Cory's Birthday Special: Godzilla vs. Gigan

1972 monster movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Aliens, under the pretext of creating a "Children's Land" that will somehow encourage peace, summon Gigan and Ghidorah in order to lure Godzilla into a trap. Can our big green friend save humanity once again?

I only celebrate two birthdays on this blog--the birthdays of Nicolas Cage and Cory. When you're getting the same treatment as Nicolas Cage, you know you're pretty special. Every year, I watch a Godzilla movie on July 16th as some weird idea of a birthday present to Cory, a guy who I like even though he doesn't see the genius in Eraserhead or The Phantom Menace like I do. I ran out of Godzilla movies that he told me were good ones and just have to watch whatever's available. I remember another reader telling me that this particular Godzilla movie was really bad, so I decided to watch it.

And as a special treat, this is Movies A-Go-Go style because that seems to be enormously popular. So here are my always somewhat convoluted thoughts as I watched Godzilla vs. Gigan, aka Godzilla on Monster Island.


Jun Fukuda directed this. I'd almost kill to have a last name like Fukuda.

This homework monster idea sounds really good actually. [Context: The main character, a comic book writer, brought a homework monster idea to the table. Essentially, it's children's fear of homework materializing in the atmosphere into a monster. See? Really great idea!]

Godzilla Tower in World Children’s Land--I thought this was going for an anti-capitalism subtext, but this playground library thing doesn’t seem like that much of a money maker.

Strict mother monster now? Man, this guy’s got some great ideas! Homework Monster? Strict Mother Monster? What will he come up with next? Chores Monster?

Monster Island shot--a final shot of baby Godzilla spitting a smoke ring accompanied by a fart sound. Before that, the shots of those twitching monsters almost made me giddy.

Godzilla looks so proud there. I'd be proud, too, if my son could do that. Or if my son could do anything! 

Rotating desk scene--I really want one of those for my classroom. Complete with the dramatic music that plays when he rotates.

What good’s a rotating desk if people can just walk around and see you though?

Whoa! What’s with this guy’s outfit? I think this might be a Japanese hippie. I like how he just helps himself to our protagonist’s corn cob, typical Japanese hippie behavior.

This is already too many pictures! 

“Those Children’s Land people are the enemies of peace.” Maybe this has an anti-Disney subtext.

Godzilla Tower is 13 stories high. And you can smoke in it. These are the kinds of things that matter to me when I'm watching a Godzilla movie.

Monster Island inhabitants apparently enjoy the sound of malfunctioning tapes. Godzilla’s eyeballs are silly in this movie.

What the hell is this talking business? Whoever came up with this idea should be slapped! Or thrown off the top of Godzilla Tower. [Note: More on this later. Barry had mentioned that Godzilla and the monster I'm going to be calling "Spiky Guy" talk in this movie. In this version I watched, they don't. In others? Well, hold on to your asses!]

Godzilla translation (since they didn’t give me subtitles): “Damn it! Those kids are playing their experimental electronic music too loudly again! Get them off my lawn!”

I’m secretly hoping that Godzilla and Godzilla Tower fight.

I haven't done the research, but I'm willing to bet Japan's got something that looks like this.

I’m watching this on something that forces commercials on me. So while I have a break--This is the second Cory’s birthday in a row where I’ve watched a Godzilla movie that is supposed to be awful, somehow making the absolute worst and cheapest birthday present even worse. This year, I have to confess, I was actually looking forward to this. Seriously--for like an entire month, I've been excited about watching a Godzilla movie on July 16th. It's like I need an excuse or something.

There’s too much time in this movie devoted to the comic book artist with terrible ideas, the chubby hippie, and the girl with no pants driving around with this dopey music in the background trying to figure things out. Bring on the monsters! This movie owes me fighting.

Fumio, who is dead but isn’t dead, died while climbing a mountain with his English teacher. And now the rule we have in my school district that prohibits student-teacher mountain-climbing expeditions makes perfect sense!

Now the bad guys are going to play “the tape of peace” which I believe was the name of Yoko Ono’s first album.

[Nope, but she does have two albums with "peace" in the title.]

Oh, boy. I just rubbed my hands together and sat up in my seat a little bit. We’re going to have some tanks vs. Spiky Guy action!

Spiky Guy seems a little too lumbering to be any kind of a menace. Well, until he makes that terrible noise that he makes. That would annoy the crap out of anybody.

Anguirus is Spiky Guy’s name. I looked it up during a commercial, but I won't remember it. His eyes don’t move. I think you either have all the monsters with moving eyes or you have none of them with moving eyes. Having both seems like some sort of continuity error.

The Japanese military = terrible shots. No wonder they had to crash their planes into things at Pearl Harbor. They couldn't shoot.

I can only assume this random gift of cigarettes is product placement.

Oh, it wasn’t random at all! It was part of an evil plan. This movie is way smarter than I am, I guess.

Ok, why are Ghidorah and Gigan floating around in space? Did Superman’s dad get mad at them and put them in a mirrors like he did with Zod and friends?

As a middle school English teacher, this is giving me ideas. Now I want to find a student to team up with to take over the world with the help of a pair of space monsters. [Clarification: Yes, I know the bad guys aren't really teacher and student. It was their cover. Still, those ideas are very real.]

Great. We have a hero who can’t make it up 13 flights of stairs.

Cool--the bad guys have cockroach shadows. Cue drunken horn and out-of-control theremin music.

I think some of these tanks might be toys.

I’m a little disappointed in the lack of movement from Ghidorah and Gigan. They don’t flap wings or anything while flying. They’re as motionless in the air as Godzilla Tower.

Finally! Building destruction! [Note: I thought the Tokyo destruction in this was pretty well done, at least average for one of these movies. It was a nice chunk of movie after a ton of exposition, too. I was starting to wonder if this movie was really as bad as Barry thought.]

Mannequins in Japan apparently look like this:

Actually, I’m wondering if these are supposed to be real people. You know, since the tanks are supposed to be real.

See, now Ghidorah and Gigan are animated. These destruction scenes are pretty cool although Gigan apparently has a tummy saw blade that makes it look like he’s having sex with buildings he’s rampaging.

Where are the screaming people? There's a disturbing lack of pedestrian mayhem here!

Godzilla and Spiky Guy are taking forever. Where the hell is Monster Island anyway? And they’re talking again. Barry, when he commented about this movie, told me they talked. This isn’t much different from how Ghidorah chirps or how they talk in other movies. I saw during a commercial break that in one version of this movie, talking bubbles were added. I’m going to have to find that.

[Note: I found that. This is probably what Barry saw, and it's definitely pretty dumb.]

Actually, this might be the best thing I've ever seen. 

I like the bad guy mayhem music. It's familiar, probably recycled, but I really like it.

I think that even more than the fighting in these monster movies, I like all the posturing that takes place before the fight. If there were translations of the monster speak, I’m sure there would be a few "yo’ mama" jokes in there. "Yo' mama's smells so bad, Tokyo crumbles even before she gets there! Oh, snap!"

Ha! Zip-lining dolls! And they’re not even wearing the same clothes.

The one near the top is the woman with the diamond-patterned shirt. That's just bad doll-makin'!

Wait a second! Godzilla isn’t even fighting Gigan. Spiky Guy is. And it looks ridiculous!

Rock volleyball, with Spiky Guy setting for a Godzilla spike at Gigan, is a little silly, but not as silly as when Gigan starts clapping with those pointy hands of his. Or when Ghidorah lightnings Godzilla right in the crotch.

Yikes! That was a lot of blood! That had to be the big guy’s jugular. I have new respect for Gigan and his stomach saw.

Godzilla responds to seeing Godzilla Tower exactly like I expected him to--with a slap to his own head.

I kind of wish Trump Tower would do to Donald Trump what Godzilla Tower is doing to Godzilla. [Clarification: Shoot him with a blue laser until he's motionless on the ground.]

Yikes again! Spiky Guy’s blood splashed on the camera! That's a Kill Bill-esque blood spurt!

Elevator door opens, and the bad guys fall for the drawing-of-the-good-guys-with-dynamite-behind-it trick! And where did they get this picture of themselves anyway?

So they were literally cockroaches. That still doesn’t explain why their shadows were cockroach shadows when they had human forms earlier. The makers of this movie don’t seem to know how shadows work which is strange since they seem to have a complete understanding of all sorts of other scientific things.

Godzilla’s really getting his ass kicked. I don't think I've seen one of these movies where Godzilla's in this much trouble.

Some of Gigan’s gesticulations are comical, mostly because he’s got goofy-looking arms. I’d be embarrassed to hang around him if I were Ghidorah. Parts of him are pretty badass, and he's got his moments, but he really seems like he was designed after some Japanese kid won a Sketch Your Own Monster contest.

This fight scene is getting a little sexual. Godzilla violently teabagged Gigan while Spiky Guy and Ghidorah were necking. Sadly, I might be getting a little turned on.

Spiky Guy’s power revealed--he can hurl himself ass-first at another monster being held by another monster.

Terrible screen shot here. My apologies. 

And with this cool final shot [but another lousy screen shot], Cory's birthday present has ended. Happy birthday, man! I hope it was a great one! 

Godzilla, come back. Come back, Godzilla! 

Movies A-Go-Go: Battlefield Earth

2000 sci-fi clunker

Rating: 4/20

Plot: It's the year 3000, and humans try to take back Earth from alien invaders called the Psychlos, a race of extraterrestrials who enjoy chuckling.

Someday, I'd like to be considered a bad-movie aficionado. I have work to do, and this is one of those bad-movie classics that I should have seen a long time ago if I'm going to be taken seriously. Here were my thoughts while I watched this seven-hour movie. And yes, by now I realize that these probably aren't going to make any sense to anybody who hasn't seen the movie recently and that they're probably not as funny as I think they are. It's too late now because I've already copy and pasted all of the words here from another document.

Movies A-Go-Go! 

Think about movies with "Earth" in the title. Have there been any good ones? And, go!

Green letters on black background. Does anything look more 1980s than that? We're seconds into the movie, and I already feel like throwing up.

Subtitle: A Saga in the Year 3000.

If there’s this alien race that has come and gone from earth and nearly wiped us out, why do humans think a wooden door with wooden spikes is going to stop them?

Wow, our fashion sense has gone to shit in 1,000 years. And what are the Scientologists behind this movie trying to say about humanity? How did we regress this much? I guess this is what John Travolta leads to.

People also over-enunciate in the future because it’s one of those movies.

This scene where Rock and some guy (Carlo apparently) who makes throat noises reminds me of the last time I played miniature golf actually. And that’s why I’ve never played miniature golf again. [See, here's the perfect example of something that doesn't make sense unless you're watching the movie. By the way, this miniature golf course scene almost convinced me that I was about to watch some underappreciated sci-fi classic. I thought it looked cool. Here's a picture: 

Sorry: No picture available.]

Uh oh! Mall security! This is exactly why you don’t make campfires and cook meet in the middle of a mall. A guy will chase you around with really bad special effects.

I think our hero just ran through 8 glass walls. I think? Maybe it was a a replay of him running through the same glass wall? Does “You Break It; You Buy It” apply in the year 3,000?

I’m pretty sure these special effects are terrible for 2000. I know they’re bad for the year 3000.

“Don’t breathe the air! It’s poison!” Actually, I think they’re piping in the stench from this movie.

“Sure you might! And I might suddenly grow a third arm!”
“You’re out of your skull-bone!”

This is the type of dialogue we're going to have in Battlefield Earth. And that, Battlefield Earth, is why people laugh at you.

Travolta and Whitaker laughing--they’re not going to think things are that funny when they read reviews of this movie. [Note: I'm amazed at how much screen time is devoted to Travolta and Whitaker laughing. Here's a compilation of their laughing that somebody put together:]

Earth--one of the ugliest crap holes in the universe? The arrival of this king guy [Zete--inspired naming with this movie] brings out an even worse acting than Travolta. [Michael MacRae, by the way. And I'm not so sure about that "worse acting" comment that I typed there.]

Oh, my. They’re laughing again. These Psychlos are certainly jovial guys.

Nevermind. Nothing is worse than Travolta in this movie.

More laughing.

Why are lines echoing? Is that supposed to be artistic?

“The senator’s exact words to me--and I’m quoting. . .” That’s what “exact words” means, isn’t it? Is this how L. Ron Hubbard's novel reads or is this the genius of the screenwriters?

Planet Psychlo is the color of medicine I used to take as a kid.

All that fighting over some sort of pistachio jello?

Oh, I really liked how that guy said “economics” there.

More Psychlo chuckling. They think everything is funny!

More artsy-fartsiness: cockeyed camera angles. For no reason! Artsy-fartsy angles and weirdo echoing. I think that forces this into bad-bad movie territory rather than good-bad.

Every transition in this movie is a swipe from the center. That’s as tiresome as the rest of this movie.

Crumbling tower: Some of the worst CGI I’ve seen in a long time. I guess that's the best that you can get from Travolta's Pulp Fiction money?

Oh, forget I said that about the tower. That spaceship thing was even worse. This entire movie is gross, and I'm starting to hate myself again.

Travolta seems proud of his hand prosthetics in this. They’re rubbery and hairy and nothing to be proud of, but he seems to be finding every opportunity to hold those bad boys up. Maybe that’s acting.

Look at that thing!

I really really hope Travolta’s character gets an opportunity to dance in this movie.

“What do you think a man-animal would like to eat? What would he consider a treat?”
“How the crap would I know?”

I just find it hard to believe a Psychlo would say "How the crap would I know?"

Ok, I guess they’re not speaking the same language here? Otherwise, Travolta isn’t giving away his plan, right? It’s a good plan, by the way--release the man-animals and wait for him to find his favorite treat. That plan's just as intelligent as the writing for this movie.

Travolta finished at the top of his class? Really? I’m finding it impossible to believe that this guy can be the top of anything.

“Crap lousy ceiling!”

Clinko language slave. And there’s a jellyfish. And some magic dust. This might be the stupidest-looking scene yet. And trust me--that’s really saying something.

“Are you hungry, little fellow? Yes?” It’s a case where ignorance is bliss because now our hero is going to have to understand the Psychlos’ terrible dialogue like the rest of us.

That hero, by the way, is apparently named Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. And he's played by somebody named Barry Pepper.

Was Barry Pepper supposed to be Tom Cruise? He looks a little like Cruise.

More movies need guy playing rudimentary horns on cliffs.

Oh, good. It’s Chrissy again. Sabine Karsenti plays her, very poorly. I'm starting to forgive all bad acting in this movie though because I think it's mostly a writing problem.

“Do you want lunch?!”

I knew this movie was bad, but I thought it had a terrible reputation because of the Scientology angle. But no--this is really as bad as its reputation would lead you to believe.

Field trip! Travolta takes our hero to a library to read the Declaration of Independence and to a farm to see cows. And this scene where Travolta’s showing off his marksmen skills by shooting cows is about as manly as a movie scene can be. Behind the back? Oh stop, Travolta! It’s not quite the dance scene I was looking for, but I guess it’ll have to do.

The lights in the night sky are planets?

Chirk’s forehead, long fingers, wild eyebrows, and tongue. And now I’m spent. I would not have predicted that I'd masturbate while watching Battlefield Earth, but there you go.

“I’m going to make you as happy as a baby Psychlo on a straight diet of Kerbango.” I'm just going to add this to the masturbation rolodex. [Oh, my! That's Kelly Preston!]

Who’s this guy who fudged the books? I bet he was in Dune.

Shaun Austin-Olsen, and he wasn't in Dune. The character's name is apparently Planetship, by the way. What the hell kind of name is that? 

Battlefield Earth drinking game: a shot every time the characters talk about leverage.

There’s no way the Washington Monument is still standing in 1,000 years.

I’ve completely lost track of what’s going on here. Maybe it’s because I’m not a Scientologist. All I know is that Carlo has regressed into a human who can only make that throaty grunting sound and say “Piece of cake!”

Leverage!

When Travolta said “Don’t be crazy!”, he sounded like Tony Manero. Until then, I was completely believing him as an alien.

Whitaker should be embarrassed. What was he doing before this movie that he felt like he had to do this movie?

“Our friendly bartender!” Severed head with giant music! Whitaker gets his hand shot off! This is nearly comedy gold.

I am really looking forward to the end of Battlefield Earth. This is an exhausting experience, easily the hardest I've had to work in 20 years.

This has turned into an explosion fest, but Carlo’s celebration after he shoots down a spaceship makes it all worth it.

Jets. Yeah, this is realistic.

I just checked on Rotten Tomatoes, and I’m surprised to see that 4 critics out of 148 gave this a favorable review.

"Blow the dome!" Paul Reubens got in trouble for that very thing while watching a movie, so I don’t think it’s a good idea to include that line so many times.

“THEY’RE KILLING US!”

I bet you can’t predict Carlo’s final words in this movie.

I have no idea what happened there, but a lot of shit blew up.

Travolta--still laughing until the very end.

I'm not sure we can take anybody involved with the production of Battlefield Earth seriously ever again. Or Scientology, of course. This is to Scientology what [insert name of any Christian movie here] is to Christianity.

Intolerable Cruelty

2003 romantic screwball comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: It's a battle of the sexes as a gold digger meets up with a successful womanizing divorce lawyer!

I'd been meaning to give this another shot anyway, but the recent death of Irwin Keyes who plays "Wheezy Joe" in this gave me an excuse. I couldn't find either of Keyes' time travel movies, one called Timegate: Tales of the Saddle Tramps and the other featuring Pat Morita. Keyes had an interesting career with some interesting roles. He was Shorty the Stagehand in Lynch's On the Air, a police officer in The Warriors, the hunchback in Motorama. He was even in an episode of Growing Pains, but I don't remember whether he had any scenes with Boner Stabone. Black Dynamite, House of 1,000 Corpses, The Flintstones. I'm not sure he was ever better than in his brief role here, the kind of minor but memorable character that can exist only in the Coen brothers' wacky world. His exit is about as memorable as it gets. Rest in peace, Wheezy Joe.

I should make a Wheezy Joe inspired top-ten list of favorite Coen Brother auxiliary characters. Joe's making it, especially if my top-ten list has fifteen items on it like it usually does.

This movie isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was. In fact, it's really pretty good. I think it's a combination of a few things. First, I'm older and more mature. Second, I have more experience with the kinds of comedy the Coens are trying to pull off here than I did when I first saw this. Third, I'm pretty sure I was disappointed that this was a movie made by the same people who made Fargo and The Big Lebowski, and I'm better able to detach the experience of watching this from my expectations. As an homage to 1940's screwball comedy, the Coens already had done it better with the criminally-underrated The Hudsucker Proxy, but this is definitely worth watching and will probably make you laugh.

We open with a great scene with Geoffrey Rush singing Simon and Garfunkel in his car. It leads to hijinks that feel kind of like Coen light. The opening sequence is almost funny, but it all seems strangely forced, not like something that belongs naturally in the Coens' world. It's almost like seeing a tiger in a cage in Indiana instead of seeing one out in the wild. It actually takes a little while for this thing to gain momentum, but once it does, it's fluent and nearly virtuosic. There are cute animated credits, choo-choo foreplay, an Abbott and Costello routine at the beginning of a courtroom scene, a bagpipe version of "Bridge over Troubled Water," and a shot of Living Without Intestines Magazine.

This was George Clooney's second Coen romp. The character's not as good as his first, but he plays this Cary Grant thing so well. Lines that aren't things that anybody would say ever, an exaggerated version of things that 1940's suave characters said that also weren't things that anybody would say ever, come out of his mouth so naturally. I'm pretty sure I have a thing for Catherine Zeta-Jones, and if there's any actress alive who could make characters fall into the traps they fall in, it might be her. Of course, I have a thing for Billy Bob Thornton, too. He's funny here, previously acclimated to the Coen Brothers' world. But man, those auxiliary characters. You've got Coen-regular Richard Jenkins playing a another lawyer. And then there's a scene-stealing performance by Jonathan Hadary as Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy who performs while holding a little yippy dog. I mean, watching this is worth it just to hear Hadary say, "She specificated a man with a wandering peepee!" And Tom Aldredge as a near-death Herb Myerson, even wheezier than Wheezy Joe? Man, I love that performance, probably just because of how he says the word "form."

So no, this isn't higher echelon Coen Brothers' stuff, but when you stack it against other rom-coms from the last 25 years, it more than satisfies. Worth checking out again if you haven't seen it in 13 years.

Noises Off

1992 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Some people try to put on a play.

I don't know why I'd never even heard of this movie until faithful reader Josh included it as one of his twelve selections on his "Museum Movie" list. I'm glad he brought it up because it was comedy gold from start to finish.

This is a Peter Bogdanovich adaptation of a stage production, and I imagine the camera's ability to move around a bit makes it more enjoyable that it would be in the theater. A lot of movies based on plays feel a little stiff; this is vivacious, mostly because of a rapidfire series of gags and great lines. This is in three acts where we essentially get to see the play performed three times--once in a last-minute rehearsal, once a behind-the-scenes look while it's being performed for an audience, and once more during a performance in Cleveland. Real-life conflicts intensify and get in the way of a production that depends on timing and rapport of the ensemble cast, and disastrous failure really isn't ever funnier.

Speaking of timing and rapport and ensembles casts, that's really what makes this movie so much fun. I guess one could make the argument that the script is so good--self-referential, stuffed with irony, peppered with smart slapstick and great visual gags that a lot of people might not even catch the first time through--that any performers thrown in there would be fine. I thought this collective was fantastic though. I haven't liked Michael Caine this much in a long time as the exasperated, philandering director. Comic legend Carol Burnett gives a spirited performance. Christopher Reeve, who I don't think I'd normally associate with comedy, is almost too big and dorky to fit on stage with everybody, but he proves he had some comedy chops. John Ritter always makes anything he's in better. I always love seeing Julie Hagerty. And Denholm Elliott is hilarious, too. Even if you hate laughing and have no interest in watching a bunch of people trying to be funny, this is worth seeing to appreciate the timing of these actors, the masterful way the visual gags--a simple thing like opening and closing doors, for example--are set up, and these performers not trying to outdo each other but working with each other to create something magical.

This should be closer to a highly-regarded comedy classic than it is. It's quick and witty, faithful to traditional Hollywood comedy while still seeming completely fresh almost 25 years after its release.

Mean Girls

2004 comedy

Rating: 12/20 (Jen: 15/20; Emma: 14/20)

Plot: Formally homeschooled Cady navigates the cliqueish waters of her new high school and infiltrates a group of preppy and snobbish mean girls called The Plastics.

I just want to point out that watching this was not my idea. It's not a Rachel McAdams thing at all. As likable as she is in the dozen or so time travel movies she's in--and I haven't stopped thinking about her since I watched About Time--she's completely unlikable here. Of course, she's supposed to be unlikable, so I guess it's a job well done. Lindsey Lohan is supposed to exist somewhere in the gray area between likable and unlikable, but I thought she leaned too much toward the latter to make the character work.

Tina Fey's written better stuff. This is a return to 80's teen comedies, like a Heathers without as much darkness or anybody doing weird Jack Nicholson impersonations. I don't think the satire really connects, and it's only funny in spurts. Tim Meadows was just about my favorite part of the movie actually.

Moron Movies

1985 collection of short films

Rating: 3/20

Plot: The story of how one man--Len Cella--came up with the idea for Vine, the short-video sharing technology.

See this guy?

That's Len Cella. If you don't like the look of that face, you're not going to watch this hour-long collection of his shenanigans because its the only face you're going to see.

These really do feel like Vines (I'm not sure if I'm using this term right. I'm too old to understand technology, after all. My son, in fact, just told me yesterday that nobody has or cares about blogs anymore, and here I thought my blog was about to take off.), and if I have to applaud anything, it's that Cella is doing something that I don't think anybody was doing at the time and really does kind of anticipate this whole anybody-can-be-a-celebrity idea that today's technology allows.

Unfortunately, I don't think there are a lot of people out there who would think Len Cella should be making short films for public consumption. I just can't imagine anybody being entertained by these, with the possible exception of Len Cella himself. As a kid, my brother and I made all these cassette tapes with these puppets we called Gnarlies. That's right--we recorded puppet shows on cassette. Why we did these with the puppets on our hands is still confusing to me. These weren't funny or clever or entertaining at all. They remind me of Len Cella, a guy who isn't really funny or clever or entertaining at all. The difference is that he should know better because he was an adult in the 80s when these were made. I imagine that he had some friends or coworkers always telling him how funny he was or something, and he decided that it was a gift that needed to be shared with the rest of the world.

Few, if any of these, were worth the amount of time it took for Len Cella to set up his camera. He rigs up things, little inventions like a cheap artificial heart or toothpaste tubes that he's punched holes in or boots tied to mattresses that he's leaned against trees, and probably is inventive enough to have one funny idea at some point in his life. Unfortunately, I don't think I saw that good idea anywhere in this collection.

Something strange happened as I watched these. And trust me--I did watch all 58 minutes of this first installment of Moron Movies. Yes, there is a sequel called, I think, More Moron Movies, something I doubt I'll ever see. But as I watched, I just kept getting sadder and sadder. I was sad for Len Cella who I dobut accomplished what he set out to accomplish. And I was sad for myself because I really started to feel that I was wasting my life away. It was one hour of my time, but this is the kind of shit I waste my time with all the time, and those hours with people like Len Cella add up.

By the time this was over, I was as depressed as I have been for a long time.

The short pieces range from a couple of seconds to maybe 20 seconds. Actually, I doubt any of these hit 20 seconds. They go by quickly enough that you'd think it wouldn't matter if they were bad. If one of the comedy bits is terrible, you don't have to wait long for another one. But that doesn't really apply when they're all terrible.

Here's the kind of genius you can expect from the appropriately-named Moron Movies:

--A caveman looks in a mirror and says, "Damn, I'm just as ugly as my friends. We're never gonna get anywhere being this ugly."
--Mount Rushmore 2
--"They didn't have any fingers left so they gave me a monkey's tail. It isn't worth a damn." And in a separate short: "They didn't have any ears left so they gave me a foot. I hate it." Predictably, by this point, he's got a shoe balanced over his ear.
--A "hamburger comedian" and later a "chicken comedian," shorts where meat with Groucho Marx glasses is dragged across the floor.
--"Jello makes a lousy doorstop." This is exactly what you think it would be.
--"I can type 90 words a minute, but nobody will hire me because I'm a shark."
--Ass appreciation class ("This is a good ass.")
--Learning that 80 frog farts can propel a canoe sixteen feet.
--A bit called "Perverted Cameraman," featuring nothing more than several zoomed shots of animal butts.
--Speed reading. Then  speed writing. Then speed sleeping. The kinds of ideas a kid might have a recess. "Hey, guys, watch me speed read!" before flipping through pages really quickly.
--Walking a pet 2x4
--Several shorts where he's attached baby bottle nipples onto his face and says they're warts. It scares you because it makes it seem like Len Cella has actually reproduced.
--"How about Dickie DooDoo Disease?"

The worst thing about this? Len Cella's fake laugh he does in this. It makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it.

I wept as I typed most of this.

Time Travel Movie Fest: Repeat Performance

1947 crime drama

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A woman kills her husband right after midnight on New Year's Day, but then finds herself starting the previous year over with a chance to make things right. Will she manage to change that tragic outcome or is she trapped by fate?

"She made a wish, a tragic one at a magic time." That's almost poetry!

I really liked the idea behind this movie and am surprised it hasn't seen a remake or two. I like what we learn with poor Sheila Page's story, about how destiny's a "stubborn old girl." It's a cool story, but it lags in a 1940's way, and most of the performers overact. Well, I take that back. The woman all overact with those sort of loud exasperated woman voices. The guys all act ike guys in noirish 40's pictures. The music's gigantic, really in-your-face at times. It's almost comical during one scene where a character says, "He can walk," a sentence punctuated with this huge music.

This movie might be worth watching if you typically like films from this period, but it's a little frustrating that a story idea with so much potential winds up being so hohum. It's almost like the makers of this were fatigued after coming up with the idea and had nothing left when actually trying to tell the story.

Chef

2014 food movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A chef who doesn't understand how social media works gets himself into some trouble following a bad review and has trouble finding another job in the kitchen. He gets some help from Iron Man and starts up a food truck business with his sous-chef and his son.

This is the second food-related movie I've seen in the last week, and apparently I really like food movies or scenes where characters work with food. Maybe I'm supposed to be a foodie, but I don't think so because I can't stand that word. But I've liked food documentaries (I Like Killing Flies and Jiro Dreams of Sushi) and foodie dramas and comedies (Tampopo, Ratatouille, Soylent Green). There might be a Food Movie Fest in our future.

This is Jon Favreau's baby, and it seems like he might be a foodie. It looks like he knows what he's doing in the kitchen anyway. I suspect that he wrote and directed this movie just for the chance to get close to Scarlett Johansson and Sofia Vergara. Those are a pair of attractive human beings. Favreau's an attractive human being himself, but Vergara and Johansson? I'm not sure there's a man alive who could catch the eye of both of those women. I guess that goes to show you what a good personality and mad cooking skills can get you in life. Which reminds me--I need to learn how to cook. And I need to get a better personality.

Favreau really is likable. He's written himself a character that is flawed but has the type of heart and personality that makes you want to hang out with the guy. It's the only way that John Leguizamo's decisions in this movie make any sense actually. I really liked Leguizamo, too, a guy who always just seems so natural on screen. Here, it's almost like he didn't even realize he was in a movie at all. It's like he just thought he was hanging out with some buddies, cooking things and traveling across the country. There's one scene where Leguizamo makes a sandwich, and I swear, it's nearly sexual. I like a lot of the cast actually. Johansson and Vergara could just stand in the background, and I'd enjoy their presence. Amy Sedaris and Robert Downey Jr. have roles that are closer to cameos. Bobby Cannavale is an actor I've always liked, and I thought Oliver Platt made a fine foodie blogger. Foodie. God, I hate that word.

Best of all might be Emjay Anthony, this kid they found to play Favreau's son. I'm often overly critical of child actors, but Anthony was good, almost as much of a natural as Leguizamo. The actors, including Anthony, had a great rapport. The father/son relationship is as important to the movie as the food plot. All plots and subplots are a little uninspired and standard, and it's really the only thing that holds this back at all. It doesn't make anything that happens less sentimentally gripping, and Chef satisfies emotionally from beginning to end.

Actually, there's something else that annoyed me about this movie. Along with some modern references to reality television (Hell's Kitchen, Honey Boo Boo), a lot of this feels like an extended advertisement for Twitter. I wanted to penalize this a point for that, but the soundtrack, a just-about-perfect collection of eclectic sounds, is so good. It's heavy on Latino sounds and has a liveliness that perfectly accompanies this chef's journey.

And Mr. Bonetangles:

I could have watched that puppet for another 30 minutes.

Anyway, this is a very likable movie, one that inspired me to put cornstarch on my balls.

Time Travel Movie Fest: 12:01

1993 time loop adventure

Rating: 13/20

Plot: An office worker finds himself reliving the same day over and over again and tries his best to hero-up and save a woman he has a crush on from being murdered.

Same source material as the last movie in my Time Travel Movie Fest--a short story by Richard Lupoff--but with dramatically different results. This is more of a sci-fi thriller but with some comedy mixed in. The blend of lighthearted goofiness and the serious violent business doesn't always work all that well. This isn't terrible at all, especially for a television movie, but it has an inconsistent tone and suffers a bit from coming out around the same time as the more-memorable Groundhog Day.

I liked that we knew what was going on with the main character before he did. There's a little inconsistency with Jonathan Silverman's character Barry because he seems like a bumbling idiot a lot of the time and a little more heroic and suave at other times. There's more inconsistency with his love interest Lisa played by Helen Slater. Her shifts from icy to warm don't always work, and I'm not sure I ever liked her nearly as much as the main character. Martin Landau's in this, and he brings this dignity to the proceedings.

Unlike Groundhog Day, this makes an effort to explain scientifically what is going on with this character. Of course, it didn't make any sense to me, and I'm not sure if it's because it's just not sound science or because I'm stupid. Either way, the explanation isn't really anything I need in a movie like this.

I suspect that while I'll remember the big plot points for this one, the smaller details won't be all that memorable. This movie is likable enough but is strangely derivative for a story that should have been more wild or original.

Oh, and look! It's Danny Trejo playing a guy in jail. He played a prisoner in at least 8 movies from 1983 to 1993.

Time Travel Movie Fest: 12:01

1990 time loop story

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy with a briefcase finds himself stuck in a time loop that forces him to relive the same hour of his life over and over again. At least it's during his lunch.

I watched two versions of this Richard Lupoff story, and this short (around 25 minutes) was definitely the one I preferred. It stars Kurtwood Smith (that guy!) as the unfortunate soul stuck in this purgatorial crisis, and his best moment is when he goes completely nuts and just starts screaming. I waited for this to get wacky, but it retains this consistent existential tone. It begins in medias res, and unless you know there's a time-loopy plot, you really don't know what's even going on, just that Smith's character is a little intense for some reason. The explanation for the time loop is all pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo, but the science doesn't need to matter anyway. Instead, you're forced to think about what this poor individual is going through psychologically, and, for me at least, it made the experience a little horrifying. This kind of had the feel of a colorized Twilight Zone episode but without any Rod Serling. I really enjoyed it.

You can find this on Youtube if you're interested.

Time Travel Movie Fest: Premature

2014 teen sex comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A teenager finds himself stuck in a raunchy rip-off of a Groundhog Day time loop ending and beginning each time he ejaculates. He finds himself reliving the same day over and over again until he gets it right.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of the genre, but I thought this movie was pretty funny. That plot synopsis up there probably makes it sound a little cheaper than it actually is. It's one of those movies that's clever while at the same time not being as clever as it thinks it is. The comedy is quick and modern. I don't like references to contemporary things--like Ellen Degeneres here--and not all of the jokes in this are going to stick. No pun intended. But the jokes come--no pun intended--fast and furiously, like a teenage boy, so you don't have to wait around too long before you find something that sort of works.

The protagonist is likable and, more importantly, believable. His dilemmas are your typical high school senior dilemmas--being bullied, finding love, getting into college, having your mother catch you post-jerk-off. I think I like the character more because he's never whiny, dealing with what comes at him with wit. His friend reminded me of Boner from Growing Pains, but a Boner who's freed from television to say whatever he wants to. The friend is played by Craig Roberts who I really liked in Submarine. Roberts gets a lot of the funniest lines. Brian Huskey gets a small but funny part as the principal, some kid named Adam Riegler adopts a unibrow to play an uber-smart kid, Steve Coulter plays the protagonist's dad and gets to say "When I was his age, I could fill a bucket," and there's a hilariously odd Israeli kid played by Jonathan Kleitman. Best of all is Alan Tudyk as the interviewer from Georgetown. Anytime a character can make you laugh at the word "lupus," you know an actor's nailing it.

This isn't for everybody, but if you've ever been interested in seeing an R-rated Boner, it's probably for you. I like these time loop movies, and this one has a nice little embedded lesson that I probably could have used back when I was too young to watch movies like this. It doesn't stray too far from its genre, but it's definitely not a complete waste of time and might be worth it just to see Alan Tudyk cry and ask, "Why were there only one set of footprints in the sand?"

Boner Stabone

Bad Movie Club: Thunderstorm: The Return of Thor

2011 superhero movie

Bad Movie Rating: 4/5 (Amy: 1/5; Fred: 2/5; Libby: 1/5; Ozzy: no rating; Johnny: 3.5/5; Josh: 4/5)

Rating: 2/20

Plot: Some devil worshipers led by a bald guy who overacts have to collect the Dragon's Crotch in order to summon Hel, a mean woman. It's up to a cop and a guy with a plastic superhero suit to save the day.

Libby: "Does this movie come with complimentary lube?"

This seems less like a movie and more like a group of people getting together to pretend to make a movie. It's endearingly cheap. The female baddie's name is Hel, so apparently they couldn't even afford that second L for her name. Her outfit appeared to be grabbed from the Halloween clearance shelves at a dollar store. Thor's hammer seems to be made out of the exact material that those jumbo wiffleball bats are made from. I mean, just look at these fuckers:

Do any of those people look like they belong in a movie? Do they even look like they belong on a community theater stage? The guy on the right is Jody Haucke who played the leader of the people who summon Hel, played by a wonky-eyed Emanuelle Carriere, a woman with the worst evil laugh I've ever heard. Haucke threw everything he had into his villainous enunciation. The hero was played by Ray Besharah who was too lame to be an actual superhero, something that worked in his favor since he was only accidentally a superhero anyway. After all, he wasn't Thor. Thor, or more accurately Thor's head, was played by writer/director Brett Kelly. Besharah played the guy who wore this:

I'm not even sure that picture makes the costume look all that cheap. His friend's bad hair and bad posture probably distracts you. But the bottom half of the costume is just a pair of black tights, and we suspected that Thunderstorm wasn't even able to move his arms in that suit.

Oh, but the piece de resistance:

That is a stop-motion dragon thing, and it's a work of art. It's a stop-motion creation that would make Harryhausen shit himself. The appearance of this thing in the final act of the movie elevated it from bunch-of-people-with-fifty-bucks-and-a-camera-hanging-out-and-making-a-movie-mostly-in-the-director's-garage to something close to award worthy. I'm not sure what awards those might be, but it's worthy of them.

You'll have to get past a 10-minute introductory scroll that is also read to us in a voice made inaudible by a loud soundtrack, but this is a fairly entertaining good-bad movie. There's some terrible fake blood, horrible writing, lame comic relief, henchmen who say "Yeah!" in unison way too much, about 1,000 uses of the word Ragnarok, my favorite line ever ("Whoa! Easy, fella!") following a death scene, and some of the worst fight scenes ever. You almost want to applaud the effort of the people involved with this because they're clearly having some fun; most of you, however, just wants to tell them to stop.

Special Television Show Post: True Detective (Season One)

2014 crime show

Rating: no rating

Plot: Troubled men try to solve a crime committed by people who might be even more troubled.

People who know me know I don't watch enough television. There were years I didn't even have access to television, and for significant chunks of my life, I haven't had cable. I've never had HBO. You hear enough about television shows though, and you want to fit in with the rest of the people, and this was one I figured I needed to check out. This is television that I think people will not only be watching years from now but probably even still talking about it.

I don't really like cop and crime shows, and in a way, this is just a bloated 8-hour episode of one of those. The extra space makes these characters and their sins--because we all, as this show constantly and bleakly reminds us, have our sins--authentic. Even at its wildest or most preposterous, this feels real. It's like an exaggerated version of the darkest and most degraded bits of human existence, but there's still something real about it, and that's because the characters are allowed to breathe. The mystery's allowed to breathe, too. Things unfold delicately, and even though there are definitely some cliffhanger moments strewn throughout the duration of this season, it's really the quieter mysterious bits that keep your eyes glued to the screen.

Those characters. Man, those characters. I'm not sure this works without Matthew McConaughey (have to look it up every single fucking time) and Woody Harrelson. There's not any insane deviation from what either of these guys normally do. McConaughey's playing the same guy he plays in the car commercials, quietly faux-philosophizing and always seeming a little alien. Harrelson's that same earthy male, the type of guy you worry might emerge from your television screen and thrust his belt buckle in your face. Both characters--Rust and Marty--spend considerable amounts of time brooding, and the hate-love relationship they build throughout this story is just terrific. You just know that one of these two guys will kill the other unless, more tragically, they end up killing each other. One thing you see over and over again is a shot of the two detectives in a car with McConaughey (I had to look at the beginning of the paragraph for the spelling this time) saying something wackily profound or profoundly wacky and Harrelson looking disgusted. As many times as that happened during this season, I never got sick of it. These are two characters who don't really like each other and can't really understand each other yet absolutely need each other, probably in ways that don't even make sense to them. And the performances from these dual-leads make the characters memorable and a lot of fun, even when they're at their most monotone. McConaughey gets great lines, most written like the type of thing that would come from an inebriated Raymond Chandler after a really bad series of days.

Reggie Ledoux. I have a theory that the makers of this show came up with that name first and said, "Wouldn't it be cool if Matthew McConaughey said that name?" and then wrote an entire show just to make it happen. I haven't been able to stop saying Reggie Ledoux using my best Matthew McConaughey impersonating skills--an impression that could only be described as horrific--since I first heard him say the name in episode three.

The auxiliary characters add so much color. Old black preachers, Southern white tent revival preachers, police guys with layers of movie grit, prostitutes, mentally-challenged individuals, And beautiful women. Alexandra Daddario is the type of actress who can cause you to start a midlife crisis, and part of me only wants to watch movies with her in them for the rest of my life. Michelle Monaghan makes you wonder what's going on in Marty's head. Beautiful actresses. I would argue that there's a little too much sex in this. I realize that makes me sound old though.

The best character isn't a character at all. It's the setting. This has a moody, Southern gothic feel, almost a Twin Peaks vibe without the backward-talking little people. Post-Katrina Louisiana feels a lot like a purgatory with it's wind-torn trees, flooded lands, dilapidated houses, places that are "like somebody's memory of a town." There are certain locations--a tree, an old fort, an abandoned church--where it seems like they found the location first and then figured out a scene that could be shot there with these characters. They started with Reggie Ledoux and moved on to the settings.

The music really works, too. I got sick of the theme song by The Handsome Family although I'm listening to it right now and like it out of that opening music context. T. Bone Burnett brought attention to some great American folk music with what he collected for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and he might do the same here with gospel and new-folk weirdness. Burnett has a gift for finding music that is perfect for the setting and probably, if I'd pay a little more attention, the themes. Here, you get a lot of gospel, some blues, some country, the Kinks, little Dylan, Vashti Bunyan, Townes Van Zandt, Father John Misty, and so on. It's an eclectic mix that somehow all manages to sound like this exact place and time.

People keep telling me that television productions have become just as good as movies, and I almost believed them with Breaking Bad. This is tense, impactful storytelling with a philosophical edge, and I'm glad writer Nic Pizzolatto wasn't constricted by the confines of a 2 hour movie. Cary Fukunaga has a great last name and must have had a nice budget to work with. This has many great individual scenes, but there are two that I want to bring up as the best example of how television drama has caught up with movie productions.

First, is a scene where McConaughey's character is working undercover. Things go great, pretty much like you expect them to, and there's an extended sequence shot that was as good as anything you'll see in a movie. The camera movements are sophisticated, and there are so many characters and so much action that you watch the whole thing stunned, not because of what was going on with any of the characters but because of the technical aspects. At least I was.

The second is a scene where they catch they get their man. You know the characters are going to survive because you see them talking in the future and know it's all a flashback, but there's still some great tension. And there's great juxtaposition between the story they are telling the interviewers and the reality that we see on the scene. It's masterfully done.

True Detective is as dark as anything you're likely to see on television, and it's not just dark because of what is happening on the screen but in the way it kind of gets under your skin. You might see a little of yourself in these exaggerated characters, might identify with their situations, and as they progress through this murky story, it makes you feel a little dirty. If you don't see yourself, you'll definitely see that this storyline with its disturbed characters doing disturbing deeds is definitely holding a filthy mirror to society, that the issues raised here and the philosophies and illnesses driving this are burbling beneath the surface of the real world. And that's what really makes things so dark, cynical, pessimistic. You recognize it. At the end, there are characters using a cheesy star-and-sky and light-vs.-dark metaphor. The characters, like they do throughout this entire season, don't agree. I was definitely on the Woody Harrelson's side on this one though, and that's not just because he had a belt buckle and a giant chin.

Seriously, Woody Harrelson's chin is huge now.

I easily liked the first 5 episodes more than the last 3 episodes in this season, but the whole thing kept my interest during the two days I watched this. I probably won't watch it again even though I'd love to look for more ways to connect--thematically--the issues with Marty and his family and the criminal acts at the center of this. I will, however, look forward to subsequent seasons to see how they explore these themes further. I'm not sure how they can dig deeper into the darkness, but it'll be fun to watch them try.

By the way, I want to point out that as horrible as I am at figuring out mysteries and seeing twists way ahead of big revelations, I had a hunch about this one that turned out to be correct. Maybe it was supposed to be more obvious than I thought it was.

I should get a belt buckle.

Time Travel Movie Fest: The Last Mimzy

2007 family sci-fi movie

Rating: 9/20 (Abbey: 11/20; Buster: stopped watching)

Plot: A pair of annoying children find a magic box with a stuffed bunny and a bunch of rocks that they keep referring to as "toys" for some reason. They all try to solve the mystery of where this crap came from and why.

Sprite, the preferred soft drink of Mimzies. That and some sneakier Intel product placement are sickening.

This movie has enough ideas for sixteen different movies. At one point, a black guy says, "Am I the only one here who doesn't have a clue what's going on?" I answered my television, "No, you aren't!" I was confused, and it wasn't in that pleasant way where a movie is mysterious and allows you to gradually figure things out. No, this just seemingly throws every idea the writers have ever had at you with the hope that you won't be bored by anything. There are kids hitting golf balls 300 years ("Whoa! We've found your sport!" is one of those reactions that makes it seem like the writers don't know how humans really act), levitation with everybody screaming and screeching, Lewis Carroll allusions (I guess I should have recognized "mimzy" from "The Jabberwocky," but I believe it's spelled with an 's'), aliens that the Doctor Who show would reject for not looking real enough, floating rocks, Hindu ritual symbols, palm reading, techno-bunnies. There's just so much going on all the time, usually accompanied by an unrelenting score. Blame Howard Shore for that.

You can't blame Howard Shore for the acting. Rainn Wilson plays a hippie teacher, and his performance is almost embarrassing. I blame the writing more than I blame Wilson though, and I even suspect that the actor, after spending a few weeks reading these terrible lines, just decided to sabotage the production. Just listen to him yelp out, "What are you doing driving a truck? You're a little boy!" Wilson isn't the worst actor in the movie. No, that blue ribbon goes to Julie the Babysitter played by Randi Lynne. Her lone scene features this freakout, and I'm wondering how many times they had to film it before deciding that they weren't going to get anything that was more realistic.

Maybe I was supposed to think the babysitter scene was funny, but I know I wasn't supposed to be laughing at some of this. The awkward scene where Rainn Wilson's girlfriend is reading palms:

"This is a very good hand."
And later: "This is a very special hand!"

The Roger Waters song that plays over the end credits also made me laugh, but then it made me cry. It's the kind of thing that happens when Roger Waters and Howard Shore combine forces, I guess. Look at these crappy lyrics:

"Is there anybody in there?
Have you heard, it was on the news,
Your child can read you like a bedtime story,
Like a magazine,
Like a has-been out to grasp,
Like afternoon TV.
Why is my life going by so fast?

Hello I love you.
Is there anybody in there?
Put down the phone, shut up the shop, make all the techno babble stop.
We'll find a short-wave frequency,
The wave connecting you and me.
Hello I love you."

You can look at those and probably know exactly what this song sounds like because all of Roger Waters' songs sound exactly the same. It's one of the most awful things that's ever happened.

I also laughed at the seizure the little girl has after seeing those Doctor Who aliens. And really, you should never laugh at a little girl having a seizure. I laughed at how fake-looking it looked when the FBI busted into the house to arrest everybody. I laughed when a scientist ripped the stuffed bunny from the little girl's hands. I laughed at a line--"Do you have a copy machine? We have to figure out a way to document this!"

The biggest problem with this movie is that it forces you to follow around some annoying children for an hour and a half. Rhiannon Leigh Wryn has a pretentious name and plays the little girl in this. She was somewhere around six when this was filmed, so everything she does can probably be forgiven. However, Chris O'Neil is the type of kid you wish you could create a time-traveling punching rabbit for so that you could cheer yourself up on bad days by sending it into the past to attack him. Yes, I realize how cruel that is, and I'd probably think more seriously about editing it right out of there if I ever proofread these things or if I thought anybody might read it. It's not the child actors as much as it's annoying characters. At times, this feels like a public service announcement for getting rid of technology. The kids always have their faces in video games, even a portable device when they're on a boat. They watch television at dinner. And they also cheat on math tests. This movie really does make children look terrible. It would be interesting to send a copy of this movie into the 1950's via a time-traveling bunny just to see how kids in that decade would react to seeing how kids in the 21st Century act. That might actually save future children from their fates. 50's children would turn into adults who think, "No! No! We can't let this happen to humanity!" and make sure emoticons and Pong never happen.

At one point, the dad tells his son that he's the "greatest kid [he knows]," and I was thinking, "Have you seen the beginning of this movie, Dad?"

Ok, I'm in too bad of a mood to write a blog entry about a family movie. Blame Howard Shore, Roger Waters, and Sprite.

I'm guessing this is their reaction to seeing their work in this movie.

This movie really did put me in a bad mood while watching it. And now, while writing about it, it's put me in a bad mood again. I'd like to apologize to anybody whose feelings I might have hurt in this blog entry. 

Not you though, Roger Waters. You're the one who owes me an apology. 

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

2006 sequel

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A troubled teen moves in with his father in Japan and gets involved with the racing scene. Drifting.

I'd probably have to watch the second installment in this franchise again, but I think I like this one more than 2 Fast 2 Furious. Not that I liked it though. This suffers from the lack of Vin Diesel, something that still feels like a weird thing to type. New protagonist Lucas Black has almost no charisma. He's just a punk kid, and it's not surprising that they decided to leave him out of these other Fast and Furious movies although I think I heard he's in the new one. Shad Moss, better known as Bow Wow, does bring a little more character as Twinkie and has most of the best one-liners. Loved the bit where he hands Black a box of Kleenex before a ride in his ridiculous car--"for when you blow your wad, man." And really, how could you not blow your wad when you're riding in a car that looks like this:

Hell, the thing's got hair! 

Sung Kang's Han character isn't a terribly interesting character in the Fast and Furious movies that follow this one--you know, the Tokyo Drift prequels. I'm still not entirely sure how that works exactly and how the post-credits scene in the sixth one even makes sense, but if you're looking for movies that make sense, perhaps this isn't the franchise for you. Kang spends much of this movie snacking in a cool way. I was most excited to see Sonny Chiba's name attached to this. For whatever reason, he's JJ Sonny Chiba, and he unfortunately doesn't have a whole lot to do. He doesn't even drift! Not even once! 

Here's a confession: I only watched this movie because I thought it would help me with my Mario Kart skills. I've been driving a Mario Kart vehicle that is shaped like a bear which, if you think about it, isn't that much sillier than some of the cars you see in this movie. You know, like the one with hair and fists popping out the side. There's also a scene where a character throws a blue shell at another character. After watching this drift-heavy movie--seriously, if you play a drinking game where you drink every time a character talks about drifting, you'll die while watching this--I started drifting for every single turn in the game, but it didn't help. In fact, I went from my usual 9th place finishes to 10th or 11th place. 

Without charismatic characters--Vin Diesel does, by the way, have a brief cameo at the end, but it's too little and too late--you have to depend on the cars to bring the personality. Things start fine. This movie doesn't waste any time at all and throws the stupid at you right at the beginning with a race that would never have happened and doesn't make any sense while it's happening. Once we get to Tokyo, the cars all look pretty much the same to me, and there really isn't a single race or chase that grabs me like the action sequences in movies 4-6. Maybe those spoiled me since I watched them first. 

Thematically, this feels a little dangerous to me. One character tells another to "make choices and don't look back," and it just seems like that "No fear!" philosophy could get people in trouble, especially since most people are incapable of making good choices. If you're going to live your life following that advice, I guess you'd better make sure you have a good supply of Kleenex. 

Favorite moment: A Snickers commercial in the middle of the movie. It's embarrassing.