Gunless

Here in Canada we feel we put up with an awful lot of American bullshit. Watch a Canadian newscast and you’ll find intelligent, reasoned discourse on the wisdom of the latest policy decision and its potential impact on our larger socio-economic structure. You’ll find coverage of local municipal issues, stories presented with a minimum of hyperbole. Now go and watch Fox News. You’d swear Hitler and Mussolini walked down the middle of Washington, DC in an attempt to steal everyone’s gun, abort their women’s babies, force white hetero sexual couples into marrying unemployed black homosexuals so that illegal Hispanic immigrants can set up radical muslim mosques in Christian neighbourhoods and train terrorists to take American jobs.

We combat such ridiculousness with irony, satire, and razor sharp wit. We can do everything our Yankee counterparts do, just with one tenth of the money, manpower and audience. We send in our most talented actors and comedians to take over Hollywood, entice big productions north with our skilled and superior production teams, tax breaks and abundance of Tim Horton’s, but tell someone you saw a great Canadian film and you’re likely to be met with, “Aw, that’s just super”.

Paul Gross is on a mission to change all that. Probably the most talented Canadian actor who’s never really broken out to US audiences, he is the gift that keeps on giving to the modest masses north of the border. Gunless is a wonderfully incisive satire about American gun culture and the wild west mentality that still pervades an unfortunately large percentage of our neighbour’s way of life. Here he plays the Montana Kid, a gunfighter on the run who accidently crosses into the polite confines of small town western Canada. He lives by a code, a very rigid, inflexible code that is an unhealthy blend of ego, testosterone and male pride.

Right off the hop, he takes offense to the local blacksmith daring to touch and tend to his horse, and demands a showdown. The rest of the movie is about the wild and elaborate lengths he will go to for retribution. There is an awful lot to enjoy about this movie. It has a cheeky subversiveness about it, where every tense dramatic moment gets undercut by hilarity, it plays to the stereotype of our overly hospitable nature - how we’re so eager to please even those looking to kill us. There is a classroom scene which I felt brilliantly lays waste to the current second amendment debate raging south of the border and is a shining example of the wit inherent throughout the script.

Of particular delight was the performance of Tyler Mane. I have become quite a fan of his work over the years – at about 6’7” and about 275lbs, he is a menacing presence on screen. As Sabretooth in the first X-Men film, Ajax in Troy, and Michael Myers in the most recent Halloween movies, he has shown an ability to dominate the screen with his physicality and surly demeanour. In Gunless, they actually let him talk. He is quite funny and delivers his lines well – he’s capable of so much more than Hollywood has been willing to give him and I hope this role kickstarts a long and interesting career in film.

Watch and enjoy Gunless. Stick around for the credits – this PG movie gets decidedly R-rated during the outtakes. I give it 8 out of 10

The Joneses

I am very good at selling things. I get paid very poorly to sell as much as inhumanly possible for an entity that does not care if I live or die – if my stinking corpse could move high margin product, they’d slap a uniform on it, prop it up and complain it doesn’t sell enough. This is the nature of corporations. People live on food, oxygen, water and love. Corporations live on marketing, profits, productivity and not giving a fuck about the people who buy their shit or the people selling it. We’re all in the cross hairs. Yes, I know that in theory, people run corporations. However, the bigger the company, the less humanity you’ll find at the helm. Something has to be sacrificed for the sake of the job.

Yes, this is an extremely cynical view of our world but if it’s not entirely true, it’s more true than you’re comfortable admitting. Origin of species? We’ve evolved from eking out an existence in unforgiving environments for the sake of survival, to creating the unforgiving environments we struggle to survive in so people will one day remember we existed at all. Conspicuous consumption. I have all I need but I demean myself every day to acquire the means to get everything I want. How do I know what I want? Corporations tell me. I would buy a solid gold turd if it came in a cool looking box and would proudly buy a display case to put it in if I thought it might one day come in a collector’s edition gift set.

So what’s the point of all this then? My point is, watch the Joneses. This is a brilliantly satirical look at how we don’t know what it is we want until someone else tells us we want it. Demi Moore and David Duchovny star as Karen and Steve Jones, a pretend married couple who are paid to live in the most gorgeous fucking house you’ve ever seen, drive the newest and hottest Audis on the market, wear the trendiest clothes, and generally set an example for all their neighbours to follow. Even their pretend kids – played by Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth – are sexy and awesome. So, how’d the Joneses get all this shit? Well, they are part of the next great corporate innovation – stealth marketing.

Basically, some big corporate entity does a marketing survey determining where all the high income status seeking douchebags live. They send out a team of four salespeople to infiltrate every possible high value market they can and move a shit tonne of product on behalf of a wide range of clients. The goal is to create an illusion of awesome to drive demand for the latest and greatest of everything ... it’s like having a living, breathing Neiman Marcus catalogue move in next door. The genius of this approach is, the less genuine and more obviously full of shit your sales people are, the greater the sales, because everyone in this demographic is as fake as a three breasted sea monkey anyway.

Duchovny is the Joneses sole link to humanity. He is the newest to the game, and only came to it because he was so lonely and lost, living as a fake family seemed more appealing than having none at all. Everyone in the cast is phenomenal and I don’t want to give away too much of the story, other than to say, it is a thought provoking, intelligent and well constructed satire that is absolutely worth the rental. I loved the execution of the concept as much as the concept itself. More than anything, the Joneses left me thinking of the following paradox:

As a salesperson, your job is entirely based on your ability to close the sale. Numbers are everything – this is a cold, harsh, results oriented world. But don’t act like a salesperson, because real people hate that. Salespeople aren’t real people, they’re pretend people who get paid to sell things nobody wants to real people. So, ideally, sell without selling. Be real people and not salespeople, because only then will real people want to buy from you. But always be closing. And structure each interaction so that you emphasize the products your employer wants you to sell the most of, because if you don’t sell what you're told to sell, you won’t be selling anything at all from the unemployment line. Sell your company's products as a solution to the clients’ need. If the client determines a different product, one that you don’t sell is what fits their need best, then you’re not a good enough sales person. Happy selling!

I rate the Joneses 8 out of 10.

Kick Ass

Ever since I was a young boy, I have dreamed of being a hero. The hours I spent with a bully’s foot on my throat while others stood unable or unwilling to help, the days spent hiding in my room from an abusive sister and alcoholic parents, the years of relying on the generosity of others in order to survive – the idea that I might be able to save someone else who felt the despair I knew all too well, made the helplessness easier to bear.

Kick Ass is a teenage action/comedy that asks the question – why don’t people try to become super heroes in real life? Why do we think we have to be bitten by a radioactive spider or have an alien fall from the sky in order to save us? Tired of being invisible, Dave Lizewski takes it upon himself to stand up and say enough is enough. He orders a wetsuit and mask online that makes him look like a sausage sponsored by John Deere and takes to the streets to fight crime.

What special skills does he have to make him a super hero? Well, um, none actually. Just the will to do it. His first rescue is predictably bad and very nearly kills him. Rather than discourage him, he learns that getting stabbed and run over by a car has damaged his nerve endings which means he feels no pain. Courage mixed with the absence of skill is a dangerous combination but in short order, Dave’s alter ego Kick Ass becomes a YouTube sensation and a legend is born. This draws attention of all kinds – the local crime lord is on a mission to murder him, kids his age are on a mission to worship him, and an actual crime fighting duo are on a mission to develop his skills.

And here we get to the highlight of Kick Ass. The true stars of this film are Chloe Moretz as Hitgirl and Nicholas Cage as Big Daddy. Chloe plays an 11 year old ass kicking dynamo who curses like a sailor and is tutored in rather shocking and horrific ways by her father. They are driven by revenge and are out to take down the criminal enterprise run by the deliciously malevolent Mark Strong.

I loved this movie. I loved the writing by Matthew Vaughn & Jane Goldman – it is sadly uncommon to see teenagers written so well in an action movie. I loved Nicholas Cage’s homage to Adam West whenever he dons his Batmanesque super hero garb. The performances all round were solid. The movie has a fantastic pace, McLovin as a double dealing douchebag in a sexy red sports car ... but mostly, Chloe Moretz. Her athleticism, the courage it took to take her character as far as she took it (both as an actor and as filmmakers, this was a ballsy choice). The scene’s epic final battle was beautifully shot and directed and I couldn’t have been more thrilled with the casting choices.

This movie, as great as I think it is, will not appeal to everyone. Watching Mark Strong towering over a 13 year old girl and trying to punch a hole in her face is pretty shocking to see. It’s also rather jarring to see someone so young and sweet looking toss around a word like cunt, but it was so worth it. This is not a family friendly movie at all, and I think the subversive /bad influence streak adds to it’s appeal to me.

I rate Kick Ass 8 out of 10

The Last Station

Full disclosure, I am not a big classic literature kind of guy. As much as I have written, or been praised or encouraged for writing, literature bores me. The more I am told something is a classic or required reading, the more likely I am to watch Spider-man or Hot Fuzz, order a donair, and drift away on a wispy thin cloud of fuck you. I don't read the book a movie is based on either, not since the train wreck that was Steven King's It starring John Ritter and John Boy from the Waltons.

I expected to hate the Last Station, figuring I might hang in there for 20 minutes or so, get bored and go on an internet search for NHL trade rumors or boobies or something more my speed. Instead here I am about to talk about how great this movie is, albeit with a few caveats.

This is a grown up movie. It is rich with story, plot, subplot, juxtaposition and all other kinds of fancy nuanced shit. It is a shut up, get serious and pay attention kinda deal so if you get bored without a car chase or ninja battle, you might want to give this a pass.

Christopher Plummer plays legendary Russian author Leo Tolstoy, the man responsible for War and Peace, as he struggles to find a balance between fame and wealth and his disdain for material possessions. Ageless sexpot Helen Mirren plays his batshit crazy wife Sofya Tolstaya, who quite enjoys the trappings of success and positively hates all the sycophants surrounding her beloved husband. She knows Leo hasn't much longer to live and is desperate to provide some security for herself and her many many children.

Working against her is Paul Giamatti, Hollywood's preeminent go to weasel, as Vladimir Chertkov, a devoted follower of Tolstoyism (basically a life of abject dullness and suppression of our more base and interesting instincts like sex, and owning stuff, and hating things). He wants Tolstoy to cut her out of his will, to turn over the rights and all future royalties to the Russian people. Because Sofya is completely insane and scares him shitless, he sends in a plant, James McAvoy, to serve as Tolstoy's new secretary but more importantly, to record his every movement and dealings, so he can gain the upper hand on crazy woman.

There is a lot of story here, and I am way too lazy to get into it all. Suffice it to say, I gleefully went down every little bunny trail, every nook and cranny director and screenwriter Michael Hoffman wanted me to go. Performances were wonderful all round, I particularly enjoyed Helen Mirren and Paul Giamatti - who in a rare move for him, was fairly restrained. Equally surprising was the fact Christopher Plummer didn't annoy me once. Jesus, maybe I am getting old.

This is not a popcorn movie. It is neither breezy or light, and should not be watched with a casual attitude. It is an engaging, slow moving, sophisticated, artsy fartsy bit of brain candy. And I loved it.

8 out of 10