(2 People gave this 1.00 out of 5)

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The series that refuses to die…

The H-Bomb:  Bruce Willis makes a shockingly un-triumphant return as John McClane, the hero cop who always seems to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.  This time, that place is Russia, where his estranged son, Jack (Jai Courtney), has been arrested for murder.  Mere moments after McClane arrives at the courthouse where his son is scheduled to appear, the place is rocked by a giant explosion, as some heavily armed goons swarm in looking to take out Jack as well as Komarov (Sebastian Koch), an ex-billionaire who apparently has some damning file on a Russian bigwig hidden away somewhere. [H-Man Note: This movie's plot somehow manages to be both paper thin and ridiculously convoluted at the same time.  I shall do my best]

After the explosion, Jack grabs Komarov, jumps into a van, and hightails it out of there, with the bad guys in hot pursuit, and a confused as fuck McClane following behind all of them.  This leads to an outrageously over-the-top, yet curiously dull, chase that practically destroys half of Moscow.  Once they leave the bad guy’s in the dust, McClane learns his son’s secret . . . that he’s a deep cover CIA operative . . . yeah . . . how’s that for a contrivance?

Jack is trying to get Komarov out of the country in exchange for whatever this file is, and he doesn’t appreciate his cowboy father showing up and nearly blowing the whole operation.  But, as Jack will soon find out, his dad is about to come in handy, as the bad guys will soon be back, in force, to get this Komarov fellow, one way, or another.  From there, we get a stream of double crosses, triple crosses, gun battles, an insanely ridiculous amount of explosions, and some father/son bonding as the McClanes dodge bullets all the way from Moscow to Chernobyl.  As all this is happening, the senior McClane is left wondering, “Why does this shit always happen when I go on vacation?”

Yippie Ki Yay, Mother Russia . . . or not.

The original Die Hard, released in 1988, is undeniably an action movie classic.  It was exciting, suspenseful, had a fantastic villain, and its lead character, John McClane, was a hero who was as human and vulnerable as he was bad ass, which made him far more relate-able than most other action stars of the era.  Die Hard 2 was a decent sequel, if perhaps a bit too close to the original in its story and structure.  Die Hard with a Vengeance I fucking love.  It was the one I watched over and over again as a kid, and having just recently re-screened it for the first time in years, I can say it’s easily the best of the Die Hard sequels.

Then, after a twelve year hiatus, we got Live Free or Die Hard, and this is where the series started its downward spiral.  Directed by Len Wiseman, who recently graced us with his oh-so-necessary Total Recall redud, this one wasn’t terrible, but the action was cartoonish, CGI-saturated, sanitized, and worst of all, neutered for the PG-13 masses.  It just didn’t look or feel like a Die Hard movie, and the title was fucking lame, to boot.

Now, as much shit as I might give Len Wiseman, he is fucking Christopher Nolan compared to John Moore, the uber-fucking-hack who helmed the shit-tastic Max Payne, and who is now spraying his fail all over the Die Hard series with A Good Day to Die Hard.  A movie as Goddamn dreary as its Russian setting, this is proof positive that, unlike the Bond films, the Die Hard series is not meant to go on forever.  The action scenes are nothing more than an endless, senseless series of bangs and booms, the editing and camera work are appallingly shoddy, and the pacing is just terrible (for an action flick running only 90 minutes, I was a hell of a lot more bored than I should have been).  Worst of all is the ass wipe screenplay by Skip Woods, which is astoundingly inept, with a confusing as fuck story, no memorable dialogue, and characters made of cardboard.

And on the subject of characters, this is a series that once gave us such deliciously evil villains played by the likes of Alan Rickman, Jeremy Irons, and William Sadler.  This time, the identity of the villain changes so many times that when the true head baddie is finally revealed, you’ll have long stopped caring.  It doesn’t help that they’re all just a bunch of clichéd, interchangeable euro-trash thugs who are not even remotely menacing or distinct.

Then there’s Jack, who, as played by the spectacularly bland Courtney, is just a belligerent little butt-face who I kept hoping John would just sock in the mouth.  See, in this movie’s limp dick attempt at character development, McClane Jr. and Sr. are not on speaking terms at the film’s start, but, predictably, will come together through the carnage and reconcile by the film’s end.  It could’ve worked, if Jack didn’t come off as such a whiny little bitch boy with daddy issues.  Through the whole movie, he moans about how John was “never there for him,” and calls him by his first name, instead of dad.  This is supposed to pay off in the end, when he finally does call him dad.  It would’ve been a big moment, if only I gave the slightest shit about this snot-nosed douche rag .

And finally, I must touch on McClane himself, who was once a relate-able, everyman hero who displayed such human qualities as fear, anger, and pain.  Remember that great scene in the original, where he had to pick all that broken glass out of his feet, and then could barely walk after that?  That flesh and blood McClane no longer exists.  This new McClane is a laid back superman who takes everything in stride and reacts to life threatening situations with an attitude so blasé it’s almost Zen-like.  Maybe McClane actually became a Zen Buddhist at some point, that would explain the bald head, but I digress.  This super-McClane can fall down several stories of scaffolding, and then simply stand up, dust himself off, and walk away, which I must admit, is pretty impressive for a guy pushing 60!  And I won’t even get into his wandering around Chernobyl without a radiation suit.

The only way in which this John McClane even remotely resembles the one from 25 years ago, is his penchant for cracking wise.  That’s pretty much it.  The reason for this, of course, is Bruce Willis himself.  He brings to A Good Day to Die Hard the same attitude he brought to Cop Out, the “I don’t give a flying fart, I’m just in this for the money” attitude.  He sleepwalks through this mess from beginning to end, and to see him, with this truly half-assed performance, show such callous disregard for the series that made him a movie star is simply a depressing sight to behold.

In fact, all of A Good Day to Die Hard was a depressing sight to behold, to see a once great series reduced to such a sloppy and downright joyless product.  Yes, this is a product, not a movie.  It’s most definitely not a Die Hard movie, just a generic action junker that just happens to star Bruce Willis playing a generic, underwritten character who just happens to be named John McClane.  If I were to hope for another entry in this series, it would only be so it wouldn’t have to end on such a shitty note, otherwise, I say it’s time for this franchise to just fuck off and die . . . hard.

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(1 People gave this 1.00 out of 5)

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Say what, David?

The H-Bomb:  28-year-old Wall Street billionaire Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) is in for one hell of a day.  His latest investment proved to be a not so wise one, as he stands to lose his entire fortune, and his security detail has just informed him that a credible threat has been made against his life.  Upon receiving all this wonderful news, Packer decides to do what anyone in his situation would… go across town for a haircut.  The only hitch is, the U.S. President happens to be in town, and his visit is causing traffic jams all over the place.

This does nothing to sway Packer’s plan of action, as he absolutely must have his haircut from this very specific barber.  So, climbing into the back of his super pimped-out stretch limousine, the inside of which looks like a space ship, Packer begins his surreal, daylong odyssey across NYC to the barbershop.  Along the way, he encounters an eclectic mix of colleagues, acquaintances, and lovers- all played by a variety of familiar faces- as well as his ice queen of a wife (Sarah Gadon).

Most of these people appear abruptly inside his limo, with no explanation offered as to how they got there, and spout mouthfuls of Greek Salad about his shrinking fortune, the economy, the future, the past, technology, sex, philosophy, anti-capitalist protesters, and God only knows what else.  For most of these incomprehensible, mind numbing exchanges, Edwar… ahem, Eric remains perched upon his thrown in the back of his space limo, sucking down cocktails, banging his mistress, and having his asymmetrical rectum examined by a visiting physician,  all while he ponders one of the universe’s biggest mysteries: Where do limos go at night when they’re done driving people like him around?

Occasionally, Packer does leave the “safety” of his vehicle, to either meet his wife in some restaurant or another, or hook up with a hooker in some hotel.  Occasionally he will venture out into the street, where people fire guns at him when they’re not inexplicably throwing pies in his face.  What could all this possibly mean?  I know not, I care not.  I just wish he would get to the Goddamn barber’s already!

How one reacts to David Cronenberg’s latest film, Cosmopolis, based on Don DeLillo’s novel of the same name, will depend on what kind of person they are.  The artsy-farts will praise it for being “ingeniously” indecipherable, while normal people will absolutely fucking hate it because it is so utterly indecipherable.  How did I feel about Cosmopolis?  Frankly, I felt like the guy from Scanners… ya know, the one whose head exploded.  In other words, this indulgently talky head trip sent my brain into a complete and total meltdown, due to a massive overload of bullshit.  For much of the picture, I had no clue what these weirdos were blathering about, and worse than that, I didn’t care enough to even try and keep up with it.

As an enormous fan of Cronenberg’s, particularly of his more “out there” films, I really hoped that Cosmopolis would be a return to form for him after A Dangerous Method, which was disappointingly flat.  By about ten minutes in, all such hopes were dashed.  That’s about how long it takes for this circle-jerk of suck to turn completely intolerable.  If I were to liken Cosmopolis to any of Cronenberg’s past works, I would say that it’s a hybrid of Crash (1996) and Naked Lunch, which oddly enough are my two favorite Cronenberg films.  From that, it would stand to reason that I would love Cosmopolis, right?  Well, sometimes reality defies reason, as I did not like Cosmopolis… not one bit.

Now, I’ve already encountered some film snots out there who call this movie “brilliant,” and who claim that anyone who speaks ill of it just “didn’t get it.”  You know what, fine, I didn’t fucking get it.  Does that automatically make me stupid?  Okay then, I’m stupid.  So, with my stupidity firmly established, this film still sucks.  Between Cronenberg and the other director named David who makes strange, abstract films, there have been plenty of movies that I absolutely loved, even though I didn’t entirely “get” them.  I loved them because, while I didn’t necessarily understand everything, I still found them provocative, captivating, and intriguing.  They made me want to keep watching, so I could ponder and try to decipher them.

Cosmopolis is not provocative, or captivating, or intriguing.  Instead, it’s a tedious, hour and forty-something minute long parade of “people” (no one here is playing a human being, let’s be clear on that) spitting out a shit-load of stilted, wannabe philosophical drivel masquerading as social commentary about contemporary American society… at least that’s my best educated guess.  It’s not at all stimulating or interesting, but merely pompous, pretentious, and dull.  Worst of all, it comes off as insufferably smug, as everyone is way too pleased with themselves for how clever they seem to think they are.  Sorry to break it to you, folks, but being incoherent does not make you clever… quite the opposite, in fact.

What passes for an actual plot in this poppycock is just pathetic.  Random shit happening randomly for random reasons.  Protesters fling dead rats around while chanting empty slogans, why?  Packer gets a pie slammed into his face, why?  Packer blows his security chief’s brains out, why?  Why?  Why?  Why?  Wish I could tell you.  This whole fucking thing is less like genuine Cronenberg, and more like some film school freshman trying to be Cronenberg, just being weird for weirdness sake, while pretending to make a profound statement of some kind.  The result is both sad and painful.  Fucking Christ on his rubber cross did I loathe this bullshit movie!

Normally I would say at least the actors managed to somewhat salvage this worthless cock-cheese, but no… not really.  This is meant to show us that Pattinson is a “real actor” and not just some pouty male model. Yeah, that didn’t happen.  He’s still doing the Edward thing, except not emo so much as simply emotionless.  I know, his pampered character is meant to be numb, detached, and bored with the world around him, but he just comes off as boring.  The supporting cast, which includes Juliette Binoche, Mathieu Amalric, Jay Baruchel, and Samantha Morton, don’t fair much better, as they all basically get one scene each, where they spew out impenetrable gobbledygook.  I just wanted them all to shut up and go away.

Of all the actors, the only one who really earns his payday is Paul Giamatti, who shows up late in the show as Packer’s would-be assassin.  Basically, the last twenty minutes of the movie belong to him, he rocks it, and he almost brings this frozen corpse of a movie to life.  His performance alone managed to raise my rating up by half a star… for whatever that’s worth.

On a technical level, Cosmopolis is an impeccably crafted picture.  The cinematography, by regular Cronenberg crony Peter Suschitzky, is beautiful… perhaps his finest work, I would venture to say.  He does an incredible job of painting with light and color, giving everything an appropriately heightened look, and the meticulously composed angles have a very Kubrickian vibe to them.  I also like Howard Shore’s score for the film, and that giant rat marionette thing was fun to look at for the few seconds it was on screen… that about does it for the likes.

I know my art house street cred may take a hit for not liking Cosmopolis, but I gots to keep it real, I absolutely despised it on almost every conceivable level.  (For the record, I gave The Tree of Life a positive review, and my favorite film is Blue Velvet, so I think my art house street cred is just fine.)  I love the bulk of Cronenberg’s filmography, so this review was particularly difficult to write.  Cosmopolis looked like it was going to be a welcome throwback to “Depraved” Cronenberg, but it just played like a pale imitation, instead.  A damn boring one, at that.  I know this once great director is getting up there in years, and that perhaps has caused him to lose a step.  If Cosmopolis is really the best he can muster now, maybe it’s time for him to just hang it up for good.

(1 People gave this 3.00 out of 5)

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A Total Dud

The H-Bomb:  From Hollywood super-hack Len Wiseman, he who is responsible for the duller-than-dogshit Underworld and the dickless Die Hard 4, comes the latest why-did-they-fucking-bother remake, Total Recall, which takes away all the fun, gory, campy awesomeness of the Paul Verhoeven/Arnold Schwarzenegger classic and replaces it with pure, unadulterated blandness.  Like that 1990 film, this is an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”, although instead of taking our asses to Mars, this time all the action is set on Earth, which has been mostly decimated by chemical warfare.

This war was apparently so widespread that the only two inhabitable places left are, and man isn’t this convenient, England and Australia.  England (or The United Federation of Britain) is where all the upper class citizens live, while Australia (or The Colony) is where the second class citizens dwell.  Naturally, a conflict has started between the UFB and rebels from The Colony.  However, instead of fighting for oxygen, as they did in the original, these freedom fighters are fighting for the new most valuable commodity, living space (because people needing oxygen is so 90′s… I guess).

One man who is seemingly on the outside of this conflict is Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell), a simple factory worker who lives in The Colony with his impossibly hot wife, Lori (Kate Beckinsale), and works in the UFB.  Quaid commutes to the UFB from The Colony each day the same way millions do, by taking a giant elevator that goes right through the center of the Earth, called The Fall (I include this detail because it is the sole interesting contribution this remake brought to the story).

Despite having a gorgeous wife and a steady job, Quaid is somewhat discontent with his mundane life.  He really feels as if he was meant for something more.  The vivid dreams he has in which he and an unknown female companion (Jessica Biel) are being chased and shot at by Storm Trooper-like cops only re-affirm his feeling that something is missing from his life.

So one day, Quaid walks into Rekall, a business that manufactures fake memories and implants them into the heads of its clients.  This is a pretty controversial service that has a reputation for being rather risky, but after listening to a rave review from one of his co-workers, Quaid decides to give it a shot.  The slickster salesman at Rekall (John Cho) offers Quaid a number of memory packages, and the Secret Agent one is, of course, the one he goes for.

Seems like Quaid is finally going to get the exciting life he always (literally) dreamed of, but he gets more than he bargained for when complications arise, his memory implant is interrupted, and Quaid finds himself on the run for real, with everyone, including his now not-so-loving wife, trying to hunt him down and kill him.  Apparently, Quaid’s entire life is a lie, as he really is a secret agent who is right in the middle of The Colony rebellion.  But which side is he on?  And who is he really?  And is any of this real, or is it all simply being remembered for him wholesale?

Quaid must figure all of this out as people chase him… and chase him… and chase him… for pretty much the duration of this movie’s running time.  Holy crap did I detest this movie!  I mean, I wasn’t exactly expecting miracles from this utterly pointless remake, but when I have to try four times to get through a movie, because it keeps putting me to sleep, something is truly fucking wrong!

With this review, I really didn’t want to take the cliched, bash-a-remake-for-being-a-remake route, but this is a case where the overall negative perceptions that people have towards remakes are absolutely justified.  Wiseman’s Total Recall redo is just total shit… totally.  Remember the original Total Recall, the REAL Total Recall?  With its cool Mars setting, its memorable mutant supporting characters, its satirical sense of humor, its cartoonishly over-the-top violence, and its wonderfully cheesy performance by Arnold?  Wiseman, the creatively-challenged knucklehead that he is, filters all of that out of this new version.

What his version leaves us with is a colorless, humorless, and downright boring Sci-Fi action chase movie that is totally undeserving of the title that it has hijacked.  Taken on its own terms, this film isn’t so much terrible as it is mediocre, but when you hold it up to the original, which was just so balls-out incredible and so wildly unique and original and fun, it just shows this one to be the unimaginative, unmemorable, second-rate, store brand knock off that it is.  As I was watching this regurgitated pile of fertilizer, my eyes kept wandering over to my Blu-Ray copy of the original Total Recall, and I kept thinking to myself, “Yeah, that’s what I could be watching.”

Essentially, all the “character development” and “exposition” are confined to the first thirty minutes.  The remaining ninety minutes are dedicated entirely to chase scenes, one after another, in hover cars, through weird elevator things, and on foot… non-stop chases, each one more tedious than the one that came before it.  That Wiseman gave the movie a washed-out, desaturated look, only adds to the overall dullness of the proceedings.

Another aspect that fails to bring any life to this limp dick of a flick is the cast.  Now, I’m not a Colin Farrell hater, and I certainly think that he’s a better actor than Arnold, but in this role, he doesn’t have an iota of Arnold’s charisma and he just isn’t nearly as engaging.  A lot of that can be blamed on the script, as Farrell certainly is earnest in the role, but the writing is so flimsy that it’s impossible to invest in his character.

Biel, who I’ve never been a huge fan of, basically just runs and jumps around… acting doesn’t really enter into the equation with her.  Bryan Cranston and Bill Nighy are absolutely wasted in nothing roles that required them to do little aside from showing up on set.  The only cast member with any spark, the only one who could almost be called a redeeming virtue for this dismal dreck, is Beckinsale, who brings a shit load of attitude and believability to her part of nice wife turned ruthless assassin.  She’s not bad to look at, either (though the fact that she’s banging the talent-deprived Wiseman is a definite turn off).  Again, she’s almost a redeeming virtue.

But, there is no redeeming this dreary, generic re-dud.  I never thought a film as lively as Total Recall could be recycled into something this monotonous and uninspired.  It’s got enough going against it being compared to an original, but also the fact that I just saw Looper, a fantastic and highly original Sci-Fi chase film, only makes this movie’s existence all the more confounding.  This, so-called, Total Recall is totally forgettable!

(1 People gave this 5.00 out of 5)

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Absolutely Terrible Movie

The H-Bomb:  Yuppie financial adviser David (Brian Geraghty) offers his female co-worker, Emily (Alice Eve) a ride home from an office Christmas party.  David has had a crush on Emily for a while, and since she has just quit the firm to start a new job, he figures this will be his last chance to make a move on her.  However, David’s hopes of courting Emily are quickly dashed by another co-worker, Corey (Josh Peck), an annoying douche-face who also hits him up for a ride home.

On the drive out of the city, Corey decides that he’s hungry and pesters David to stop at an ATM so he can get some cash for a pizza place (this pizza place being one of the five restaurants left on the planet that still doesn’t accept credit or debit cards in the year 2011).  David would like to just tell Corey to shove it, but it’s very late at night, and he doesn’t feel like arguing, so he agrees to stop at an ATM, which is located in a small glass building in the middle of a deserted parking lot.

David parks, strangely, quite a ways away from the ATM, and Corey heads inside, only to wave both David and Emily in a few moments later.  Apparently, Corey’s ATM card won’t work, and he needs David to spot him some cash (as if the guy hasn’t already done him enough favors).  Once the money is withdrawn, they turn to leave, only to find some creepy motherfucker in an Eskimo jacket, standing perfectly still in the parking lot, staring in at them.

All three of them have an inkling that something is off about this guy, particularly when they try to leave the ATM, he starts towards them, only to stop when they go back inside.  Their suspicions that this ominous looking dude intends to harm them are pretty much confirmed when they witness him murder an unsuspecting passerby with his bare hands.  From there on in, this sinister fellow, whose face is perpetually hidden in shadow, proceeds to stalk and play mind games with our trio of non-heroes.

Since one needs a debit card to unlock the door to the glassed-in structure, the three of them should be safe, so long as they stay inside.  But, as the night wears on, and the temperature drops, they become desperate to either signal help, or find a way to escape (conveniently, not a one of them is carrying a cell phone).  The fact that the psycho outside is inhumanly patient and has a few tricks up his sleeve to lure them out, the odds of them surviving the night are not in their favor…

From the look of the trailer, I really thought that ATM would be right up my alley.  It looked like it had a potential to be a tense, tight, single location thriller that could do for going to an ATM after dark what Psycho did for taking showers, what Jaws did for swimming in the ocean, and what Pluto Nash did for paying to see Eddie Murphy movies.  And I was right, it did have that potential, as director David Brooks (making his feature debut), did manage to shoot and cut together some sequences that could have been nerve-wrackingly suspenseful… if it wasn’t for him being saddled with a screenplay by Chris Sparking (Buried) that wasn’t so utterly Goddamn stupid!

And when I say stupid, I mean exactly that, STUPID.  “Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!” as Ed Wood would say.  A stupid script with stupid protagonists who do the stupidest things imaginable, just because the stupid plot needs them to.  I’ve come down on certain horror movies for this kind of shit before, but here, these characters are so fucking moronic it totally and completely invalidates anything this movie might have had going for it.

I’ll just list off a few instances of the blatant dumb-assery on display here, in the hopes that you’ll pass this ass-wad up when/if you come upon it on Netflix.  Let’s see, first, our main character David inexplicably parks about a hundred yards from the ATM, even though the parking lot is empty and it’s freezing cold outside.  Then we’re supposed to believe that not one of these yuppie butt-rags has a cell phone on them, which in this day and age, is not just unlikely, it‘s absurd.  Then there’s the notion that these two grown men don’t have the nuts to go outside and try to rush this guy and overpower him, even though they agree that if he had a weapon, he would have brandished it by now.  This ain’t fuckin’ Bane we’re talking about, these two could’ve taken him, had they not been too chickenshit to try.

If that’s not enough, they also have numerous chances to bravely run away, like when he’s beating a passerby to death, or when he’s behind the ATM building hammering away at the back wall, they could easily bolt out the front door, but they don’t.  Or, all three of them, at any point, could have all made a run for it at once, each going in a different direction, thus ensuring that at least two of them would reach help, but that, of course, never occurs to them.  Instead, when they do venture outside to get help, they go one at a time, guaranteeing that this nut job will be able to foil them.  Hell, even the killer himself expresses his boredom with their shear stupidity when he breaks out a fucking lawn chair just so he can sit and watch his tiny-minded victims as they fumble about foolishly in their little glass hut.

I know that when people are under extreme duress, they tend not to make the smartest decisions, but thanks to screenwriter Sparking, these three dullards don’t have a quarter of a brain between them.  They work at a financial firm?  Yeah, with the state the economy’s in, I fuckin’ believe it.  Sparking wrote a sharp, intelligent single location thriller with Buried.  With ATM, however, he wrote a desperately contrived, nonsensical pile of poop.

The actors try their best with the imbeciles they were tasked with inhabiting, but as it breaks down; David is a sniveling wuss, Corey is an obnoxious dick, Emily is bland, and they are all dumber than a box of rocks.  Director Brooks, again, does show some talent with the camera, especially the creepiness of the isolated location at night, as well some well staged suspense scenes.  If he ever gets his hands on a good script, he really could make a good film, but this bundle of bullshit is not that script.  I can forgive a considerable amount of stupidity, as well as some lapses in logic, in my horror movies, but ATM had so much of both, that by the end of it’s 90 minutes, it just became insufferable, infuriating, and more than a little insulting.

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It’s the end of the world as we know it . . . and I don‘t care!

The H-Bomb:  Bring on the apocalypse…  seriously, I mean it.  Bring it on, now!  If it means not having to sit through any more of this dreary, tortuously inert, coma inducing crap-tastrophe, then the end of days is something I welcome with open arms!

Okay, I suppose I should backtrack a bit and explain myself.  11-11-11 (a title that doubles as an expiration date) is an apocalyptic thriller (pfft … that would imply the presence of actual thrills) from Saw II, III, & IV director Darren Lynn Bousman, whose surprisingly kick-ass Mother’s Day remake I reviewed a month or two back.  With that film, I thought Bousman was well on his way to becoming one of the better genre filmmakers working today… then he had to go and do this.

The story of this supernatural snoozer revolves around Joseph Crone (Timothy Gibbs), a successful author who’s wife and son died tragically in a fire a year or so back.  His son was pronounced dead at 11:11 PM, and since then, Joseph has been unable to help but notice the number 11-11 everywhere he looks.  He wakes up from a nightmare at 11:11, he gets into a car accident at 11:11, and he receives a phone call from his younger brother summoning him to Spain because their father is dying, and the time that call came in was … yep, 11:11.  In fact, every time a clock is shown in the film, it’s 11:11.

So Joseph hops the next plane to Spain, where he meets up with said younger brother, Samuel (Michael Landes), a wheelchair bound pastor who runs a church in Barcelona.  Since Joseph has been a devout atheist ever since his wife and son died, he has been estranged from his father and brother, and is none too happy to see them.

But before Joseph has time to mend fences, weird shit starts happening; he hallucinates his dead son, he catches glimpses of bizarre, demonic looking creatures in the shadows, his brother is attacked by a crazed parishioner with a gun, and that damn number 11-11 continues to pop up.  When a security camera catches a glimpse of a strange figure, the time code reads 11:11, and Joseph remembers that his mother died giving birth to Samuel some three decades ago on 11/11… as in November 11th, the movie felt the need to clarify.

Joseph, unable to shake the feeling that the number must have some greater meaning, researches it on teh internets, and comes to find that people called “Eleveners” (groan) believe that all of these 11-11 signs are messages sent by celestial beings trying to warn us that the apocalypse will come about on the date of 11/11/11… which is just a few short days away (and for me can’t get here fast enough).

11/11, if you remember, also happens to be Samuel’s birthday, and Joseph’s father cryptically warns him that Samuel is “very important” and must be protected.  And after the incident with the armed parishioner, as well as a close call with a falling chandelier, Joseph becomes convinced that his brother is somehow at the center of all the crazy 11-11 crap that’s going on.

Well, dear readers, this Summer has been remarkably kind to me, in that just about every film I watched and reviewed I liked, to one degree or another.  This looked like it was going to be a perfect summer season… then the pile of Satanic Suckage that is 11-11-11 had to come farting along at the last minute and break that streak.  The fact that it’s barely 80 minutes long, yet it still took me three tries to sit through it all, speaks volumes of how utterly fucking boring it is and what a chore it was to watch.  I viewed it on Netflix Instant Streaming, and I still felt like I had been ripped off in some way by the time it ended.

I find the subject of Satanism and the occult inherently creepy and fascinating, and the idea behind 11-11-11 is certainly an interesting one.  Unfortunately, the story, as executed by writer/director Bousman, is anemic, lethargically paced, and completely lacks any kind of suspense.  The exposition, of which there is a lot, is delivered via clunky, forced dialogue that the actors practically have to puke out of their mouths, and the end of the world scenario is given no urgency whatsoever.  This is a rare instance where Bousman is working from his own screenplay, and judging from the end result, it’s clear that writing is not where his talents lie.

Bousman attempts to keep us on the edge of our seats with randomly scattered jolt scares, but they only succeed in keeping us awake (and just barely, at that).  He also tries to ratchet up the suspense during the climax, and pay everything off with a big “twist” ending, but we the audience had already stopped caring long ago.  At least I did.  And as for the twist, it will be pretty apparent to anyone who’s actually paying attention, as Bousman, the brilliant writer that he is, foreshadows it with some insultingly obvious dialogue, “Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing…  The devil’s greatest trick is deception…”, and other such clichéd bullshit.

Adding even more to the movie’s overall dull-spiritedness is the lead actor, Gibbs, who is perhaps the most charismatically-challenged thespian this side of Sam Worthington.  If he were any more wooden, he’d be a fucking totem pole, and the few instances where he’s actually called upon to emote are simply embarrassing.  The scene early on where he has a big break down at the grave of his wife and son had me laughing harder than an old Eddie Murphy stand-up special, and maybe I’m being presumptuous here, but I’m fairly certain that was not the reaction that Bousman was going for.

Also good for some accidental yucks is the film’s final shot, which is meant to be oh-so-creepy and chill us to the bone, but instead comes off as awkward and giggle inducing… for those few of us who are miraculously still awake by then.  And that brings me back to my main problem, 11-11-11 is just so bloody dull!  Bousman has shown he is fully capable of making an effective suspense flick, so how did he go so fucking astray here?

Again, I believe the major problem is his lousy script.  It’s admirable that he tried to depart from the more visceral “torture porn” arena and make a different kind of horror film, but Darren Lynn Bousman the director was completely let down by Darren Lynn Bousman the screenwriter.  For any and all of his future projects, it would probably behoove him to leave the writing to those who are more capable.

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A collage of “Indie” clichés.

The H-Bomb:  Enoch (Henry Hopper) is your basic indie film protagonist; a sensitive young man with a tragic family history who’s lost and directionless and full of angst, yada, yada, yada.   He’s in between schools for reasons we’re told late in the film (not that it really matters) and his favorite past times include crashing the funerals of complete strangers and playing Battleship with his best friend, Hiroshi (Ryo Kase), who just happens to be the ghost of a WWII Japanese Kamikaze pilot… just take a moment and let that last bit sink in.  Ready to move on?  Okay.

One day, while crashing a funeral, Enoch meets a girl named Annabel (Mia Wasikowska).  Now much in the way that Enoch is our typical indie film leading man, Annabel is our typical indie film leading lady; she’s sweet, free spirited, into nature (including bugs and birds), is not necessarily drop dead gorgeous, but attractive enough to make us smitten with her, and, of course, she is the only person on the planet who can relate to our spastic weirdo of a protagonist. (This is the exact kind of character Zooey Deschanel would’ve played had the movie been made some 4-5 years ago)

Enoch and Annabel have a few meetings before they really hit it off, but eventually they bond over their conversations about funeral crashing, funeral attire, musical instruments, and I forget what else.  Then, right before this predictably quirky relationship can really hit its stride, Annabel drops an A-Bomb…  she’s got cancer and she only has three months to live.  Enoch takes this news remarkably well and continues the relationship in which they converse with Hiroshi the ghost, throw rocks at passing trains, go trick or treating, memorize facts from bird books, along with other such activities that I would most definitely engage in if I knew I was going to keel over in three months time.

Restless, which came out quietly last Fall, is Un Film du Gus Van Sant, a director most people will know from Good Will Hunting, but who I like more for My Own Private Idaho and Elephant.  I won’t do a full run down of his career, I’ll just say he’s had his share of solid films (Milk) and not-so-solid (Psycho remake), and that he’s one of those directors whose films I will go out of my way to see.  And now that I have gone way out of my way to see Restless, I can say that it is a movie that rightly went in and out of theaters with little notice, as the movie going public missed absolutely nothing when it flew underneath their radars.

Independent films over the last few years, particularly independent romantic dramedies, have developed their own aesthetic, become basically their own genre, with their own set of clichés; and aside from the ones already laid out, we are also treated to such staples as the typical indie soundtrack.  It’s hard to describe, really… it’s the kind of music that has a lot of bouncy, boinging noises in it, the kind that’s spunky, playful, grating, and just weird.  It also features cinematography that is nice but self-consciously artsy, chock full of pretty, perfectly composed pictures of our heroes drawing chalk lines around themselves, and overall, a whimsical vibe that’s meant to be endearing but just comes off as smug.

What I have just described is more or less the whole of Gus Van Sant’s Restless, a stereotypical check list of modern “independent” movie clichés, and in describing it, hopefully, I have taken away any and all interest you might have had in actually seeing this irritatingly self-satisfied wank-fest.  It is basically, weird boy meets weird girl, they have weird relationship, in which they have one boring, pretentious conversation after another, and then she, and I’m not spoiling a thing, dies of her cancer.  And it’s no biggie when Annabel does die, because she’s made peace with that and goes out with a smile, and we should all just party when she kicks the bucket, because that’s what she would want.

Plus, you know what’s really nice about her cancer, it’s that special kind of movie cancer, the kind that allows her to look all cute and pixie-like right up until the bitter end.  Ya know, unlike real cancer, where people are usually bald from chemo, deathly thin, and look like they’re being eaten away from the inside out, which, by they way, Mr. Van Sant, is what happens to real people with real cancer, fuck you very much!

But I don’t mean to get so hot under the collar, because Restless, which is inexplicably co-produced by Ron and Bryce Dallas Howard, is not a completely awful movie, it’s just an awfully annoying one with its overly familiar, oh-so-hip art house vibe.  Usually, at least the actors would help make things a little bearable, but here, we get Hopper (son of Dennis), who displays absolutely none of his late father’s charismatic intensity, and instead just mopes through this flick like a drippy little emo punk you just want to beat the shit out of on general principle.  In other words, I didn’t like him.

Then there’s Wasikowska (good thing this is a written review, so I wouldn’t have to try and butcher that), who does manage to be appealing in a way, but again, her character is the stock indie chick in a film that is made up entirely of stock indie film ingredients.  I wouldn’t be harping on this so much if it wasn’t so damn true!  Add onto that it’s never charming, never moving, nor does it ever ring emotionally true even once in it’s ninety-something minutes (and even that slim running time feels too long).  With all that, Restless adds up to nothing more than one a big, fat, obnoxious cliché of independent cinema that absolutely is not worth anyone’s time of day.

(2 People gave this 1.00 out of 5)

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Belongs squarely in the . . .

Limacher Low Down: The Sitter has previews that offer a pretty decent glimpse into the entire story line of the movie; an R rated remake of “Adventures in Babysitting”. The problem with trying to retell a classic of a generation is the fact it may not work well, and that is certainly the case with “The Sitter”. Jokes that some may get don’t always hit with others, and the only thing that made me laugh a handful of times were the one liners. The plot developed poorly, certain things were predictable, and the end couldn’t come soon enough.

“The Sitter” starts off with a rather “racy” scene where Noah (Jonah Hill) is doing everything he can to make the girl he wants, Marissa (Ari Graynor), like him even a little. We find out that Noah has no job, no money, and no license; when his mom asks him for a favor, to babysit her friends’ kids so she can meet a new man and get some extra cash for him, Noah reluctantly accepts. This part of the movie really shows us how wrapped up in himself Noah is, but why? We get a little background to the family life, but it seems a little preachy and a meager way of setting up future plot points.

So, Noah takes the job, not like he has anything better to do!  We meet the first kid, Slater (Max Records). Slater is a seemingly misunderstood kid who faces the pressures of someone twice his age, at least in his own mind. Noah then is introduced to Blithe (Landry Bender). Blithe is eager to grow up like  a Hilton or a Lohan, she says everything is “hot” and likes to put on make-up that would make Tammy Faye Baker cringe. Lastly, we meet Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez). Rodrigo was adopted and brought in from El Salvador. Rodrigo definitely has a chip on his shoulder.

The kids’ parents leave quickly, and like most brats, they start testing the patience of their new babysitter, Noah. That is until Noah gets a call from Marissa. The whole meeting of the kids is important to gain a better understanding of each character, and it does help build a flimsy rapport with the audience. A few things seem far-fetched, but this is a farce of a movie after all.

Noah, who was advised against driving the family vehicle (remember, he has no license), quickly loads up the kids in the minivan and is off to do what he can to get to Marissa, and possibly get laid. This is where I saw a shining gleam of hope, only to be let down. We meet Karl (Sam Rockwell), who has something that Noah was asked to pick up for Marissa. Karl quickly accepts Noah and wants to be “friends” with him. Well, to be friends with Karl is not what Noah has in mind; he just wants to pick up what Marissa wants and be on his way. Unfortunately, bad things happen to Noah and he gets into deeper shit than he ever imagined as he started the trek. One thing leads to another and Noah needs to get a hefty sum of cash in a short amount of time. I generally like Sam Rockwell. He’s made mostly good choices, but this role just doesn’t fit him, and it really comes across in the movie as well.

The adventure officially begins for Noah and the gang; and there are some good quick jokes in the scenes. When the “adventure” really kicks in there are parts that seem forced; parts that made me question the logic; and there were even parts that seemingly took way too long to develop to progress the movie in the direction, which was rather predictable, in the way it was going. The movie concludes on a rather predictable note, and while there are very few redeeming qualities, it just was good for the movie to be over.

So many scenes were predictable and not funny, which left a bad taste in my mouth. Development wasn’t a strong suit either, as the movie had moments of heart and growth; it also had moments that just fell flat and completely missed the target. The thing I hated most about everything was this was another situation where I saw most of the funny parts in the previews!

The kids in the movie, especially Landry Bender, were one of the few bright spots, as they really did a good job and held their own. One thing I came away noticing was that Jonah Hill works well in SMALL doses, but a movie where he’s the STAR and tries to carry the movie just doesn’t work. I say you can avoid this movie, and remember the good times of “Adventures in Babysitting”. Basically, “The Sitter” belongs in the, hmm, what rhymes with sitter?  Yea, if you can predict that, you can easily pass on this inept attempt to rehash a classic comedy.

(2 People gave this 3.00 out of 5)

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Sweet dreams are made of Zzzzzzzz…

The H-Bomb: So this is a dream house, huh? It must have been one dull ass dream. But how did it go wrong? This film, which I’m guessing was supposed to be a thriller, certainly had a dream team on both sides of the camera. A first rate director in Jim Sheridan (“My Left Foot”, “In America”), and a first rate cast in Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Naomi Watts. Sadly, instead of being a clever, well crafted spookfest with A-List talent, “Dream House” is merely a very well polished turd, one in which the audience will not be trying to untangle the over-tangled mystery, but will instead be wondering how it all ended up being such a thrilless and chilless bore?

Well, before I go into what went wrong, let me briefly take you through the set up: Book editor Will Atenton (Craig, sporting a laughably dorky haircut) is quitting his high paying job in NYC and relocating to a small town to write a novel, and spend more time with his all-to-perfect wife, Libby (Weisz), and their all-too-perfect daughters. The house they move into is a definite fixer-upper, but everyone’s happy… that is, until the girls start seeing a strange man out their window, and start hearing things go bump and creak in the night.

One snowy evening, such unnatural sounds lure Will into the basement, where he catches a pack of emo brats messing around with dolls and spray painting things on the walls. Will grabs one as they attempt to run, and she tells him about the man who used to own the house, Peter Ward, and how he murdered his wife and two daughters some five years earlier. When Will goes around town asking about the murders, he notices people giving him the stink eye. In particular, his neighbor across the street, divorcee Ann (Watts), seems to know more about the murders than she lets on. As Will tracks down this Peter Ward, who was recently released from the local laughing factory, he discovers something that… well, I should stop there.

To divulge any more at this point would be to drop some major spoilers, not that it would really matter, since the fucking trailer spoiled at least one major twist anyway (seriously, which intellectually challenged Marketing intern cut the trailer to this thing– I want his fuckin’ name!). Not that it really matters that much, since I highly doubt that not knowing this plot development would have enhanced my enjoyment of this hopelessly dreary affair.

Which brings me back to my original query, despite the Oscar Caliber Pedigree involved, where the hell did this lead footed, boring-er-than-thou “thriller” go wrong? Well, to me the answer is pretty obvious; this “Dream House” simply lacked the foundation it needed to stay standing. To put it more simply, it lacked a good script. When it isn’t just running through the list of supernatural thriller clichés, it’s just hokey, unbelievable, and kind of stupid (the scene in which a character’s name is explained is one of the dumbest, most unintentionally funny moments I’ve seen in any movie). After the key twist, the one the trailer brilliantly gives away, is revealed halfway through, the story just becomes illogical, repetitive, until it finally culminates in a climax that’s as rushed and tacked on as it is preposterous.

I feel bad for this cast, because they try, they really do. But when you give them nothing to work with, how can you expect anything more than nothing in return? I like Daniel Craig, and I really want him to have a bonafide hit outside of Bond, but for him, this is a Double-O Zero. I still have hopes for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. Weisz does her best with a role that basically required her to alternate between looking happy, looking concerned, and looking scared. She’s done better.

Watts, who looks like she’s had one facelift too many, has even less to do than Weitz, in what has to be her most thankless role since “Children of the Corn IV”. The great Canadian actor Elias Koteas is also in here, but God knows why, because he’s wasted completely in an important but severely underdeveloped role.

Plainly put, “Dream House” is a stinker. When it’s not going the “been there, done that, seen that, bored with that” route, it’s just making no fucking sense at all. The last time I sat through a suspense flick this lifeless was around this time last year with “My Soul to Take“, and while it didn’t quite plummet to the same level of suckage as that Godforsaken piece of shit, it comes shockingly close. Overall, “Dream House” is one sorry excuse for a scary movie, and one lame way to kick off the Halloween season.

(4 People gave this 3.25 out of 5)

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Stop touching your face!

How many times does the average person touch their face? Check it out, here: Wiki Answers & ChaCha.Com (yes, only two places…I’m lazy) the consensus agrees that the average person touches their face three to five times every waking minute. So that means on the high side, subtracting eight hours for sleep, the average person is touching their face a whopping four thousand, eight hundred times a day! Think about it…how many times have you touched your face today? What did you touch prior to that? Money? A doorknob? Toilet lid? Lightswitch? A pen? Your keys? Someone else? You get the picture – germs get transmitted easily through your touch. If you want a better picture, check out the Mythbuster’s episodes where they test the dirtiest items in a home.

Contagion predicates itself on this consensus, opening our story on day two of the outbreak with our first known victim, Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow), who just returned from Hong Kong on a business trip. Her husband, Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon) and son Clark (Griffin Kane) are both exposed but we soon find out that Mitch is immune. The story branches from there involving the CDC, most prominantly Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne), Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) and Dr. Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle). Rattling the CDC and the government cages, is blogger/writer and rabble rouser Alan Krumwiede who is dead set to blow his percieved government conspiracy wide open while making moves to cash in on the ground floor with a publicized cure. There are some other branches of story I won’t even touch, because in the end, it was all pointless.

I sat there feeling like I was watching a movie for the entire one hundred five minute run-time. For me, that’s a bad thing. I like to watch movies to be engaged, to be sucked in almost as if I were part of the story rather than a spectator. Sure, there was drama, and there was some suspense, but anything not directly pertaining to the impending epidemic at hand was just trite bullshit fluff that left me comfortably nowhere near the edge of my seat. For me, Contagion falls flat on its ass in that regard, just like the Oscar-winning Traffic did, which is no surprise as director Steven Soderbergh managed to lay a golden turd with that one. No doubt, his bowels are moving for a repeat.

Diatribe aside, there are a few bright spots of Contagion. The opening infection path montage was nicely done, and Matt Damon takes a hearty step into his non-Bourne Identity and plays the limited role of Mitch Emhoff very well. Another notable, though not on purpose, is Enrico Colantioni who plays Dennis French, a bureaucratic agent of some sort. He was notable in that I could not separate him from one of his previous roles – that of Mathesar (Galaxy Quest).

Every time he came onscreen I kept picturing him saying, “You must save us,” with that flaccid humor inducing smile to whichever person he was addressing. Jude Law is also convincing with his portrayal of a typical dirt digging conspiracy theorist/reporter that provides one of my favorite lines in the movie, ringing the death nell of print media.

In the end, while it was a good attempt, the multiple threaded storyline detracts what could have been a solid movie. Sadly, I think there will be some Oscar nods for this fluff, but the only thing Contagion can really be applauded for is its feast on people’s paranoia. Purell’s bottom line will make some executives happy in the next few months, I’m sure.