The Ghost Writer

I must say, I am a wee bit conflicted with this film. You see, as a passionate film goer, over the years I have learned certain inalienable truths. Number one – Keanu Reaves is the worst actor alive and should never EVER be paid to do anything on film. Number two – there are a lot of assholes in Hollywood. Tinsel town breeds its’ own unique and very special kind of douchebag. I have never watched a Woody Allen movie and never will no matter how good a director people think he is. The guy’s a creepy self absorbed sexual deviant and I will not spend my money supporting the vehicle that enables his behaviour.

Any list of celebrity pigfuckers has to place Roman Polanski right at the very top. This keebler elf child raping motherfucker has not only lived in exile from the law, he keeps getting millions and millions of dollars to make movies from an industry willing to excuse his abhorrent behaviour. Yes, I know it was 30+ years ago that he drugged and sodomized a 13 year old girl, but what does history tell us? Pedophilia has a 100% recidivism rate. Powerful people have powerful friends and I can guarantee you, his tiny little prick has found it’s way up the unconscious asshole of more than just one underage girl. We just haven’t heard about it yet.

I don’t care how good a director this guy is, I will not recommend this movie. I watched it only because I had no idea he directed it until I watched the credits. My thoughts on the movie before I knew a convicted rapist was paid millions to make it? It’s a smart, well paced murder mystery with a political undercurrent in keeping with film’s inherent mistrust of government and the CIA. Ewen MacGregor plays a ghost writer brought in to finish the memoirs of disgraced former British PM Pierce Brosnan after the original ghost writer is found dead. To ease his potentially burdened conscious, they offer him $250,000 for a month’s work plus expenses.

Olivia Williams plays Brosnan’s beleaguered wife Ruth, who must deal with the open infidelity her hubby shares with British-for- the- purposes- of- this- movie- only Kim Cattrall. Suspicion is cast on everybody except MacGregor regarding the death of the original ghost, and the main unanswered question is what secret was uncovered that made his murder necessary. There’s an urgency to the pace of the movie, and the acting was fine (except for Cattrall. Really – couldn’t they find a British actress with no moral compass willing to take money to work with an infamous child rapist?), but really, it all boils down to this: are you willing to keep paying money to support Polanski’s freedom? Is your own entertainment so valuable that you can overlook who made it?

I won’t. This film gets no rating.

Date Night

In my review of She’s Out of My League, I stated my philosophy that humor is intensely personal. The joke and who tells it are co-equal branches of comedy’s government – it’s a delicate balance. I like to think I am pretty open to a wide variety of comedic styles, and am genuinely appreciative of those who put in the work to bring a smile to my face. I have recently debated two dear friends on their appraisal of Steve Carell. One said they found him low brow and the other said he was hit or miss. Both of them are completely wrong but I continue to love them anyway.

Date Night stars Steve Carell and Tina Fey as Phil and Claire Foster, a mundane suburban New Jersey couple in dire need of a shake-up in their routine. At a book club meeting they learn a couple in their circle who’d always appeared happy was headed for divorce, and they see parallels in their own relationship. So on their scheduled date night, they improvise a trip to Manhatten to dine at a swanky upscale restaurant and live life on a slightly more wild side. Wackiness and shenanigans ensue when they get caught up in a case of mistaken identity, police corruption, bribery and political intrigue.

To be perfectly honest, I thought this was one of the funniest movies I have seen in years. The chemistry between Carell and Fey is phenomenal – they work together brilliantly and I find their styles to be perfectly complimentary. They are believable as a couple, they have impeccable line delivery and flawless timing. There is a sight gag involving a taxi and an Audi R8 that is flat out epic. Hilarious cameos from James Franco and Mila Kunis, and Mark Wahlberg as a shirtless sight gag of his own, Carell in a track suit and Fey in a 1800’s western saloon girl outfit pole dancing – this is the romantic comedy the Bounty Hunter only wished it could’ve been.

The only nits I had to pick were with William Fichtner as the corrupt DA and Ray Liotta as the gangster Miletto. Regarding Liotta, I’m sorry, but it’s hard to look intimidating and badass when you’ve got thick black eye liner and a puffy pasty face that looks like the dimpled ass of an obese dwarf. Fichtner doesn’t do weird sexual deviant that well. I’m sure he’ll be relieved to know that. I’m thinking maybe Paul Giamatti or even Thomas Haden Church could’ve pulled it off a bit better.

This is a wonderful date flick. For those who can appreciate Carell’s talents that is. Silly people.

I rate Date Night 9 out of 10

Helen

Ok, let’s get this out of the way. I am a nutcase. Completely and utterly insane. I am all ate up with anxieties and depression and mood swings and all sorts of crazy shit. I think my fiancé deserves a fucking medal for putting up with my bullshit on a daily basis – it exhausts the fuck out of me, I can’t even imagine the kind of strain it puts on her. I have dealt with a variety of mental health issues for a very long time and so when I saw a movie that promised to put a spotlight on this bitch of an illness, I was all in.

The first thing that struck me about Helen was Ashley Judd. For the first time in a long time she wasn’t stiff as a board or just skimming the surface of the script. She actually gives her character some depth and subtlety that’s been sorely lacking from some of her other work. In this film, she plays the title role, a woman in her 40’s trying to cope with SEVERE depression. I emphasize severe because if you come into this not knowing what the average depressed person deals with day to day, and think that this is typical, well, uh, no, you would be wrong.

I am not going to get too far into the story, because honestly, it isn’t all that likely that anything I say will get you excited to see a movie that goes to such lengths to portray the absolute extremes of a very common mental illness. No, the reason I am reviewing a film that maybe two or three thousand people will ever see is because of how much this thing pisses me off. Being depressed is hard enough on the head – the stigma this attaches to it is a whole other ballgame.

If you’re not depressed and want to know what it’s like, here’s a taste – and to be fair, the first part of the movie portrays this very, very well. There is a kind of mental and emotional distraction, an inability to focus on things consistently – as if there is another conversation taking place in your immediate vicinity that you can’t quite hear but prevents you from fully taking in what is going on around you. There is a nagging and annoying uncertainty, as if you are always missing a crucial piece of information that makes whatever decision or choice you are going to make even harder or more stressful. Perceived and actual consequences have a long distance relationship with each other most of the time, which causes the panic from your perception to have a forceful impact on the actual. For reasons you can’t quite explain, banal, mundane obstacles can paralyze you with impossibility. You become emotionally invested in situations that don’t require it. You’ll think of options and outcomes others might not and it absolutely inhibits you from completing even the simplest of tasks.

Depression just isn’t about sadness. Sadness can be a rational response to a lot of circumstances one encounters in life. Depression as an illness is almost defined by the irrationality of one’s response to the world. As this movie progresses, and the audience becomes more and more exposed to Helen’s histrionics, suicidal tendencies, and dramatic spells of near catatonia, I kept thinking to myself, “Oh fucking hell” because it gives those of us not swinging for the fences of misery a lot to live down to.

I know a LOT of people who live with this illness, and all of us have our own unique symptoms that are every bit as pronounced as the ones we share. Suicidal ideation is a common enough symptom but actually acting out on it? No, most of us have much better impulse control than that. Even depressed people are born with a survival instinct. When the desire to act on irrational thoughts grows, most of us know this means to talk to someone NOW. The anxieties, physical impairments, uncertainty, emotional upheaval and inexplicable errors in judgement most of us deal with are not interesting enough for a paying audience. Electro shock therapy, crying jags, suicidal tendencies and frequent hospitalizations is what Hollywood requires in order to make depression film worthy. I get it, but I don’t like it.

Helen gets a 4 out of 10

The Warlords

One of the many things I’ve learned spending an unhealthy amount of time in front of my tv watching movies, is that the folks in the Orient are pretty good at making epic flicks. When I watch films such as Hero, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower I find myself in awe at the ingenius integration of colour, poetry and action as a single seemless story telling device. People can get weirded out all they want at the notion of people flying through the trees in a desperate attempt to gut each other like fish, but if you want to see the cutting edge of non CGI special effects and cinematography, go East.

Ever since those aforementioned groundbreaking movies, I have lept at the opportunity to take home just about any movie that even looks vaguely similar. In so doing, some patterns are starting to emerge. What Brooklyn’s Finest is to police dramas, the Warlords is to Chinese war movies. It seems like every movie of the last 2 or 3 years getting released to dvd here involves a variation of the same fucking theme: China, a nation divided, powerful armies mass against each other for slaughter and treasure, but from the chaos a hero emerges whose ultimate victory/defeat is the unification of his people. They eat that shit up over there apparently.

Jet Li stars as a general who keeps getting fucked over by tenuous alliances between douchebag politicians and even douchier generals. When we first meet his character, he is the sole survivor of a battle that saw every single soldier under his command killed while his reinforcements just chilled off in the distance. As he aimlessly wanders the countryside, he stumbles across a strange chick who feeds him what looks like dirty bathwater from an ashtray looking dish and spends the night with him to make sure he lives. In the morning, she’s gone and he isn’t sure if he imagined the whole thing.

Before long, a marauding band of rebels come along recruiting the poor with food they stole from the army that had abandoned him. Being Jet Li, he shows some killer kung fu which piques the interest of the head dude. But see, there’s a conundrum, Jet Li is clearly an army man, and these dudes kill army dudes. They can’t be brothers can they? Well, when the army catches wind of who stole their shit and comes back for some ass kicking, Jet Li has a solution. Join the rival army under his leadership, they can feed their families and stop getting the shit they stole stolen back. So head dude from earlier, his fellow even headier dude, and Jet Li swear a blood oath to become brothers and set out to get some dignity by making Jet’s quest for peace and unification come to fruition.

There are some pretty epic battles, twists and turns, romantic entanglements and some kung fu, but in the end, the Warlords is what you get when you mix Braveheart with the Departed and set it in China, only not as good. Li is looking old but is still fierce as fuck, and he seems more relaxed when he’s able to speak his own language instead of mangling English. They were able to avoid a lot of the standard shots I’ve come to expect in these movies (i.e. the love affair with a sky full of flying arrows) but overall, this is not up to the standard set by Red Cliff, Hero or House of Flying Daggers.

I rate this 6 out of 10

Serenity

The main reason why this movie exists is because hardly anyone watched the tv show it was based on. You see, the show, called Firefly, was the brainchild of Joss Whedon and had the misfortune of getting picked up by Fox. And Fox, well, they have a make us an assload of money now or die in a fire attitude toward programming. They killed the show after only 14 incredibly fantastic episodes which left the diehards screaming for more. Whedon, god bless him, worked his ass off to get $40 million together to do this movie to help tie up the loose ends of the series and to demonstrate exactly how awesome this could be.

So why did the show not get ratings? I blame you, the reader. That’s right, it’s all on you. Firefly was original, clever, funny as hell, had an amazing cast led by the hilarious Nathan Fillion, was beautifully written, genuinely adventurous and entertaining, and it should still be airing now and making me laugh. Apparently however, that’s not enough for some people. They need to sit on the edge of their seats watching a fucking karaoke contest or live action DDR renamed So You Think You Can Dance or some other shit that rots the soul. Bad, bad reader!!

The show, and the movie, takes place 500 years in the future. Earth could no longer sustain its’ population so it sent ships out to the far corners of the galaxy to find suitable planets and moons to terraform. This new group of interstellar colonies was to be run under the central command of the two most powerful countries of earth (USA & China) and called the Alliance. As free people are wont to do, some thought the idea of centralized government was bullshit and rebelled. The soldiers of this ragtag group of independence fighters were called Brown coats. They got their asses kicked and now basically live to piss off the authorities.

One of the most fulfilling ways to annoy authority is to steal and smuggle their shit. That is exactly what the crew of Serenity do best. Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) leads a merry band of outlaws who travel the outer rim looking for jobs and stuff to steal – basically, Robin Hood in space. His right hand lady is Zoe (Gina Torres), who fought beside Mal in the war for independence. She is seriously badass and fluent in the language of sarcasm. Zoe is married to ship pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk) who could fly an oil tanker through a mosquito’s puckered sphincter if he was so inclined. He’s not, but he could. The undersexed engineer is Kaylee (Jewel Staite). Jayne (Adam Baldwin) is the thick headed muscle who has a gun for every occasion. Sean Maher plays the ship doctor Simon. He has pulled off the ultimate heist – he stole his batshit crazy sister River back from the Alliance where she was being used for extensive military/medical experimentation.

The story is extremely rich and layered so I won’t get into too much detail here. So here are a few quick pointers to guide you through: River is a psychic and of high military value to the Alliance, they will do anything to get her back. Through all 14 episodes of the tv series, she was basically a free roaming nutbar who acted weird and creeped everyone out. In the movie, she’s been given a subliminal trigger that unleashes her inner Bruce Lee which in addition to her unpredictable and crazy demeanor, makes her utterly terrifying and confounding. Jayne has tried all along to get rid of her, because having her aboard means having extra attention from the authorities, which is bad for smugglers.

Very important to keep in mind – China and the USA are the two dominant powers of the Alliance, so in this future, everyone speaks English and Chinese (I know Chinese isn’t a language, but fuck off and go with it). Usually the Chinese comes out when they want to swear.

Sexual tension time – Mal loves Inara, a gussied up space whore, and she loves him too, but neither seem able to admit it to each other. Kaylee loves Simon and vice versa, and they’ve wanted to hump each other blind basically since they met, but he is clueless about how best to do this. Zoe obviously loves Wash, being married and all, and Jayne basically loves guns, food, money and really cheap whores.

Knowing this, I send you forth to watch and love this film. It wouldn’t kill you to watch the tv series, but even if you don’t, the movie will stand on it’s own. It is hilarious, brilliant, adventurous, has a great pace, excellent dialogue, is a great story, it’s fun, and light and yes, I do love it so much I want to marry it. If you watch it and hate it, I’m sorry, we can’t be friends anymore.

I rate Serenity 9 out of 10

Cop Out

As a rule, I enjoy Kevin Smith. He is a fellow fattie, a regular dude who made it big and gets to do what many of us would love to do – make funny movies and earn lots of money doing it. He makes more of an effort to connect with his fan base than pretty much anyone I’ve ever seen and he really seems to understand that while he has worked extremely hard to get where he is, he is lucky to be there. Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Chasing Amy and Dogma are absolute gifts to movie goers. If you haven’t seen them, get off your ass and go get me some cake. Seriously, I’m hungry and I have a sweet tooth. I’ll tell you about the movies when you get back.

Cop Out is the first movie Smith has directed that he didn’t also write. This is no cause for celebration because he is a phenomenal writer. Robb and Mark Cullen, who did write this movie, are not even close to his level. Billy Connolly once said in an interview that he curses a lot in his stand up because it has a nice rhythm when you do it right. You see evidence of that in Smith’s own screenplays, but that particular bit of wisdom was not imparted upon the Cullens. This movie has problems - chief among them was the writing. It didn’t feel entirely worked through, like they filmed a rough draft hoping they could fill the holes as they went.

The story is convoluted, but this is a buddy comedy – story is a vehicle to move from joke to joke. For this movie to work, one needs to ask: 1. Are the jokes funny? 2. Are the people who are telling me the jokes funny? This is where personal preference comes in. I find Tracey Morgan hilarious. He is batshit crazy and shouts his lines like a 6 year old on a sugar rush. A lot of people I talk to find him annoying as fuck so they will frigging hate this film. Seann Williams Scott is great in the 12-14 minutes of screen time he actually gets.

Know who sucks big giant hairy balls though? Bruce Willis. Bruce fucking Willis is painful to watch all the way through this movie. He isn’t funny, most of the time he is barely amusing. The scene with Jason Lee discussing who will pay for his daughter’s marriage was one of the most poorly written and amateurish scenes I have ever seen. The scene with Fred Armisen? Fucking painful to watch. His part was terribly written and acted with a Kristen Stewart-esque awkwardness that actually made me feel a bit embarrassed for the guy.

Speaking of embarrassing, the guys in the Mexican drug gang. I still don’t know what Smith was going for. I know what I saw – overacting. They weren’t funny. They weren’t scary. Their presence certainly added conflict and urgency for Willis, but they were so poorly executed ... it would have been so much funnier had they gotten rid of them altogether and just made Scott the film’s sole obstacle to Willis’ quest to pawn that baseball card.

I’ve seen this twice – once on the big screen and once on the small screen. It doesn’t hold up to multiple viewings I’m afraid. I laughed a fair bit the first time I saw it. Not so much the second time. Unlike Zack and Miri, which makes me laugh every single time I watch it. I do not think this is Smith’s worst movie, and because I am a fan of his and I enjoy Tracey Morgan and Seann Williams Scott, I will probably rate this higher than most other people would.

I rate Cop Out 5 out of 10

What the Fuck is Going On With the Incredible Hulk?

Okay, so we have a situation here and it's really pissing me off. The Incredible Hulk is a GREAT comic book character - the strongest, most destructive, most powerful super hero imaginable. Anger only fuels his destructive tendencies and EVERYTHING pisses him off. Back in the day, they made his story into a tv show that was like the opposite of the Littlest Hobo. Not having the technology yet for CGI, they found the biggest motherfucker they could in Lou Ferrigno, painted him green and let him grunt and growl around the small screen every week for 4 years between 1978 and 1982.

The idea of doing a big screen Hulk movie was bouncing around for years, but no one really knew how to do it, so they stuck with animated movies and cartoon shit until advances in CGI made a big screen adaptation possible. Every actor with a penis was considered for the role, but the producers went off the board by picking relatively unknown Aussie comedian Eric Bana. Directed by Ang Lee, co starring Jennifer Connelly and Nick Nolte and with the full force of Industrial Light and Magic doing all the techy stuff, it couldn't lose, right? Except it totally and completely did. Opening weekend it did stellar, racing out to around $62 million box office and then it tanked. I loved the movie - to this day I thought it was one of the best written and edited comic book movies I've ever seen. It jumped the shark however, when the decision was made to have Hulk do battle with a hulked out poodle and then fight his father, who was basically a giant electrical surge. Audiences thought he kinda looked like Shrek and the movie barely made it's money back.

Once Marvel got sick and tired of studios fucking up their product, they formed their own studio and financed a reboot of Hulk, called the Incredible Hulk. This time they got Louis Leterrier to direct (who'd done the first 2 Transporter movies and Unleashed with Jet Li) - a serious fucking downgrade over Ang Lee - and got Edward Norton to play Bruce Banner/Hulk opposite Liv Tyler, William Hurt and Tim Roth. Instead of fighting a roided out lapdog, he had to fight a bigger, badder monster called Abomination. They made Hulk dirtier, darker, angrier. Marvel had creative control. It couldn't lose, right? Except it did. It opened worse than the Ang Lee version (only $55 million this time), and even though it had a bigger budget, a bankable star, better special effects, a better story, better pacing, more action and was a superior product in every way imaginable, did about exactly the same box office as the first one ($264 million world wide vs $245 million, and the new one cost about $15 million more to make).

Part of the problem was Edward Norton being a prick. Norton is a wonderful actor and I enjoyed him as Bruce Banner and I think he does a pretty decent job in most of the movies he does, however, he is a colossal douchebucket. He decided that since he changed a lot of his dialogue for the movie that he wanted a screenwriting credit, which Marvel didn't want to give him. The screenwriting guild apparently agreed. He fought with the director over editing and wanted a bit more screen time, the studio sided with their director. Rumours of his ego hit the press and put a bit of a negative impression on the film and then he refused to do any promotion while pouting like a little bitch about Marvel the whole time. He says he doesn't do promotion for any of his work but you know what? Suck it up buttercup - as an actor you are paid to whore your wares. Now put on your make up, grab a seat and tell Regis and Kelly how fucking awesome the movie is and stop crying about your artistic sensibilities. Just typing that last paragraph makes me want to kick him in right in the aorta.

So, now Marvel is making the Avengers, which is like the ultimate comic book movie. It will unite Iron Man, Thor (coming May 2011), Captain America (coming later 2011) possibly some other Marvel heroes that haven't yet had movies made about them to do battle with the fucking Hulk. Sweet mother of God that is so awesome. They are going to sink good money after bad, have a ridiculous all star cast, it'll be directed by Joss Whedon - not going to lie, I think I just came a little. But guess who isn't going to be in the Avengers now? Edward fucking Norton. Kevin Feige, the big cheese of Marvel Studios couldn't stand the prima donna arrogant bastard anymore and fired off a statement to an internet rumour site saying he broke off negotiations because money was not the issue with Ed Norton, Ed Norton was the issue. He came right out and said Norton's ego can't fit with an ensemble cast and so they will find another big name actor to play Hulk in the Avengers movie and will announce it in a few weeks.

Edward's agent fired off a response calling Feige an asshole, and saying Norton wanted to be part of an ensemble cast and he's mother Theresa with a cock and balls and Feige is defaming him and a bunch of other shit that someone who is paid to represent you would say when the world finds out what an epic self absorbed spoiled swine you are. Then Norton releases a statement to his "fans" on Facebook saying how grateful he is to have been given the chance to add to the Incredible Hulk legacy and is thrilled they even considered him for the Avengers. What a lying, manipulative, maniacal shitrat They won't let Norton in the editing bay to give himself more screen time than the people who might actually deserve it - the vast majority of the movie will be a CGI Hulk and not a whining pissy Bruce Banner anyway.

The whole dramatic episode threatens to derail the mojo of what can possibly be either the greatest comic book movie ever, or the biggest sack of shit I will ever spend a lot of time and money watching, owning and writing about. Now the speculation is rampant and once again, every actor with a penis is up for the role. Nathan Fillion, Joaquin Phoenix. Eric Bana again (please god no). David Tennent. Norton thinks that on set conflict keeps his movies from banality. Really? Have you ever watched Death to Smoochy? Rounders? Territorial pissing matches and power trips won't stop a movie from crapping out, it leads to studio heads publicly calling you an asshole and losing parts in blockbuster movies that have the potential to be a generation defining product.

All this hissy fit has accomplished is to lay waste to continuity in the Marvel movie universe, to vomit all over the potential of the Incredible Hulk ever being a successful franchise and cementing Norton's legacy as an egomaniacal prick. He was a very good Bruce Banner, but he will always be a rat faced bastard.