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 SYSTEM is the conspiracy!

We’re gonna put the SYSTEM on trial!
— Jim Carrey, THE CABLE GUY.

If you were wondering why director Robert Redford would re-litigate Abraham Lincoln‘s assassination on film (how many times can they sink the Titanic, right?), then defer to Redford’s rationale: “It’s a story that no one knows about, connected to a story that everybody knows about.”

You mean Lincoln wasn’t assassinated by Nicolas Cage’s ancestors?

THE CONSPIRATOR recounts the tale of Mary Surrat (Robin Wright), the lone female amongst a cadre of men, accused of conspiring in President Lincoln’s assassination. The government wants a scapegoat, the public wants a hanging, and the slanted military tribunal declares her guilty, the “trial” just a formality. Only a young, idealistic lawyer (James McAvoy) clings to the American constitution to try her fairly, against the machinations of the lawless mob (aka, the court itself, made up of – you guessed it – angry white guys; did we expect anything more from a gaggle of Republicans?).

Masterful director Redford (with writers James Solomon and Gregory Bernstein) actually pulls together a multitude of post-assassination details that make THE CONSPIRATOR a compelling courtroom drama. It starts with visualizing how soldiers must have slogged through packed, panicked streets, carrying Lincoln’s body immediately after being shot in the Ford Theater by John Wilkes Booth; details like the conspirators initially wanting to kidnap Lincoln and hold him for ransom; details like the politics behind Mary Surrat being held with no evidence and slated for hanging, overlorded by a sadistic Secretary of State, Edwin Stanton (Kevin Kline, unrecognizable in makeup and manner) who shared the same swinish ancestral blood as Dick Cheney.

McAvoy brings his big, honest, pretty pretty eyes as Fred Aiken, an ex-soldier who is outraged that the Constitution he has fought to uphold is being so prejudicially compromised by the very courts that should be adhering to it, telling them that this case – where minds are made unclear due to public opinion – should be the exact instance where constitutional procedure should be upheld, rather than discarded. It’s like talking to a brick wall. Or Dick Cheney. The prosecuting attorney (Danny Huston) tells him later, almost as an excuse for the court’s petulant boneheadedness, “In times of war, the law falls silent.”

And that’s why THE CONSPIRATOR resonates through the ages. This film has exposed a recurring theme in American judicial history: the courts decide only what the people with the most political power want. Like the Nuremburg trials, like the Rodney King beating trials, like the Bush administration kidnapping and torturing whomever they wanted, like the Obama administration letting torturers go unpunished…

Kevin Kline’s Stanton is the political powerdog here, single-minded on revenge for Lincoln, not justice. (Kline asked Redford about Stanton, “He’s a pretty heavy guy. Are we talking Cheney?” Hah! The former VP has become a trope for unreasoning sadistic assholes!) It makes us think about the architect of the Kennedy post-assassination meme: someone in political power deemed there would be a single scapegoat to represent the conspiracy behind that presidential shooting. This movie comes 150 years after Lincoln’s death, able to declare previously little-known facts without vilification, retribution or political upheaval. Will it take another century before the facts behind Kennedy’s assassination are revealed? Another century after that for the facts behind “9-11”?

All history is gossip.
— Clare Booth Luce, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, 1953.

Aiken, like the American population at the time, comes into the case believing the furious narrative that Mary Surrat is as guilty as all the other conspirators who roomed at her boarding house (which included Booth and her son John, the only two suspects who escaped being rounded up). It becomes apparent to Aiken that there are more nuances to this case than meets the eye (and that the blinkered military tribunal would rather pay off witnesses to spout indictments, than dig for the truth), and he is outraged to his pretty-eyed soul that the men representing justice are more fanatical, bloodthirsty and conspiratorial than the conspirators they are sending up the river; subverting justice in order to enact what they alone deemed justice.

Evan Rachel Wood is Mary’s daughter, Colm Meaney is the blinkered judge, and Justin Long is improbably cast as a soldier friend of Aiken, faking a British accent almost as abominable as Don Cheadle’s in OCEAN’S ELEVEN.

Mary Surrat was the first woman in history to be hung. Not counting Chaz Bono.

Fred Aiken would leave his law practice and become the first city editor of the newly-formed Washington Post. Trace a direct line to Woodward and Bernstein taking down Nixon. Fine pedigree.

Redford succeeds in telling us something new about something old. Nicolas Cage wept.

END

Wild(ly retarded) Kingdom.

STRANGE WILDERNESS is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s not just the worst comedy, it’s not just the worst road movie, it’s not just the worst buddy movie or redemption movie or animal movie I’ve seen; it is simply the worst MOVIE. Period.

In an effort to staunch failing ratings after inheriting his dad’s wildlife TV show called Strange Wilderness, Peter Gaulke (Steve Zahn) goes in search of Bigfoot with a group of losers (including beige Allen Covert, stoner Justin Long, wacko Jonah Hill, alcoholic Kevin Heffernan, and blonde Ashley Scott as the chick whom we’re meant to think gets her knockers out but it’s just a body double).

We follow this group’s unfunny road misadventures through execrable direction (by Fred Wolf), callous editing (Tim Costain), juvenile writing (Wolf and Peter Gaulke) and acting so directionless and amateurish Hayden Christensen called and threatened legal action.

Adam Sandler produces, which is the only reason this movie got funded. One wonders if even Will Ferrell would find these flat attempts at jokes funny. WILDERNESS tries desperately to be willfully absurd like BALLS OF FURY or ZOOLANDER, but lands closer to the mincemeat of YOUR HIGHNESS or the hash of ENVY. Does Ernest Borgnine really want STRANGE WILDERNESS to be one of his last legacies? What is he doing? And it’s usually women who have to show their genitals to get movie roles, but here, Robert Patrick is a veteran jungle tracker who drops trou to show us his war-wounded shaft. Like this movie, it’s been terminated.

END

A dweeb by any other name…

In YOUTH IN REVOLT, ill-defined characters populate a trailer trash landscape, with dialogue trying way too hard to be JUNO.

Even Michael Cera is sick of how dweeby he is. He’s willowy Nick Twisp, who invents an alter-ego to be able to find the audacity to break his virginity with the girl of his dreams, Sheeni (Portia Doubleday). He calls his alter-ego Francois Dillinger, and Cera plays Francois as another character alongside his dweeb Nick, with a pencil mustache and smoking cigarettes with French faux-cool. But this supposedly anarchic muse was not as interesting as the trailers made him out to be.

Nick arcs from being bland, to the realization that The Prick Gets The Girl, to inventing Francois for the express purpose of being a prick – and then allows Francois to become as bland as Michael Cera.

And I thought Jon Heder was a one-note Napoleon. Cera out-one-notes Heder with a character that has plagued us since SUPERBAD. His dual role allows him to stretch about as far as the pinkie he uses to smoke like a European; in such small doses, Francois matters almost not at all.

Thoughtless storyline has Nick getting Sheeni expelled from college by asking another girl to dope her with sleeping pills during classes, so that she would move back to town near him. He succeeds. And when Sheeni discovers his nefarious deed, yet she accepts him unto her teen vagina! Because the script says so.

You lost me at stalker.

Steve Buscemi, Ray Liotta, Fred Willard, Justin Long, Zach Galifianakis all have small roles, do nothing, disappear arbitrarily, and pick up an easy paycheck.

I tried to be charitable; asked myself, Were I a teen virgin, would this movie affect me differently? Struggled with that question until my devil cucumber alter-ego set me straight: “This movie is shit!” Oh, alter ego, you’re always so adorably right.

END

He who sips from many cups, drinks from none.

The imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior and has inferior offspring.
— Plato, The Republic, Book X.

Wow! A movie with NO original ideas! PLANET 51 is a glop of as many nudge-nudge wink-wink cultural references as cartoonly possible in an uninvolving 91-minute chase movie.

Set on an alien planet which is basically 1950’s Middle America with rounded edges, this animated comedy feature offers nothing in the way of ideas, creativity or entertainment. Its only hook is that the roles of alien and human have been reversed. A (very unlikable) human astronaut (voiced by Dwayne Johnson) lands on an alien planet claiming it for the Yewnited States, and finds it is already populated by little green beings (who are not even “alien,” just Middle Americans with antennae and no pants).

Astronaut Baker – the jingoistic selfish, provincial Ugly American – finds that HE is the “alien.” Uh huh. A twist so original I almost lost my Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars album.

On this planet (which is never actually called Planet 51), propaganda paints humans as “Humaniacs” out to eat your brains and turn you into a zombie. So astronaut Baker is hunted by the military and helped by a young native boy, Lem (voice of Justin Long), whose main concern is trying to get his smooth crotch onto the presumably smoother crotch of the native girl next door, Neera (Jessica Biel).

In just its first 15 minutes, PLANET 51 mentions, pays homage to, plagiarizes, satirizes, spoofs [intake big breath]: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, BACK TO THE FUTURE, “duck and roll,” anal probing, Griffith Observatory, Pod People, APOLLO 13, LOST IN SPACE, STAR WARS, THE RIGHT STUFF, WAR OF THE WORLDS, E.T THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, McCarthyism, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, Bob Dylan, The Macarena, Singing In The Rain, ALIEN, “Resistance is Futile,” GREASE, THE TERMINATOR, George W. Bush’s Military Commissions Act, every single cliché from 1950’s sci-fi films, even the Republican mindset (“the universe is over 500 miles long and contains over 1000 stars!”), and 1950 sexual propaganda, i.e. sex=death (just as two virginal teens are about to make out in a sci-fi movie, a Humaniac ship attacks and the girl says, “I knew this would happen if we made out!”). Even Lem’s name is the original acronym for the Apollo Lunar Module (Lunar Excursion Module).

There’s only so much referencing/homaging one can do before it all just piles into a dungheap of derivative plagiarism.

But it’s for the children! The Universal Excuse for cartoons infused with mediocrity and lack of ingenuity.

But I ask: which children will understand why astronaut Baker is humming Thus Spake Zarathustra while he’s planting his flag? Or the thousands upon thousands of other layered references? Stop bullshitting a bullshitter: The references are for adults – who are not so much “appreciating” them as being pummeled by them.

Just as in MONSTERS VS. ALIENS (which was also not funny), PLANET 51 hits a raw nerve when it makes a little kid accuse his mother of being taken over by aliens, so that the military will chase her and he can escape his dentist visit. In this toxic political nightmare that we call Amerika, where torture and denial of rights and suspension of habeas corpus are realities brought about by that felon imbecile who last stank up the Commander-in-Chief’s seat, this is just not funny.

John Cleese (as expected) lords it comedically over the other voice talent as Professor Kipple (a word stolen from Philip K. Dick’s novel that inspired BLADE RUNNER, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep). And Gary Oldman, with his arsenal of voices, is majestic as the General, but the script lets him down.

When I saw the Handmade Films logo, I held out hope for this movie, but George Harrison’s original indie company – formed to provide funding for MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL and TIME BANDITS – has gone through so many corporate takeovers that it has morphed from supporting incendiaries like LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS to insipids like PLANET 51. Ilion Animation is the animation studio. All we know is–

This ain’t Pixar.

END

Sweet and Sour Hanky Skanky.

“Sweet” might not be the first word that comes to mind when thinking of a movie with the word “Porno” in the title – but that’s exactly what this movie is: a heartfelt romantic comedy.

Oh God! I almost vomited – I never thought I’d see the words “heartfelt romantic comedy” typed onto my sacred nihilist keyboard by my very own puffy cartoon gloves.

But ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO is truly an enjoyable Judd Apatow film – made by Kevin Smith! The creator of such street-classics as CLERKS and DOGMA has tried his hand at a genre usually equated with gutless Hollywood types who churn out substanceless, brainless, swoony Chick Flicks for guaranteed sales and quick returns. But Smith takes a few left turns, foremost being the fact that his “chick flick” revolves around a porn movie.

Before you think I’m going soft in both heads, I admit there is also much brainlessness in ZACK AND MIRI, foremost being the issue of whether heterosexual men and women can be Just Friends – as if that was an issue. The simple answer – actually, the only answer – is ‘no.’ And I sincerely thank writer-director Kevin Smith for stating unequivocally with this film what all men know and all women deny: that between a heterosexual single man and heterosexual single woman (who are in each other’s Pumping Paradigm), there is no such thing as Just Friends.

In freezing Pittsburgh, roommates Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks), friends since high school, are so far behind in their bills that their heat, electricity and water are all turned off.

After a desperate few minutes of options, they hit upon making a porno movie. Stupid? Yes. Funny? This plot point could have flopped to the floor quicker than Sarah Palin’s tightly-strapped mammii at the end of a long day of fear-mongering, but, like Patrick Stewart in STAR TREK, Seth Rogen makes it so.

Taking for granted the audience is ignorant to the fact that making an independent film, porno or otherwise, would COST money before making any, if at all, Kevin Smith boldly continues the stupid throughline to its filthy conclusion.

They make a porno. Through begging for funding, scraping together equipment and hiring D-actors, Zack and Miri keep pretending that the project is merely to pay their bills and rent. But upon “doing it” on set – the first time they’ve ever “known” each other biblically – they realize they have deep feelings for each other.

It can’t be that their “feelings” are 20 years of pentup frustration; of accidentally walking in on each other during showers; of hearing each other masturbate; of talking about each others’ separate sex lives without consummation; of the natural sexual curiosity any man and woman would harbor for each other over years of supposed platonic ambivalence – it can’t be that! It can’t even be that the glutting sensual excitement they felt might have been the dirtiness of doing it in front of a crowd – which would mean they’re born porn actors. But it surely couldn’t be that! It must be because they’re “soul mates.” And the girlie demographic swoons.

Actual porn actresses, booby Katie Morgan and old-timer Traci Lords, proudly un-act so decisively they show us why they’re porn actresses.

Two Smith alumni (Jason Mewes and Jeff Anderson) get in on the action as randy actor and wisecracking DP (that’s Director of Photography, not the “other” DP). Surprising that we’re allowed to see actual pumping motions during the filming, Katie Morgan’s assets bouncing tubular in our faces.

The chemistry between the rambunctious Rogen and the beatific Banks is undeniable. We can feel their first-time-entry position in our loins; her glowing acceptance, his driving towards scalding release… In a later scene, as Katie Morgan steals away Zack for a quickie, the emotion that flows between Zack and Miri (as they look at each other sadly and move apart in slow motion) is palpable.

Suffice to say, the endgame was never about paying the rent; to overstate a point, it was about Zack and Miri discovering they liked fucking. Each other. (You know those yawns that are so hard your jawbones crack?) An “interesting” plot point might have been for them to discover they were bisexual, and get it on with Justin Long and Brandon Routh (playing gay guys so badly it’s funny).

If this movie was not as successful as it should have been, it is because people are more afraid of admitting their own dark fantasies and tangled emotions. If we all do what porn actors do, what distinguishes their profession as “pornographic”? Define “pornography.” Merriam-Webster: “the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement.” Behind closed doors, every Episcopalian, Mormon, Catholic, Essene, Tlingit, Innuit and Republican is EXACTLY THE SAME – procreation through sexual excitement. The Penis Goes In The Vagina. Or none of them would be here to complain about it.

Bravo to Kevin Smith for rejecting the chimera of Just Friends, for waking us all to our inner filth, for giving us more Seth Rogen improv to marvel at, for screwing raw and scat humor and showing us Katie Morgan’s naked ta-tas – and disguising it all as romantic comedy.

Now that’s sweet!

END

In Bruce We Trust.

Never trust a computer you can’t throw out your window.
– Steve “Woz” Wozniak.

This mess is not his fault; he’d rather be home with a cold one; he’s no superman, just an average guy who must act like a super man – and I think he’s wearing the same sweaty shirt from DIE HARD (1988).

The Sweaty Smart-Aleck T-Shirt Brigade

Justin Long asks Bruce Willis (playing Detective John McClane as flippantly and dynamically as only he knows how): “What makes you That Guy?” That lovable lump, that forthright avenger, that pissed off everyman…Arnold’s pressing flesh instead of pounding it, Sly just gave his last gasp as ROCKY BALBOA, Clint Eastwood is defiantly aging gracefully, though – sadly for us – on the other side of the camera; Van Damme and Seagal? As gone as the 1990s… Is Bruce Willis the Last Action Hero?

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD gives us every reason to believe it; a ramped, incendiary, chest-beater of a thriller and surely the best Boy’s Movie of the summer; distinguishing itself from the rash of CGI-fueled actioners by performing most of its stunts in Dangerous Real Life.

Which is ironic, considering LIVE FREE revolves around computers, pitting veteran detective McClane against a hacker, Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) who has commandeered the nation’s networks, bringing the country to a standstill in what hackers call a “Fire Sale” (Everything Must Go) as he helter skelters the stock market, transport and energy systems, his ultimate goal, securing the accumulated virtual wealth of America. An ex-government agent, Gabriel designed the very security systems he is now breaking down. (It is quite sobering to be shown how integral the Big Bad Computer has become to our society.)

A low-tech hero in a high tech world, Luddite McClane must rely on the geek stylings of unwitting virus tester, Matt Farrell (rising star, Justin Long – is it serendipity he is the Mac Guy?) to walk him through the virtual anarchy, whilst he in turn shepherds Farrell through the bone-crunching kind, shadowed by hitmen with big automatic weapons who can’t aim.

It’d be good to be Unbreakable right about now. As the frenetic camera of director Len Wiseman (the UNDERWORLD movies) never stops creatively moving, and as we wonder how many rounds professional hitmen can expend without actually killing anyone, McClane is pummeled by all comers, not least a taut leathered Asian chick (Maggie Q) whom he doesn’t ruthlessly shoot down like the rest of the bad guys because she’s a taut leathered Asian chick. Exerting that movie double standard (which only reflects societal double standard): she can kick him as much as she wants, but he’s not allowed to dispatch her like a guy – she’s got to die “passively” (falling to her death in an elevator shaft) so it doesn’t seem “unfair.”

At least he’s got a smartarse comment to salve the pc pain.

Kevin Smith (yes, writer, director and Silent Bob) is Warlock, STAR WARS geek and computer nerd, just one action figure short of being totally convincing.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is McClane’s daughter, Lucy (who actually looks like an older version of the little girl who played his daughter in DIE HARD), with the best naturally rounded ta-tas I’ve seen in awhile (at least, her bra makes them so). Gabriel kidnaps her to raise the dramatic stakes and give McClane more smart-aleck jabs to throw.

Besides the obvious weathered and witty character Willis is reprising, LIVE FREE gets its kicks paralleling DIE HARD in innumerable winks to the audience: FBI Agent Johnson; the fact that McClane is in constant communication with the villain yet cannot get to him; being in communication with the authorities (Cliff Curtis, FBI chief, but to me, forever Uncle Bully from ONCE WERE WARRIORS) yet powerless to aid them or them, him; the shoulder shot – somehow he always gets it in the right shoulder, seemingly exacerbating that real life scar he already sports there; once again he is attacked by air support and screams to the pilot, “I’m on your side, assholes!” (in an insane sequence battling an F36 Harrier jet which is not the least bit plausible); in a broken and bedraggled state, he greets his daughter the same way he greeted his wife in DIE HARD, as if it’s all in a day’s work, “Hi honey”; and – like his estranged bitch wife before her – his daughter is tough little “Mz. Gennero” until McClane’s man-sized rescue levels her fem-lib posturing and she reverts back to Daughter McClane. But Beethoven’s Ninth – though used in trailers – was sorely missed.

Probably the most obvious callback to DIE HARD is that which reminds us that this movie isn’t in the spirit of DIE HARD – the catchphrase “Yippie ki yay, motherfucker!” As you’ve seen on the sides of buses (in the most annoying advertising campaign since “Jack FM–We play what we want”), the “motherfucker” is shortened to “mo” as if the billboard has run out of space or been cut off. If this was just the advertising, we could shrug it off as a smart way to convey the street without being explicit, but the movie itself is rated PG-13, in that painfully obvious “summer audience” grab, sanitizing the film to grade school speak. Upon re-watching the R-rated DIE HARD series the characters come so much more alive when allowed to speak like hard men under pressure; infinitely more believable as ruthless combatants involved in death struggles. LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD is stunt piled on stunt so we don’t notice the lack of street dialog.

So when Olyphant is criticized for lacking gravitas as the villain, it may just be because his mouth is soap-washed for family viewing, not because of his metrosexual youth (anyone over 30 would have been too old to be a hacker anyway). Going for Bond, smooth criminal élan was probably a wrong turn – maybe he should have tried for Johnny Lee Miller in HACKERS: bottle-blond leatherboy.

The actual “Yippee ki yay mo” moment is as truncated as its bus billboard. But the circumstance itself is an action gem. Screenwriter Mark Bomback and co-story David Marconi arrive at a situation where McClane’s wounds play an integral creative part in the demise of the villain who caused those wounds. It’s an amazing little conundrum – with a nifty solution by McClane.

Set in Washington D.C. during a July 4 weekend (so there is no need to excuse the American flags aflutter everywhere), the title could be construed as a grim reminder to real life Americans who flutter that flag unthinkingly – LIVE FREE… For is it also serendipity that Olyphant’s villain seizes criminal control of the virtual world at a time in America’s dark present when the Bush administration is trying to do just that by tapping the internet without warrants?

No denying it, we love Bruce Willis as John McClane. After his intense turns as deeper characters in HOSTAGE (2005), SIN CITY (2005), 16 BLOCKS (2006), he’s back at his shallow best. Taking cover behind corners, pointing a gun, or limping in pissed off pain, he looks like himself again. At a slammin’ 52, Willis still reeks of Hero; still ranks as someone who gives bruises as good as he takes ‘em; still rocks when he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That’s what makes him That Guy.

END

Entirely Unacceptable.

In the tiresome ACCEPTED, Justin Long is Bartleby Gaines, rejected from a series of reputable colleges. To appease his parents, he forges an acceptance letter to a fake college, and then finds he must create an actual campus to follow through with his ruse. So is born the South Harmon Institute of Technology (the sophomoric acronym S.H.I.T. used with ubiquitous abandon and little effect).

Slackers from around the state attend and the “college courses” (Math-turbation, Men Are Weak, Exploding Things with your Mind, Watching Bikini Girls, etc.) are actually accredited by movie’s end
through the methodology of Inspiring Movie Speeches Accompanied by Music Swells (be still my SCENT OF A WOMAN).

Writers Adam Cooper, Bill Collage and Mark Perez, and director Steve Pink ask us to accept too much without so much as a giggle in return. Photoshopping letters of acceptance is one thing; designing a website that would pass scrutiny for parents about to shell out $10,000 for semester fees is quite the stretch.

That’s just the film’s first obstacle. Which it hurdles by making the parents desperate enough to pay a college whom they can’t even contact through its website. (Parents are dumber than their kids, right? Fuggedaboudit!)

Then come bleating at us the uncountable clichés: the tomboy chick friend, the fat friend, the black friend, the stupid friend, the geek friend, the hot chicks, the jock fraternity trying to bring down the fake geek university (and being regarded as the Bad Guys for doing so – even though the geek university is a scam), Bartleby’s smart-aleck twelve-year-old sister, who can see through his ruse even though his parents can’t (she says of South Harmon, “I haven’t heard of it” – maybe because you’re twelve, snot!).

The implausibilities multiply like lemmings: Bartleby and four friends transform a derelict mental hospital into a college campus that – once again – fools the parents (whom by this point we know must be mildly autistic); a wacko acquaintance installed as ersatz dean (Lewis Black – the only funny thing within ten miles of this garbage); local council and authorities are completely incurious as to the hospital being reconditioned; electricity, water and maintenance concerns don’t exist in this universe…

At nearby Harmon College, the movie continues the grand American tradition of disparaging “real” education: students struggling to keep their eyes open, playing video games, or unknowingly turning into corporate monkeys due to being educated the “conventional” way. In other words – there is NO WAY for an American Idiot to be educated. This is the message of ACCEPTED. And we wonder why the rest of the world laughs at America.

The movie espouses some valid points, but since the resident Madman (Lewis Black) makes these points, they are lunatic ravings. The education system in America IS an Agrarian Age system, more interested in leaching the inquisitive mind of the desire for knowledge and pimping students unto society as peons for the workforce than it is in “educating” individuals. But the dropouts and losers who populate the fake South Harmon college are not there for real “education” either. They are goofing off in lieu of learning and seeking diplomas for it. Like those commercials advertising you don’t have to break a sweat to get great abs with their lazy machine – but if you don’t break a sweat, you’ll NEVER have great abs, with or without their useless machine. Arguing that leaving the dropouts to their devices will produce the scientists and scholars of tomorrow is demonstrably asinine.

But enough impassioned movie speechifying and inspirational music and you can achieve anything, kids!

Justin Long has established a flollopy niche for himself (although his attempts at slapstick are entirely unnecessary) and he carries the movie well as a jumpy leading man, but not through any overt talent or charisma; rather because his supporting cast display such a lack of charisma (Jonah Hill, Adam Herchman, Columbus Short, Maria Thayer), it seems they’re only appearing in ACCEPTED because, like their characters, they were rejected from everything else they auditioned for…

END

That moment when they need volunteers for a horrible space death.

No Dreck on This Trek.

In its swinging skewering of that TV series which featured that Vulcan guy and that Overacting guy, GALAXY QUEST is everything that the SCARY MOVIE parody franchise is not: well-produced, well-written, well-acted – and funny.

Action Man Poffy

Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) is the ex-captain of a television starship not unlike that one that boldly goes where no man has gone before, from a show which was cancelled 20 years ago, GALAXY QUEST. He and his crew, typecast for eternity as the crew of “The NSEA Protector,” fill their weary, laurel-resting days appearing at science fiction conventions, mall openings and autograph signings.

In what must be closer to the scathing truth than any real life series typecastee would care to admit, Nesmith’s crew moan en masse at their fate, which is double-edged: forced to dork themselves and recite lines from 20 years ago, but able to pay the rent for it. Living long. But not prospering. All except for Nesmith, who enlivens his role as action captain just a little too over-dramatically, not unlike that enterprising captain from that 60’s show.

There is ex-Shakespearean, Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman; though the loudest wheel in disparaging the GALAXY QUEST legacy, never thinks to remove the ludicrous latex headgear that buries him in the role of his alien character – the obvious Science Officer to Nesmith’s Cheesy Captain); Sigourney Weaver, a world away from Ripley, giving a Breasts-First performance as Gwen DeMarco (whose sole spacefaring job is repeating the captain’s orders to the computer and repeating the computers replies back to the captain), and the underrated Tony Shalhoub as Fred Kwan (parodying that Scottish engineer fella, but on ‘ludes); and we all know Sam Rockwell‘s character – the crewman who is sent down to the planet with the major stars – only to NOT make it back to the ship alive (you know – for that touch of “realism”), appropriately named Guy – as in “Guy #6.”

As Dane might have elocuted 20 years ago, “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Shocking them out of their stupor, the Galaxy Quest crew is abducted by an actual alien civilization, the benign Thermians – who over the years picked up transmissions of the series broadcasts, believing them to be “historical documents” rather than fiction – and seek their aid in defeating a real intergalactic villain named Sarris (Robin Sachs, in a fantastically diabolical performance, with makeup effects by legendary Stan Winston).

These “real” space sequences are where GALAXY QUEST pulls its biggest surprise. No quarter is spared in creating stunning space effects and authentic-looking alien monster villains. For the satire to run on steel-biting wheels, it was necessary to make this “real-life” intergalactic fracas as realistic as possible – otherwise director Dean Parisot would have had just another B-Movie on his hands with the cheapness and artificiality exhibited by the actual series he was spoofing!

The Protector crew must assimilate into their television personalities to weather the real intergalactic battle, as the Thermians, led by Mathesar and Teb (Enrico Colantoni and Jed Rees fleshing out their extraterrestrial roles with decidedly alien flair), have based their culture on the GALAXY QUEST canon – from its technical details (the NSEA Protector in operational full scale) to its slogans: “Never give up. Never surrender!”

This movie is to the 60’s series as Spinal Tap was to heavy metal: it captured all the insider jokes that true fans would notice, and laughed WITH the fans, not at them. Dane disdainfully notes Jason’s Shirtless penchant; a hallway for no reason has chompy, crushy things just to serve as obstacles; engineer Kwan’s method for assessing the breathability of an alien planet’s atmosphere is to open the hatch and take a sniff; all the while, Guy wailing whenever unnecessary risks are taken, as – being credited only as “Crewman Number 6” – he is certain he will be the first to die.

The hero-worshipping of the Protector crew by the Thermians lends itself to unexpected poignancy, when Dane, who holds his most famous phrase in contempt (“By Grabthar’s hammer, you will be avenged!”), unwittingly finds an opportunity to utter it, in grave sincerity, to someone for whom it carries worlds of weight – a dying Thermian who regarded Dane as his otherworldly father… How are we suddenly weeping?

GALAXY QUEST affectionately gives the fanboys their due as rocket scientists trapped in dweeb bodies, as ubergeek Brandon (the stammering Justin Long), with fan-researched tech specs, aids in saving the Protector, blowing up Sarris, and winging our heroes Earthward.

But when Sarris appears at the film’s finale (I mean, the villain-surviving-for-one-last-stab had to be exploited, right? Sigourney Weaver can testify to that!), it is up to Jason Nesmith to save the day with a cheese-alicious duck-and-roll and phaser powerblast worthy of… that guy in the yellow jersey (occasionally Shirtless and body-oiled) who made an art form of melodramatic pausing between lines – you know who I mean… by Grabthar’s hammer, the name’s on the tip of my tongue…

END

DODGEBALL grabs its nuts by the balls.

Ben Stiller‘s best roles have been the few that have almost burst his carotid artery through certifiably asinine overacting. (To date, that would only count MYSTERY MEN, ZOOLANDER, and cameos in ANCHORMAN and THE CABLE GUY – add DODGEBALL to that short list.)

His early 90s comedy series, THE BEN STILLER SHOW, though a fine showcase for his frenetic talents, was so underrated and misunderstood that it was actually cancelled first time outa the gate, only to be reinstated on Comedy Central at varying intervals. Unfortunately, in his gradual assimilation into feature film pap, his chunky monkey breadwinner is his Woody Allen Lite nebbish (YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, ALONG CAME POLLY, MEET THE PARENTS, et al; hell! – he even turned David Starsky into a neb!).

DOGDGEBALL is Stiller’s welcome return to artery-busting form, as the corporate gym owner, White Goodman – entrepreneurial, avaricious, bombastic Bad Guy to Vince Vaughn‘s somnolent Pete La Fleur, who mismanages his own failing gym across the way. White has designs on merging Pete’s fringe-dweller gym with his own commercial monster conglomerate and will go to any sweat-tainted lengths to corporately consume it.

Poffball!

In this film fantasy where an independent, successful, sexy woman (Christine Taylor, Stiller’s real-life wife, playing Kate the auditor, whom everybody wants to examine “under the counter”), can fall for a shiftless itinerant like Pete La Fleur, it is no stretch to discover that the only way La Fleur can raise money to save his gym is to enter a Dodgeball tournament with a cadre of his willing (though untrained) gym patrons (that include: Alan Tudyk, who thinks he’s a pirate; Justin Long, who is a virgin; Stephen Root, who brings his Milton; and lanky dorky Joel David Moore). Due to the movie taking itself about as seriously as the inflated bulge in White Goodman’s jockstrap, we go along for the ride.

Hank Azaria and Rip Torn camp it up as young and old versions of legendary Dodgeballer, Patches O’Houlihan, whose methods of training La Fleur’s dysfunctional, ubergeek squad would give any man pause for scrotal reflection.

The tournament itself action-packs the last half hour of film, and climaxes with Pete and White facing off (- how’d you guess? You must be psychic!). During the game-play, director and writer, Rawson Marshall Thurber cannily transfers the volley of humor, which rested upon the main cast – who has now taken to the Dodgeball court – to the broadcast commentators, Cotton McKnight and Pepper Brooks (Gary Cole and Jason Bateman, hamming their roles with a vengeance and a copy of the Insensate Drivel Handbook).

Any movie artful enough to tweak audiences into investing their alliance in a misfit dodgeball team has more going for it than just hot chicks and scrotum jokes. Who outside of the sixth grade even knew this sport still existed in mankind’s repertoire? Anxiety churns my blood, for the internet can so easily resolve this mystery, yet I dare not make the connection, for I fear I will either discover a horror so demeaning that it will debase my already staggering lack of faith in humanity’s intelligence quotient, or – L. Ron Hubbard have mercy! – I may suddenly embrace the urge to squoze my scrote into a purple unitard and take one on the face for the team – and if that image doesn’t get your carotid artery throbbing, it’s already burst…

END