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“What in the name of Elvis is going on?”

The H-Bomb: Dave (Chase Williamson) and John (Rob Mayes) were just a couple of typical, twenty-something slackers when they came upon a new mind altering drug called Soy Sauce. A pitch black goo with hair growing out of it, Soy Sauce can “open doors to other worlds” by giving its users an array of psychic powers, as well as making them able to see things normal people cannot… like strange, otherworldly creatures. Other side effects of the Sauce include turning sausages into cellphones and doorknobs into dicks… but let’s not get into that.

Before Dave and John can fully wrap their tiny minds around the new powers this black gunk has given them, they find themselves in the middle of an outrageous plot that involves a full-on invasion of Earth by beings from an alternate dimension. Now, our un-dynamic duo, with their recently obtained extra-sensory abilities, find themselves in the most unenviable position of being the only ones who can stop it. You may want to step back, because shit is about to get freaky.

I kept the plot synopsis for John Dies at the End deliberately general, because if I tried to go into any real detail describing this thing, I would, in all likelihood, only confuse you. Sure, I could tell you about the demonic monster assembled from meat products, or the flying mustache bat creature, but you really need to see it for yourself for any of it to make even an iota of sense.

Based on a book by David Wong, John Dies at the End is brought to us by screenwriter/director Don Coscarelli, who has dabbled in the extreme abnormal in the past with his Phantasm films (of which there are four), as well as his goofy, but irresistible cult hit, Bubba Ho-Tep. As bizarre as those past flicks were, they ain’t got shit on this one. John Dies at the End is by far, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Coscarelli’s most all out bonkers film to date.

Imagine if someone were to drop Naked Lunch, Night of the Creeps, and any adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft into a blender and hit puree, this zany ass horror/sci-fi/comedy thing is what would probably come out. I don’t know how much of the material in here is Wong’s and how much is Coscarelli’s, but it seems like they both threw absolutely everything they could at the wall to see what would stick, and if something didn’t stick, they simply said, “Fuck it. We’ll make it stick, every last bit of it. Even if we have to use fucking super glue, it shall stick. Logic be damned.” This line of thinking has resulted in a genuine work of what-the-fuck cinema that even David Lynch would be proud of.

Granted, this is nowhere near as esoteric or confounding as a Lynch film, it’s still way the hell out there, and often makes no bloody sense whatsoever. But that’s fine, as it’s made clear from the off set that this takes place in a world where anything goes. Literally. We could call this lazy writing, an excuse for the author/filmmaker to just make any damn thing up as he goes, a way to give himself an easy out if he gets stuck story wise, and it probably is, but with a flick this wildly whacked out and unpredictable, not to mention this gruesomely fun, that I can let it slide.

What I can’t let slide, though, is the confusing beginning, a structurally jumbled mess of flashbacks and flash-forwards that’s all over the place, including a bit with a severed head and a broken axe that the film leaves hanging and never comes back to. Once it settles into its framing device with Dave telling his story to a reporter (Paul Giamatti, who also executive produced), all is well, but at first it comes off as scatter-shot and makes us feel a little lost as to where we are in the story.

While I’m complaining, I should also bring up that for a film this ambitious, and it gets pretty damn ambitious, it sports a very low budget, and at times it shows, particularly with the uneven special effects. When it sticks to practical effects, its all good, but when it goes the digital route, it’s like watching a computer game. There are some green screen shots in a cave that just reek of artificial cheese (seriously, is it that hard to film in an actual cave?). The most egregious of the lot, though, is when the film abruptly switches to animation in order to depict a large scale massacre. This, like Kill Bill Vol. 1, is the sort of flick where you can get away with that kind of thing, but the transition is jarring, and they obviously did it this way because they lacked the funds to do it practically.

But enough with my petty gripes, on to the cast, who have given me absolutely nothing to gripe about. Williamson, making his feature debut, plays Dave with just the right balance of sarcasm and bewilderment. We experience pretty much everything through his eyes, and he makes the character easy to relate to and pull for, despite the outrageous circumstances he finds himself in. Mayes, as the John of the title, makes this doofus stoner oddly endearing, even if he is a complete dunderhead. Giamatti brings some weight to the supporting cast as a reporter who isn’t what he seems, as does Clancy Brown, who is funny but underused as Marconi, a superstar televangelist/monster slayer. Fans of Phantasm are in for a particular treat, as a certain Tall Man makes a cameo as a demented priest.

All things considered, John Dies at the End may not be one of the best films of the past year, but it is certainly one of the most original, which should come as no surprise, as it is brought to us from the same director who, ten years ago, gave us an elderly Elvis Presley who is forced to do battle with a soul sucking Mummy in a Texas nursing home. While it doesn’t quite have the heart or charm of his Bubba Ho-Tep, John Dies at the End is every bit as absurdly entertaining, and Coscarelli does manage to somehow make it even more outrageous. On the heels of this, I am certainly curious to see what Coscarelli does next, I can only hope it doesn’t take him another ten years to do it.

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A great story, but merely a good movie.

The H-Bomb: In post-war 1940′s America, fascism has been defeated overseas, but here at home, segregation still exists in practically every facet of society; in schools, buses, restaurants, restrooms, and professional sports. Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) feels that it’s time to break down that racial barrier by recruiting an African American player onto his team (though he admits it’s as much a financial decision as it is a social statement). After an extensive search, Rickey settles on a 26-year-old prodigy out of California named Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman).

This Robinson kid soon proves to be quite gifted, as he makes stealing bases look easy, and can hit a home run like it nobody’s business. He clearly has the potential to be a great sports star, there’s just one problem… his skin color. He is the first African American to ever play in the Major Leagues, and given that this is the 40′s, not everyone is a fan. Despite being clearly talented, Robinson encounters, and is forced to deal with, bigotry at pretty much every turn. It’s something that could derail his promising career, especially if he loses his cool in public. So, the question is, will he be able to suck it up, put all the taunts and torments out of mind and just play the game?

As I said a long, long time ago in my review for The Blind Side, I’m not a sports fan. However, I do tend to enjoy sports movies, because they usually have the makings for good drama: a hero, typically an underdog, has to struggle against all odds, in order to achieve an ultimate goal, which in a sports film usually means winning the big game/race/fight, or what have you. That is the formula for most sports films, and it’s the one that 42 follows to the letter.

For Jackie Robinson, the hurdle he had to pass didn’t have to do with the game of baseball, so much as his ability to play the game while contending with small minded racism that seems to come from all directions; from booing crowds (there’s a chilling moment where a young boy starts shouting the N-word at Jackie after listening to his father do it), umpires, players from opposing teams, and even his own teammates.

One of the worst occurrences happens early on; Robinson is playing for the Montreal Royals in Florida, when some shit-kicking hillbilly cop walks up to him after scoring a run, and orders him to get off the field, or else. Another instance, one that personally brought my piss to a boil, is when Robinson steps up to bat in Philadelphia, and is forced to listen to an endless barrage of cruel taunts from Phillies Manager, Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk, who plays a true dick, and does it a little too well).

At that point, I would’ve had no problem with Robinson going over to the guy and caving his face in with his bat, which he clearly wants to, but of course doesn’t, because good old Rickey taught him better than that. He taught Jackie to turn the other cheek, that the best way to show up his unenlightened naysayers up is by performing on the field. And that Jackie does, by taking the Dodgers all the way to the Pennant… don’t think I’m spoiling anything there, folks.

As an indictment on racism, and showing younger audiences just how bad things really used to be, 42 pushes all the right buttons, hits all the right notes, and works nicely. As a sports drama, and a biopic of one of the most important men to ever play the game of baseball, it just doesn’t quite make the cut. This is mainly because Robinson, as a central character, is woefully underwritten. Boseman is stellar in the role, but aside from a few moments of warmth with his wife, Rachel (Nicole Beharie), and one crucial scene where he has a private emotional breakdown, he comes off as incredibly stoic and cold, to the point where he seems a little off putting.

I know it was a conscious decision for Robinson to behave that way in public, but we never get enough of a peek behind the curtain to get a sense of who he really was, and consequently, I never got as caught up in his story, nor did I care about him, nearly as much as I knew I was supposed to. I lay the blame for this at the feet of writer/director Brian Helgeland (screenwriter of L.A. Confidential and Mystic River), who does a masterful job of recreating the period. The ball parks, the locker rooms, and the back offices all look and feel authentic, it’s just a shame Helgeland decided to treat Robinson as a symbol instead of a character.

Because of that, the majority of the dramatically juicy bits go to the cigar chomping Rickey, who is played by Ford with gravitas and gusto. Unless I’m forgetting something, this is the first time in Ford’s career where he truly inhabits and disappears inside of a character. I didn’t even recognize him when he first appeared on screen, then, after some time, I forgot that I was even watching him. I would go so far as to call his performance Oscar worthy, even if he does overplay his hand at times by hamming it up a little too much. It also seemed a tad silly that he always had some wiser-than-thou speech prepared whenever someone came to him with a problem, but again, that’s Helgeland’s doing.

With 42′s faults aside, it is a solidly entertaining film that tells a remarkable, and important, “true” story (embellishments were made, I’m sure) that deserves to be seen, particularly by young people, who only seem to get their history from the movies these days, anyway (if Scary Movie 5 out performs this at the Box Office, I will lose all hope for humanity). Yes, it could have been better, and perhaps less conventional, but still, it’s uplifting, inspirational, and had me leaving the theater with a smile on my face.

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Groovy!

Click the image for more screen captures of Evil Dead (2013)

The H-Bomb: Or perhaps a better subheading would be, “Gory!” Very, very gory. For the initiated, this should come as no surprise, there will be blood… lots of it. Stands to reason, as it is a remake of one of the most unabashedly gruesome films ever made. 1981′s The Evil Dead is a homegrown horror flick shot on a shoestring over a period of several years that is now considered a classic by gore junkies the world over, and that started the careers of director Sam Raimi and B-movie demigod Bruce Campbell. Raimi and Campbell would later collaborate on two sequels, both of which also achieved cult status, and have now re-teamed to produce this remake. That they’ve overseen the project directly is probably the reason why fanboys are willing to give this redo a shot, instead of reacting with their typical knee jerk, vitriolic outrage.

Like the original, this one starts with five friends heading out to a remote cabin in the woods to spend the weekend. They include nurse Olivia (Jessica Lucas), academic Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), mechanic David (Shiloh Fernandez), David’s girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), and David’s sister, Mia (Jane Levy). You may have noticed there’s no one named Ash in that group, which is kind of a bummer, but really, who wants to see anyone besides Campbell in that role, anyway?

Unlike the original, these twenty-somethings are not gathered at the cabin to party. As it happens, Mia has a serious drug problem, and after a near fatal overdose, her friends have brought her out to the middle of nowhere as a last ditch attempt at an intervention. So, she has a fun weekend of torturous withdrawal to look forward to, while her brother and friends get to put up with her ugly episodes as they keep her locked in the cabin and away from her magic fairy dust.

All of that, however, soon proves to be the least of everyone’s problems, as when they arrive at the cabin, they find it’s dingy, disgusting, and in complete disrepair. It’s a dilapidated old dump that not even a hobo would squat in, and there’s a really foul stench coming from the basement. When the two men of the group venture down into the basement, they find several dead cats, along with signs of some ritual, a shotgun, and weirdest of all, a really creepy looking book that’s wrapped shut with barbed wire.

Everyone agrees that they should just attend to Mia and leave all that spooky shit alone, but egghead Eric, who acts as this movie’s Jeff Goldblum, can’t resist the urge to open the creepy book, flip through its creepy pages, and read the creepy incantations inside. Little does Eric know, he has just opened a Pandora’s Box from Hell, as ancient demonic spirits will soon descend on the cabin to claim the souls of those within. Now our young heroes will have to find a way to fight off this army of darkness, or they will all be dead by dawn… sorry.

Now I, like many, am pretty cynical when it comes to remakes, especially more recent ones, because their high aptitude to suck. I did go into Evil Dead more optimistic than usual, but I still had my reservations, as the original film is a personal favorite and kind of sacred to me. Having now seen it, I can say that even my slightest fears were entirely misplaced, as it is an absolute blast! I really must say, if all remakes were as flat out fucking fantastic as this, I wouldn’t have such a big problem with them.

What we have with Evil Dead is a truly twisted re-imagining that stays true to the bloody insane spirit of the original, while at the same time completely doing it’s own thing. Director Fede Alvarez tips his hat to the original in a number of ways, such as recreating some of Raimi’s most memorable shots, like the moving point-of-view shots through the woods, as well as re-staging the infamous “Tree Rape” scene. He also sets up some very familiar scenarios, then takes them in entirely new directions that actually provide a great deal of jolts, jumps, and genuine surprises throughout.

And that is something I really have to give Alvarez props for, aside from just making the flick bloodier than a used Maxi Pad, he also made it relentlessly intense, with a batshit crazy atmosphere of pure chaos that made me feel terrified for the characters. I also have to hand it to him for keeping the tone appropriately dark and serious. While I love the sequels, they took a more humorous route, to a point where the third film became more or less a supernatural slapstick comedy. All the hijinks has been dispensed with, this one is one hundred percent grim all the way. Grim… but oddly enough, still fun.

Another thing that makes this Evil Dead potent is, surprisingly, the amount of character development. All of the characters, with the sole exception of Blackmore’s Natalie, who is given nothing to do except die, are given much more depth and definition than your typical splatter flick fodder. At first, I thought that all the drug intervention drama felt way out of place for an Evil Dead movie, but as it turned out, that actually helped me invest in these people, and it got me to root for them once they started getting picked off in the most grisly and disgusting ways imaginable.

Which brings me to a point I feel I need to make, a kind of disclaimer of sorts. I may be overstating the obvious, but there is nothing PG-13 going on around here. This flick contains guts and gore galore, with people getting dismembered and disemboweled in all kinds of creative ways, ways which made even me wince once or twice… that bit with the tongue and the box cutter… eew!!! I don’t know how many gallons of fake blood were used in this movie, but I’d be very surprised if it didn’t set a record. Believe me, nothing was watered or sanitized for this remake. If the original Evil Dead was too gross for you to stomach, then you don’t want to go anywhere near this new one.

But, if you’re a blood thirsty freak like me, then this nasty ass remake is just your cup tea. It is a wild, ferocious thrill ride that does the Evil Dead brand name proud. It thoroughly kicked my fat ass all over the theater and left me begging for more like some demented, masochistic bitch boy! If you love the Evil Dead series, or horror flicks in general, then check this sick bitch out, pronto! And when you do, make sure you stay through the end credits, where a groovy surprise awaits…

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“You may call me Hitch, hold the cock.”

The H-Bomb: I should confess right off the cuff, I’m a sucker for movies about movie making. From 8 1/2, to Living in Oblivion, to Bowfinger, to one of my all time personal favorites, Ed Wood, I’ve always had a great interest in stories about the struggles of getting a film made. I also, like any true cinema aficionado, am an enormous admirer of the work of Alfred Hitchcock, in particular, his seminal 1960 masterpiece, Psycho. So naturally, when I caught wind that there was a film in the works on the making of Psycho, starring Anthony Hopkins as the master himself, my interest was piqued. It went right to the top of my must see list.

Then I began to hear the very mixed word of mouth about the film, with its detractors absolutely hating it, and my interest waned. Add to that the fact that it barely got a release, and failed to garner much notice during the awards season, and whatever hopes I had for this movie had pretty much eroded. They fucked it up. Somehow, they managed to fuck it up, although that no “No Talking, No Texting” PSA with Hopkins in his full Hitch get-up was pretty damn funny.

Anyhow, bearing the film’s buzz in mind, I, unenthusiastically, finally sat down to give Hitchcock a look, more or less to see how much of a train wreck it actually is, and as it happens, it’s not a train wreck at all. It’s certainly not as good as it could, or should, have been, and it’s easy to understand why many were underwhelmed by it, but it is far from being the absolute stink bomb that some have made it out to be.

Based on the book by Stephen Rebello, Hitchcock begins with the release of North by Northwest, which is met with mostly lukewarm reviews, and with people suggesting that Hitch, who is 60, has lost his touch. Determined to prove that he still possesses the power to shock and terrify, Hitch becomes obsessed with a novel that is loosely inspired by real-life mama’s boy-turned-killer, Ed Gein, and decides that will be his next project. That project is, of course, Psycho, and getting it made will be considerably more difficult than Hitch anticipates, as the bosses at Paramount see it as nothing more than a trashy horror flick, and refuse to back it.

Not one to be easily deterred, Hitch goes to his wife and number one collaborator, Alma Reville (Helen Mirren, in the film’s best performance), and talks her into mortgaging their home in order to fund the film himself. But money isn’t the only thing troubling Hitch, he also has to deal with the censor’s board (the head of which is played by a hilariously stuffy Kurtwood Smith) who make it clear that no nudity or graphic violence will fly with them. Needless to say, this master of suspense will have to be a bit creative when it comes to filming a certain scene set in a shower.

As if the hassles of bringing Psycho to the screen aren’t enough, Hitch also has to contend with his personal troubles with Alma. The burden of funding the film themselves has put a strain on the marriage, as they’ve grown distant from each other, and her once playful barbs towards him are now sounding more and more malicious. Worst of all is a new writing project Alma has started with writer Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), with whom she is spending a great deal of time with at a secluded beach house, where Hitch suspects they’re up to a lot more than just writing.

When things become too much for Hitch to handle, he turns to the company and advice of his new imaginary friend… Ed Gein (Michael Wincott). Will our director, plagued by insecurity and self-doubt, be able to complete his film with his marriage, career, and sanity intact? Or will he go completely psycho? Unfortunately, we already know the answers to those questions.

And therein lies the rub; we know how Psycho is going to turn out, we know how everything will turn out… and that kinda, sorta kills whatever suspense, or uncertainty, that the film hopes to build. This issue is compounded by John J. McLaughlin’s script, and Sacha Gervasi’s stylish-but-breezy direction, which lack any kind of dramatic momentum. Sure, there’s behind-the-scenes shenanigans and scene recreations from Psycho to amuse film nerds, and we do get to see some of Hitch’s obsessive, perfectionist quirks emerge as he makes a movie, but dramatically speaking, there’s nothing here to really make us care.

The conflict between Hitch and his wife over whether or not she’s having an affair is obviously meant to be the film’s dramatic crux, but since the film makes the answer to that question clear early on, without a shadow of a doubt, it’s ineffective. Perhaps if the filmmakers handled it with a little more ambiguity, some actual tension could have been wrung from it, but alas, there is none. This is also the case when we see Hitchcock fretting over how Psycho will turn out, because, again, we all know how it turns out.

The overall lack of dramatic weight aside, my other major issue is with the performances. Not that they were bad, per se, it’s simply that, for me, most of the actors never became the people they were supposed to be. When I looked at Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh, I didn’t see Janet Leigh, I saw Scarlett Johansson made up to look like her. And when I looked at Anthony Hopkins, I didn’t see Alfred Hitchcock, I merely saw Anthony Hopkins in a fat suit and facial prosthesis. What’s worse is that his performance didn’t seem like a performance so much as merely a shallow impersonation. From an actor of Hopkins’ stature, I really expected more.

Perhaps I’m not being fair, as I’m so used to watching the real people that I just can’t accept these impersonators. No matter, this is still a very flawed film. That’s not to say, though, that it’s a bad one, as it is light as a feather and goes down pretty easy. As a movie buff, I was fairly entertained by all the cutesy little references and in-jokes contained in the film. But that’s the problem, it’s a movie for movie buffs, and movie buffs only. It’s full of winks, nods, homages, and little more. There’s no compelling drama to speak of, nor is there even any real insight into Alfred Hitchcock, the man, the myth, or the legend. Because of that, Hitchcock, as a whole, comes off as flat, superficial, and inconsequential.

(1 People gave this 4.00 out of 5)

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“Spring break forever, bitches!”

The H-Bomb: Four college friends decide to do what no college student has ever done before; head down to Florida for Spring Break. Three of them (Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine) are total wild chicks who are into boozing, smoking dope, and shoving various powdered substances up their noses. The fourth one, Faith (Selena Gomez), is a goody-goody two shoes who’s into prayer groups and is not at all a party girl. Why she’s BFFs with these other chicks is anybody’s guess.

Anyhow, the four of them have been planning and saving for several months for this trip, and much to their dismay, when they pool their savings together, they only have around $300. So the girls, minus Faith, go about procuring additional funds, with the help of a couple of spray painted squirt guns and some ski masks… that’s all I’ll say about that.

So, with said additional funds raised, the bikini-clad foursome finally hits the sunshine state, where they ride motor scooters, dance on the beach, drink, smoke (not cigarettes), and play cocktease with some douche bag jocks. Then one night, they all party just a little too hard, and they end up in jail, where they’ll have to spend two whole days if they can’t pay the fine. Now, our fab four are in a real bind; they have to either spend the rest of their Spring Break behind bars, which would be like such a bummer, or call their parentals for bail money, which would so totally suck, as well.

Fortunately, the young lovelies are spared from making such a painful decision when they are bailed out by a mysterious benefactor… “Alien” (James Franco). Who (or more appropriately, what) is “Alien?” A white boy gansta/rapper/drug dealer guy with dreadlocks, a mouth full of gold teeth, and an unhealthy fixation with Britney Spears, who claims to be from another planet… a claim this reviewer is inclined to believe. The girls (rather inexplicably) fall for Alien’s charms, as he brings them into his world of drugs and sex and money (and guns, lots of guns). But Alien’s world is a truly dangerous one, and the farther the girls descend into it, the more their dream vacation threatens to turn into a total nightmare.

Spring Breakers, which is perhaps the most artsy-fartsy beach movie since… The Beach, comes to us from writer/director Harmony Korine, a filmmaker who first made waves back in 1995 with his screenplay for Kids, which I cannot deny was absolutely brilliant. It was haunting, provocative, and overall just a deeply disturbing work. As for everything else he’s done, Holy Christ… let me do a rundown; Gummo was garbage, Julien Donkey-Boy sucked donkey dick, and Ken Park… don’t even get me going on that vile pile of ass vomit.

As far as I’m concerned, Korine is a gutter auteur of toilet bowl cinema, and I’m not exactly a fan of his. However, if there is one thing being un critic du cinema has taught me, it’s to go into every single film, even the ones I think are going to blow beaver butt, with an open mind… as doing so can periodically bring about a pleasant surprise. Such is the case with Spring Breakers. I expected to despise it, strongly, but I ended up kind of liking it.

Now, I should point out that this is not a movie for the masses. In fact, I’m a little surprised it’s gotten such a wide release. Many who go to see this film are really not going to like it, for perhaps a couple of different reasons. The art house crowd, who would recognize Harmony Korine’s name, are going to see the first half of the film and think it’s just a polished Girls Gone Wild video. The moviegoers of less sophisticated design, who show up for the T&A, which is supplied in abundance, will probably be put off by the artsy-ness of the whole thing.

What am I talking about? Well, the way the film is edited, we’ll see montages of people partying on the beach accompanied by moody, dreamy music and/or quasi-deep narration from one of the characters. Another bizarre artistic touch is when certain lines of dialogue are repeated for no apparent reason.  Maybe it’s meant to imply that those lines have some greater significance…? Fuck if I know. Let me put it like this, if Terrence Malick ever directed a beach party movie (after dropping a shitload of acid), it would turn out something like this. For many out there, I imagine it won’t go over very well… at the end of my screening, when the closing credits came up, somebody shouted, “What the hell was that?!”

For me, however, it more or less worked. Like Korine’s past films, it gets incredibly sleazy, and sordid, and made me want to take a shower afterwards, but I was also invested in what was happening, intrigued as to where it was going, captivated by the gorgeous cinematography by Benoit Debie, stimulated by the bodies on display (I am a dude, after all), and, for the most part, entertained, particularly when the flamboyant Franco enters the picture.

The first half plays like a slightly pretentious version of Project X, with Gomez and Hudgens doing things that Walt Disney most definitely would not approve of. This front section of the film does get a tad repetitive and tedious, what with all those seemingly endless montages of smoking, drinking, and fucking. And aside from Gomez, none of the lead girls are well developed as characters and are more or less interchangeable.

Then Franco comes into the movie, and when he does, it becomes his movie entirely. He has to be the craziest white dude with dreads this side of Gary Oldman in True Romance, and hot damn is he a blast to watch. A long way from the Land of Oz, his “Alien” is a disgusting, creepy, little scuzzbucket… but he’s also absolutely fucking hilarious. Everything he does, from talkin’ black, to playing the poolside piano for his ladies, to sucking off a Beretta, is just priceless, and he more than makes the movie. This is probably my favorite performance of his, and if the Oscars had any balls (which they don’t), they would nominate it, for sure (which they won’t).

Thanks to Franco, I had a lot more fun with Spring Breakers than I ever should have been allowed to. But his outlandish turn aside, I really enjoyed the film overall as I was watching it. So, why the relatively low rating, you ask? Well, when it was all over, I was left with one burning question: What was the point? What was Korine trying to say with this? I mean, it’s obvious from the heavy stylization and the introspective voice overs that he was going for more than pure exploitation here. So what, then? That bad things can happen to out-of-control college kids on Spring Break? That was the apparent point up until the last ten minutes, where the story makes an absurdly ridiculous turn that is so unbelievable that it invalidates such a point.

It was then that I came to the realization that Spring Breakers, with all its depictions of excess, decadence, and hedonism, really doesn’t have a point. That is such a shame, since Korine, as a director, has finally made a film that’s worth a damn, he just forgot to give it a purpose, and when it ended, I was left feeling kind of empty… despite the strangely good time I had with it.

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Flawed, but compelling and important.

The H-Bomb:  Bullying is one of the more unpleasant aspects of childhood, I don’t think there is anyone who will argue with that.  For many out there, it’s a sad fact of life, a pain in the ass that’s an inherent part of growing up.  Just about anyone who has experienced bullying firsthand will tell you, it is no fun to endure.  Have I ever been bullied in my life?  Well, I was a fat kid for most of my childhood, so what do you think?  Bullying is something that has gone on for as long as anyone can remember, but over the last few years, it has become more and more of a societal concern, mainly due to the number of kids who have committed suicide because, apparently, they were being bullied relentlessly.  The number of bully-related suicides have grown to near epidemic levels, and parents, teachers, and entire communities seem to be at a loss as to what to do about it.

With the documentary, Bully, filmmaker Lee Hirsch attempts to examine the effects of bullying by following three subjects; Twelve-year-old Alex, a geeky introvert who is both physically and verbally abused by kids on his school bus, and is pretty much friendless at school, sixteen-year-old Kelby, who has been ostracized from her entire Oklahoma town ever since she came out as a lesbian, and fourteen-year-old Ja’Maya, who is in deep legal doo-doo after bringing her mom’s gun onto her school bus and threatening her classmates with it.

The film also introduces us to David and Tina Long, whose eldest son Tyler took his own life at the age of seventeen because of bullying, as well as Kirk Smalley, the father of another bullied child, twelve-year-old Ty, who also committed suicide.  The movie cuts back and forth between these people, as we observe the kids trying to cope with the constant torment, and the adults, parents and various school administrators, as they try, seemingly in vain, to combat this problem.

If I were to give out ratings to films based solely on good intentions, then Bully would earn six out of five stars, easily.  As an indictment of bullying, it is pretty powerful stuff.  It tugs on your heart strings, it pushes your emotional buttons.  When you watch it, you won’t be able to help feeling sad for the awkward-but-sweet Alex when you see what he has to put up with day in and day out, or for the two sets of parents when they talk about the children they’ve lost.  You’ll vacillate between frustration and anger as you watch various school officials refusing to deal with the problem by either saying “boys will be boys” or going into complete denial- there’s an absolutely bubble-headed, brain-dead bimbo bitch of an assistant principal in here who is so fucking inept at resolving bullying issues that you’ll just want to take a fucking crowbar to her head.  Not to hurt her, mind you, just to knock some Goddamn sense into her.

As far as eliciting emotions from the viewer goes, Bully succeeds in spades, there’s no denying that.  It also gets the job done in terms of bringing awareness to the issue of bullying, how truly harmful it can be to the victims, and how it most definitely should not be tolerated.  It more than gets all of that across.  However, when it comes to examining the issue in any kind of deep or truly meaningful way, that is, sadly, where Bully falls short.  Way, way short.

Yes, we see the effects of bullying from the point of view of a few victims and their families, all cherry-picked from rural parts of the heartland.  Unfortunately, that’s just about all we see, and that is the egregious flaw of this documentary- its scope, its focus, is way too narrow.  Other critics have pointed this out, and having seen the film myself, I can say they are absolutely right.  There are so many other angles to this issue, so many other points-of-view, that a comprehensive documentary would have included, but this one simply does not.

Why are there not any child psychologists interviewed in the film, to shed light on why kids bully each other?  Do they do it out of insecurity?  An undeveloped sense of empathy?  Because they themselves are abused at home?  For the lulz?  Why?  Another question that’s never explored, why is it that even though bullying has been around since the dawn of man, only in recent years have children started committing suicide because of it?  Does it have to do with the prevalence of online social networks, like Facebook, where bullying can now follow kids home from school?  Also, if the purpose of this documentary is, in part, to understand bullying, why not interview a bully?  Follow him around, see what his day to day life is like, at school and at home, and see if we can understand why he’s compelled to pick on and torment other kids.  The film never does that.

Another problem with the movie is that it fails to give equal time to its subjects.  The film primarily follows Alex, he’s the one we get to know the best.  We actually see him get picked on while riding the school bus (thanks to an apparently hidden camera) and at recess, as kids punch him in the arms and back, call him names, and even threaten to kill him.  We also watch him at home, as his parents, who know he’s having problems, try to talk to him, and his inability to open up and communicate with them.

Kelby and Ja’Maya aren’t covered nearly as much, and therefore, we don’t come to understand their situations nearly as well.  Kelby talks about the way she’s been treated at school since coming out, but we never see any of this.  In fact, the only townsfolk we see her interact with are her friends, of which she has quite a few.  As for Ja’Maya, all we ever find out about her bullying experiences were that kids on the bus were always calling her “stupid,” which in and of itself just doesn’t sound like enough to drive her into taking a gun onto the bus.  Yet, that’s all we’re ever told.  Pretty weak, pretty damn weak.

However, while Bully is plagued by numerous flaws, ultimately, its intentions do overcome its imperfections.  It’s meant to strike an emotional chord in the audience and to get us thinking about this societal ill, and that it does.  It will make you mad, it will make you sad, it will make you want to reach out and punch someone (like that idiot assistant principal).  You’d have to be one heartless bastard (and in all likelihood, a bully yourself) in order to walk out of this one without being moved.  If you’re a parent, then Bully is a must see.  In fact, it should be required by law that every parent, and every school age child in this country see this movie.  Like the ads for those HBO after school specials used to go, “See it with your kids, see it for your kids.”

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A ‘call’ you might want to take.

The H-Bomb: It’s a typical night for Los Angeles 911 operator Jordan Turner (Halle Berry), taking an array of calls ranging from domestic disputes, to medical emergencies, to the occasional crank, and handling them all with the kind of professional detachment that would be required of those who would have a job like this. Then she receives a call from a frightened teenage girl who reports a prowler breaking into her house. While waiting for the police to arrive (FYI, in this movie, they always arrive too late), Jordan gives the girl by-the-book instructions on where to hide and what to do, but when the line gets disconnected, Jordan makes a mistake, an astoundingly stupid mistake, that results in the girl’s kidnapping and eventual murder.

Six months later, a guilt-ridden Jordan, who is understandably traumatized by her collossal fuck up, now works as an instructor for the 911 operator training program. While taking a group of trainees on a tour of “The Hive” (the call center), Jordan listens in on a 911 call from a Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin), another teenager who has been abducted and is locked in the trunk of a moving car. Jordan immediately takes over the call from the inexperienced operator, and finds herself in a disturbingly familiar situation… trying to instruct another terrified girl on how to escape a kidnapping.

As if the two scenarios aren’t already similar enough, Jordan soon finds reason to believe that the man who took Casey is the same nut job who abducted and killed the girl from six months ago. As far as plot goes, I’ll stop there, because this is one movie where the less you know about it going in, the better off you’ll be.

The Call is a film that I was so not looking forward to. For one thing, ever since the new year, with a few exceptions aside, I had been seeing nothing but pure, unadulterated, cinematic dogshit.  And this thriller, starring Halle Berry, who ever since winning the Oscar, has turned herself into the queen of crap movies, sure didn’t look like it was going to do diddly-dick to break that trend. Even though the words, “A Film by Brad Anderson” did give me a slight shimmer of hope (I didn’t know going in that he was the director), I was still expecting the following ninety minutes to be nothing but torturous.

I suppose I should have had a little more faith in director Anderson, because I was wrong. Dead wrong. Not only was The Call not ninety minutes of torture, it actually turned out to be a surprisingly intense and entertaining flick. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t going to end up on my top ten of 2013 list (at least I hope not), it’s not going to win any awards, but as far as taut, exciting thrillers go, it definitely gets the job done, as it had me on the edge of my seat for most of its running time, and even managed to surprise me once or twice with the various twists and turns that it took.

Now, this is far from my favorite Brad Anderson flick, as that honor still goes to Session 9, with The Machinist in a very close second. This, I would say, is the “most Hollywood” film he’s ever made, but he takes Richard D’Ovidio’s script and wrings every last ounce of tension from it that he can. And damn does it get tense at times. The sequences in which Casey tries to signal for help without her abductor noticing, and another involving a would-be savior, were honest-to-God nail biters that had the audience at my showing revved up and yelling at the screen– this is the sort of movie where that kind of audience behavior is not only not annoying, but actually enhances the experience.

The strong lead performances by Berry and Breslin, as well as Richard Eklund as the kidnapper (who turns out to be a real sick puppy), also add a lot to the film’s building tension. I’m typically not a fan of Berry’s, but she’s quite solid here, as a 911 operator who constantly breaks her own rules, like never getting emotionally involved with callers, and never making promises to the callers. Then there’s Breslin, who’s, frankly, pretty terrific as the frightened young victim. I bought her terror completely, particularly when Anderson put the camera right up into her face, which he does quite often.

Eklund does a fine job of conveying what a genuine wacko this kidnapper is, but as we find out, he’s a man leading a double life, and I would’ve liked to have seen more of the “normal” side of his persona. But still, he was good. I also liked how the script went into his motives for doing what he does. I obviously can’t get into specifics here, but instead of just saying he’s crazy and leaving it at that, Anderson shows us things from his life that shed light on his actions. I’ll just say, this guy does not pick his victims at random.

On the negative side of things, there’s the film’s last act. Basically, like with many thrillers of this ilk, all believability gets chucked right out the window during the final half-hour. We find out that the bad guy has an underground lair (I mean, really?!), then we’re supposed to believe that Jordan would leave the call center in order to search for Casey herself… sorry, but bullshit. And if that’s not enough, Jordan then just happens upon evidence that the cops missed that leads her right to the location of said underground lair… come on! There are more issues that I had with the film’s finale, but again, due to the no spoiler law on this site, I won’t go into them, but I think my point has been made. The movie becomes completely ludicrous in the last act, which is disappointing, since I was totally with it up to that point.

But, even though the filmmakers apparently said “fuck credibility” towards the end, the audience I saw it with seemed to lap it up, so maybe I’m just full of it. Maybe I’m just over-thinking it. Either way, it didn’t kill the film for me, as I can still say that, again, much to my own surprise, I had a lot of fun with The Call. Is it a modern classic? Hell no, not by a long shot. It is more or less just “another Hollywood thriller,” but it’s darker than most, smarter than most, and more suspenseful than most.

(2 People gave this 2.00 out of 5)

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Fee Fi Fo Fum, I hear the snores of boredom!

The H-Bomb: Over the last couple of years, we’ve been seeing a new trend coming out of Hollywood, the revisionist fairy tale, where they take classic stories and give them a “modern” twist. Like, for example, taking the main characters from said stories, giving them weapons, reinventing them as ass-kickers, and casting attractive young actors who look way too contemporary for the story’s medieval setting. Thanks to this, we’ve gotten to see Snow White in a suit of armor, and Hansel & Gretel re-imagined as witch hunters, all in a cynical attempt to make these timeless fables “cool” and market them to the hip (and potentially lucrative) adolescent demographic. Now, Jack and the Beanstalk is the latest fairy tale to fall victim to this trend, as its young hero has been transformed into a “giant slayer.”

Much like A Good Day to Die Hard, the set up for Jack the Giant Slayer is laughably convoluted, so I shall try to spit it out as concisely and coherently as I can. Once upon a time these giants came down from their giant world in the clouds and waged war with mankind. Then along came a king who had a special crown. This magic crown had power over the giants, as basically whomever possessed this crown could control them. The king used the power of the crown to banish the giants back to their world, between Heaven and Earth (God, I feel fucking stupid writing this). When this king died, he was buried with the crown, as well as with the magic beans that can grow the humongous stalks that act as bridges between the giants’ world and our own.

Jumping ahead several generations, to a point in time when the story of the giants is thought to be only a myth, a young, peasant farm boy named Jack (Nicholas Hoult), is at the castle trying to sell his horse when he encounters a monk who is eager to take the horse off his hands. As payment, he gives Jack these beans that he insists are very special and very valuable. Before Jack really has a chance to turn down this amazing offer, the monk jumps on the horse and tries to escape the castle walls.

As we already know, this monk is on the run from Roderick (a hammy Stanley Tucci), a dastardly villain who stole the magic crown and beans from the king’s tomb. His plan, surprisingly, is to use the crown and the giants to take over the kingdom himself.

Unfortunately for everyone, Roderick happens to be one of the current king’s top advisers, and is set to marry his beautiful young daughter, Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson, who’s about as lively as a wooden plank). Isabelle, naturally, does not want to marry this creepy, ugly middle-age guy, and runs away in the middle of the night.

And wouldn’t you know it, she runs right into Jack’s farmhouse. The two of them had a strange run-in earlier that day, and as they converse, they realize that there’s a spark between them (at least the movie would like us to think there is). Of course, nothing could ever come of this romance, as he’s a peasant, and she’s royalty, and there are laws against them hooking up.  But there is a spark, nonetheless. As all this is happening, one of the magic beans, which Jack accidentally dropped into the cellar, starts to grow into a giant beanstalk that shoots up into the sky, taking his farmhouse, and the princess, with it.

Before Jack knows it, the king, along with his entire army, is standing in front of him, demanding to know where his daughter is. All Jack has to do is point up at the giant beanstalk behind him, and a rescue party, including Jack and the evil Roderick, is formed to ascend the stalk up into the clouds to fetch the fair maiden. To make a long story short (too late), what they find at the top of the stalk are some very pissed off giants, thirsty for the blood of some Englishmen. Oh, and Ewan McGregor plays a knight.

Ugggh… what can I say about Jack the Giant Slayer, other than it serves as yet another perfect example of why you should never go to movies that are released this time of year. I hate that I’m being so down on films lately, but part of my job is to be straight up and honest, and honestly, this flick bored me stiff. Oh, there were some nice special effects, as both the beanstalk and the giants looked like real, physical things with weight and life to them, and not just like images drawn in a computer. There was plenty of action to spare, but because I wasn’t invested in the shallow, thinly drawn characters, I wasn’t invested in any of it. In fact, I would say this movie has the least involving action scenes since Zack Snyder’s ill-conceived Sucker Punch, and, with the exception of a scene where a giant swallows a bee hive, they somehow manage to be even less memorable.

What truly boggles my mind is that this dreary, soulless fantasy yarn was directed by Brian Singer, the man who made The Usual Suspects, which is one of the greatest crime thrillers in existence. Granted, I haven’t been impressed with anything else he’s done, as I never cared about X-Men, and his Superman movie bored me even more than this did, but man, I can’t get around the idea that he could make something this utterly generic.

From the lazy design of the giants, which are well-rendered, but basically look like Orcs left over from The Hobbit, to the “Real 3D,” which is flatter than a Kansas landscape, I just get the sense that Singer really, truly did not give a shit with this one. That this was nothing more than a payday for him.

The actors could’ve helped, had the undernourished screenplay given them anything to work with. Leading man Hoult tries to add a quirky sense of self-deprecating humor to Jack, but the character is written as the cliched, timid, unlikely hero who follows an all-too-predictable arc. The fact that he and leading lady Tomlinson had absolutely no chemistry whatsoever only made it worse. As for what I thought of Tomlinson’s performance…the CGI beanstalk acted circles around her, need I say more? Tucci, as the conniving human antagonist, does the requisite scenery chewing, and he seems to be having a lot more fun than anyone in the audience, so good on him. Then we get to McGregor, playing a valiant, heroic knight who is treated as a complete afterthought and seems completely extraneous. He brings absolutely nothing to this undeveloped character, and ultimately, he’s as out-of-place in this movie as his inappropriately modern hairstyle.

Trust me, folks, if the studio who released Jack the Giant Slayer actually wanted people to go see it, they wouldn’t be releasing it in the first week of March. This “revisionist” fairy tale is an unspeakably dull butt-burner that goes on way too long, and as icing on the cake, puts the audience through a series of false endings before finally rolling the credits. It has no sense of adventure, no sense of wonder, no sense of excitement, and there is absolutely, positively no reason for anyone to see it.

[Swift aside: And THAT folks, is why we are the 'viciously ruthless' movie critics]

(2 People gave this 2.00 out of 5)

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Enough already!

The H-Bomb: I’m just going to cut right to it, here, Paranormal Activity 4 is what you get when you take a movie franchise that is fueled only by one single idea, one single gimmick, and just run it completely into the ground. It starts to feed off itself, cannibalize itself, just recycling the same old shit until it stops being a valid continuation of the original film, and just becomes a half-assed knock off, instead.

So it went with the Saw films, so it goes for Paranormal Activity. In the beginning, I was a fan, as the first film is one of the very, very few horror movies to actually scare me as an adult. It was a simple concept, a young couple videotaping their encounters with a demonic entity, who like any demonic entity, is tormenting and terrorizing them for the lulz. While the story was basic, it was also chocked full of moments that were truly unnerving, and was overall just creepy as hell. A rare example of a found footage flick that actually worked.

Then came the inevitable sequel that did essentially the same thing, only not nearly as effectively. It expanded on the back story a bit, but that aside, it was more or less an inferior repeat of the first movie. With the third film, the same exact formula was followed, and it was starting to get pretty damn tired. When I finished with Paranormal Activity 3, I figured they stretched this one concept as far as it could be stretched, and any movies after this will just be contrived rehashes of what came before.

And having now sat through all 95 minutes of Paranormal Activity 4, I can say emphatically, I was right, Goddamn it! This fourth installment, which thankfully I passed up in theaters, brings absolutely nothing new to the table, and gives us nothing we haven’t already seen. Just more things going bump in the night, more objects being moved by themselves, more possessed people acting oddly… more of the fucking same. Except this time, none of it is scary. Not in the slightest.

It starts with a recap of the earlier films, where possessed Katie Featherston kills her boyfriend, her sister’s husband, her sister, and disappears with her sister’s baby. Some six years pass, we are now in a nice, quiet Nevada suburb, where we meet our hero, an obnoxious bubble-headed blonde teenybopper, who, for no apparent reason, videotapes every damn thing that happens in her life. Recently, a single “mother” and her six-year-old “son” moved into the house across the street from her. Would I really be spoiling anything if I told you who these two really are? Anyhow, the “mother” is never around, and the “son” is… weird.

How is this little boy weird? Well, aside from looking like Damien from The Omen, he’s very quiet, he tends to suddenly appear in places, and has a habit of standing in a single spot and staring off blankly. Little Miss Teenybopper is particularly disconcerted when she’s told that the boy’s mother was injured in an accident and has to go to the hospital, and that he’s going to come stay over at her house. Soon after his arrival, the typical paranormal shit, the kind we’ve come to expect, starts happening.

Little Miss Teenybopper is convinced that this brat has “brought something into the house,” but her parents, who are your average, dense-headed horror movie parents, will hear none of it, despite chandeliers falling from ceilings and other such abnormalities. The only person who does believe her is her grinning, dumb-ass baboon of a boyfriend, and the two of them concoct a plan using all the cameras on every computer in the house (conveniently, there’s a computer in practically every room), to try and catch some supernatural shit. From there, a Paranormal Activity movie ensues…

And that, dear readers, is something I really can’t stress enough. You have seen this movie done before, and done way, way, way better. Where there was once genuine creepiness and tension, there is only boring padding, unimaginative plotting, and exceptionally bad acting (even by this series’ standards). And did I say boring? I’m sorry, what I meant to say was FUCKING BORING. Endless sequences of us looking into empty rooms, waiting for something, anything, to happen. Sadly, with the exception of the occasional jump scare, nothing really does. Now, as you know, I normally hate jump scares, but in this case, I actually welcomed them, because this time they were the only things keeping me awake. I can only imagine, if Princess Coppola ever directed a horror movie, it would be something like this… I shudder at the thought.

In all seriousness, though, Paranormal Craptivity 4 serves as undeniable proof that there is nowhere new for this series to go, nothing new to be added to it, and, aside from nefarious cash-grab motives on the part of the studio, no damn reason for any more of these movies to be made. There is certainly no reason for you to see this, or any future installments that may (and most likely will) come along. Your time would be better spent re-watching the original, because all the real scares were squeezed out of this cash cow about two movies ago, and now the time has come to put it out to pasture.

Check out the better PA titles here