3 Days of Swill.

Kevin Costner is suitably grizzled CIA agent Ethan Renner, suffering from a terrible case of Screenwriting Clichés: he’s got The Hollywood Cancer with 3 months to live and he’s got The Estranged Wife and  The Strong-Willed Teen Daughter whom he is Trying To Connect With while he’s on One Last Mission with 3 DAYS TO KILL.

Will he survive? No, not survive the hitmen sent to 86 him, not survive the agency tailing him, not survive the cops getting in the way of his assassination – will he survive his teenage daughter wearing too much makeup to an all-night rave?

In this well-produced action-comedy, shot around England, from a screenplay by master fantasist Luc Besson, Costner is suitably hard and makes some cool killing moves, but his performance is brought down by the WATERWORLD Syndrome: that is, Hard Guy becomes Softee to take care of female. Happens in TRANSPORTER; happens in THE POSTMAN; happens in GROSSE POINTE BLANK. But it never needs to happen – the hero could be protective and still hard (TRUE GRIT, DIE HARD, MILLION DOLLAR BABY), but that mindless cliché of leaching the hero’s masculinity is usually mishandled for gutless pc purposes.

So Ethan is emasculated. First, the disease, then the smokin’ wife who disrespects him (Connie Nielsen with sensual orange locks, looking like an elder version of Kirsten Dunst), then the daughter who keeps whining, and then — Amber Heard as undercover agent Vivi (whose idea of being undercover is to dress like every man’s idea of a prostitute), who hires/blackmails Ethan to kill an operative called The Wolf (Richard Sammel), in return for a cancer cure. Tooling around with a look that says Move over and let me blow you, the chain-smoking Vivi turns up and kills all the guys Ethan is supposed to be killing, because he’s getting so humorously old, which leads us to question the redundancy of one of them at least. (Let’s just lose Ethan and watch the whore in the leather and wigs try to look inconspicuous.)

Hailee Steinfeld (TRUE GRIT 2010) is the annoying daughter, and Tómas Lemarquis (SNOWPIERCER) is The Albino. An assortment of guys who all look like thick-necked Russian thugs play thick-necked Russian thugs. And I still can’t figure the subplot of the black family squatting in Ethan’s apartment.

Though the movie has some dry humorous turns, its punch is further ruined by McG‘s fartsy direction (that’s artsy-fartsy without the artsy).

END

The Manchurian Candidator.

For fuck’s sake, man, you’re amateur!
— Christian Bale on the set of TERMINATOR SALVATION.

That’s the best description *I* can think of for TERMINATOR SALVATION. What more could we expect from writers who penned the silly TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES and a director whose claim to fame is the CHARLIE’S ANGELS franchise? James Cameron would be turning in his grave if he didn’t just resurrect himself with AVATAR.

A story about Heart that lacks it completely.

It is 2018. John Connor (Christian Bale) is leader of “The Resistance” against The Machines who have assumed intelligence and are trying to wipe out humankind by shooting at them one at a time. Will someone remind the machines that being such an integral part of humankind’s existence, all they have to do to bring humankind to its knees is to stop working – and mollycoddled humankind will start crying like little girls without dollies.

Those unfamiliar with TERMINATOR canon can apparently go suck an egg, as there are so many winks at 1984’s TERMINATOR and 1991’s TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, newbies should expect to be crushed under heavy metal in-gags:

“Come with me if you want to live”; Guns ‘N Roses’ You Could Be Mine; battles on catwalks, boiling metal, liquid nitrogen, “There is no fate but what we make,” and of course, “I’ll be back” (delivered by Connor at a nondescript juncture)…

I know why Bale is so pissed off: Sam Worthington got the best role – as machinesexy Marcus, a cyborg programmed to think he’s human, who infiltrates and unknowingly draws out Connor for destruction. Bale is a brilliant actor, a chameleon, an artisan; Sam Worthington is a block of sexy wood – and so, like the original films, the coolest role went to the guy who could act the LEAST.

Helena Bonham Carter explains the Manchurian Situation via a Marlon Jor-El Brando holo-exposition – coincidentally, like a Batman Villain – that no one asked for and would have served her purpose better to have not explained.

Cybernetic vegetable

So have they invented time-travel yet? Didn’t machines send the Governor back first, forcing John Connor to send Kyle back to stop him? Which would mean MACHINES created time travel. Thanks, Diebold! Humans couldn’t find the time to invent it, not with all that hiding and skulking in portable underground labs covered in poo.Trying to tie it all in with canon, Connor narrates at the end that “the war is just beginning,” meaning that war Kyle Reese rasps about in THE TERMINATOR, even though the Schwarzenegger Terminator was like a toy soldier compared to the techno design of the Worthingtonator, which was so technologically covert it didn’t even know it was a Manchurian Candidator. And like George Lucas’s prequel-abominations-with-better-effects, the paradoxes and anomalous plotting of writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris comes back ’round to bite them in the assinator.

The irony of SALVATION is that it is continually yammering about “strong hearts” delineating humans from machines and “what it means to be human” and all manner of poignant story element so obviously cribbed from Screenwriting For Dummies – and lacks everything it yammers about.

Bale brings his Batman rasp and boundless temper; Bryce Dallas Howard brings her three unnecessary names and a spunky red coiffure; looking like Billy Bibbit from CUCKOO’S NEST, Anton Yelchin is young Kyle Reese (in one of those many nods to TERMINATOR fans that means nothing to first-time viewers); Moon Bloodgood brings a sexy disposition for metal man meat; Michael Ironside is Bad Guy emeritus; Helena Bonham Carter goes name to name with Bryce Dallas Howard but beats out Howard on looking like a bloodless horse junkie (i.e. like Helena Bonham Carter); and a bodybuilt guy with a face like an Arnold tips another hat to the fanboys.

The production values are as scorching as Bale’s temper. There is an amazing unbroken tracking shot 360 degrees around a helicopter in distress, that then tracks INTO the helicopter (John Connor piloting) and stays with the action as the helicopter crashes and lands upside down. John Connor crawls from the wreck and sees a mushroom cloud in the distance, blasted radar dishes littering the foreground and middle background. We know this is all green screen, yet it takes us right into the murderous battle heat of Termytown. Then it gets stupid immediately – as a skeletal Terminator grabs John Connor and throws him. Let me get this straight: this steel-belted Terminator’s one directive is to terminate humans, yet having the opportunity to simply clasp its mighty metal claw around Connor’s neck from behind and asphyxiate him or snap his neck, it opts to grab him by the shoulder and throw him?

And so it goes with every Terminator: they grab Kyle or Connor or Marcus and instead of simply crushing them – again with the throwing! Or shooting without aiming. (You’d think they’d have some kind of inbuilt aiming mechanism, but apparently Terminators were built by the same useless techs who made the battle droids for The Empire.)

Which proves that McG (the McDirector) has a great grasp of constructing action scenes – but don’t let him near your story. Unless you’re two bitches who wrote TERMINATOR 3. See how it all comes around and bites us in the ass?

END

“Hi, we’re here for the Shrikes On Bikes event.”

Too much style IS a bad thing.

Despite the consensus that Cameron Diaz wantonly proffering her backside like a baboon in estrus makes for good cinema, my existence would be incalculably enhanced if I never witness this repulsive rectal display cloaked in ostensible good-natured humor ever again in my short span on this earth.

CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE is so plastic, it hurt my teeth. There is a plot somewhere, but they forgot to film it. There is a movie somewhere amidst all the explosions and over-lighting and inane dialogue, but everyone forgot to act in it.

Soft-porn Poffy

Which boat did I miss? Why are these puerile, cardboard doxies regarded as screen goddesses?; heroines for an arse-tattooed generation of over-fed, class-less, prepubescent, poorly-educated future streetwalkers? The just-plain-ugly Lucy Liu, the matron-plump, lisping, graceless Drew Barrymore and the flat-plastic Cameron Diaz, who’s idiot-grinning and asinine booty-shaking every ten minutes reaches stratospheric ludicrousness unequaled by the worst Ed Wood or Godzilla movie. None of these tarts is in the least appealing to me as a procreative heterosexual male.The Hammer dance? And all that imbecilic giggling? Only minimum-wage flunkies slaving over fast-food counters and born-again christians exhibit such a surfeit of fake sincerity. Either stop all that laughing and hugging on the couch – or continue along this pornographic thread that you yourselves have instigated – and give us a payoff. But at PG-13, as long as there are no swear words, simply insert as much lewd innuendo as possible and slide it past the feeble-minded censorship board.

Over-riding my desire to slap these three emasculating shrikes was the yearning to cudgel every half-wit who greenlit, funded, created and marketed this monstrous cinematic trash which, due to its distribution budget, has ingrained itself deeper into the world culture than the name of penicillin’s discoverer. (Alexander Fleming, on the off-chance you can tear your eyes from Diaz’s baboon rectum on display yet again.)

The unsophisticates may opine: “But it’s all in fun – it’s entertainment!” Well, so is overdosing on heroin, which is what this film’s barf-inducing action sequences resemble. The opening scene, in which the Angels run a truck carrying a helicopter off a bridge and then climb into the helicopter and fire its ignition and fly off (all within a 100-foot drop to a river) is enough to discern that this movie is definitively purely for the plastic popcorn and cardboard hot dog brigade (i.e. the swell of the bell-curve of movie-going audiences who have no discernment – for cuisine or film-making). And the Great Unwashed rise up in indignation, unwilling to be classified as bovine enough to be deceived into paying to be exploited – yet – how else did a movie aiming for low intelligence ever manage to make the amount of money it extracted from the viewing public?

The paradox: Director McG’s target demographic (4 to 7 year olds with an attention span no greater than 12 seconds exactly – the longest interval of time which ever elapses in this movie without an over-tweaked explosion, unrealistic wire stunt, CGI-drenched “action” sequence, irrelevant slomo passage, or gratuitous soft-porn allusion) will never have the perception to fathom the musical and visual cultural references which the movie is bloated with: The Sound Of Music, KC & The Sunshine Band, The Pink Panther, Flashdance, the Cape Fear remake, etc. Almost every sequence becomes a wink to the audience, as McG gets swallowed by his own anus by trying way too hard to impress upon his viewers that he’s in on these gags as well. His groveling as a sycophant far outweighs his talents as a film-maker.

Did anyone else notice the 20 million watts of obvious stage lighting on all characters all the time especially when they’re out in the sunlight and they don’t need it? Are we to consider that these hounds are so freakin’ beautiful that we wouldn’t want to miss one inch of their bootylicious backsides or frontsides in realistic shadow?

And speaking of bootylicious frontsides, the ab-crunched, testosterone-drenched Demi Moore appears in the movie solely to display her nakedness to Ashton Kutcher’s jealous mates in a socially-acceptable forum. Lord knows, she’ll never actually deign to ever visit a beach to do so – if you think these Hollywood starlets get their all-over tans by gadding about in natural sunshine, you must also believe that any film with over seven explosions in its 30-second trailer is a movie worth seeing.

John Cleese is the film’s only saving grace (along with Bruce Willis’ 30-second cameo), but Cleese’s screentime is diluted by his interaction with the mannequin Matt LeBlanc. LeBlanc should be thanking his goat-headed gods that he actually got the opportunity to even stand alongside the icon Cleese, let alone share screentime with him. The downside to appearing alongside Cleese was, of course, that it proved beyond a doubt that Matt LeBlanc isn’t really an actor. Or funny. Or ever has been. And should probably be put out of his misery like the hoss that he is.

A lot of sugar went into making this sour ipecac seem sweet. If I could just purloin one god-given opportunity to wrap my fingers around their collective throats, I’d illustrate the proper method to execute a FULL THROTTLE.

END
Orig: Dec 2004