It doesn’t matter which cinematic universe you’re from – Mark Ruffalo will be there to charm you.

For the Love of Adam.

Never have I cried so much at a time travel film, especially one loaded with this many Hollywood tropes. THE ADAM PROJECT is pretty straightforward in its first two acts, about a pilot from the future who lands in 2022 and enlists the aid of his 12-year-old self to time-travel further back in time to meet their dead father and restore something-something one-point-twenty-one-gigawatts… but in its third act, ADAM PROJECT just overwhelms with the poignancy of its father-son redemption.

When we meet Young Adam (played well by Walker Scobell), his father is one year dead, and for some reason Adam resents him. We take it for granted it will turn out to be the same ole trope of working-father- with-no-time-for-son. Then we meet Big Adam (Ryan Reynolds, still just playing Ryan Reynolds and somehow getting away with it), arriving from the future, and retaining a hatred for his father. Oh, so maybe it was alcoholism, or wife-beating, or gambling away Adam’s college money?—we grit our teeth and wait for the inevitable flashbacks; obviously a character build for the two Adams – something tragic in their past to overcome together… but the flashbacks never come… There’s something original (for Hollywood at least) coming ‘round the corner to slap us in the smug…

Adam’s mother is Jennifer Garner, who basically disappears from the movie after the adventure kicks in.

The adventure itself is the infamous Biff Conundrum: “We have to stop the baddie from the future going back in time and giving their young self a McGuffin that will make them all-powerful in the future.” Biff is played by Catherine Keener and her past self de-aged looks like the efx department used a deepfake phone app.

Zoe Saldana is Laura, Big Adam’s modern action-chick girlfriend, another soldier from the future whom he is battling across time to reunite with.

ADAM PROJECT has all the whoosh and whizbang and paradoxical jargon that comes with any time travel movie, but the father-son relationship at the heart of it will tear your heart out. Probably because father is Mark Ruffalo – those puppy dog eyes for days.

We discover Young Adam resents his father for the simple fact that he died. And in so dying was “not there for him” – Ruffalo’s untimely death itself was regarded as “abandonment” by the young child. Young Adam maintains “It’s easier to hate than to forgive,” and would carry that irrational emotion into adulthood.

And the tears will come when puppy-dog Ruffalo holds Big Adam’s face and tells him over and over, “I love you! I love you!” … I fully realize that as we age, more and more things make us cry, whether aimed at our heartstrings or not, because the regrets just keep piling up. Any tenuous resonance with our own broken life sets us off: estrangements, missed opportunities, loves lost, failed fathers and mothers and sons and daughters – yet this open admission of love from a father to a son is anything but tenuous; direct and unambiguous, it’s what ALL humans seek.

Someone to love them like Mark Ruffalo.

Alright, all weeping aside, after Ruffalo declares his love for the 47^th time to Big Adam, right there in front of Young Adam… wouldn’t that mean that Young Adam’s whole worldview would change, and therefore his lifestyle and life choices would change? Therefore, turning Big Adam into a different person immediately. There’s a throwaway line about Big Adam being ripped (because – Ryan Reynolds), but if Young Adam flensed the animus toward his father at this young age, wouldn’t his older body shape be different? Meaning that a lot of his anger and inborn need to dominate the gym was born of revenge focused on his father. Maybe he’d still have a motormouth, but probably not as successful with the ladies as ripped Adam. And now, with his newfound love of his father blessed deep into his heart, would he even need the crutch of a hot girlfriend like Zoe? Would he have had the drive to even go after a chick like this?

The love of Mark Ruffalo can be a terrible thing.

END

Serve, Return, Rally, Lob, Smash – Love.

Rigorous love-game and stalking game-play – or is it the other way ’round? – make WIMBLEDON an enjoyable afternoon on the green.

Peter Colt (British Nice Guy Paul Bettany) was once ranked 11th in the tennis world; now in his thirties, he finds himself 119th and dispiritedly shopping for jobs as a tennis instructor. But he’s going to give Wimbledon one last shot before announcing his retirement. (And during that announcement, the Hot Young Tennis Stud (Austin Nichols) enters the press room and dilutes even that one last moment for Peter.)

Lizzie Bradbury (American Bad Girl Kirsten Dunst) on the other hand, is a rising tennis star, here to breeze through Wimbledon, her iron-fisted manager-dad Dennis (Sam Neill) watching over her.

Peter and Lizzie Meet Cute on a tennis court (where else?) and start romancing the hell outa the film (you know, going on walk-dates with ice cream in parks and laughing at stuff that we can’t hear because the boppy source music is playing over the audio of the sickening montage). When reporters find them holed up in hotel rooms, the press jumps down their throat – as does father Dennis (Sam Neill hasn’t been this menacing since he was the Anti-Christ), warning Peter not to distract his daughter from her tennis career.

He keeps winning because of her. She keeps losing because of him. Obviously because, like any guy, he’s just fucking and, like any girl, she’s taking it way too seriously. He soars through match after match with Lizzie in the stands, while she – who arrived at Wimbledon prepared to win – struggles through her matches. It gets a tad non-believable when he’s climbing trestles to sneak into her hotel room against the wishes of Dennis 666…

Number 1 Cuke Seed

For those who could care less for all the tennis racket (ha! See what I did?), WIMBLEDON is produced well enough not to bore us with tennis being the focus – match play is compressed and kinetically shot – yet for tennis buffs, it’s more thrilling than being there for these very reasons. Authentic? It is shot at the All England Club itself –  Wimbledon. And the tennis form of all the principals looks very professional – maybe not championship level, but definitely not weekend warrior banality with bended elbow and over-running the ball. We are either seeing very good rallies culled from hours of play, or seeing very good special effects. Either way – it’s got balls. (Ha! See what I did again?)

Bernard Hill and Eleanor Bron are Peter’s polar opposite parents (mum pretends not to be interested in Peter’s matches – she loves him unconditionally, while dad fanatically carries a portable TV with him everywhere in the house, digesting every grass court point). James McAvoy is comic relief as Peter’s porn-loving brother, who constantly bets against him, to the chagrin of even his bookies: “If he loses, I make money, if he wins, I get laid!” Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is Peter’s coach, a fun/flip interaction that proves poignant in the end. Real life tennis legends John McEnroe and Chris Evert are commentators.

And then – Favreau Favreau Favreau!!! The swinging director of IRON MAN (who would relegate Paul Bettany to a faithful computer butler in that film) turns up as Peter’s agent – due to Peter’s rise in prominence, ready to cut promotional deals with him again.

So the flow chart is rallying smoothly: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. But WIMBLEDON establishes it is not a juvenile romancer, so we cannot bank on the smash-shot of the boy getting the girl and winning Wimbledon. We can see a net-ball coming, where the filmmakers will resolve the romance, but then to balance Peter’s life, won’t let him win the title. Wouldn’t it be just plain greed to nab fame and fortune as well as the girl? Love is all that matters, right?

But as Lizzie says when she’s breaking up with him: “I really don’t love you. Love means nothing in tennis – zero.”

If we thought the Wimbledon Finals tennis match would be tacked onto the end of the movie like an afterthought – the whole third act is the match, drawing out the suspense to divot-punching proportions. Let the nail-biting begin. Is it actually OUR greed that the filmmakers are playing on?

But it’s an unfair advantage from the get-go: Consider that Peter can track every nuance in the ball bounce, every trajectory and uneven patch of grass, every strike potentiality… he’s Iron Man’s computer!

Further, deponent sayeth not.

END

Set to Spin: How Sarah Palin Saved America by Losing the Election.

Sarah Palin, the most polarizing and laughable “politician” to ever shamelessly, undeservedly grace a world stage, has her laundry cleaned in this spin-doctored hallelujah chorus. When she ran for the vice presidency of the United States in 2008, she was defeated; when she returned to her post as Governor of Alaska, she quit; when she had the chance to run for a presidential candidacy, she declined. Writer-director Stephen K. Bannon must have been thinking about someone else when he titled his witless encomium THE UNDEFEATED.

In this hedonistic exercise piled neck-deep with talking heads and former staff and flunkies of Palin all effusing over what a blameless demi-god she is, the person I feel most sorry for is the director. Poor Stephen K. Bannon. He wants to fuck Sarah Palin so badly. And that big girl’s blouse Todd keeps being her husband. So sad.

Poor Stephen K. Bannon. His burning love is unrequited: Palin herself – though giving the production her “blessing” – doesn’t appear in it, except in archive footage, though we do hear snatches of her nasal whine reading passages from her audiobook. So sad.

The opening titles inform us THE UNDEFEATED was inspired by Palin’s book Going Rogue: An American Life (a ghost-written hit piece blaming all Palin’s shortcomings and mistakes on Everyone Else). More like “inspired by the tenting in Stephen K. Bannon’s pants.” How else can we perceive this one-note symphony of sophist mendacity?

As the film wears on, it becomes less a contradictory tribute to her outsider status (like every politician, she likes to claim she is not a politician, but a folksy down-home gal who just happens to have been in politics for the last 22 years), and leans gradually and subtly on what her true agenda seems to be: End Times…

Miss Alaska 1984:
“…such as the Iraq such as…”

Any sensible person, myself included, would be willing to give Palin credit for her accomplishments. She was obviously canny enough to become the mayor of Wasilla and then the governor of Alaska. Apply Peter Principle here. Trying to rise above her stature in Alaskan politics was her undoing – she reached her level of incompetence. (She and her “Palin-drones” might argue that it rocketed her into the public eye, riches and power.) And though no one should fault her for not knowing where Iraq was on a map (we all have to look it up for the first time at some point), her problem/downfall is that she never wanted to know. And I bet she still doesn’t know. And that’s the problem with Sarah Palin. This incurious, anti-education, anti-science sociopath stepped into the vice presidential candidate’s ticket with no thought to the geopolitical world at large. But she had facial reconstruction surgery and did her hair.

She’s an acknowledged dunderhead who thrives on being one. Further, she accuses anyone smarter than her of elitism; she considers any question she cannot answer a “gotcha” question; and she promotes stupidity and anti-science to a whole swathe of foaming followers stupider than her, who are loaded springs of social chaos waiting to happen.

All of us encounter situations where we know our knowledge is inadequate to see us through, so we acquire the knowledge needed to move forward. Not Palin. She has rutted in her ignorance since Day One, not only incurious, but intemperately blaming those around her for her incompetence and idiocy, doubling down on incorrect statements rather than typing a few words into Google and acquiring the most basic details to find out that Paul Revere didn’t “warn the British… sending warning shots and bells.” And that is why the great Keith Olbermann was wont to affirm, “That woman – is an idiot!”

Those same sensible people who might give her plaudits for being canny enough to be a sports broadcaster and learn the flute and become a rifle marksman are rightfully alarmed at the darker tone that this movie adopts as it limps to its conclusion. Palin’s fundamentalist background means she believes the Earth is 6,000 years old and dinosaurs walked with cavemen (she must think Peter Jackson’s KING KONG is a documentary); and though the first half of the movie bored us to sleep with wonk minutiae, towards its end, Palin’s religious beliefs filter into the movie’s narrative thread and wake us the fuck up. We start hearing how she is in a “spiritual” battle with her detractors (many of whom are featured in the movie’s opening montage: Bill Maher, Matt Damon, Howard Stern, John Cleese, blogs, websites, a tsunami of negative press junkets). And it is chilling to glean that Palin believes she was divinely chosen as the Lord’s evangel to shepherd His flock during these End Times… Huh? Did that “spiritual” battle start before or after she was asked what newspapers she reads?

Andrew Breitbart: liar.
Nice legacy, jackass!

Of all the talking heads who offer their unbridled juice for Palin, when Andrew Breitbart appears, it’s all over. It’s been unwatchable up to this point. Now it’s hurting my back. Thank Christ that willfully ignorant, primitive excuse for a human being is dead.

Matt Lewis in The Daily Caller, wrote that THE UNDEFEATED reminded him of ROCKY, in that no one thought Rocky would get that far. But Matt, you forget the other similarities: in the sense that she’s inarticulate, in the sense that she goes in pretty and comes out ugly; in the sense that she battles with Creed; in the sense that she has brain damage; in the sense that a black man schools her on how it’s done…

If you’d like to wash the taste of Todd’s spunk out of your mouth after watching this tripe, you might consider Nick Broomfield’s SARAH PALIN: YOU BETCHA! (2011), a decidedly unauthorized documentary, featuring interviews with Palin’s family, friends and acquaintances.

THE UNDEFEATED is well-produced, and has all the right BEHIND THE MUSIC beats (early childhood, scratchy video, school photos, mentors, lovers, villains, “then tragedy struck,” successes and slomo) but it is, in one word, boring. And not for the reasons you think. If it were a cacophony of shrikes lauding Palin’s supposed political prowess, that would at least spur outrage in our breasts. But it is merely a combination infomercial/resume, outlining in painful detail Palin’s bill-passing political career, sub-clause by sub-clause. Now that would be fine if your crowd is all politicians and you’re running for a seat where they need to know your background, but let’s not forget that Stephen K. Bannon made this glorified demo reel as apologist retaliation for Palin opening her big mouth during the McCain campaign and vindicating the Peter Principle. Oh, yeah, and because he wants to fuck her.

END

Hitting Bottom.

Boy’s Movie. In 3D. Serves its purpose of getting thirteen-year-old boys interested in slim blond girls with indeterminate Euro accents and tennis-ball ta-tas.

Brendan Fraser has some nice ta-tas too. All that sweaty tight t-shirt adventure with the Running and Screaming and CGI completely outa control.

It’s been decades since I’ve read Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of The Earth, but I can safely say this movie is only “loosely based” on Verne’s book. Very loosely based. They really lost me on the INDIANA JONES mine-cart ride… when three mine-carts jump a precipice (with no approach ramp) and land on the opposite side, exactly on their tracks – a stretch of fantasy even Jules Verne would never ask of us.

More concerned with inserting 3D wonderama moments than any plausible explanation on how humans can survive the bone-crushing pressures at the Earth’s core, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH quickly takes our heroes to a subterranean world within this world. Brendan Fraser is the scientist mocked for his “hollow Earth theories,” Anita Briem is the indeterminate Euro chick and Josh Hutcherson is this movie’s own target audience 13-year-old boy, who discover a pocket of ecosystem near the Earth’s center, where they encounter luminescent birds, floating magnetic rocks, and the perfunctory tyrannosaur.

Every new iteration of CGI tyrannosaurs keeps getting better and better. This is the best you will ever see. Until the next iteration.

Though it contains a smidgen more “science” than the 1959 movie of the same name (starring James Mason doing his best – uh, James Mason), we must note that this 1864 tale was written by a guy interested in “science” as adventure fantasy, not as scientific fiction, like Clarke or Asimov. So the crushing atmospheres above our heroes’ heads is never mentioned. Or there would be no movie. No popcorn. No ta-tas. Verne did try to convey a sense of evolution though, the surroundings and fauna becoming more prehistoric the deeper the characters went; a jot of that concept remains when Brendan Fraser ejaculates every ten minutes about the exciting rock strata that no one else is interested in, including the audience. Get to the dinosaurs, willya!

Directed by first-timer Eric Brevig, JOURNEY goes deep, stays shallow. For the thirteen-year-old boys. And when the temperature rises so high it forces Anita Briem to strip down to sweaty tank top and short shorts, Science is the last thing they’re thinking about… well, maybe biology.

END