work in a business that has moved past their cowboy attitudes and advancing ages; the other, a tale of a rising young starlet going somewhere, while her throughline goes nowhere.

And that’s the small gripe I have with this meticulously made film: a little less homage, a little more story.

Writer-director Tarantino paints two fictional characters from scratch and portrays one real life character; the fictional pair are actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stuntman bro Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, as leathery and runneled as Tommy Lee Jones), while the historical character is Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who is connected to real life acquaintances that would scar history forever – the Manson Family (portrayed as peripheral characters, including a lookalike who could be a young Liam Neeson or, I’m guessing, Charlie Manson).

Tarantino also re-dresses Hollywood the town (either in CGI, practical effects or a combo of both) in the glitter gown it wore in the ‘60s, from the shop facades on Hollywood Boulevard, to the car models from that era, down to the street signs, bus shelters and billboards. And credit where it’s due – that effort in itself is a stunning achievement!

However, Tarantino seems to have lost his throughline in chasing his art. Firstly, only movie-philes would know or care that he has brought 1960’s Hollywood to life so fastidiously; secondly, he spends way too much time with eyes on Sharon Tate. Movie might have benefitted had Tarantino simply followed the two buddies (with their own compelling narratives), because by inserting Tate and rewriting her as a survivor of the “Tate Murders,” her appearance in the film is meaningless to any cinemagoer with no knowledge of her real history (victim to the Manson Family, that murdered five people in Roman Polanski’s Los Angeles home in 1969), and she ultimately becomes nothing but a red herring to those who do know the history. Tate happens to be Rick Dalton’s neighbor, therefore a motivating subplot for actor Dalton, who craves to make contact with Tate’s director husband, Polanski. After the film’s climax (in which Tate is not involved), she appears as a concerned neighbor, in the smallest of comedic payoffs.

That being said, allow me to commend IN HOLLYWOOD for its sudden, savage climax – one of the most satisfying payoffs in cinematic history, with Brad Pitt pulling out his big dick for the type of studied gore-ballet that Tarantino is renowned for. The crafted gutshock blunt blow to our skulls doesn’t get any better. It’s Hero Time.

Most women have to be held back when confronted with The Pitt.

Like the two films that inspired its name (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, both directed by one of Quentin’s heroes – Sergio Leone), ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is a tale about a few connected characters set against the backdrop of a kaleidoscopic cultural sprawl. Definitely a passion project for Quentin (who admits 1969 holds a rose-colored grip on his youth), movie is a pastiche wrapped in a homage and doused liberally with roman a clef, packed with Easter eggs, classic rock, in-jokes, and parts for all his brahs.

There’s ice-cool Timothy Olyphant and ice-veined Michael Madsen as cowboys, Kurt Russell as a producer (and narrator), stuntwoman Zoe Bell as his wife; there’s even Bruce’s daughter Rumer Willis and Kevin Smith’s daughter Harley Quinn, as Manson cultists. Leo, of course, did DJANGO, and even Pitt has crossed paths with Tarantino before… remember Floyd the stoner in the Tarantino-penned TRUE ROMANCE? “Don’t conden-send me, man! Fucken kill you, man!…”

Al Pacino is producer Marvin Schwarz, who steers Dalton toward spaghetti westerns out-of-country, to build an overseas cachet and return a hero (a real life gambit that rocketed none other than Clint Eastwood to stardom); Margaret Qualley is Pussycat, a free spirit who tempts Booth to the cult; Bruce Dern is old George Spahn, who allows the Manson Family to camp at his Spahn Movie Ranch (which features in the other prime scene of the movie – Booth visiting the eerily stagnant Ranch and talking his way through the ominous female hippies to visit old George, who may be… dead? prisoner? worse?…)

Martial artist Mike Moh plays Bruce Lee (during his Kato period in THE GREEN HORNET), comparing dick size with Cliff Booth on the set of a movie. Booth ends up getting kicked off the set for beating up Lee. Now that’s just wrong. No matter how funny or artistic license the scene is – no one beats up Bruce Lee!

Rare picture of Bruce Lee at one of his Fight Club meets.

The primo performance in this movie is Leo. His Dalton looks haggard, old, he’s coughing, smoking, clearing his throat, he has a slight stutter (which is beautifully played by DiCaprio, not as a full-blown “b-b-b-but” type of impediment, but an occasional slight hesitation when he is talking to people in uncomfortable situations), his usually pretty eyes are bloodshot with lack of sleep, but also with the knowledge that every hour he rests is one less hour he is spending trying to stay on top of a profession which is leaving him in its wake. Though he’s starred in his share of TV serials, his confidence as a viable leading man is waning, because he cannot get the breaks to transition to the big screen, (like Steve McQueen and other contemporaries).

On the cusp of a new decade, Dalton feels aged and used up, realizing the movie industry is No Country for Old Men. And we are in the fibers of his being and suffering with his soul through his existential crisis. And I personally feel every bladed inch of his anxiety; that character – is ME. And I’m guessing a lot of YOU as well…

His crisis is brought to a head when he meets a precocious little girl on set (an outstanding performance by young Julia Butters, who is reading a book where the hero feels the world has moved on without him. Dalton confesses “I’m more useless every day,” and breaks down in tears in front of her.

Tarantino is transmitting directly into my darkest limbic fluids, that place where hope goes to die, my sunken place…

While Dalton is Acting The Shit out of his angst, Pitt’s Booth – also in the autumn of his career – comes across as still vital and more in touch with his previous power. He seems happy to flit from one odd job to the next, always the faithful second banana to Dalton, his stuntman skills serving him well in street fights, drifting, and taking life on the chin; in essence, DiCaprio has the meatier role, while Pitt has the meat.

“I’m having such a good time doing nothing in this movie.”

The Rolling Stones’ Out Of Time drives us into the third act, and I found myself wondering why I was not gripped around the throat yet, which is the usual modus operandi for Tarantino films at this late stage. Also, besides Dalton and Cobb starting a new life chapter, eyes are back on Tate, and no one will fault me for thinking the Stones song is a harbinger of her doom, “Baby baby baby – you’re out of time…” (hinting that her time is up soon?). Not only that, Russell’s narration describes the people who would be the real life Manson victims moving in next door with Tate – but in this movie, they do NOT meet a tragic end, and are therefore useless to this movie’s plot, yet the narration continues this red herring throughline! Looking back on it, I’m actually getting annoyed. Technicians and actors spent days, weeks on these scenes; editors, lighting, costumes, et al, only to have this thread completely dropped when the Manson Family – led by the real life character “Tex” (Austin Butler) – skulked up Cielo Drive to start the mayhem. And Tarantino cut out all Tim Roth’s scenes for that non sequitur garbage?!

Maybe Tarantino is right, when he says he only has 10 films in him. In this penultimate one, he is finding it hard to clear his own high bar; his own legacy of leaving us breathless for weeks, months, years after viewing his iconoclastic product. Besides the compelling performance from Leo and the mantastic muscle of Pitt, this film wasted more time meandering up and down the Hollywood Hills than idiot tourists searching for the Hollywood sign.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, “The 9^th Film from Quentin Tarantino,” definitely ends with a bang not a whimper, which flavors our exit libido, however, do we allow Quentin to skate on the body of the film being “merely great,” or do we insist on nothing less than gripping from film start to final frame?

We await Quentin’s 10^th, insisting on, and anticipating, the latter…

END

When you’re this much a street brah, sleeves are optional.

2 Fast 2 Bi-Curious.

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS was so successful that Universal Pictures had to have a sequel, so they did the smart thing and threw out all the characters from the first movie and only kept the prettiest girl for the sequel, Paul Walker. (Actually, all the characters were asked to return, but Vin Diesel turned down “the shitty script” in favor of RIDDICK, which negated the reason for most of the other hangers-on being there.)

In 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, Walker is ex-cop Brandy O’Conner—I mean, Brian O’Conner (sorry, it’s his eyes, I think, or maybe the frosted hair), who has relocated from LA to Miami and is now just some kind of itinerant. Ludacris appears, with an afro the size of the ‘70s, and calls Brandy for an illegal street race that’s going down. Just Because. Brandy, who seemingly has nothing better to do, wins the race, by switching through all his 38 gears, then gets busted by the cops, and is forced to go undercover to bust a kingpin smuggler.

The characters all talk in a too-kewl-for-skool street vernacular that jangles the nerves, so I might be a bit hazy on the plot, which involves cars the color of irradiated cotton candy and women in various states of undress.

The villain is Patrick Wilson lookalike Cole Hauser, named Verone so that it lends a Euro air to the Miami vice. His girlfriend is undercover agent, Eva Mendes’s Breasts. The two agents who recruit Brandy are Agent James Remar and Agent Bikini– oh, wait, that’s Agent Bilkins – what do you expect me to have on the brain with so many chicks in mini-skirts shaking their hips sensually for no reason?

Ladies and gentlemen, to balance the testosterone – Eva Mendes’s Breasts.

Brandy recruits Roman (Tyrese Gibson) as her driving partner, because the filmmakers needed to replace the dark meat of Diesel with some darker meat. At first they fight, because apparently Brandy put Roman away, but we know they’re deep brahs from way back, on accounta Paul Walker reading some dialogue with no emotion, that goes, “’Member when we were young, and we kept getting busted?” Okay, good rehearsal boys, let’s go for a take– oh, that was a take?… When Paul Walker’s onscreen, it always looks like they’re filming the rehearsals…

Verone recruits drivers for his drug-smuggling operation (although in the whole movie we never see any drugs) by making them compete in a street race where they must reach an impounded car and retrieve a McGuffin. This Brandy and Roman do, in cars the color of a Disney princess’s wet dream, switching through all 38 of their gears again, that allows them to attain speeds faster than the director can make sense of the visuals, so throws a whole bunch of 1-second edits together and then goes for a footrub.

Verone hires Brandy and Roman for a mule job worth “a hundred g’s”, providing them with cars the color of a douchebag’s vomit, which they find out are bugged. So they street-race some other dudes to win their cars and switch ‘em. Which is a great opportunity to show more girls exposing as much ta-ta as possible for a PG-13 wankfest where the cars earn more jizz than the women.

Verone tortures a fat cop with a rat, Eva Mendes’s Breasts turn up on Brandy’s boat to warn him Verone is going to kill him (–wait, Brandy has a BOAT? And Eva Mendes’s Breasts had to be dressed like a slut to come tell him this?), and Verone’s two henchies get their bit parts extended when they are told to go on the mule job as ride-alongs.

With John Singleton (SHAFT) directing like Michael Bay, the final scenes involve hundreds of cars provided by Ludacris’s Afro, all the color of a baboon’s vagina in estrus, to confuse the cops.

I had a gay comment for this picture, but I forgot what it was.

Then the feature stunt, as Brandy jumps a car from a road onto Verone’s yacht. That’s the big ending, although in future entries in this FAST AND FURIOUS franchise, a jump like this would be only the beginning of a much longer and stupider action sequence. For now, the dust settles, Agent Remar and Bikini cuff everyone, Eva Mendes’s Breasts walk in one direction, Brandy and Roman walk in the other, hand in each other’s pants, as we see they have kept some of Verone’s drug money, with plans to open a garage. It’s so touching, I didn’t even notice how many gearheads around me had cum into their oily rags…

Thus the FAST AND FURIOUS franchise sets itself up for a third movie, TOKYO DRIFT, where they do the smart thing and throw out all the characters from THIS movie…

END

Harry Potter and the Horns of Dilemma.

Soon after the mysterious death of his girlfriend, Ig Perrish wakes to find two horns growing out of his forehead. He realizes people are revealing their innermost secrets to him, and Ig figures it must be due to the horns, which no one gives any undue notice. He realizes he can use this bizarre power to hunt down his girlfriend’s killer.

A supernatural murder mystery, with lots of red herrings and lots of red devils, HORNS is a sui generis black comedy from the mind of Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King. Taken from Hill’s novel of the same name, screenwriter Kevin Bunin and director Alexandre Aja craft a compelling tale of intrigue in a small logging town, but cannot sustain the film’s original tone into the third act, which gets caught up in questionable special effects that temper the unique storytelling and well-constructed pacing.

Movie opens with Ig (Daniel Radcliffe) and his girl Merrin (Juno Temple) sharing a romantic moment under a tree. Next thing he knows, Ig is waking up at his place, groggy drunk, with an angry mob outside blaming him for the murder of Merrin.

After Ig spends a bitter night with a barmaid (Kelli Garner), he wakes to find he has sprouted small devil-like horns. Suddenly the barmaid is pigging out on a box of donuts, telling him she’d like to get really fat because people think she’s trash and have to get drunk to sleep with her. Ooookay… we can chalk that one up to chicks being chicks, but then…

When Ig visits a doctor’s office to see about the horns, a waiting patient tells him she’d like to “kick my daughter right in her spoiled ass, and divorce my husband so I could fuck my golf pro again. I’ve never been with a jigaboo before!” Now that’s deeper than chick crazy. The nurse and doctor are no better, confessing deep-rooted fantasies to Ig. In a fit of desperation, Ig tells the doctor to saw off the horns – and wakes from his anesthetic to find the doctor and nurse having sex, with the saw stuck mid-cut through one of his horns! And they’re getting bigger.

While under anesthetic, Ig flashbacks to when he was a little boy meeting Merrin for the first time – but we already know what Daniel Radcliffe looks like as a little boy – and young Ig doesn’t look one bit like Harry Potter!

As Ig’s quest progresses, snakes now drape themselves around him. The priest tells Ig to kill himself, the bartender wants to burn his bar down for the insurance, his own mother (Kathleen Quinlan) spews vitriol at Ig blaming him for the murder, and Merrin’s father (the great David Morse) wants to shoot Ig. The only person who seems sane and unaffected is Ig’s lawyer friend Lee (Max Minghella), who can’t see the horns: “Maybe the horns don’t work on good people…”

When a feather boa is REALLY a boa.

Underscored by a great rock soundtrack (Bowie’s Heroes, Pixies’ Where Is My Mind, Manson’s Personal Jesus, Wanton Bishops’ Sleep With The Lights On), movie is filled with flashbacks that explore Ig’s and Merrin’s relationship and how it might have led to her death. The breakup scene is so real it’s uncomfortable. Fellas, watch carefully: this is how every woman you are madly in love with is going to come at you – suddenly, irrationally, and when you think everything is going swimmingly; there will be a moment when you wonder exactly who you are talking to and how this person got into your girlfriend’s body and mind. But there is another compelling layer here, that Ig (and we the viewers) will find out too late.

Climax finds Ig turning into a giant red devil, rendered so poorly that Hogwarts called and said they’d lend the movie an Expecto Patronus. Final scene repeats the opening scene, showing Ig and Merrin under that tree together, implying this was the final scene all along; implying they are together in death… implying that if devils exist, then so do ghosts reuniting, wearing ghost clothes lying on ghost grass, ending in ghost sex. (Does this make – ghost babies?)

In his quest to break away from Harry, Daniel Radcliffe does a commendable job. (Remember, the last POTTER film was a mere two years ago, 2011. Radcliffe accepted THE WOMAN IN BLACK (2012) directly after THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 (2011) in a blatant attempt to re-cast his goodboy image – although choosing that film about ghosts thankfully didn’t backfire). The whole cast are ensconced in their tragic roles – except for Max Minghella, who seems miscast and oddly detached, as Ig’s friend and as an actor in the movie.

Movie is so enjoyable because it doesn’t explore anything deeper than Ig’s revenge quest and the power of suggestion and confession that the horns seem to convey. There is no moral questioning of whether Ig is doing the right thing using his powers to make two officers have homo sex, or whether he should kill the real killer of Merrin. That is, movie is devoid of that weary pondering: Just because someone CAN do something, SHOULD they?

That’s what makes HORNS a devil of a film!

END

Once Upon a Black Time in the White West.

Whiteys: 0. Niggers: 1

Quentin Tarantino, as he did with INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009), once again punches history in the face and rewrites the underdog as the alpha dog in DJANGO UNCHAINED. And says nigger a lot.

DJANGO UNCHAINED throws that word at us in such forceful abandon that it becomes hilarious to hear from the mouths of rednecks and high society alike; a grim reminder of the times (1858, two years before the American Civil War), when even the educated elite were conditioned to call African slaves niggers, not as pejorative or juvenile display of superiority, but as reference.

Rock solid Jamie Foxx is slave Django, liberated from a slave gang by dentist/bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (eternally mesmeric Christoph Waltz), at first to help King identify a bounty kill, then going Marvel Team-Up to rescue Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who was sold to a dandy Mississippi plantation owner, Kandie (a very sinister Leonardo DiCaprio).

As with all Tarantino films, the movie MAKING sells it, not so much the simple buddy/road-movie plot, which is once again littered with audacious coincidences and maddeningly convenient plot points. Tarantino’s signature compelling vignettes still litter the celluloid, the hip dialogue as ferocious as the bullet-fests, yet of all Tarantino’s oeuvre, DJANGO stands apart as arguably his first film that can neatly be sliced into three acts.

The acts are split into comedy, drama and violence. First act finds Django and King bonding on bounty kills, second act is the Long Con, and third act is all Foxx, hero angles, hero bloodshed, and hero slomo.

Act I, we meet heavily-drawling Don Johnson as plantation owner Big Daddy, replete with Colonel Sanders goatee, imperious white suit and finger-lickin’ necktie; Django posing as a “free man,” the plantation slaves so inculcated in perceiving black men as slaves that Big Daddy must instruct them on how to treat Django – “like a white man” – which flabbergasts them; and a wildly-miscast Jonah Hill, arguing with fellow Klan members over the eye-holes in their hoods being constrictive to their vision, like a Python sketch.

Act II is the Long Con, the most intense psychodrama sequence, where Tarantino sets up his beautiful dangerous tableaus: Django posing as a black slave trader (“lower than a house nigger”), he and King masquerading to Kandie as business partners seeking new talent for “mandingo fighting,” a whitey bloodsport pitting black against black to the death (broken arms, hammers to the head and other such whimsy). They attempt to buy Django’s wife from Kandie, on the pretense they would be investing thousands more buying mandingoes. When the ruse is uncovered – by the lowly “house nigger” – and Kandie brings out his father’s skull, we just know we’re in for some sweet Tarantino mindfuck dialoguing. And who is the house nigger? None other than Samuel L. Jackson; a wonder how he pulls off a role alternately so funny and so slimy.

Second act wraps with wild gunfire, dodging impossible hails of bullets, gouts of blood spurting in bucketfuls, each death an art statement, human entrails exploding in fiery red fountains… It’s classic Tarantino by way of Sam Peckinpah and early John Woo, with better technology, ergo better gratuitous gore. That’s why we love him. We also love Tarantino for his brazen deus ex machinae  that always seem as natural as spitting blood after being shot in the lung. But in DJANGO, for the first time – Tarantino fails to make it seem natural…

It is in these impossibly tense Kandie sequences that all Tarantino’s storytelling errors are made: firstly, King could have avoided Kandie’s revenge with one simple lie (that he bedded Broomhilda); secondly, King is outfitted with guns hidden up his forearms (TAXI-DRIVER-style) and opts not to go out blazing; thirdly, Django is saved at the annoyingly last minute by the person who hates him most, the house nigger. And he is sent on a cross-country trek with infinite opportunities to escape, like a 1960’s Batman episode. A jaw-dropping display of lazy screenwriting.

In BASTERDS, Waltz played someone so demonic, his every innocuous gesture contained menace, his every courteous word laced with arsenic and occluded intent. In DJANGO, Waltz is still lucid, ruthless, merciless (and it’s incongruously hilarious hearing him say nigger in that Germanic brogue) – but this time, he’s on our side. Here, Leo is The Christoph Waltz, teetering on a tightrope of volcanic eruption and insatiable violence, his beatific smile masking a sociopathic nihilism. And boy does he love saying nigger. Walton Goggins is a crazy-eyed Kandie ranch-hand (the guy you call when Steve Buscemi is unavailable) and the most comfortable having nigger in his redneck vernacular. But the movie is Foxx’s, to have and to hold. And he’s the only one who can say nigger with any conviction and impunity.

Act III is Jamie Foxx Unchained. Who would’ve thought Wanda would end up such a big brutal star?

On his trek to the Batman prison with three other caged slaves (minded by Tarantino in a jailer cameo with an atrocious Australian accent), Django, in his overbearing confidence, spins a tale to free himself, spitting at his dubious captors, “Do I talk like a slave?” (An excellent line, reminding us that though most slaves must have been cowed into obeisance, there must have been men among them who yet held their heads high enough to rise above the physical and psychological cowing of Whitey, otherwise Lincoln and his cronies would never have thought it morally reprehensible to keep these men captive.) After a brutally quick shootout with his captors, Django rides off armed to the teeth on an unsaddled horse, and one of the caged slaves watches him, the hint of a smile on his face. That smile, edged with tears, is a hammerblow button to this scene. It’s like the slave was looking at everything the black man could be; like he was looking at the revolution right there; witness to the beginning of the rising up from underfoot. Unwritten history written all over his face…

UNCHAINED is another Tarantino thunderball. Though based in an historical period, it unapologetically blazes outside the arc of history. Its lead character is an anomaly – Django is not just a rebel slave, he doesn’t even consider himself an underdog. It is not in his vernacular; he holds an intrinsic belief that he *is* superior to his captors, an aspect that was literally beaten and bred out of generations of Africans.

Tarantino had to field a slew of interviews to justify why his characters said nigger so much. (Why do you idiots focus on that one word? Is anyone hearing Waltz mention Alexandre Dumas to Leo, who coincidentally played THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK? Is anyone hearing the authentically Western soundtrack that contains numerous Ennio Morricone compositions, including themes from TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA? Is anyone commending QT for alluding to Wagner’s Brünnhilde?)

And here’s the thing: even though writer-director Tarantino set DJANGO during slavery and feels justified in sprinkling n-words like glitter, the tale of the unbound slave-turned-bounty hunter is hyper-realism – it’s not meant to be a documentary or authentic representation of the era – so Tarantino could have opted to be more niggardly with the “niggers.” But – as we discovered in PULP FICTION – QT just loooves dropping that bomb… I think it’s a case of just liking the way the word sounds, like “fuck.”

Like fuck, it drops like a ball-peen hammer every time you hear it. It never gets old and it never wears thin. Like fuck, it is all-purpose, can be used in any context, to friend or foe, to black or white, for stop or go. Could it be that modern Whitey guilt just doesn’t like admitting how blasé and passe the derogation was back then? That, just like rewriting “Mark Twain” and Republicans’ disavowal of slavery, they don’t want such a harsh light shone on their past cowardly White-nited States of America?

Once again, the purveyors of the message are attacked, instead of the message being heard. When I state that the Pope and his cronies fuck boys, it’s me who gets vilified for saying “fuck.” (What would you prefer I say – making love?) Do you critics think the actual crime/sin of fucking boys can be overlooked simply because you turn your hypocritical derision to the people who are calling it what it is?

Nigger, please!

END

Red-Blooded American Funtime.

A shoot-em-up, rock-em sock-em age-fest.

RED is Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman; they’re ex-CIA, Retired Extremely Dangerous. You betcha – each of these operatives could wipe out whole cities: Willis with his arctic cool, Malko with his leering morbidity, Helen Mirren with her sexagenarian sexiness and Morgan Freeman with his pompous voiceover.

The four principals have more years between them than all the stars of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL combined. Ironically, watching HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL can kill you faster than any RED.

From a DC Comics graphic novel (by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner), RED follows Frank Moses (Willis) as he evades CIA operatives sent to kill him, led by Cooper (Karl Urban). It’s easy to evade bad guys in movies who still can’t aim after all those years of CIA training. Yes, it’s the yawn plot device of CIA trying to kill its own ex-operatives. Frank recruits his old team mates to get to the bottom of why. (Why? Because it’s the CIA, stupid! That’s what they do.)

Cooper culls Frank’s file from curmudgeonly CIA analyst, Ernest Borgnine (that guy’s still alive?!).

Poffy goes RED

Beautiful Mary-Louise Parker is Sarah, a cubicled government accountant who dwells romantically on her spy novels, merely a phone flirtation for Frank, until he inadvertently pulls her into the chase and she finds herself on the lam with an All-American Hero more virile than any Fabio-based cover model. Her wonderment, amusement and sensual excitement are pitch-perfect, with just that right dash of spinner cuteness. Positively glowing.Brian Cox is The Russian Guy. Was Rade Sherbedgia busy? In forbidden love with Helen Mirren. (Who isn’t in forbidden love with Helen Mirren?..)

Suddenly – Richard Dreyfuss! He’s a slimy weapons contractor (cough–Halliburton) who uses the CIA as his personal hit squad, under orders from the vice president — oh, so this is culled directly from the desk of the real-life Dick Cheney (Dreyfuss played that low swine in W.); here, the VP is Julian McMahon (appropriately, Dr. Doom from FANTASTIC FOUR, and the real-life son to a former Australian Prime Minister, William McMahon).

RED is solid action-comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously, yet seriously commits to delivering cheeky China White straight-to-the-vein outlandish bombast. Just how drunk was the stunt coordinator who thought up the eye-popping gag of Willis stepping from a spinning car, guns aimed and blazing? And how uber cool (and sexually arousing) is Helen Mirren pumping an automatic machine gun or Bruce Willis in hand-to-hand combat beating up on some guy half his age?

Of course, the mindless action would be immaterial were it not punctuated by the personalities of the principals; Willis, Malkovich, Mirren and Freeman armed not only with guns that never run out of ammo, but a dry, deadly wit that only comes with the accumulation of years that these red-blooded wolves have spent howling at the moon.

END

Homo superior, Bromo superior.

How annoyed am I? Pretty damn annoyed! Annoyed that this is such a fantastic movie. Based on such a fantastic lie!

To have the brass balls to call your movie X-MEN: FIRST CLASS (implying the team featured in Marvel Comics X-Men #1, published 1963) and then to cram your movie with second class X-Men is the height of Hollywood arrogance. Everyone this side of the dinosaurs knows the very first X-Men were Professor X, Cyclops, Angel, Beast, Iceman and Marvel Girl.

Instead, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is populated by a clutch of neophytes created a few years after the original crimefighting clan donned flamboyant x-themed duds and clobbered supervillains. (Who said THAT was okay?) Professor X is here, as is Beast, but then there’s Mystique, Havok, Banshee, Token Black Guy, and Angel reimagined as an annoying ugly black woman.

Of the villains, Magneto is here (as he should be, but only because he was fleshed out so archly by Ian McKellen), with a cast of second-stringers who came into existence sometimes decades after the actual first class of X-Men: Azazel, Emma Frost, Riptide and Sebastian Shaw.

Magnepoffy

And slap me on the pedantic bone for saying so, but the movie treads that dangerous mire of messing with X-Men canon at such a grassroots level that X-fans less equable than myself might find cause to psionically heart-spike all the filmmakers and Marvel Corp who conspired to annoy them this much.So X-MEN: FIRST CLASS has no right to be so damn good!

Remove the movie from its source material and FIRST CLASS is a very enjoyable origin tale, smartly depicting how the – snigger – “first” X-Men came to wear such flamboyant matching blouses. But being an origin tale, we must necessarily put up with scene after scene of discovering, honing and training ultra-human powers, and specious explanations on how these wunderkinds came to possess them (the word “mutant” thrown around like cheap wine at a bachelor party, with no comprehension of what molecular mutation really is, the word merely a McGuffin that denotes “super powers” that regular homo sapiens don’t possess). They are Nietzsche’s Übermensch writ large. In canary yellow magic marker.

Though FIRST CLASS is epic in scope, with creamy chicks and dreamy guys glutting the colorful foreground blamfest, the heart of the tale is the deep friendship and fragile alliance between homo superiors, Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Bound in brotherhood by mutant blood, yet on different moral trajectories, their relationship is not childish good-vs-evil, hero-vs-villain, it is gray complexity; their compelling tête à tête is a nuanced power struggle over two conflicting ideas – that of homo sapiens being passive allies or active foes.

We meet them as young boys in 1944, Xavier as a rich kid with telepathic prowess, and Lehnsherr in a German prison camp with the mental power over metal, whose mother is killed by none other than Nazi Kevin Bacon (less than six degrees to Hitler at the time).

Jump cut to 1962, where we catch up with both young men, now with powers beyond imagining. And using them in diametrically opposing ways: Lehnsherr scouring the globe, torturing old war criminals hiding in society, in the quest to find his Nazi mother-killer Sebastian Shaw (Bacon, whose mutant power keeps him looking young and footloose); while Xavier uses his mind powers to become a professor of genetics and to pick up chicks.

Lehnsherr and Xavier meet in a spectacular action sequence, which leads to their employment by the CIA as unofficial helper bears. Lehnsherr accedes to the uneasy alliance because Shaw is the CIA’s target, plotting to pit Russia against the USA (Rade Sherbedgia naturally making an appearance as a furry-faced Russkie), which cutely intertwines the Cuban Missile Crisis with the fates of our mutants. Xavier wants to turn Shaw to the Good Side of the X-Force, while Lehnsherr just wants revenge.

Xavier and Lehnsherr recruit mutants to aid their quest: Xavier’s adopted sister is blue-skinned shapeshifter Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence, whom we suspect craves some kind of foursome with Xavier, Lehnsherr, Beast and herself – now that’s deviant); they find powerhouse nerd Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult), ginger screamer Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), boy band blaster blondie Havok (Lucas Till), retcon* adaptationist Darwin (Edi Gathegi, playing the Black Dude Who Dies First), and stripper Angel (Zoë Kravitz, who will flap her little fairy wings over to the Dark X-Side, because no one really cares about this made-up character anyway).

Firstly, unless I missed some world-shaking event in the Marvel Universe that turned all white guys with eagle wings into black girls with fairy wings, this reimagining of one of the coolest-looking X-Men is unconscionable! (We even saw an excellent filmic incarnation of Angel in X-MEN: THE LAST STAND! Whose eyes are they trying to pull the wool over?!) Secondly, what’s this ‘spitting acid’ crap? They’ve given Angel an offensive weapon because, let’s face it, being able to fly is cool, but that’s about it.

The x-youngsters give each other “code names” (being CIA operatives, after all), which is a reasonable retroactive justification for their “superhero” monikers. “Professor X” and “Magneto” don’t care too much for theirs.

Oliver Platt is a nameless CIA guy; Rose Byrne is CIA agent and Xavier’s latent love interest Moira MacTaggert; Matt Craven is CIA Director; rugged Michael Ironside is a Naval Captain.

When I heard this X-Men prequel was being made, my first thought was, ‘They can still use Hugh Jackman because Wolverine doesn’t age!’ Sure enough, Xavier and Lehnsherr try to solicit a gruff Logan (Hugh Jackman, still the best there is at what he does – and what he does best is play Wolverine), belly up to a bar, who tells them in his inimitable curt manner to “Fuck off!” before they can introduce themselves. Ageless. And priceless.

FIRST CLASS seems to be two different movies running congruently, both of them enjoyable in their own way – the tone of one, campy and blandly kinetic, the tone of the other, philosophical, powerfully emotional and morally ambiguous. Director/co-writer Matthew Vaughn (KICK-ASS) and writers Bryan Singer, Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz and Jane Goldman artfully allow the sober tone to inform the camp. Like Batman beating up the Joker if he gets outta line.

In the sober camp are McAvoy and Fassbender. Their intense, exotic drama/bromance is tempered by everyone else funning it up in that other, more conventional blamfest with The Bacon leading the pack as Hellfire Club honcho, Shaw. He is clearly the most experienced actor in the ‘camp’ camp and he’s gonna add as much ham and cheese to his Bacon as he damn well pleases. He does have the support of excellent Jason Flemyng (as devil-red teleporter Azazel, who doesn’t get to do much besides disappear and appear in tasty burgundy bamfs, like his future blue-skinned spawn, Nightcrawler).

Shaw’s other henchies include Riptide (Álex González, with the power to create tornadoes, but apparently with an agent powerless to haggle for even one line of dialogue), and Emma Frost (January Jones, with the power to turn to diamond, read minds, and distract men with her giant jugaloos).

Though every actor commits to their comicbook roles, Fassbender brings a conviction to his metal-bending madboy that is awe-inspiring. His power over everything ferrous is ferociously cool, and the climactic scene with a submarine and hundreds of missiles is an exhilarating display of man-sexiness that ensures he will be neck deep in puss for the rest of his life. Of all the muties, his is the power that we most wish we had. Dare I say he is a ‘magnetic’ presence? Ha! Onward…

Amongst the tiresome, mildly humorous scenes of the x-naifs honing their chops, Lehnsherr and Xavier share the film’s mightiest and most poignant moment: when Lehnsherr fails to mentally move a giant radio telescope dish, Xavier asks permission to aid Lehnsherr by probing his mind, whereupon he unlocks a memory of Lehnsherr’s dead mother. A single tear from Fassbender’s closed eyes, a single tear from McAvoy’s. And a single tear from mine. Oh, X-God! Where do these people go to find these emotions?! Sharing such a moment illustrates how deep would run the scar when their friendship is ultimately riven. (Bromantically, the camera stays tight above their waistlines; lucky they were both wearing tracksuit pants, or the strain would have been unbearable…)

While the CIA holds Emma Frost without charging her, disregarding her rights to a lawyer and fair trial, their credo is: “Security is more important than liberty.” When a rational person views this abuse of power, they realize it’s a satire on American “values,” but unfortunately, Republicans think it merely corroborates their criminal ideology.

Speaking of criminal ideology: the American and Russian navies. After the Cuban Missile Crisis is averted through mutant intervention (and all this time we thought it was Kennedy’s tactful politicking), both the Soviets and U.S. warships turn their attention to the common enemy – the mutants who intervened. Thus does Lehnsherr, now embracing his code name Magneto, displace his hatred of “people just taking orders” – from WWII Nazis to the modern military.

I sympathize with and commend the writers who were commissioned to plug in all the canon and arrive at a point prior to the first X-MEN film (2000): very satisfying depictions of how Professor X ends up in a wheelchair, of his arc from using his talents as a roaring puker to finding a nobler purpose, how Mystique (“Mutant and Proud”) chooses Magneto over Xavier, how Xavier’s and Lehnsherr’s dissolution birthed internecine x-struggles, and how Magneto came to wear such a snazzy helmet.

But come on, guys: with 33 subsidiary directors (second directors, assistants to the seconds, second directors to the second assistant directors, etc.) no one thought to make Beast say at least once, “Oh, my stars and garters!”

I’ve never known what that means, but boy, it sure sounds deviant.

END

A Muddle-Headed Miracle.

WARNING TO DIABETICS: The syrup content of MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET is so high that the surgeon general advises not to watch it, for danger of inducing diabetic neuropathy and gastroparesis.

Les Mayfield (ENCINO MAN) directs this remake of the 1947 “classic,” about a Coles store Santa who claims to be “Kris Kringle” (Richard Attenborough), and is taken to court charged with assault (the “Santa” impersonator whom Kris replaced at Coles provoked Kris into assaulting him), whereby the assault charge is forgotten and the case instead turns to “whether Santa Claus is real.” And we wonder why there are so many innocent people in jail…

Elf Poffy, child slave to Klaus Kringlehoffen.

Dorey Walker (Elizabeth Perkins) is responsible for hiring Kris at Coles, with a cynic daughter, Susan (Mara Wilson), who ironically doesn’t believe in Santa. Not until all her outlandish wishes are granted, at least. Bryan Bedford (Dylan McDermott) is the hunk next door who helps Kris win in court and helps himself to finding Dorey.

Like a straightjacketed epileptic, this film bashes itself against hundreds of paradoxes, in frothing attempts at taking one step forward (in its high-end production value and A-list acting) and then three or four steps backwards into the mouth of Hell (with its thigh-numbing sentiments of goodness and niceness and the utility of believing in figments as reality). MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET is one of those well-intentioned, “dangerous” movies – the type over-popularized in the last two decades by brain-damaging fare like the HOME ALONE’s and the CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN’s, which purport to wholesome family entertainment, whilst insidiously intimating that intelligence and reason are only for fools.

The greatest paradox faced by any Santa-Is-Real film is that in the film’s world, it is always taken for granted that Santa DOES exist and that parents do not believe in him. But if he actually exists, it is not a question of “belief” – it is a case of “evidence.” All it takes is one christmas morning and a cluster of unidentified presents under the christian-killed tree and – question of veracity solved! Therefore, in these movies, if the parents are, in fact, buying all the presents, there are two possibilities: either Santa does exist and is not visiting anyone, or Santa doesn’t exist, which is why you parents had to buy all the crap under the tree. Occam’s Razor tells us to go with the simpler of the two possibilities.

Yet through the course of this film, all the humbugs and doubting parents in Kris’s jolly wake gradually get overtaken by some kind of delusion (sometimes called “the christmas spirit” in pagan texts), and are cajoled into “believing” in Santa, for the sake of, we are told, “a lie that draws a smile, rather than a truth that draws a tear.” Yes, turn away from Truth. Truth is bad. Better to delude yourself that Mercury in retrograde is the cause of your lost wealth, rather than betting it all on a card game. Better to believe in astrology, rather than facing the truth that you are a DIMWITTED MORON STEERING YOUR SPECIES INTO EVOLUTIONARY OBLIVION.

Sir Attenborough makes for a perfect visual representation of the mythical, peeping-tom, child-watcher Klaus (render as much Nazi inflection as you see fit), ably supported by intentionally-retarded performances by Perkins, McDermott, James Remar as an attorney, Robert Prosky as a judge and young Mara Wilson, playing her usual seven-going-on-forty, precocious, mouthy brat. (Why “intentionally-retarded”? Well, the longest anyone would ever have to wait to establish whether Santa existed or not is 364 days. In MIRACLE, the wait is only a few days, yet the filmmakers conveniently avoid the issue by neglecting to tell viewers whether any presents mysteriously appeared under trees.)

The fact that this movie astoundingly retains as its central theme the conundrum that any semi-intelligent dolphin could decipher as unutterably imbecilic, illustrates perfectly the reason why mercy killings exist. This movie almost cries out for humanity to beat it over the head to put it out of its misery.

Before his arrest, Kris – in his naïve goodheartedness – was advising Coles patrons of better bargains at other stores. Immediately, Coles management jumps on the marketing ploy: “If we don’t have it, we’ll find it for you.” Now, as altruistic as this may sound, the corporate heads realize the reverse-psychology is garnering more business! With the public embracing Coles as helpful, their rival department store seethes with lost-business fury! Conveniently located across the street, the rival store is managed by a game Joss Ackland (playing the same evil overlord he perfected in LETHAL WEAPON 2 and BILL AND TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY), who goes after the person responsible for the campaign to discredit him. No, not someone in the Coles marketing department, nosiree; in his tactical wisdom, he goes after the bottom rung employee, the Coles Santa Claus.

Idiocy soars.

As evidenced when Perkins, recanting on her brain, poses the question to the Coles board of directors when they are considering ceasing Kris’s “ploy” of recommending other stores, “What do we care about? Profit?” Well – YES, you jackass! Why are you working here? Charity? And the only reason she convinces them to retain Kris is because of the PROFITS they are seeing!

Kris tells Dorey, “If you can’t accept anything on faith, then you’re doomed for a life dominated by doubt.” Yes, but Kris, if you use the scientific method of observation, skepticism, theory, experiment, amassing evidence, replacing outmoded knowledge with updated facts, a cohesive picture of what you doubted will come into focus. And we wonder why America, in the 2000s bows down to a megalomaniac who cannot separate church from state (at a base level, this means he cannot separate fact from fiction – exactly this movie’s problem!); we wonder why science is taking a backseat to pseudoscience; we wonder why it is so easy to sell people an ab-roller that “takes pounds off” their fugly gunts without any effort expended on their part, yet who cannot be convinced that proteins, carbohydrates, fats and sugars in correct amounts can winnow away that same fat.

The miracle is that, for all its vaunted intelligence, the human race has degenerated to this credulous, gullible, mongoloid state.

Treat others with respect. Be humane. Be courteous. Love. Sex (as in verb). Let live. These are universal truths, built into our genetic framework, in order to perpetuate procreation of our species. There are those who maintain the movie’s aspirations to goodheartedness and the “spirit of christmas” should not be belittled. They are right – the SENTIMENTS should be upheld. But why couch these truths in the filth of mysticism and hypocrisy, in the framework of paradoxical fictions that insult the truly inspiring, knowledge-seeking mind?

Claus affirms, “I’m a symbol to suppress the hateful tendencies that rule a major part of our lives.” Firstly, if “hateful tendencies,” as you so pessimistically put it, Klaus, “ruled our lives,” homo sapiens would have been excised from the pathway of evolution eons ago. Our adherence to social structure and reciprocal altruism is what has kept us alive. That being said, if modern day humans are so braindead that they require an effigy to represent faux-spirituality and faux-goodness (whether it be Santa, Jesus, Thor, Buddha, or Tom Cruise), we’ve put ourselves on the pathway out of evolutionary selection. Give it fifty-thousand years. The roaches would thank us – if we were not already below their contempt.

The grandest malarkey of all is that the case for or against Kris Kringle – a phantasm to begin with – is decided on the grounds of another phantasm. Bryan, Kris’s attorney, highlights the fact that American money is inscribed with the words, “In God We Trust.” On the strength of this vague indeterminacy, the judge rationalizes that one fiction is as good as another and rules that Santa Claus does, in fact, exist.

Piling insult upon insult on the viewer, Klaus then tells the prosecuting attorney (J.T. Walsh), “I hope you removed that antenna because I tore my pants on it last year.” This must mean that Klaus left anonymous presents at the attorney’s house. Evidence! So the only reason Walsh refutes Santa’s existence must be either short term memory loss or retardation. Choose one, movie.

As we gag in disbelief at the level of insanity attained in the movie’s last ten minutes, we remember Sarah’s Christmas wish – “a house, a brother, a dad” – anything else, like 40 acres and a mule, you little snot? And just to make our heads explode: Bryan and Dorey suddenly wed at movie’s end, both advised of work bonuses (which accounts for Dorey’s chunky wedding ring), and then take possession of a mansion mysteriously bequeathed to them. And if the movie is to comply to all the wishes of the whining spoiled bitch at its heart, I suppose Dorey has a bun up the duff as well.

This makes Susan very happy, because that’s what happiness is all about – having lots of money and a house that is fully paid for, living in a family with great-looking people with great hair, because those are the most loving and sincere of all humans. And if you believe in a fiction hard enough, you will win your court case.

I wish for some insulin.

END