Interspecies Love and the Balls it Requires.

Like the aqua spawn of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and Abe Sapien from HELLBOY, our collective consciousness accepts the “Gill Man” as a species; a familiar alien entity in our science fiction. Yet in Guillermo del Toro’s unique THE SHAPE OF WATER, the Gill Man has transcended the species demarcation and is now more “man” than “gill.”

See how far we’ve come: In BLACK LAGOON, women screamed, overacted and swooned into the arms of the Gill Man, for the poster shot of Creature Carrying Woman, and it was assumed the Creature would Weinstein the human woman if she was not saved by the rugged hero. Then Abe Sapien in del Toro’s own HELLBOY II had a “thing” for an underworld chick; this time, at least, the Gill Man was allowed some unrequited love with a woman who did not fear, or was repulsed by, him. Now, in THE SHAPE OF WATER, the Gill Man has a consensual sexual relationship with a human woman – and everyone’s okay with that! See how far we’ve cum?

During the race-riot 1960s, in “a small city near the coast,” an “asset” is “dragged out of the river muck in South America” and brought to an aerospace plant for containment and study. A cleaning lady discovers the asset is an aquatic anthropoid creature, a Gill Man, and forms a bond with him. When she learns of the Gill Man’s fate – dissection by the military – she rescues him to set him free, thereby setting herself free in the process.

You know what I like about THE SHAPE OF WATER? Not just that it’s crammed with visual texture, or that it draws from so much of our cultural consciousness, or that every shot is an art explosion, and each character breathes with painful human clarity, but that it is purely original. Not a sequel or a prequel, not from a novel, not a true story, not a superhero film, not a reboot or a remake, not a stodgy drama about kids reconciling with their parents during adulthood – writer-director del Toro (PAN’S LABYRINTH) and co-writer Vanessa Taylor (DIVERGENT) have forged this mythic tale from whole cloth.

Sally Hawkins is mute cleaning lady, Elisa, immediately appealing, immediately nude, and immediately masturbating. Her daily ritual of masturbating in the tub is a movie device that tells us love is missing in her life (although I don’t know why “masturbation” should be that device. Maybe she’s oversexed? But in movies, being oversexed is also considered a problem…sigh). However, the fact that she pleasures herself in water is a foreshadowing.

Elisa lives with middle-aged Giles (Richard Jenkins), a closeted gay ad painter trying to reclaim his artistic job, during the advent of commercial photography; a pathetic lonely soul himself, Giles (ha! Didja notice his name? Like “gills”) has a few pleasant sign-language words with Elisa as their paths cross every evening, when Elisa sets out for her midnight shift at the aerospace plant. Octavia Spencer is Elisa’s cleaning friend and accomplice, Zelda.

Strickland (Michael Shannon) is the government agent who ostentatiously hauls in a water tank to a classified room one night: “The most sensitive asset ever to be housed in this facility.” We suspect Strickland is a loon with his belligerent attitude toward what’s in the tank, and with each scene, he reveals himself to be more unhinged: washing his hands before he pees with arms akimbo on hips, because “it reveals a character flaw if a man washes afterwards”; misogynistic, racist, sadistic, with an extreme devotion to Nick Searcy’s unforgiving, hard-nosed general…

Michael Stuhlbarg is Hoffstetler, the lead scientist who studies the creature in the tank; at first, he seems to be on the side of Strickland – until we discover he isn’t even on the side of America! He’s a Russian spy in the aerospace plant (of COURSE he is; Russia has had moles in the American government from way back then, all the way to Dumbo Donald in 2016), who tells his superiors that Russia can learn from this creature because it is intelligent. But Russia just wants to kill the creature, to prevent the Americans from learning anything from it – and the Americans want to “learn from it” by killing it and studying it. (Seems the only thing stunted minds have in common is killing.) Stuhlbarg has always played cool, sympathetic roles, and his Hoffstetler is no exception, as he risks his life to help Elisa save the Gill Man. “I don’t want an intricate beautiful thing destroyed!”

That knowing smile when a Gill Man’s tackle perfectly fits your bait.

When Strickland stumbles bleeding out of the asset room one day, with two of his fingers sliced off, Elisa runs in to discover – the Gill Man (Doug Jones in an amphibian suit). Entranced, she empathizes with the Gill Man’s loneliness and fear of his alien environment. Now we realize why this tale had to be set in the ‘60s, because Elisa makes numerous unauthorized visits to the Gill Man simply by swiping her security card; with modern tech security, she would be found out immediately. Her fondness for the Gill Man grows, as she brings him boiled eggs and Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman albums on a Gramophone, and he learns her sign language, which means they are doing what all intelligent creatures do – communicating.

Yes, but when does it get to the fornicating?

For THE SHAPE OF WATER to succeed, it needed to transcend all those simplistic BEAUTY AND THE BEAST tropes of platonic “love,” and classically beautiful women falling for ruggedly handsome beasts (Sally Hawkins is a very non-conventional yet alluring beauty!), and the most insidious trope of the “beast” protagonist changing into human form so that “physical love” won’t freak anyone out, which completely negates the message of “loving the alien” if you’re going to make the alien look like YOU. So SHAPE astounds us with its bravery of moving into the intercourse arena with gills wide open.

Elisa, on the bus, traces falling rainwater across the pane – the droplets looking for all the world like sperm chasing an ovum, multiplying. A metaphor, or my jovial imagination?

Movie opens with Richard Jenkins narrating about a “princess, a tale of love and loss, and the monster who tried to destroy it all.” Of course, the “monster” is not who we think it is at all. In a tale this un-ordinary, it takes a master storyteller to weave the threads of happenstance in such a way that we accept the actions of his damaged characters. From Elisa, the lonely mute, orphaned as a baby with scars on her throat, (emulating… gills?), who finds such understanding in an alien creature that she is aroused to coitus with it (without even knowing if it possessed the requisite hardware!); Zelda, whose moribund marriage allows her to empathize with anything yearning for freedom; Zelda’s husband, so “small” that he doesn’t even think to stand up for his wife against Strickland in his own home; Strickland, so unhappy with his wife talking during clinical sex that he comes onto Elisa simply for the sake of her silence; Giles, who must go through a rejection fire of his own to understand the loneliness of Eliza.

“Life is but the shipwreck of our plans.”

Just as Andy Serkis has become the King of Mo-Cap, Doug Jones is undoubtedly the King of the Fantasy Creature Suit. He imbues his Gill Man with such rapturous emotion, such poignant connectivity, it elevates what was once the visage of a monstrous deviant (in BLACK LAGOON) to that of the rugged six-packed leading man.

Elisa tries to tell the Gill Man how many eggs she has left, so…

I was disappointed that Giles had to be shown suffering rejection by the ad agency and the homophobic diner chef, before he would help Elisa. Only then did he realize what it was like to have no one. Earlier, he balked at helping the Gill Man because, “He’s not even human.” Elisa signs at him: “If we do nothing, neither are we!” If Giles had offered to help before he suffered humiliation, before he felt that his life held no more hope, then his help would hold more worth, no? As it is, it’s a man teetering on the edge of insanity with nothing to lose. Why wouldn’t he help two ladies and a Russian steal a Gill Man?

Strickland told of the South American tribes worshipping the Gill Man “as a god,” and later lectures Zelda how it can’t be a god, because “the Lord created humans in His image – even you. Well, maybe more like me than you.” Then the ending is gonna surprise the hell outa that racist…

Knowing that del Toro was affected by BLACK LAGOON as a child (thinking it was a love story about the Creature and a lady which would end happily), we consciously feel his rewrite in the final scenes of SHAPE. Like Tarantino rewriting Hitler’s demise in his own brutal manner, del Toro recreates that earlier movie’s actions only to have them soar in other directions. Del Toro’s Gill Man carries unconscious Elisa into the water. It’s the same Creature Carrying Woman pose that adorned thousands of ‘60s movie posters, but this time – the woman is going willingly; this time, the man who looks on is not doing so in horror, but serenity, knowing the woman has found her place. And he’s gay. (There are even theories that baby Eliza was abandoned near the water with throat scars because she was OF the water to begin with, and has found her way back, the Gill Man not transforming her scars into gills, but merely opening up her actual nascent gills.)

Like Steven Spielberg before him, who re-cast world-destroying aliens as benign musical visitors, Guillermo del Toro has re-cast the Beast that can remain a Beast and still be respected, revered, loved. With his implicit message of quiet strength and noble beauty the Gill Man challenges us: How far can we cum?

END

Ape-ocalypse Now…

Reboot. Gorilla style.

In a cold open, two pilots – an American and Japanese – crash-land on a deserted Pacific island. It is 1944. They try to kill each other, in a foot chase that leads to a mountain ledge. As they grapple, something… YUGE… rises from below. A gorilla! No, not just a gorilla – a GORIL-LIL-LIL-LIL-LA!

Opening Titles, scrolling through the years, showing watershed events – nuclear tests, Viet Nam, space race – to 1973.

An American scientist leads a military expedition to an island discovered by satellite photos, to beat the Russians there and discover its secrets – and is confronted by that same gorilla, who goes ape on their helicopters. All the extras die. The next move is up to the scientist and the military. To kill or not to kill this ancient beast…

KONG: SKULL ISLAND is APOCALYPSE NOW meets GODZILLA. For a very marketable reason. Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment are even now planning the Daikaiju Match of the Century – Kong Vs Godzilla! For that to happen, they had to make the 50-foot Kong of the past 84 years more GORIL-LIL-LIL-LIL-LA. To face the modern 350-foot GODZILL-LIL-LIL-LIL-LA. Not only is the ape’s size amped up to 100 feet, its role is modified to be more of a rampaging beast, a creature that ruled the Earth before Man; it is played like it might not be an ape at all but just a giant carnivorous creature with a hint of blond ambition… The stage is set…

… for Francis Ford Coppolla. Writers Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein and Derek Connolly, and director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, save on man-hours, printing costs and originality, by simply copying and pasting Coppolla’s 1979 APOCALYPSE NOW, with Huey helicopters, loudmouth military grunts, obsessive military captains, a riverboat ride, wild machine-gun fire, napalm, wartime cinematography, and that same overused seventies soundtrack that hits all the Creedence and Jefferson Airplane beats. It worked for that big ape, Brando…

“Sir, I think we’ve found Marlon Brando.”

Starring Tom Hiddleston’s British Smug, Brie Larson’s Tight T-shirt, Samuel L. Jackson’s Shouting, Toby Kebbell’s Dog Tags, John Goodman (who doesn’t roll on Shabbas), Corey Hawkins Being Black and Nearby, Jason Mitchell Straight Outta Compton, John Ortiz as Welcome Back Kotter, and John C. Reilly as Sasquatch.

Jackson is Captain Insecure Dicksize, who, after his men are annihilated by Kong for invading Kong’s territory, obsesses over killing Kong. Like every American chickenhawk, he lays the blame of his troop’s death not on himself for invading, but on the party being invaded. “I know an enemy when I see it!” Uh, okay, but Kong is not your enemy, jarhead. YOU struck first, without warning, without permission. Movie shows us very explicitly that the only “monsters” on the island are the ones who arrived in Hueys. They even make Goodman’s scientist, Dr. Crackpot, a superficial monster whose parents were killed by Kong, which he regards as “something with no conscience, no reason.” Well, not really. The reason: you were encroaching on his territory.

Crackpot tells Dicksize his organization is after Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms (MUTOs, which ties it to GODZILLA 2014, where the winged monsters were called MUTOs – a stupid name, because once you find them, and classify them – huzzah! Massive Identified Terrestrial Organisms.) “The Castle Bravo tests were not nuclear tests – they were trying to kill something.” (Almost the same dialogue in GODZILLA, describing the Bikini Atoll tests.) His token black assistant pipes up about his Hollow Earth Theory, which has turned out to be true. No one cares. Not even the black demo he’s here for.

The wonderful rounded hills of Skull Island.

Crackpot wants evidence to take back to civilization. Shouldn’t the focus then, be more on T-shirt taking pics, rather than Dicksize’s vendetta? That’s when we realize even the filmmakers have lost the plot: When we see a graveyard filled with giant bones of dead apes (Kong’s parents), T-shirt says “I’ve taken enough pictures of mass graves to recognize one.” Yeah, well, how about taking a picture of THIS one? Because – evidence.

We see her snapping pics, but of all the wrong things. That picture of a giant footprint might be a tiny hamster’s without showing a canteen or person’s foot next to it for scale. Or how about this? At least all the male scientists back home can get a perfect idea of size if you place your D-cup rack next to it.

Hiddleston the tracker is introduced like Wolverine in a bar fight. Then we never see him use any skills again for the rest of the movie, except looking like Thor’s brother. Movie tries to flesh out his character with talk about his father in the RAF mounting an attack from which he never returned (but we’re just wondering when he’s going to mount an attack on T-shirt’s nicely-rounded Hamburger Hills). Other futile attempts at characterization also fall flat, like Dicksize being a career military man, left rudderless when assigned leave, and then creaming his camo when assigned the Skull Island mission. We recognize each of these characters from bullet points in the Selling Your Hollywood Screenplay Manual:

• the girl who befriends the monster
• the jock who befriends the girl
• the fanatic general
• the nervy company man who is eaten first
• the token black dude
• the token Asian chick
• the loon who lives with the natives…

John C. Reilly is the bearded loon, who turns out to be the pilot from the cold open. He’s the Dennis Hopper in this Ape-ocalypse, and the only character well-rounded enough for a poignant post-credits resolution. Providing exposition on the ape (“Kong is king around here; god to these people”), and the “skull-crawlers” (“I never said that name out loud before, it sounds stupid now that I think about it”) – giant iguana-like monsters that are genuinely scary, taking the place of the tyrannosaurs in any given Kong adventure. Why? Because of Kong’s new SIZE; he needs bigger foes. Everything is giant – oxen, spiders, stick insects, squid – except for the human roles. Outstanding production values save KONG from the B-movie pile, but the vapid characters drift it back.

I love the smell of ape-harm in the morning.

For once, the great ape is not played by Andy Serkis in mocap; Toby Kebbell and Terry Notary don the motion-capture suit (veterans of playing apes in the modern PLANET OF THE APES saga), and find the connective tissue between all the Kongs:

He tries to rip apart the monster’s jaws (like KONG 1933), he walks upright (like KONG 1976), he is seamless, wondrous CGI (like KONG 2005). And his “realism” sells this film. We do not doubt any more that what is onscreen is absolutely in the environment. I like the way Kong just wanders around and appears here, appears there, unhurried. As I always complain in JURASSIC PARK movies, we never get to see the dinosaurs just being themselves before the Running and Screaming starts. It’s nice to see Kong stop to get a drink.

When T-shirt finds an ox trapped under a helicopter and tries to save it, Kong is there to help. He looks down upon her magnificent push-up bra, ponders on his animal attraction, then strides away. (But Kong is a carnivore – those incisors didn’t evolve for herbivorous diet – wouldn’t he EAT the ox? Instead, we only see him eating a squid when it attacks him. As in every movie that anthropomorphizes animals (MADAGASCAR, ZOOTOPIA), mammals don’t eat mammals – but feast on fish. Unless you’re in NEMO, fish are no higher than plants in Hollywood’s hierarchy.)

The scant connection between blond and ape is downplayed here, because of the extended universe the studios intend to tread. If Kong fell in love – he would have to die. The theme will never more be “beauty and the beast.” Kong is necessarily beauty (of nature) and beast (of destruction) all in one.

That’s what happens when you do it gorilla style.

END

DIE HARDER in the White House with a Vengeance.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN (released June 2013) was sold as the “comedic” version of OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (March 2013). Is that why we’re laughing AT it? Not that we can even differentiate them; both are the same level of serious, and the same height of stupidity. With the exact same outcome – America wins! Yay! Because – ‘MURRICA!

The White House is taken by domestic terrorists and John McClane is there to– I mean Gerard Butler is there to—I mean, Channing McTatum is there to be Gerard McClane to– I mean – ‘MURRICA!

They even dress Channing in the Bruce Willis Sweaty McT-shirt to leave no doubt. He’s protecting President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx, doing his best Obama – he’s sexy, young, fit, virile; he’s a fighter who can leap elevator shafts with the best McClanes – he’s even chewing Nicorette gum!) But wait! There is so much clichéd backstory here, I suspect screenwriter James Vanderbilt (THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN) and director Roland Emmerich (2012) copied and pasted it out of the LETHAL WEAPON Action Movie Handbook: precocious daughter, divorced parents, daughter calls father by his name instead of daddy, hero wants to be secret service but fails test, only to save Pres in real life, disenfranchised white guy villains, led by ideological villain who cares nothing for money, but makes it look like he does, Pretty Orange Explosions, bad guys no aim, army no use, media no brains – somebody call Jerry Bruckheimer!

Channing Tatum is John Cale (his name even sounds like “John McClane”!), guardian agent to the Speaker of the House (Richard Jenkins, yay!), but he’s applying to be the Big Man’s boy, interviewing with agent head Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal, so sensual I don’t think I can hold an intelligent conversation with her; I mean, everything she says is in that lilt that subtexts, “Will you lay on top of me naked?”).

James Woods is the disgruntled Chief of Staff who lost a boy in the president’s war and is taking revenge on American values by recruiting bad guys from Dissenters R Us (featuring Jimmi Simpson, Jason Clarke, and Kevin Rankin, who’s cheesing his best Bill Paxton). Finnerty raises the point that it is too easy for an insurrectionist to recruit sympathetic anarchistic, treasonous felons when the White House puts them all in one black list. Something to think about, Secret Service.

The dreamy eyes get me every time…

Now what drives Cale to aid the president? When the thugs start taking hostages and blowing things up, shouldn’t he retreat to protect the Speaker? Not today, as he’s on a White House Tour with his precocious 11-year-old daughter Emily (Joey King, who looks oddly like swimmer Ryan Lochte), and she is separated from him when the Pretty Orange Explosions start. Thus, after the president accidentally falls under Cale’s care, he still can’t leave – Not Without his Daughter!

Doesn’t anyone ever notice thugs skulking around in jumpsuits with sinister expressions on their faces? During the White House tour, Obvious Thugs In Jumpsuits are walking past Ryan Lochte and the nerdy tour guide and opening doors that should probably be locked and setting timers and hacking computers… so much for the whoop-de-doo security system. A $4.50 lock on some of those doors would help. And has every action movie in the world not alerted the White House to the fact that every maintenance man in a jumpsuit is a treasonous infiltrator? Just shoot on sight, okay?

Cale takes an interview while he’s there, with Finnerty reading Cale’s laundry list of accomplishments, even though his resumé does not meet White House standards. Why is she even talking to him? Simply to let the audience know his “heroic” background: “…three tours of Afghanistan, rescued a guy from a burning Humvee”—give it a rest! He already knows! Why are you telling HIM? I already had my expositional resumé bullshit stew for breakfast!

When the shooting starts, not one of those hundreds of trained White House agents can avoid the bullets of the thugs. The White House is brought down – including the professional snipers on the roof – in less than 5 minutes. But they can’t shoot Cale – no! – because he uses the John McClane method of diving for cover in slow motion. Movie is reasonable viewing up to this point, even with the overzealousness of the daughter who annoyingly knows more about political issues than the last two presidential candidates combined. After the White House is overrun, it becomes a drone of beatings, shootings, explosions, and cliché payoffs, such as: Cale missed his daughter’s school talent show, which featured her flag-waving (Cale: “Is that a talent?”); cue end scene with daughter waving a flag to stave off the fighter jets about to blow the White House. Single patriotic tear.

Payoffs like President telling Cale he needs to make “one great sacrifice” in his career; cue villain threatening to kill Cale’s daughter and President offering himself instead of Cale! Still, does anyone believe the gun to Emily’s head will go off, spraying brain matter over the Oval Office curtains?

The Vice President (Michael Murphy) orders three Black Hawk helicopters to fly in low and kick some ass; manned with Seal Team 6 – you know, those fictional military superguys that only appear when a political situation calls for the president not to take direct blame for murder. Leads to some great closeup shots of helicopters being ass-kicked and exploding.

This movie really makes us aware of the vast number of “nuclear footballs”! (Those suitcases with the nuclear launch codes.) When the President is considered compromised, suddenly the guys behind the VP bring one out; when the VP is shot down, suddenly out walks another one behind the Speaker. I mean, how many of these things are there? And how can I get my hands on one?

WHITE HOUSE DOWN inadvertently advocates for a fit, young president. Remember when kings and leaders had to be the toughest warriors in their clans? If a situation this intense were to befall the White House, we can truly imagine athlete Obama in this role kicking ass and taking names. Whom we cannot imagine being put through these paces, however, is duplicitous McCain, or shifty Hillary, or even that turnip Trump, all in their 70s, all likely to break hips or die of heart attacks.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN runs the gamut of clichés down to its conclusion, including the trigger-happy Bill Paxton never shooting anyone who is right in front of him, and a bullet being stopped by a gold watch. Single idiotic tear. By putting all the gags in one trailer, WHITE HOUSE DOWN sought to pull in all those who thought OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN was too dark. But it’s the same tone, and it’s the same treacle outcome, because – ‘MURRICA.

END

Reaching For Grate-ness.

The name is from a series of books by author Jim Grant (pseudonym Lee Child); even so, casting Tom Cruise as a character called JACK REACHER is just asking for the inevitable gay gags, like Jack Reacharound. And what kind of epicness was Grant aiming for anyway? Did he want big chords every time someone said the name, and then putting sunglasses on like David Caruso in CSI?

Ex-military homicide investigator Jack Reacher [–sunglasses–YEEEAAAAGH!–] digs deep into a case involving an ex-military sniper who shot five seemingly random victims, and finds he is – ahem – *reaching* too deep for the likes of the corporate murderers who staged the hits. In his defense, the sniper asks for – Jack Reacher! [dun dun daaah!–sunglasses.] Jack Reacher [dun dun daaah!–sunglasses] unofficially looks into the case, bringing his esoteric military expertise, his photographic memory, his fighting skills, marksmanship, driving expertise and gloriously body-shaved chest.

And his smug. But this is more Tom Cruise’s fault than Jack Reacher’s. I’m sure no author could ever emplace that amount of nerve-jangling smug in any written character. And the worst part is: the Tom Cruise Smug has rubbed off on everyone else in the cast.

Try not to cringe watching Richard Jenkins and David Oyelowo going through Jack Reacharound’s history in that uninterested drawl, like it’s the most offhanded thing in the world: “Well, Jack Reacher’s a ghost, no driver’s license, no residence, no credit cards… Iraq, Afghanistan, The Balkans, – you name it – served with distinction…By all accounts a brilliant investigator…” (Thanks for the character exposition, guys. Do you want the big chords now or should I wait until someone puts on their sunglasses?)

Try not to let the smugness of Reacharound grate on your nerves when he’s investigating the sniper rifle with Oyelowo; the head-waggling walk away from the evidence cage, the rakish tilt in both their heads when they talk to each other like sarcasm was on special at Wal-Mart, the smugness in the questions they ask each other – and never answer; the smugness in Reacharound answering Oyelowo’s question about the rifle serial number a few scenes later. Dragging the smug across scenes!

Then Rosamund Pike appears as the sniper’s lawyer, and all smug breaks loose, as she informs Jenkins and Co. about the law giving her the right to be this smug. She outlines the backstories of all the random shooting victims like she’s doing a first read-through of her sides. (Nice line-read, honey! Take it from the part where you start to give a fuck.) By the way, who cares who these people are? Do you have a nude scene coming up or should I just Google “Rosamund Pike nude”? Goddess-sexy in WRATH OF THE TITANS (2012), here she keeps on way too many clothes for any man to take her blondly – I mean, seriously. Especially not Jack Reacher [dun dun daaah!–sunglasses], who seems to have a history with her, from the way he constantly invades her personal space when giving her orders on what girlie task to do next. Either that, or they should just screw and get it over with. At one point, Reacher exits the bathroom shirtless, and the sexual tension is palpable – between Tom Cruise and his gloriously body-shaved chest.

Mystery is intriguing, although nothing special, and certainly not “gripping” enough knowing that Cruise is the lead, and the production companies will be looking for sequelae ad infinitum, so he’s pretty much guaranteed a Get Out Of Jail Free card if his life is at stake. A purple friend of mine suggested that this mystery thriller would have made a great Batman movie – because that’s what Batman is, a detective. My friend’s (quite credible) suggestion to moviemakers is: disavow all those billion-dollar blockbusters and make 20 affordable, *good* Batman movies for us to enjoy, with very workable scripts along these lines. Although I don’t see how the blockbuster spiral can be quashed with that rollercoaster in motion for over three decades. And with the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman in 2015, not only is it guaranteed to be a billion-dollar baby, but the smug levels will be chokifying.

Suddenly, the great Robert Duvall, as shooting range owner and ex-sharpshooter Cash, whose best character trait is – NO SMUG. We should’ve known that Duvall’s resolute skill would not be affected by Tom Cruise’s – ahem – *reach*… Reacher says something interesting when he doubts Cash’s aim: “It’s a perishable skill.” And Cash, in turn, does something interesting: uses his ears instead of his eyes to aim. You go, Duvall!

You’re kidding me! A 20-minute car chase in 2012? At least with hand-to-hand combat, there is a modicum of creativity employed by the many unique styles and sweet moves that fight choreographers were forced to invent after Steven Seagal ruined everything with his minimalistic smug-kwon-do. But car chases? Jesus! There’s only so much banging of bumpers and slamming of sides that we can endure. Oh, I forgot screeching around corners and the perfunctory car flipping over for no reason other than to annoy me. I will admit, the ending is a surprise. But not worth the other 19 minutes.

Jai Courtney (A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, 2013) is the Hot Bad Guy, and victim to one of the all-time ludicrous cinematic tropes:

TROPE: the hero and villain face off – one of them is unarmed. The armed person – whether hero or villain – disarms himself (LETHAL WEAPON, COMMANDO, DARK NIGHT RISES, WRATH OF THE TITANS, BULLET TO THE HEAD, EXPENDABLES 2, the list is endless). Why?

Is it called honor – or padding?

Unarmed guy versus unarmed guy – the tension is totally bearable.

Why don’t these guys take a lesson from the Man Among Men, Clint Eastwood? Any time the bad guy is unarmed, he shoots the bad guy. Gladly. At close range, in the back, while baddie is begging for mercy, whatever. If you were the villain, being shot would be your fate – THAT is the right message, not this imaginary “honor” thing. Because it stands to logic that if you  decided to take the path of villainy, then you HAVE no honor, so in the case of the hero disarming himself to battle the villain on equal terms, that’s just stupid, and in the case of the dishonorable villain disarming himself to give the hero an even shot, that’s just ridiculous!

Anyway, so Hot Bad Guy and Reacher scuffle (and I’m sure there’s a reacharound gag in there somewhere) and bones are broken and it’s raining men and just totally street and post-Seagal. And Rosamund asks Reacher to come back to her place for a snuggle, but he declines on the grounds that Others Somewhere might need his help (like his cape is flying in the wind), and that He’ll Find Her When He Needs Her (i.e. booty call), but mostly, cos he’s —

Jack Reacher! [Dun dun– dammit, where’d I leave my sunglasses?]

END

A Hip New Reason for Tired Old Slayings.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS is about four painfully pretty college kids (and one Shaggy) being slasher-slain by zombies at said cabin. Seen it all before, right? But there’s a twist: the cabin is a front for a religious cult, who are in the business of luring college kids to this technologically advanced hideaway and sacrificing them to their insatiable god. Well… at least the movie is trying. Veeery trying…

After an excellent false-opening credit sequence, we meet Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins, two office guys in short-sleeved white shirts and ties, around a water cooler. Cut back to – what the teen demo are here to see – a chick in panties, getting ready for a trip to the woods.

The four pretty kids are Chris Hemsworth (THOR), Anna Hutchison (The Slut), Jesse Williams (the Jock) and Kristen Connolly (The Virgin). The fifth wheel is Fran Kranz (The Shaggy). Stereotypes just waiting to die.

In the woods, a falcon flies into an invisible force shield, which tells us the cabin is surrounded by this unseen electric fence. Intriguing…

We quickly discover the ulterior agenda of the office guys, as they command a war room outfitted with banks of computers and monitors, showing… you guessed it – the cabin in the woods. And though they’re quite flippant about their job of monitoring the kids, they speak in more reverent tones of appeasing their bloodthirsty god. Through levers and pulleys that the cabin is surreptitiously retrofitted with, the office guys manipulate the walls and doors to lure the kids to the basement, “then we let them use free will from there.”

It’s an interesting twist on tired old slasher genre. And a peek into what modern religious cults might be doing, considering technological advances. But after the initial jolt wears off, it’s still just murders and screaming and stuff.

A guard in the war room objects to the staff gathering around watching Thor nail the naked Slut, “Do we really have to watch this?” – then doesn’t object to the horrific manner she is murdered two minutes later. I can see where he gets his twisted priorities – his sniveling mindset is the exact mindset of the idiotic Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), who blanch at depicting all things that create Life, but have no problem rating a movie PG-13 that depicts all manner of Death.

CABIN is written and produced by the great Joss Whedon (FIREFLY), so I was expecting a little more. Still, a few good ideas with the final scenes, showing all the monsters of myth kept locked in cages under the cabin – and escaping! And when Thor tries to ride out of the woods – one hell of an unexpected demise! And I guess it’s always a plus when a culty god escapes his subterranean abode to wreak havoc on the Earth.

Which is what happens at the end, so if you’re reading this, you’re one of the few survivors on this desolate Earth.

END

The Capitalism of Killing.

KILLING THEM SOFTLY opens with scarring sound design and disturbing images of debris-strewn streets, and then launches into the poetry of small time hood-speak. (Mobalogue? Gangsternacular?) Writer-director Andrew Dominik (ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES, 2007) approaches an excellence in his writing and direction that is the closest thing to Tarantino without actually lazily copying him, as this movie about Mob-related crime features no woozy car chases or interminable shoot-em-ups, but large meaty chunks of beautiful, sinister, foreboding dialogue and sudden, distressing violence.

Somewhere in the dankest, dirtiest climes of New Orleans, after three local hoods rob a Mob-protected card game and crash the underworld economy, hitman Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) is brought in by the Mob attorney (Richard Jenkins) to “restore order” to the burg.

Set in the days leading to Election 2008 (with the American economy crashing due to W, with Obama’s platitudes and Bush’s lies filtering from every radio and TV, with news reports about AIG and other such True Crime ambience), KILLING THEM SOFTLY is analogous to the macro world of seedy capitalism; all crime is ultimately an economic endeavor, as many economic endeavors are ultimately crimes. In a way, Street Crime can’t keep up – because the politicians and bankers who own countries’ monies and debts are much bigger criminals and murderers than small-time thugs could ever hope to be.

You wanted the oiliest – you GOT the oiliest!

The opening scenes are surprising for their grabbing power, as two lowlife street hoods are given a job by Squirrel (Vincent Curatola – Johnny Sack from THE SOPRANOS, grown as stout as Tony Soprano). The hoods are Frankie (Scoot McNairy – in ARGO he never got such meaty screentime, or to be this filthy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), a sweaty low-class Australian, whose idea of a life plan is to steal and sell purebred dogs, amass $7000 and then buy heroin and become a dealer.

The Job: knock over a Mob card game run by Markie (Ray Liotta) who once knocked over his own card game, was never found out, and who then owned up to it after the heat was off. Everybody laughed back then “’cause people liked Markie.” But they wouldn’t laugh a second time – and Markie would be whacked as the obvious suspect, leaving Squirrel, Frankie and Russell free of suspicion.

“No, really, how do you get that dirty?”

With the compelling dialogue and foreboding sequences, we don’t even care that Pitt doesn’t appear in the first act! We wanna see what happens to these three mutts.

Pitt’s Jackie is a smooth operator. He believes in “killing them softly” – from afar, where there’s no chance of getting emotional with the mark. He opines, “The country is fucked. There’s a plague coming!” The reason? Not because of all the killings and crime and such – but because the Mob are now squeamish about murder, and hesitate on giving him the OK to do his job efficiently! What’s the world coming to, if The Mob won’t murder people?! There are many instances of this black comedy wrapped within the sinister dialogue surrounding it.

When Jackie shoots his first mark, it is a ballet of super-slomo, of bullets exiting barrels, of glass shattering, of blood flowering sensually in the air behind an exit wound. It is glittering art.

“Am I a clown? Am I here to amuse you?”

And when the closeup violence comes, we are reminded of Scorcese as well as Tarantino; vicious, brutal, real. Ray Liotta’s beating is disturbing for its veracity; reminiscent of the True Violence portrayed in THE SOPRANOS (cases in point: Mustang Sally beaten with a golf club; the hooker beaten by Joe Pantoliano).

New York Mickey (James Gandolfini) is called in to help Jackie. Here he comes in slow motion toward the camera – the late, great Gando! An expensive hitman (yet in this economy, accepting less pay), now past his prime, drinking, whoring and paranoia that will not end well for him. “You want ass? There’s no ass in the whole world like a young Jewish girl who’s hooking.”

KILLING THEM SOFTLY is a work of art, controlled, sincere and brutal. Dominik’s stark visuals are perfectly complemented by the ominous soundtrack, such unique aural dalliances, it is not even called soundtrack, rather credited as “Piano pieces and musical ambiences by Marc Streitenfeld.”

While they watch Obama’s election victory speech, Jackie gives a final clenched-teeth monologue about the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson and the shallowness of the new president Obama, which is stunning for its incisiveness. Now let me qualify: I’m no Obama-Hater, and I’m sure Brad Pitt himself doesn’t suffer Obama Derangement Syndrome, but his character’s tirade highlights the hollowness of any president’s words, no matter how soaring the speech:

“Don’t make me laugh! ‘We’re one people’! It’s a myth created by Thomas Jefferson… an American saint because he wrote the words ‘All men are created equal.’ Words he clearly didn’t believe since he allowed his own children to live in slavery. He was a rich wine snob who was sick of paying taxes to the Brits. So yeah, he wrote some lovely words and aroused the rabble and they went out and died for those words, while he sat back and drank his wine and fucked his slave girl. This guy [Obama] wants to tell me we’re living in a community? Don’t make me laugh! I’m living in America, and in America, you’re on your own. America’s not a country. It’s just a business. Now fuckin’ pay me!”

Poffy The Cucumber concurs.

END

Dear John, I never want to see you again.

Who knew dating was so frickin’ BORING?!

DEAR JON is a weepy date movie, where army guy Brick Rockchest (Channing Tatum, champion mumbler) meets beach chick Blondie Cocktease (Amanda Seyfried) and they bore us going on talk-dates. Then they get caught in the rain and kiss. Then they have a beach montage. Weepy-date-movie tropes fly at us like carnival balls thrown at target booths, to win your date a giant teddy bear that serves no purpose other than to block out thoughts of her previous boyfriends with its manifest presence.

Then Blondie accidentally calls Brick’s dad (Richard Jenkins) a retard, which precipitates the Second Act Breakup. But they make up quicksmart, so that when Brick gets called back to military service they can both be feeling that Love Pain in their groins.

Brick is sent to Libya, or Iraq, or Pakistan, or some other place that America is sticking its military nose into for no good reason, and we are assaulted and battered with a soppy montage of Blondie and Brick sending each other letters and reading them in voiceover. She calls him “Dear John” in the letters to comply with the movie title.

Cue 9-11. So Brick signs up to Fight Them Over There. And Blondie begs him not to go – even though the American ethos demands that she bless his stupid little revenge volunteerism. He cries and says he needs her to tell him what he should do. Oh, a 90’s Man. It gets him a sex montage with good production values (i.e. we can’t see anything and there’s no actual pumping motions).

The most authentic moments in this film are between Brick and his mildly autistic dad. Very poignant, but it’s too little too late.

Brick is in some sandblasted desert when he receives the REAL Dear John letter. And burns all her letters. Girlies in audience weeping like marmosets.

Blondie has married Cancerboy (Henry Thomas). Yeah, that’s right, not only does this movie hit every weepy-date-movie trope imaginable, it even stoops to giving characters cancer, so that Blondie can marry (which is a tragic turn in our weepy-date-movie flow chart) and then Cancerboy can conveniently die (bad for him, good for flow chart), and the movie can close with Blondie wrapping her thighs around Brick again.

I wept all the way through DEAR JOHN, because I was so happy that an army caveman like Brick could read and write.

END

Every president rapes. Only one is an Oscar winner.

Thieves in the Temple.

In ABSOLUTE POWER, Clint Eastwood is super thief Luther Whitney, robbing a mansion when he is interrupted by two lovers entering the room. Luther takes cover and witnesses rough foreplay, until the man gets too rough for the woman and she retaliates by trying to stab him.

The man, pinned on the floor, cries, “Help! Help!” and two Secret Service men shoot the woman (the glorious Melora Hardin) fatally from behind.

The man is the American President (Gene Hackman). Judy Davis (who always looks like she never got enough sleep) is Secretary of State, and as she and her Secret Service men clean the room, Luther makes a break for it. The Secret Service men (Dennis Haysbert and Scott Glenn) pursue him, but he eludes them. With a secret that could topple the presidency.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. ABSOLUTE POWER does not give us any ambiguity on how the American President is corrupt – he’s pretty much been handed the White House by his billionaire benefactor, Walter Sullivan (E.G. Marshall), the old man whose wife he just killed. And Hackman imbues the role with every ounce of contempt and duplicity that we know the actual President has for the American people whom he should be serving.

The Prince song Thieves in the Temple has nothing to do with politics, but these lines could very well be applied to The White House: “…Don’t care where they kick / Just as long as they hurt you / There are thieves in the temple tonight.” And we begin to realize that the actual “thieves” in our temples are not those simple robbers in our houses who steal money and jewels – the thieves are in the highest temples of power, CREATING the social disparities that CAUSE the robbers in our houses.

Ed Harris is police detective Seth Frank, misdirected off the murder scent by the cover up of the White House criminals; hot on the trail of Luther, but unable to prove anything. Besides, he’s hot on the TAIL of Luther’s estranged daughter Kate (Laura Linney), who is a trial lawyer, so he is stuck between a rock (the presidency responsible for murder – heaven forbid!) and a hard place (his pants). Once again demonstrating how real criminals (those in positions of sociological power) misdirect blame downwards. The thief becomes the focus of derision rather than the actual murderers.

Remember that bandit mouse from the Klondike Kat cartoon? “Savoir Fare is everywhere!” That’s Luther. His daughter comes home with Seth – Luther is there; Seth is brushing his teeth – Luther is there; Sullivan gets into his town car – Luther is there. In a career of subdued roles, Eastwood directs himself in one of the most subdued, seemingly behind the scenes of the plot itself.

While attempting to capture Luther, Scott Glenn and Ed Harris are paired up; though they are strangers from two rival departments at odds with each other, there is a nagging familiarity about them being onscreen together…Of course! These guys were astronaut pals in the Mercury 7 program in THE RIGHT STUFF!

On the president’s orders, the Secret Service go after Luther and his daughter. But Luther is there! In one of the most satisfying scenes of mercilessness Eastwood has ever performed: Secret Serviceman Colin (Haysbert) sneaks up on Kate in a hospital bed, with a lethal injection. From behind, Luther grabs Colin, puts a needle to his neck, warning him that a small dose will fry his brain, adding, “You went after my little girl – and that’s entirely unacceptable!” (From that day, I began using the phrase “Entirely Unacceptable” to people who let me down and you have no idea how powerful an indictment it is!). Colin pleads with Luther, “Mercy.” Luther replies, “I’m fresh out,” and pushes the needle’s plunger. (Stabbing those who let you down in the neck with a hypodermic needle is also pretty satisfying, but, like Dave Chappelle, I plead The Fif on that one.)

ABSOLUTE POWER is not “political” and makes no sociological statements. If anything, it underscores how the American president should be answerable for the crimes he commits – and we should already know that! In a more subtle way than usual, ABSOLUTE POWER shows us that Clint still has The Right Stuff. Though his character is a thief, he manages to retain the avenger idiom of his best anti-heroes and rights a wrong quite decisively. And takes down the President of the United States.

Now that’s absolute power.

END

Steps in it.

Will Ferrell as Adam Sandler and John C. Reilly as a funny Will Ferrell.

Both 40 going on 14. Both thrown together as step brothers when their single parents (Richard Jenkins and Mary Steenburgen) marry; set in their ways, yet forced to share the same house, they must somehow find a way to co-exist – or this mixture of funny, half-funny and deadpan stupid gags would all go to waste.

Splash review on the DVD box for STEP BROTHERS, from Kyle Smith, New York Post: “The funniest film I’ve seen this year.” You don’t get out much, do you, Kyle?

Movie opens with a quote onscreen: “Families is where our nation finds hope; where wings take dream.” The credit reads: “an actual quote from George W. Bush.” Rather than pushing any political stance, I think this movie is trying to tell us it’s going to be about a couple of mongoons.

One of the main gags is, of course, that both Ferrell and Reilly are probably no more than ten years younger than their parents. Once we’re over that one, there’s hardly anywhere left to go, yet the movie keeps trying: thrill to the drama of the parents giving the spoiled step brothers an ultimatum of finding a job or moving out; cringe at the brothers’ attempts at making an informercial while destroying their father’s yacht; vomit at the eventual success of the brothers as an unlikely musical duo, saving the day at a business symposium (where Horatio Sanz solicits one titter from us as an 80’s Billy Joel Tribute Band – “We only play his hits from the ’80s”)…

There are a few good lines, all said by someone other than Will Ferrell, but if you enjoy this movie without being whiskied up enough to put a mule-deer into a coma, you’re probably related to him.

END

Guy Ritchie without the Two Smoking Barrels.

At times funny, at times frenetic, at times foolish, BURN AFTER READING is mostly a lost opportunity with a great ensemble cast.

Brad Pitt is a goofball Valley Boy (ten years too old for the role), saying “shit” to his heart’s content, as John Malkovich is a recently-fired CIA agent (perfect for the role), saying “fuck” to his. George Clooney is in magnum head-waggling mode as another Coen idiot construct, an ex-secret service agent with a proclivity for surfing the web for one-night stands; Frances McDormand is a gym employee (who works with Pitt) who is looking for love in all the wrong chat rooms and hooks up with Clooney.

Each character is an extreme stereotype and the plot is woven into their lives through Pitt finding a CD left behind at the gym, which he thinks is classified CIA material. When he and McDormand trace its ownership to Malkovich and try to sell it back to him, complications arise and they end up trying to sell it to the Damn Russkies.

Turns out it’s only Malko’s memoirs, so it’s a McGuffin.

Written and directed by the erratic Coen Brothers, BURN AFTER READING loses itself somewhere amongst the many plot threads and the second act. The comedy is so black it tips into espionage, and the espionage is so moronic, we’re sure it’s trying to be a black comedy.

But then it gets too black with one sudden, accidental kill, which freezes the smile on our faces, wondering whether this kill was meant to be funny – because the character who gets it right between the eyes is completely innocent and was in the middle of a throughline.

I like shocking as much as the next nihilist, but the Coens sabotaged their own movie by wiping out this much-loved character in the second act.

I wouldn’t go so far as some reviewers to state “Burn After Viewing” – just burn the third act and excise those unfunny CIA segments with J.K. Simmons. Then we’ve got ourselves a watchable spy comedy that outsmarts GET SMART and is way funnier than QUANTUM OF SOLACE.

END