The H-Bomb: After a decade and a half of making a name for himself as a potty-mouthed indie auteur, Kevin Smith makes his second attempt to break into mainstream movie making, after his misguided PG-13, blander than white rice effort known as “Jersey Girl”. Is he more successful this time? As I always say, read on…

Kevin Smith is one of my favorite filmmakers. The moment I finished watching “Clerks“ on video for the first time, I immediately rewound the tape and watched it again. That‘s something I never do, but I found the film so fucking hysterical I just had to see it again right then and there. As you may have guessed from reading some of my bin bilge write-ups, Smith’s profane style of humor appeals to me, and I’ve been a devout fan of his work for a decade now.

That said, I honestly was not looking forward to “Cop Out”. The more I heard about this movie, the more I got that sinking feeling that Kev sold out. Why? Well first off, the fact that he didn’t write it. What’s the damn point of Kevin Smith directing someone else’s script when he himself is most distinguished for his obscene and clever writing? The least impressive part of his films has been his simple “point and shoot” style of directing. Secondly, the buddy cop action comedy genre is so fucking tired. From the “Lethal Weapon” movies, to the “Rush Hour” movies, and all the others in between, did we really need another one of these? Thirdly, the trailer I saw looked bloody awful! It made me want to chuck my laptop out the fucking window! Fourthly, Tracey Morgan… more on him later.

Fortunately, for my sake, “Cop Out” turned out to be much better than expected. It’s often funny and watchable throughout. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good, in fact it’s pretty uneven in spots, but for much of the time, I found it reasonably entertaining.

The story breaks down like this: Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan play a couple of dicks in NYC who have been partners for nine years. Willis’ daughter is getting married soon and her wedding will cost around fifty grand. Now, fifty grand is A LOT of money for a New York cop, and it doesn’t help that Willis and Morgan have both been suspended from the force, for a complicated mishap, without pay, for a month. Rather than let his daughter’s wealthy but douche baggy step dad pay for the wedding, he decides to sell a valuable vintage baseball card of his to cover the shindig.

Things get (overly) complicated when the card is stolen from Willis, and he and Morgan spend the rest of the movie dealing with burglars, car thieves, Mexican drug dealers, and other assorted low lives in order to get it back.

Yes, on paper, the plot SOUNDS. FUCKING. STUPID. However, the events unfold in a surprisingly unpredictable and enjoyable way… for the most part. While Smith isn’t credited with the screenplay, it actually is every bit as raunchy and R-Rated as anything he’s ever directed. It’s so rife with his style of profanity and sexual humor, that I suspect he did do a polish on the material, after all (The fact that the phrase :“ass-to-mouth“ is uttered at one point confirms this in my mind). And despite the fact that he’s not known for having any kind of visual flare, his skills behind the camera are quite impressive. There are slick camera moves and shaky cam aplenty, and Smith, despite statements he’s made in the past, shows that he has a skill for shooting action scenes. They’re well shot and the violence gets pretty brutal.

He does a good job of balancing the comedic and dark aspects of the material. At times it plays like a very gritty crime drama, while at others it feels like a “Naked Gun” movie. The dynamic between Willis and Morgan is what you would expect; Willis is the straight man and Morgan is the “funny” man. They have good chemistry together and, as such, play off each other well, though predictably, most of their interaction consists of bickering.

On the down side of things, the film is very hit or miss when it comes to the laughs. Morgan is alternately incredibly funny or excruciatingly irritating. This is perfectly encapsulated in a running gag the movie creates for him: whenever he’s speaking to a suspect, he repeats lines from famous cop movies. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Let me put it this way, if you ever want to hear the worst Robocop impression ever, go see this movie.

The same goes for Seann William Scott, who has a supporting role as a Parkour running thief; sometimes funny, sometimes annoying as fucknuts. The movie does drag in places from having scenes allowed to go on for too long and from too many subplots that have nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Were the rival detectives played by Adam Brody and Kevin Pollack necessary? Did we need the plot thread where Tracey Morgan’s wife may or may not be cheating on him?

Not to mention there are many scenes that could’ve and should’ve been left on the cutting room floor. One that comes to mind is an amusing yet lengthy and totally unnecessary scene between Seann William Scott and some random dude in a jail cell. While watching it, I kept thinking to myself, “Why the fuck is this scene in the movie? What purpose does it serve?” None, at all, as do a number of others.

When all is said and done, it is a perfectly decent action-comedy that mixes the laughs and the gunfire well, but it is flawed and more likely is worth a rental, and not a trip to the theater. If you do go to see it, be sure to stay through the first part of the end credits, because there is a hilarious scene that ends the film proper.

Sound the trumpet!

Swift shot:  Didn’t suck, was fun and I liked the overall premise.  What I could have lived without is seeing an Angel do battle with a machine gun, but, it was a fresh approach on biblical combat. This is the kind of film you just sit back and enjoy, don’t rip it to shreds and you will have a good experience.  If you want to shred it though, it would be easier than the Holy Divinity sending a legion of angels and his archangel, Gabriel (Kevin Durand) to smite an unborn infant – oh, wait, that isn’t so easy, apparently.

Enter Michael, and he isn’t John Travolta, smashing heads with a bull in some field, puffing feathers like some kind of lame twittering bird.  This Michael, Paul Bettany, slams to the Earth and in a dramatic self-flagellation scene, literally rends his wings from his back . . . and stitches them up using a mirror. You get an immediate understanding that God is the bad-guy in this film, so if you have no flexibility in your faith, you might want to check out 10Things I Hate About Christianity, it helps put things in perspective.

I held a contest for free movie passes wherein I asked people to explain why humanity should be spared from God’s wrath, someone suggested www.cuteoverload.com and even Cheeseburgers as reasons for letting us live – I am sure the PETA people would beg to differ, but . . . I digest. (That’s from Family Guy you knuckleheads)

I really enjoy movies about theology, even bad ones can be mildly amusing if handled in a fresh way.  And when you meet the sympathetic character in Legion, Charlie (Adrianne Palicki) doesn’t even have compassion for herself.  Charlie is a pregnant woman who smokes – I mean, she might as well be Hitler!  But, in order to show her transformation, she needs to start somewhere, and really the gutter is as good a place as any, right?

The other characters are quickly under siege by weak-minded people who allow themselves to be possessed by angels – critical aside, apparently everyone in the diner in Paradise Falls is immune somehow, or are they?  There were a lot of poor dialog choices in Legion.  The kind that make you want to to scream at the screen, come on, you can do so much better than that line, especially famous last words.

Still, this film had one gem I enjoyed tremendously.  When Bob (Dennis Quaid) is asked why he keeps carrying around an old zippo lighter now that he doesn’t smoke anymore, he replies, “I’m sentimental, my ex-wife gave it to me, and I want to remember how much I hate her.”  Nicely put!  But moments that could have been downright scary came across as lame, no Lame (with a capital L) – when you see it you will know right away which sequence I am speaking of, I think it was a nod to Chucky, but it just sucked, truly abysmal.

Keep an open mind, have fun with it, don’t be so damned critical and you will enjoy it.  Remember what it was like to just sit back and enjoy a film?  That is what this film was like for me, I just sat back and casually enjoyed it.  It had kind of a Demon Night meets Diner feel to it, but, if you take it for what it is, it ‘aint too shabby.

“It’s classified.”

Swift shot:  Left me wanting more on every level, too much was shoved into the script – nothing really powerful ever happens, it was like firing hollow-points at a watermelon, sure it’s fun, but if you aren’t taking out bad-guys, so what?  The exposition never really happened, and I understand this is a film based on a TV series, that explains why so much plot is cut out – just not enough time.

Edge of Darkness tells the highly complex story about a Boston detective who witnesses his daughter murdered on his front stoop.  Was he the target, was she, is there international intrigue involved, is it the typical Hollywood cliche crap where the US government are evil manipulators of the masses?  Guess which one it is?  I won’t spoil it for you.

Mel Gibson is still one of my favorite actors, because I have yet to see him phone one in, the same is true with Edge of Darkness.  I am sure after seeing the final cut he was disappointed in the overall product, but he has nothing to feel ashamed about – it was just too much crammed into such a short run time – much of the drama takes place in your imagination – and when you can’t dramatically connect with the characters (because all the good stuff is classified) your imagination isn’t enough.

The supporting cast all performed well; no one was firing blanks, but it just wasn’t something I would recommend to my friends – which really is what we always get asked “So, how was it?”  Well, Edge of Darkness wasn’t great, and it wasn’t garbage – but it was convoluted and imprecise film-making.  And, sadly, it was quite predictable, even though it presumed it wasn’t.  The writers probably thought they were being interesting, but it came across as confusing more than anything else.  Several characters were barely explained, and the overall package was overstuffed with nonsense instead of good juicy plot.

Rent this one when you are jonesin’ to watch Mel Gibson kick some ass and take names, but not if you are looking to be inspired, intrigued, or even remotely stirred.  I wanted to like this one more; I just couldn’t connect – maybe you will have better luck.

Zac is back.

“Me and Orson Welles” stars Zac Efron as Richard Samuels, a high-school student who is bored with school and longs to be doing something more exciting than studying. A chance encounter with Orson Welles (Christian McKay) changes his outlook on things. Welles is casting for his latest project, an updated version of “Caesar” and Richard is given the role as Lucius. Richard is thrust into the “glamorous” world of show business, and he learns the ropes from Sonja Jones (Claire Danes), who works at the theatre where “Caesar” will be performed. Sonja will do anything to get ahead and this leads to disappointment for Richard, who after a night of passion with Sonja, thinks he is in love with her.

In this movie, Orson Welles is portrayed as a shady, womanizing, slightly crazy genius. Sometimes he was like-able, most times he was not. Efron did a good job in his role (as always). Supporting cast included Ben Chaplin, who had a few solid scenes as George Coulouris and who played Mark Antony in “Caesar” and Kelly Reilly as superficial “shine the light on my face this way, not that way” Muriel Brassler, who played Portia in “Caesar”.

I wasn’t sure who exactly the target audience for this movie was. We have Zac Efron, teen heartthrob, in a movie about a producer/actor from the 30’s. I’m not sure if this movie was geared towards the teenage girls, or the older crowd.  I noticed that a lot of the older folks in the audience thought the movie was hilarious (maybe because they were around in the 30’s??).

The H-Bomb: The romance between Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and her androgynous, emo vampire boyfriend Edward (Robert Pattinson) has hit a snag. Meanwhile, she’s started to take a liking to her old Native American friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner), who has a secret or two of his own. Teenage fangirls, start your drooling…

Let me start off by saying that I am not a teenage girl and therefore “Twilight” just isn’t my thing. In fact, when I was asked to review this, I thought to myself, “Man, Rick Swift must really hate me!” I made a point of not watching the original, and now I’m being forced to see the sequel?! Father, why have you forsaken me?!

Oh well, bearing in mind that I am not the target audience for this movie, the second in the phenomenally (and bewilderingly) popular “Twilight” series, I went into it determined to be as open minded as possible, because every film deserves a fair shake from me, and hey, it does have vampires, which I generally dig.

The first thing I did when I was tasked with reviewing “New Moon”, was to go rent the original film, to familiarize myself with the “saga,” and I must say that it did not give me high hopes for the sequel. Aside from some nice direction and strong performances, I found the first “Twilight” to be about as exciting and interesting as watching a dog take a shit. To me the whole thing played out like a cheesy soap opera, complete with exceptionally lame dialogue, with some super natural elements mixed in. So I approached the sequel with pretty low expectations and… what do you know, I didn’t hate it at all.

Which is not to say that I loved it, or even really liked it, but again, taking into account that I am not part of the teeny-bopper demographic, I have to say this movie is not bad. It starts out with Bella the human and Edward the vampire still very much in love, with Edward endlessly stating how he’ll always be with her and how he’ll always protect her, so on and so forth. This is a good thing, because Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre), the redheaded female vampire, is out to kill Bella as revenge for the death of her mate at the hands of the Cullens. But after Bella is attacked by a member of the Cullen family, Edward realizes that the best way to protect her is to leave her, which he does, vowing to never see her again.

This throws Bella into a deep depression for several months. She becomes completely withdrawn, sitting around staring out the window all day, and having horrible nightmares that make her scream hysterically in the middle of the night. Ain’t love grand? This cycle of misery goes on until one night when Bella discovers that if she puts herself in perilous situations, Edward will appear to her as an apparition warning her of danger. So Bella figures that a ghost Edward is better than no Edward and decides to start taking up thrill seeking type hobbies like… motorcycle riding.

She purchases a couple of junked motorbikes and enlists the help of her newly hunky friend Jacob to help repair them. As they spend their afternoons together, they begin to realize that they’re attracted to each other. But all of the sudden, Jacob begins acting strangely, with a violent temper that seems to come out of nowhere. He also seems to know more about Edward than he’s letting on. All the while, people have reported seeing large wolf like creatures in the nearby forest…

This film basically has everything you’d expect from a “Twilight” movie; teen romance, teen love, teen anguish, teen angst, teen horniness, with some vampires and werewolves thrown into the crock pot for good measure. Director Chris Weitz (American Pie, The Golden Compass) takes over for Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the first film, but the change isn’t all that noticeable as the visual style and tone are pretty much the same. There is more action in this installment, but it’s nothing to write home about.

The writing is as gooey as it was last time, and gets very redundant, with characters constantly proclaiming their love for each other while bemoaning how they can never be together for one reason or another. There’s even an obvious reference to Romeo & Juliet in the first part of the film. The cast does perfectly fine, given the mushy material they have to work with, and the tween-age girls will have plenty of eye candy to feast upon in the form chiseled, naked male torsos.

While “Twilight” is not my cup of tea (sorry, just not that into gazing at chiseled, naked male torsos), I won’t partake in any fashionable bashing of it, either. Truth be told, I found it perfectly watchable. If the reaction of the young females in the audience I saw it with is any indicator, the movie’s fan base will eat this up and ask for more, which they will get, since the third one, “Eclipse”, is already in the can. So, while real horror fans like myself may be completely baffled and dismayed over this “Twilight” craze, the audience this film was made for will be more than satisfied. As for me, when it comes to vampire tales, I’ll take “Nosferatu” or “Near Dark” over this kid’s stuff any day.

“This is the way the world ends… this is the way the world ends… this is the way the worl-” Okay! Okay! For fuck’s sake, I got it already!!!”

H-Bomb: Richard Kelly’s scatter shot, schizophrenic apocalyptic tale has so many characters, themes, ideas, plots, twists, subplots, sub-subplots, and sub-sub-subplots that it weaves itself into a web of almost complete senselessness, nearly beating the viewer into intellectual submission. However, it does make for an inexplicably interesting watch…

(more…)

Ready for a hook up?

Swift shot: Classical contrasting cinematography makes for some visually compelling shots, and the story is interesting enough.  Some of the characters, ok, almost all of the characters come across as unbelievable – and where Seven was able to make the shocking seem tangible, Horsemen fails to ride convincingly into an evil sunset.  The evil is not interesting, because it is so over the top it comes across as fantastical.  Still, this one is chock full of gore and bondage, so it should satiate most S&M enthusiasts.

Dennis Quaid and Ziyi Zhang share the screen in this straight to DVD horror, suspense – made for Seven fans.  Though clumsy in a few places, the acting is solid and believable, but the actions of these characters just didn’t seem to fit with reality.  Granted, criminally insane people can get away with the most despicable of acts in Hollywood, the whole Hannibal series more than illustrates that point.  But, Hannibal was an evil genius, and when the veil is lifted in The Horsemen, you may find yourself going, what?  I don’t get it.

I blame Director Jonas Åkerland for that, because he had a good cast, a decent script, and he should have built up more around the why these evil acts were being committed.  In an evil mind, “just because” never cuts it with me.  There needs to be some driving motivation for the evil, or I just don’t care.  And when you learn that “We are the Nothings” is behind it, uhm, this story is a perverse, adult version of the Neverending Story, chock full with a son (Lou Taylor Pucci) who has lost his mother and is being raised by a dad that is clueless and aloof.

Bondage fans, suspension lovers and bleeders will eat this movie alive, as the fetish element is splashed in your face throughout.  Remember The Cell with Jennifer Lopez?  This literally ratchets up the suspension scenes with even more macabre elements of terror.  So, if you want Seven-lite and are into fetish violence, look no further than The Horsemen.

Surrogates, based upon the comic book series of the same name, is the sort of high-concept sci-fi fireball that draws you in with numerous compelling ideas and then does nothing particularly interesting with any of them.  They’re mere frilly stuffs adorning the real bottom line, which is noise, violence, and hyperkinetic urban pursuits.

The film is set in the year 2017, which an intertitle announces as “The Present.”  This comes after an opening informative montage that suggests a rich opportunity for satire that this fairly humorless film immediately begins squandering.  In the years leading up to “The Present,” technologies corporation VSI has mainstreamed “surrogates,” lifelike robots that essentially perfect the human experience: real people, like you and I, reside in pods that allow them to remotely inhabit and control their “surrogates,” providing all the traditional sensory stimuli associated with being human, with the additional benefit of being whoever they want to be and completely impervious to harm.  Furthermore, since surrogates have become the majority and replaced their human operators in daily life, violent crime has seen a 99% reduction (although the opening exposition fails to explain why).

FBI Agent Greer (Bruce Willis) finds it pretty striking, then, to learn that when a pair of surrogates turns up destroyed, their human operators are later found just as dead, with their brains “melted from the inside out.”  Greer and his partner, Peters (Rahda Mitchell), begin investigating the origin of the mysterious weapon responsible for this anomaly and learn that one of the victims was the son of the former head of VSI (James Cromwell, in what feels very much like a cameo).  Meanwhile, the weapon finds its way into “Dread Territory,” which consists of government-protected humans-only safe havens, not unlike Indian reservations, for those who refuse to surrender to the surrogacy lifestyle.  The denizens of these surrogate-free zones are impoverished survivalists led by The Prophet, played by Ving Rhames, whose origins and motives become hazier as the film progresses.

The film is densely, albeit not convolutedly, plotted, for its 88-minute running time.  The nature of the surrogates allows for an interesting brand of violence in which the bodily harm is more grievous (Greer’s brutal assault on a surrogate who cuckolds him recalls the face-destruction-via-fire-extinguisher from Irreversible), but the stakes are lower, as the surrogates are really just tangible video game sprites.  Consequently, when flesh-and-blood Greer is in physical danger among the surrogates, the danger is more deeply felt.

Director Jonathan Mostow stages his action scenes with more aplomb than can be found, say, in the unwatchably rapid-fire slideshows of things happening in the recent Terminator Salvation, and the film does have a clean look, but where Mostow excels in action he fails just about everywhere else.  If the film looks clean, it also looks too slick—when some unnecessary oblique angle isn’t being used, the camera is constantly moving.  Such over-direction of the film’s visual aspects smacks of narrative insecurity, and in the case of Surrogates, such insecurity is well-founded, as the film’s handling of dramatic situations—specifically, the cornball domestic drama between Greer and his wife, and the grief of Cromwell’s character over his son’s death—is tone-deaf, limp, and about as inorganic as the surrogates themselves.  Reaction shots reveal screen test-caliber mugging, clichés such as “Give me your badge and your gun” aren’t mitigated by any kind of creative license, and key lines of dramatic dialogue (“Oh my God.  If it was me they were after, I’m responsible for my son’s death”) sound like they belong in speech bubbles.

The look of the surrogates themselves is unsettling, as they resemble something like a cross between the animated characters from The Polar Express and department store mannequins.  Greer’s surrogate looks like a Madame Tussaud’s version of Bruce Willis circa Moonlighting.  When Greer’s “meatbag” human self is out and about, he hobbles, hunches, and generally has difficulty moving around.  For once, and refreshingly, Willis looks his age.  He’s not fit.  In fact, when we first see Greer’s human form at rest in his pod, we don’t even recognize him as Bruce Willis; a portly, bald middle-aged victim from a few scenes prior is seen in the same general setup as Willis, therefore homogenizing the two.

Such notions about being free from the confines of infirmity, old age, gender, disability, etc, by way of cerebral cortex “jacking in” technology have been explored before, however, and more compellingly in films like Until the End of the World, Strange Days, and eXistenZ, all made over a decade ago (although all by filmmakers with greater aims than Mostow).  Surrogates, then, feels a little conceptually dated in light of its having nothing new—or much anything at all—to say about its conceits. Furthermore, more recent works in this genre such as Children of Men and District 9 illustrate that a sci-fi actioner can retain the integrity of its ideas, emotional resonance, and even satire without compromising the punch of its action.  Bruce Willis’ presence and his dual selves, too, elicited fond thoughts of 12 Monkeys, another film by which Surrogates suffers in comparison.  And at fourteen years of age, it’s considerably less dated than Surrogates, which is stale right out of the package.

The opening visuals are entrancing and even border on spellbinding, two hands sewing the finishing stitches on a creature made to carry on this post-apocalyptic worlds life. A world where machines and humans have collided, a world we are far too familiar with in Hollywood from Terminator to The Matrix and now to Tim Burton’s producing credit 9. The sad thing about this cgi-sci-fi flick is that Hollywood seems to think dialogue is not important when there is action scene after action scene to compensate. The screenplay is plagued with command after command line , it never tackles the complex themes it aspires to actually cover. 9 asks the question we always ask “why are we here”, but it never even tries to answer it allowing it’s nevertheless amazing visuals to stomp all over it.

9 stars Elijah Wood as the youngest and most intelligent “creature” (which reminded me much of the creatures from Sony’s Little Big Planet) always defying authority, and making dangerous, action packed decisions.  The authority, voiced by Christopher Plummer is #1, who seems to think that keeping to themselves will save them from total extinction and annihilation. Jennifer Connely voices #7, a pretty bad ass creature that is introduced via a visually appetizing decapitation. If you wanna see a movie this year that is visually exciting, has astounding cinematic photography, and leads to absolutely no where, this is your ticket. And although this flick isn’t directed at pre-teens or children alike, it does drum on the same kind of silly underwritten dialogue that hangs way beneath its visual caliber.