A Million Ways to Die in the West

2014 snoozer

Rating: 8/20

Plot: A sheep herder wants to get out of the titular deathtrap but falls in love with the wife of a dangerous outlaw instead.

The "guy who brought you Ted" should have warned me, I guess. I don't know why I thought this would be worth my time because I haven't liked a single thing that Seth MacFarlane has done. Ted wasn't funny at all. The Family Guy is obnoxious. And this bloated and predictable Western spoof doesn't have a single laugh in it. Not one. I wanted to throw a chuckle at Sarah Silverman's Christian whore character's potty mouth or references to her folds, but that was only because I think she's cute as a goddamn button. An allusion to Back to the Future III just feels cheap, like MacFarlane ran out of ideas and had to quickly make up a new gag to help fill the two hours. Liam Neeson's as cool as always, but he shouldn't be wasting his time with something like this because he's got more movies about kidnapping to star in. Taken 6 ain't going to make itself, Liam, and your fans are waiting.

Ok, I've made my decision. Just as I decided to quit Will Ferrell movies cold turkey a few years ago, I'm also done with Seth MacFarlane. I just don't get him.

Iron Man (Redux)

2008 superhero (?) movie

Rating: 14/20 (adjusted from when I first saw the movie and wrote about it here)

Plot: I already wrote an adequate plot synopsis in the blog post linked above. Go there if you want to know what this movie's about.

Jeff Bridges smoking a cigar while riding on a Segway--see, those are the types of things you might miss if you only watch a movie one time. I gave this an 11/20 the first time which was unfair because I must have dozed off during the scene where Jeff Bridges smokes a cigar while riding on a Segway. I kind of liked Robert Downey Jr. a little more than I did the first time around, too. I guess I get what he's doing a little more, and I like how a lot of his scenes with other actors--especially Paltrow--have them stepping all over each other's lines. Maybe Downey Jr. is the kind of actor who can have good rapport with anybody.

Superhero/comic movies still confuse me, even when I'm watching them for the second time.

Here--this might be the best moment in any Marvel movie:

Seriously, does it get more manly than that?

Training Day

2001 crime drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A rookie cop partners up with a narcotics officer veteran who doesn't quite play by the rules. A battle for the rookie's soul ensues.

It's Hollywood grit, but it's good grit, and almost everything Denzel Washington says is poetry. There are a lot of dudes holding their guns sideways, the method preferred by four out of five gangstas, and the action scenes--the shoot-outs and ruckus-making--are often ludicrous and implausible. But the story remains gripping without with this conflict between the idealistic Ethan Hawke character and Washington's who might actually be just as idealistic if you think about it. This was filmed in some fairly dangerous locations, but I'm not sure if that really adds to any realism this might have. Actually, I don't know if I even want my movies like this to be all that realistic anyway. It flows like a modern urban Shakespearean tragi-comedy, often moves dick-first and topheavy, and it's better for it because the world doesn't need to hold their guns sideways for a movie like this to work. Denzel shines, lyrically bombastic, always on the edge of realism and cartoon. Alonzo's a good character, a cool cat that might have worked with any actor (probably a black one) filling the shoes, but Washington delivers the kind of performance that really makes the guy memorable. Hawke's ok, too, and there are times when he appears shrunken. He was classically trained in white boy strutting and wears brown leather as well as a good guy could. The rest of the cast is great, too, especially Macy Gray (that's Macy Gray?) with those fingernails, that silver tooth, and that incredible voice and Scott Glenn's Roger with his snail jokes and his forehead's resolve. And Eva Mendes' ass. That makes an appearance, completely unnecessarily unless you think about it and then it's the most necessary thing in the world. Oh, and Snoop Dogg? Who would have guessed that Snoop would turn out to be such a fine thespian? Really cool movie, though polished a little too hard. You know, for the crackers.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

2014 superhero movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular hero battles the mysterious new titular threat. A guy with one eye, a flying black guy, and one of the most beautiful women on earth help him out.

The first Captain America movie was my favorite of these Marvel superhero movies, probably because I could understand what was going on the entire time. This sequel doesn't disappoint--the rare sequel that is actually just as good as the original--and throws in Scarlett Johansson and Robert Redford. And the bad guy, who for whatever reason reminds me of Darth Maul, is cool with that metal arm and shit. This has some ludicrous action sequences, but they're very well done action sequences and the special effects here--lots of swooping and superhuman fisticuffs and explosions--are the best I can remember seeing in a superhero movie. I liked the first movie because it had a little something to say about America, patriotism, and propaganda. And I like this movie because it also mirrors society and has a threat--even a weird Bondish supervillain-esque preposterous thing that ends up being at the center of all of this--that feels just a little bit real. This always kind of threatens to go a little too far and unravel into something sloppy and typically superheroish, but it always manages to hold together, and although it fails to complete tie up every single loose end and leaves you waiting for another sequel, it ends up satisfying. There are a couple dopey twists though, and if I thought about them anymore, they'd be the type of thing that would almost make me dock this a point or two until I thought about Scarlett Johansson's buttocks again. I still like Chris Evans as Captain America, a superhero who has to adjust to future he's been thrust into and is ill-equipped for, and rest of the cast is good, too. The action's what drives people to the big screen. There's a great car chase scene that looks really expensive and a terrific close-quarters fight in an elevator. But the writing, with the humor sprinkled throughout and what passes for emotional depth in a superhero comic book, works really well, too. I like this better than the messy Avengers movie and can honestly say that I look forward to the third installment.

Bad Words

2013 comedy

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 14/20)

Plot: A grown-ass man--out of spite--competes in a spelling bee and pisses everybody off.

Jen and I are both Jason Bateman fans, so I was interested in this, his directorial debut. The drama side of this little adventure is a little pointless and probably predictable, but the comedy, likably subversive, keeps things squirmingly fun. Generally, I'm not a fan of comedies involving adult characters cursing in front of children, but it's fine when Jason Bateman does it because he was that kid on Silver Spoons. The script is littered with the sorts of lines fans of The Hangover IV would chortle at, and I laughed a few times but sort of felt guilty about the whole thing. Bateman's character is the type of character who can only exist in a movie. He's a villain, but if you're a terrible person, you might actually root for the guy even when you have no idea what his motivations might be. Most of the kids are stereotypes, but Rohan Chand was geekily adorable and had good rapport with the star. Their relationship's ups and downs aren't going to seem like anything new, but there's still enough sweetness there and enough of this ability to sort of chip away at the crusty armor of Guy Trilby, that you still appreciate it.

Bad Movie Club: The Peanut Butter Solution

1985 fantasy

Rating: 11/20 (Jeremy: 12/20; Fred: 2/20; Libby: no rating; Josh: fell asleep)

Plot: A kid loses his hair after encountering a pair of ghosts in a mansion that burned down. Later, he's visited by the ghosts who instruct him on how to make a concoction featuring just-the-right-amount of the titular spread. He follows the directions, and his hair starts growing absurdly. Then, his friend puts some on his junk. That really has nothing to do with the movie's plot, but if that happens in a movie, I'm going to mention it. Then, a sketchy art teacher kidnaps a bunch of children.

I can guarantee you that no matter how stupid you think my plot synopsis for this one is, the actual plot of the movie is even stupider. So much of this is just inexplicable, like the fever dream of a kid with the measles. There's an assortment odd characters--the villain, the father who I could have sworn was shane-movies' favorite Jack Nance, an Asian kid, a disturbing little sister. And half of the characters have these weird accents that place them in parts unknown like Superfly Snuka. There's the dark-tinted twists this story takes, the sort of thing you might expect to see in a Roald Dahl story. It seems like it was written by somebody who couldn't make up his mind what he wanted the story to be about. Hair loss and subsequent growth? Ghosts? Kidnapping? Magic? Pubic hair? One of the writers has a name that makes him sound like a Transformer though (Vojtech), so what do you expect? There are several "What the hell?" moments in this. There's a scene that takes place at a soccer game where it's revealed that the main character is wearing a wig. Of course, the game immediately ends and the kids chase the poor boy all the way home while chanting the exact same little jingle that they somehow all know. Which is exactly how the whole thing would play out in real life. Or there's the scene where the art teacher/part-time kidnapper starts painting with his magical brush and has his kidnapping victims suddenly start cheering him on because that makes a lot of sense. Or a scene where the children come up with a clever scheme involving sugar in order to find the location of the missing children, a scene that Jeremy pointed out had a bunch of random homeless people cheering on a little girl on a bicycle. Or there's the whole thing with the Asian kid and his pubic hair. C'mon, Vojtech! What the hell are you trying to pull there? It's a story so strangely told that it takes on an almost surreal quality that I liked and probably would have liked as a kid if some adult--undoubtedly, one that would have been a poor influence--had shown this to me. Jeremy certainly had fond memories of the thing. He has been nominating this for Bad Movie Club for months.

Here's a picture of a kid putting peanut butter on his head because that's something that everybody can appreciate:

Edge of Tomorrow

2014 science fiction action movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A high-ranking military dude is stripped of his rank and sent to war against some creatures from Japanese tentacle pornography. Not that I've actually seen any of that sort of stuff. And not that I'm just putting that in there to get more random perverts to read my blog although I can definitely see that happening. Hello, middle-aged Japanese men, by the way! You've stumbled--disappointingly--upon the blog of a guy who is likely to mention something like Japanese tentacle pornography but whose focus is on writing poorly and probably ineptly about movies that he's seen. Like this plot synopsis. It's completely off the rails, and a better writer or blogger would likely delete almost the entire thing and try again. That's not me though.

I thought this movie, mostly ignored by the masses because it doesn't have a superhero or a princess or come from a comic book, looked interesting, and I had never before seen a movie where a character has to live the same day over and over again. The premise is interesting, but you're really going to have to suspend disbelief and just go with flow. It's like they had the main idea for the movie and wanted the plot to be like a video game where you had to keep starting over, but unfortunately had no idea how to logically make that happen to the character. And then somebody suggested, "What about if the aliens can do that and some alien blood gets on him?" And by that time, Tom Cruise was impatient, so they just went with it. If you watched this and just went with it, you'll probably enjoy the ride. Tom Cruise, oddly, can play a successful Everyman-type character, something that really doesn't seem like it would ever work. Say what you want about everybody's favorite Scientologist (unless you like Beck), but the guy's charming, has always had the action chops, and has good comic timing. And the script, instead of being that overly-serious sci-fi type thing, is peppered with comedy which makes the whole thing breezy. Sure, it's stuffed with action mayhem, but there's some cleverness there, too. I also liked Noah Taylor and Noah Taylor's beard. I've like Taylor before. He is, after all, the guy in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou who like's Jane's hairdo. I like that Brendan Gleeson, too. I don't know if he could even grow facial hair like Noah Taylor's, but he's got a presence that I like. Well-paced, good-looking, and entertaining throughout, even when hints of romance threaten to annoy, I'm willing to bet this one will end up being something that people are more likely to watch in 25 years than most modern science fiction movies. That is, if people start forgiving Tom Cruise for getting footprints on Oprah's couch.

Silent Hill

2006 video game horror movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A woman's somnambulistic daughter's mentions of Silent Hill, a ghost town still burning subterraneanly after some sort of  mine disaster

I'm forgiving this movie for two things: its utter incomprehensibility and a few sort-of stupid moments that probably contributed to the utter incomprehensibility. And the reason I can forgive it for those things is because I just had to appreciate the ambition here, the creative and often haunting visuals, and an intriguing and gradually unfolding story even though it never made a lot of sense. One of the characters even says "I don't know what's going on here," and that was exactly what I was thinking. Not a clue. This pervasive, foreboding creepiness is relentless, and there's really no room at all for exposition. You wouldn't be able to see it anyway thanks to a constant slow drizzle of ash. There's a moment where a little girl comes along to explain things, sort of, but all that really does is open the door to allow all the other characters to start talkin' stupid. And there's a line--"Look at me. I'm burning."--that made me either giggle, chuckle, or roar with laughter. Still, that imagery is terrific, and just the amount of sets used for this poor woman--a hot Radha Mitchell--and her lesbian cop buddy (lesbian in my mind anyway) is impressive. And I like how the camera kind of swoons through the titular town. The ashes and dilapidated sets are the perfect scenery for a town so haunted by its own past. The acting's fine for this sort of thing with Alison Krige shining as the creepily-fanatic Christabella. Quite the name there. The "acting" from the CGI monster children or zombie nurses or whatever other kinds of creatures are in this thing--one is a pyramid-headed thing that is really strange--is a little off. They're all contorted and jerky, partially because of the animation, I think, but probably a little because they're supposed to be like that. They look like they come straight from a video game, something that makes sense since this is a movie based on a video game. It's the sort of thing that should have been a red flag for me because there hasn't been a great movie based on a video game since Super Mario Brothers. I actually swore off movies based on video games until they give me a live-action Q-Bert, but I watched this anyway. I wonder if it would make more sense if I was familiar with the video game. The score is mostly music direct from the game apparently, and although that kind of sounds weird to me--a 1980's kid used to the sounds that the Atari was capable of producing--it's really pretty effective here. Anyway, this movie's worth watching if you don't mind movies that don't make a lot of sense. Personally, I have no problem with movies that seem more like dreams than straight narratives, and this kind of works like that.

The Bellboy

1960 slapstick comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Stanley, the titular hotel employee, tries his best to do a good job at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami.

I suppose I should like this a lot more since I'm probably the audience for this. I have a high tolerance for slapstick, especially in the 1920's style that Lewis and company seem to be going for. However, although the above poster promised that I'd giggle, chuckle, and roar, I really didn't do any of the three. Well, maybe there was a giggle in there somewhere. Possibly, I emitted something that somebody who doesn't really know me would label a chuckle. Nary a roar though. Influenced heavily by the comedy stylings of silent cinema, director/writer/star Jerry Lewis's only able to sort of nail it, nailing it like I did when I worked one summer as a carpenter for a guy named Mike. I hit the nail squarely a small percentage of the time when attempting hammering, but mostly, I hit the nail in a way that bent it, missed completely and hit whatever I was trying to nail the nail into, or occasionally connected with my thumb. Once, I hit Mike. So Europe gets the elegance of Jacques Tati, and we get Jerry Lewis with his big clown shoes, but I'm perfectly ok with that because there's always room for a guy with a rubbery face and comically-large shoes. And France embraced the guy anyway, so the joke's really on all of them. I do like that this is short--71 minutes long and that includes the introduction where a guy tells us how this is a plotless "film based on fun." Lewis is good at what he's doing here, again like Jim Carey 30 years before Jim Carey, but probably not in the way you think. The character's mute, for most of the movie anyway, so he has to really exaggerate facial expressions and gesticulations which again recalls the silent era. There are some good bits--a clown car limousine, scenes where Lewis pushes elevator buttons or attempts to answer a phone, ironed pants, a sculpture, the conducting of an invisible orchestra--and they don't have to make a bit of sense because, after all, this is just a "film based on fun." A lot of this falls flat, and a lot more of it is sort of in this in-between haziness between funny and not funny. And I'm not sure where the running gag of a Stan Laurel impersonator falls on that scale. There's a great musical number by The Novelites--"Alabama Jubilee," a song I should probably karaoke if given the chance. And there are some nice moments with the incidental music as well, including some times where the music goes along with the shapes and movements of the characters, almost like in a cartoon. Unless I was just imagining that.

Bad Movie Club: The Galaxy Invader

1985 science fiction movie

Rating: 3/20 (Josh: 1/20; Fred: 11/20; Libby: 14/20; Jeremy: no rating)

Plot: An alien fireballs to earth for reasons that are never fully explained, and some rednecks decide they can profit from it. Meanwhile, an archaeologist and his former student try to save it while also maybe saving the hillbillies from themselves. And I just put more thought into this plot synopsis than the screenwriters put into this movie's screenplay.

There were certainly a lot of Dohlers involved in the making of Galaxy Invader. Ok, so there's really only four of them including writer/director Don Dohler, but that still--obviously from the results--exceeded Hollywood's Dohler limit. It probably exceeded it by tfour actually. One of the Dohlers, Pam Dohler, plays "People at Table" which seems like a pretty neat trick. I looked the Dohlers up, and they've all three been in other movies which were either all directed by the same Don Dohler or, in some wild coincidence, a guy with an identical name. Actually, I'd forgotten the name Don Dohler, but I really enjoyed another one of his movies a while back--Nightbeast. That's memorable for a great performance and scintillating sex scene featuring a guy named Tom Griffith. This movie's got its own fantastically awful performance by a a guy named Richard Ruxton who runs around wearing about half a t-shirt and yelling like a demented low-budget Jimmy Stewart. No, there's not a sex scene, but he does attempt to rape somebody at a time that doesn't make a great deal of sense. Watching Ruxton's performance, you really can't tell if he's got an authentic accent or not. In fact, you might have trouble even figuring out if he's an actual human being. It's the kind of performance that seems like a miracle, and I'm serious, Jimmy Stewart Fan Club--you need to check this movie out and pretend it's a long-lost performance from the Hollywood icon. There are loads of colorful characters, none of them with dialogue that makes much sense (most of the lines, I believe, are repetitious mentions of "the green man" or lines about money) or with cigars that stay the size they're supposed to. That cigar belonged to another fine character played by Don Leifert who also shone in Nightbeast. An action figure of that guy would have to come with cigar and beer can accessories. Bad movies get magical when it seems like it was written by a person who has never actually seen human beings interact, and this movie could have been written by the titular galaxy invader who, by the way, just kind of stumbles around with no clear intentions and doesn't look capable of even finding himself a galaxy. Here's the galaxy invader:

The green man! He's played by Glenn Barnes who was also in Nightbeast and--this is going to shock you--is the half-brother of Don Dohler. I'm surprised Barnes wasn't invited to play a monster in any other movies because his pigeon-toed trot looks just like an alien's should. This movie feels made-up-as-the-Dohlers-go, the characters never feel like real people, and the pacing feels awkward. But it all leads to a climax that will leave you stunned an unable to sleep for days (Hint: It features a dummy!), so it's all worth the time invested. A fun bad movie.

Overlord

1975 war movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy goes to war and [Spoiler Alert!] gets himself killed.

The half-documentary/half-fiction approach to this and the cinematography make this worth watching although it's a little boring. At a smidge over 80 minutes, this isn't a long film at all, but some of the fictional dramatic scenes still make it drag a bit. It's darkly poetic, however, and the weaving of the fiction and archive footage is seamless. It's tough to tell what imagery is real and what was filmed in the 1970s, and that archival stuff gives the whole thing a weight that it otherwise wouldn't have. I'm not generally a fan of war movies at all, but this one's more interested in detailing the war inside one soldier rather than showing off grand battle sequences or making grand statements. And because of that, it makes the experience a very personal one. You don't quite become the main character in this, but you can't help connecting with him intimately, almost in an abstract way.

Hot Fuzz

2007 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Cop Nicholas is transferred against his will from London to a seemingly-quiet village. He realizes soon enough, however, that his initial impression was wrong. Trouble's afoot!

Vivacious, very funny, unapologetically gruesome, extremely English, clever. This is a very poorly written review. I didn't even use the word titular in this anywhere.

Everything Is Terrible!: The Movie

2009 documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The title says it all.

This doesn't feel as cohesive as its sequel or Doggie Woggiez Poochie Woochiez!, but the uncovered and unleashed idiocy is more likely to drop your jaw and make you shit your pants than anything James Cameron will ever make. If you spend any time with the Everything Is Terrible people--and you really should--you'll recognize snippets of things they've played around with in shorts, snippets tossed in the ol' blender. The results don't make as much of a statement as these guys have in the other two longer things, more of a dada-rific, loosey-goosey tornado of silliness, but they're still just as funny and just as disturbing. You'll ask, "Why has society allowed this to happen?" You'll simultaneously fall in love with humanity all over again while being convinced that we're all absolute lunatics. It's the kind of beauty that can drive a man insane.

Bad Movie Club: Deadly Blessing

1981 horror movie

Rating: 10/20 (Fred: 2/20; Jeremy: 3/20; Libby: 3/20; Johnny: 1/20)

Plot: A prodigal Hittite man is killed by his own tractor, and his wife and her two friends are tormented by some Amish guys and maybe an incubus.

Maybe there's just something wrong with me, but I didn't think this was that bad while my fellow Bad Movie Club jockasses rated it very lowly. This is a Wes Craven jam, and at the very least, he's got some ideas. There's a foreboding setting (Amish country--yikes), some suspenseful moments (including an extended scene with Sharon Stone in a barn, one of those maybe-classic horror sequences with a spider, and a great scene with a snake and a bathtub), and a pair of weird twists at the end that make the thing memorable. And it's got this guy:

Michael Berryman, one of those guys who walks around with his own special effects. I looked him up--he's got something called Hypohidrotic Ectodermal Dysplasia, a condition which means he can't have hair, fingernails, teeth, or sweat glands. Let the records show that I had a joke there but edited it out because I didn't want Mr. Berryman coming along and seeing this. This also has the great Ernest Borgnine who is once again giving it his all in a bad movie that features a little religion. We enjoyed his work in Devil's Rain, too. Here, he snarls about somebody being "a stench in the nostrils of God" which is sort of thing that makes these movies worth it for me. There aren't many scares here if you're looking for that in a horror movie, just that sense of foreboding. The biggest problem, however, is that the whole thing just doesn't make that much sense. I had to look up and read a plot synopsis to even understand what happened during the first of the movie's twists, and the second, although it contained a shot that was kind of cool, seemed tacked-on because it was tacked-on. So I would recommend this movie only to Ernest Borgnine or Wes Craven completists and not necessarily to somebody looking for a movie that is either good or bad. I did like that scene with the snake quite a bit though.

Snowpiercer

2013 post-apocalyptic action movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Humanity lives on a train that circles the globe once again after the dumbasses shot chemicals into the sky and caused a new Ice Age. Folks in the back of the train--where the underfed and miserable poor people are packed--decide that it's time for a coup and make plans to rush to the front to take over Snowpiercer.

Snowpiercer's kind of a dumb name for a movie, so I was skeptical when I heard that this was good. I guess that's what the train is named, but I don't remember it being mentioned in the movie. The titular train is all CGI when they decide to show it off, which isn't very often. Around 97% of this happens on the inside of the train cars, and when there are exterior shots, they seem to be there just to show us that we shouldn't complain about all the train interior action because they're a little dopey. Some of the iced-over views from the train windows are interest and strangely beautiful though. I ended up liking this movie after thinking I'd hate it after the first ten minutes or so. However, it really is uneven with all kinds of cool ideas mixed in with a lot of dopiness. The general idea, though it seems somehow derivative, is fun in that depressing kind of way, and a lot of the ideas for what was going on in the train cars--especially the education one--were inspiring. There's a little dark humor in this that keeps things interesting even when it threatens to just devolve into a bunch of scenes featuring slow-motion, close-quartered brouhaha-ing. A somewhat fearless script, the kind where every character possibly expendable except for the one you know isn't expendable, keeps things realistic. The cast is impressive for a movie called Snowpiercer that is all about a train called Snowpiercer, too. John Hurt gets a memorable and complex character to chew on, one that at least has half of his appendages. Ed Harris pops in to do his typical Ed Harris thing which I typically don't care that much for. Tilda Swinton pours it on pretty thickly, easily portraying one of the most interesting characters in the whole thing, and Chris "Captain America" Evans not only makes for a hunky action superstar but has the acting chops to pull off the more emotional stuff when things get a little more complex. This is an ambitious offering from Joon-ho Bong, the guy who brought us The Host, and is the kind of movie you are forced to think about no matter how stupid the action on the screen seems. It's a post-apocalyptic action movie that tries to say something about society, and that's probably the exact reason why it ends up kind of messy. You have to appreciate the effort to stuff a bunch of action movie cliches into something kind of original though, and if I saw this again, chances are the allegorical nature of it might click and cause me to like it more. I'll still hate that title though and the ending, possibly indeterminate and featuring what seemed to be Coca Cola product placement.