Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Eli, Eli,

lama sabachthani?

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The protean string

will offer an inestimable yield.

Well then, son, you've got a condition.

The Avengers - 8/10. Fun as shit. Joss Whedon is the star of the movie, but he's also its weakness – a television director's sense of things. It's all big, but it doesn't look or feel big. Some scenes are outright poorly done. Do you think this motherfucker cares? 

We all thought it was cancer.

Crazy, Stupid, Love - 7/10. 'The Kids Are Alright' and 'Hitch.' It's very amiable and sometimes funny, but it's got a sticky-sweet core that's partly icky and partly disingenuous. It's easy not to think about it.

Did they send me daughters when I asked for sons?

Mulan - 7/10. It's not really talked about and from that era when people stopped caring, but it's surprisingly good. The songs, mostly. Eddie Murphy practices his annoying side-character voice. It's annoying. Jackie Chan sings a super-serious version of 'I'll Make A Man Out Of You' on the DVD extras. 

If I'm mad, I will enrage.

The Raid: Redemption - 7/10. Less fun than it should have been. Fantastic premise, just wish it didn't take itself so seriously. They should've thrown a little bit of comic book in there. A little more 'The Warriors.' I hope America remakes it!

You shall kill the woman and the beast.

The Girl With Dragon Tattoo - 7.5/10. A very exciting thriller, I just have no idea why she's so fucking important to the whole thing. It's really more of his movie, isn't it? I mean, she's cool, and she adds some sadness and pain, but some of that's just secondary to the primary. Gripes, that's all.

Am I on speakerphone?

Cabin In The Woods - 8/10. Hello, friends, do you like to have a good time at the movies?

They just want a good show.

Hunger Games - 6.5/10. Reads like a good first season of a TV show. I wish it was a TV show. What's the use of introducing characters if you can't grow to care about them and then get sad or joyful when you watch them die? Too many people. What seems like scheming is actually just sincerity. Production value of a TV show, too. Fashion is odd – an amalgamation of things, never its own thing. That's the feel of the movie – a whole bunch of shit crammed into two hours, never finding an identity. Katniss is an easy hero. Make her make hard decisions. Make her fight her way through. Things happen around her. 

You forgot something.

The Secret World of Arriety - 8.5/10. An extremely kind and gentle movie, action bros. My favorite of the Miyazaki family (by far) (and he didn't direct this one!). The most linear of the Ghibli movies I've seen, which I desperately needed from the other Ghibli movies I've seen. Quiet and soulful. A slight misstep at the end ruins the beauty of the ambiguity, but fuck it, I'll forgive it. (And apparently it's not in the original version, just tacked on to the American. Anywayz.)

Hell yes.

Ghost Rider 2: Spirit Of Vengeance - 4/10. From the directors of Crank? You've caught my eye, little sparkle. Everything they're good at – style, speed… pretty much those two things, I guess – is good. Everything they're not good at – plot – is not good. Whenever it slows down to speak, it fuuuuucking slows down. Everything you need to know about Ghost Rider is in the fucking name  – we want to see a guy with a flaming skull for a face ride a motorcycle. They make it a plot point to take that away altogether. Just shut the fuck up and give us what we want, you pissants. Now's not the time for clever.

Murdered to death.

Punisher War Zone - 2/10. Dominic Monaghan is a bad actor in everything but 'The Wire.' Just watch 'Death Wish' over this overblown nonsense. 

Monday, May 28, 2012

I know you're a good guy.

Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance - 7/10. I hardly remember watching this but I wrote down 7 out of 10, so I'll trust that. I think I got confused by which characters were what characters. Reminded me of 'Blood Simple,' with everything turning bad for everything.

That's Vietnam music. Can't we get our own music?

Jarhead - 7/10. It's certainly an interesting movie with all of its middling about. The ennui, as all of the reviewers say. There's just no way to leave this movie without a sense of being unfulfilled because, like, that's what this movie's about, dog. 

Oh, but none of us will see it.

Gosford Park - 7/10. It's well put-together. I guess that's what Altman does, with all his many parts. He did it again! Yay!

This is a unique and dramatic situation.

The Descendants - 7/10. I CANNAE REMEMBER MUH THOUGHTS ON THIS MOVIE. It was reserved, almost too reserved, until that moment at the end when it all came out? Something like that. It's called crescendo, motherfucker.

When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships.

The Hunt For Red October - 5/10. My boy Johnny McTiernan wrings some tension out of the scenario, but only so much. 

Oh hidy-ho, officer, we've had a doozy of a day.

Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil - 3/10. Nothing particularly offensive about this, I just ain't find the jokes funny. 

Magic? You just pissed on a gypsy in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Bronson - 8.5/10. Motherfucker, I loved the fuck out of this. It's like 'Amelie' with a bad guy, which may make it sound worse than it is, but fuck, it fits. There is no way in which I did not love this. Tom Hardy is a fucking star. 

He was my son. But he was also a douchebag.

World's Greatest Dad - 7/10. Robin Williams is friendly and sad and forms something of a person to rally around. Bobcat Goldthwait makes that easy by making everyone else a douchebag. But still. It's a great set-up, it really is, but it stops short of the fences. There's no build-up to that final reveal that makes it seem like it just has to come. Therefore: a fine, competent movie. 

Ain't no use fixing things.

Things'd just be broke in some other way.

You've become proud! You've become stupid!

The Artist - 7.5/10. The first thirty minutes is mostly notable for how well-thought out it is. Those thirty minutes, more than the movie that follows, captures the idea of these old movies as these magical things where every prop can possibly co-star. After that, it loses its ideas and meanders on and Jean Dujardin has a beautiful smile, but it doesn't make a great movie.

It's a devil of a thing, dying.

Bill Cunningham New York - 6.5/10. Cunningham comes off as adorable and simple. The few occasions where the filmmakers ask interesting questions to get at a little piece of depth are the best in the movie, but they're not poked at. The movie makers seem almost apologetic for having asked those questions in the first place. 

Yes, but you're a surrealist!

Midnight In Paris - 7.5/10. Foot loose, bordering on adorable, doesn't leave you feeling full. That is to say – it doesn't try very hard to accomplish some great task. We know where our final destination is from the outset. There are no real curves or intricacies. But it's nice. It's nice.

A hard, cynical act for a hard, cynical world.

The Muppets - 7/10. Fun, enjoyable songs. Jason Segel doesn't try to be an actor, which is befuddling. Great character moments but, like all Muppets movies, not a tightly-wound plot. I hope this series someday tries to say something.

THE PRESIDENT HAS INITIATED GHOST PROTOCOL.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - 5/10. Nobody was having fun. The set pieces deserved a better movie. Something with charm. Something where someone smiled once in a while. Roger Moore-era Bond film, where are we when we need you. 

Godless sonofabitch.

Warrior - 6/10. There's some honest-to-god tension in seeing two estranged brothers go at it, but: Tom Hardy plays it tight-lipped and one-note, Nick Nolte's character is all-but-forgotten, and Joel Edgerton feels the need to fight to save his idyllic two-story home. Yo, bitch? Keep your job as a teacher and buy an affordable house. It is not heroic to fight for something you don't need. 

Buddy Slade and I are meant to be together.

Young Adult - 6.5/10. Literalism! Everything ties in to its title and character and job description and movie poster and aiyiyiyiyiyiy. It's all a bit too much. But I can be okay with it. The problem as I see it are a lack of a consistent… presentation? I am honestly not sure if I am supposed to laugh when things happen, or if the movie thinks its ending is empowering. Maybe this shit is just really dark and that bitch crazy. I don't know. 

Let's go see the 3D Werner Herzog film.

Cave Of Forgotten Dreams - 4/10. You were boring!

Enough romance. Let's fuck!

I Love You Philip Morris - 7/10. It's fun! Critical analysis yeah!

This is where they're made.

Hugo - 5/10. It's bad magic. All distraction without any sleight of hand. Such such such potential for a good story in that of George Méliès and it wastes it on squat sentimentality. It forgets its themes. Nothing connects. It's not about a love of movies, it's about some kid trying to 'fix' things. Fuck you, kid. Martin Scorcese only knows how to make unlikeable characters. Fuck him, too.

When I passed the Statue of Liberty, I took it seriously.

Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man - 5.5/10. It never manages to define him. It builds him up, good and bad parts, but never manages to show what it is that created him. It needs a bat crashing through his window following the death of his parents at the hands of Crime.

Get them to blink in sequence.

Airplane II - 4/10. There are some jokes, but there are a lot of them, and I don't play that ratio game.

This station is non-operational.

Paranormal Activity 3 - 8/10. Just a fucking master class in making movies, man. Fuck y'all, shit.

Hello, my name is Michael Caine.

The Trip - 7/10. It's such a genial and inviting movie that I'd rather choose to forget its stray dressings.

Someone who was famous for a while.

Notting Hill - 3/10. Why the fuck would anyone fall in love with this bitch?

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Buttsnatch

and Herb.

Incontinental

shores.

Here go

hell come.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

His last words were reportedly:

I don't even know why I'm here.

Not to sound kooky or out there,

but Marvin will help him to choose.

The populist

zit.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

What I been practicing my whole life

is to be okay in the moment of possible failure.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Butt

hut.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Sex

poisoning.

Friday, May 11, 2012

We've missed the opportunity

to screw this up.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

You make it

commonplace.

Friday, May 4, 2012

Say goodbye

to common ground.

This is how everyone

talks to everyone.

I want a good life.

and a nose for things.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

We ain't got to tell the truth,

we just got to make it sound good.