Author Archives: Erek

Dictator Avenges Hugo and His Musketeers

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TL;DR EDITION
– Hugo: Sucked.
– The Dictator: Passable. Should have been better.
– The Three Musketeers: Sucked. Couldn’t finish watching it.
– Wanderlust: Not bad. I am beginning to forgive Paul Rudd for How Do You Know (2010).
– The Avengers: Good. Buy it on September 25th.

HUGO (2011)

Boring, boring, boring. Movie never goes anywhere. Attempts to be quirky/fantastic, ends up dull, lifeless and riddled with scenes that don’t seem to belong together. How this was even nominated for academy awards, much less won them, is a testament to how far sucking off the right people will get you. Or, in the case of Martin Scorsese, how being revered in your field can garner your projects praise even when they don’t deserve it.

Sacha Baron Cohen is really the only reason to watch this movie. His character’s love interest with Lisette, played by Emily Mortimer, is the only genuinely intriguing part of an otherwise underwhelming performance on all sides of the ball. Unfortunately it never gets developed, half the characters in the movie aren’t developed for that matter, and the one thing that could have saved this film is shat on in favor of more disjointed scenes of visual “splendor”.

I’m pretty sure Scorsese watched James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) and thought “You know what? I bet I could make a film about absolutely nothing and get away with it, too.” Unfortunately for him, wannabe students of film are the only ones who pretended to like this movie–it bombed financially–so it never reached the mythical bullshit level of success enjoyed by Avatar.

THE DICTATOR (2012)

Speaking of Sacha Baron Cohen, I watched The Dictator recently. While I really enjoyed the character of Admiral General Aladeen, the film itself falls a little flat. Based on the premise it could have been amazing, but it is spackled with jokes that fall on their face or scenes that go on much longer than they should. I, personally, would have liked to see more of the Supreme Grocer period of the movie.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (2011)

Do not watch this movie–ever.

WANDERLUST (2012)

Paul Rudd is dead to me. Okay, not yet. After agonizing through one of his previous films, How Do You Know (2010), I vowed to never again watch a movie where Mr. Rudd played a primary role. I would talk about what a piece of work his character was in what was supposed to be a romantic comedy, but that’s a review for another time.

I reneged on Paul Rudd last year when I sat down to watch Our Idiot Brother (2011) and was pleasantly surprised. I allowed him a reprieve, but it wasn’t without some hesitation that I recently decided to watch Wanderlust, his newest film which co-stars Jennifer Aniston as his wife.

The movie wasn’t bad. It was surprisingly good. Paul Rudd has once again convinced me to offer him clemency. That’s not to say the movie isn’t without its faults. Many scenes drag on far too long. I recall one in particular where Paul’s character is trying to psyche himself into sleeping with Eva, a recently converted hippy played by Malin Akerman, by talking into a mirror. The scene itself was awkward in both its length and its dialog, and when completed it jumped right into another scene with the same tired gags.

After the movie finished I realized what Paul Rudd’s problem is. He’s extremely funny, he’s charming, he’s an excellent comedic actor. Wait, what is his problem? The problem occurs when Paul Rudd plays a character trying to get a girlfriend. At which point the movie turns into a raging pile of dog shit and you literally hate his character so much you refuse to watch any movie he’s in, sorry Anchorman. However, in both Our Idiot Brother (2011) and Wanderlust (2012), Paul’s character is not trying to find a girlfriend and both movies end up being really fun.

If you’re reading this, Paul, don’t make any more shitty romantic comedies and people will stop hating you.

THE AVENGERS (2012)

What do you say about the most successful superhero movie of all time? It was good. It didn’t blow my mind. It didn’t change how I think about superhero movies. It didn’t help me find religion or make me want to travel the world in search of my true self. It did, however, make me say “yes”.

Initially I didn’t understand why Loki was chosen as the villain for this movie, considering that he was already the villain in Thor (2011), but the character–played by Tom Hiddleston–does exhibit a certain sleazy charm. After he was given some screen time I settled for Loki and ended up happy that they brought him back into the fold.

Robert Downey Jr was his usual awesome self, but that’s to be expected. I have heard that he also looks a little bit like me, so that makes him even more cool. Everyone did an admirable job portraying their comic book alter egos, however I’m still not sold on Samual Jackson as Nick Fury, but I guess I’ll just have to live with it. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some bad motherfucker, he just isn’t Nick Fury.

I have to say the best part of the entire film is watching the Hulk smash everything within a nine block vicinity of the camera. There is one scene in particular that depicts the Hulk racing through a skyscraper toward one of the flying alien worm/troop deployment system vehicles. Whoever animated him should pat themselves on the back, because they did a fabulous job capturing everything the Hulk represents as he plows through the structure, completely unfazed by everything, and then leaps out through the building and onto the flying worm/personnel carrier and proceeds to bash its face in.

Awesome movie, and you should definitely pick up the home version when it is released on September 25th. Also, staring at Scarlett Johansson’s ass in tight, black leather is never a bad thing. In fact, you literally cannot stop looking at it. I couldn’t. My wife couldn’t. I don’t think anyone else in the theater could have pulled their gaze away from it.

You Didn’t Build That

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I was not going to write about this. I was going to let it slide. I was going to ignore all the jackasses whose only mission in life is to ruin the remainder of the day for the rest of us. Not that there are very many of the rest of us left. Everyone is either a conservative or a liberal and they’re all nuts.

I consider myself to be neither. I do not blindly back democrats or republicans. Conservatives may plant their lips on my right ass cheek while the liberals are busy making mouth love to the left one. I am a realist. The second you step foot to either side of that imaginary political boundary you lose sight of reality. Unfortunately, that includes almost everyone.

Anyway. There has been a lot of horse shit floating around about the president’s speech involving small business owners. Horse shit that has mainly been propagated by the media in a transparent assault on what little remains of the integrity of the medium. The primary method is clever use of video editing. They cut out the parts that are actually important and you’re left with “You didn’t build that!”.

The fact of the matter is YOU AREN’T GETTING THE FACTS OF THE MATTER. The president is trying to celebrate the environment that has been created by all of us as a nation, the things that have happened over the last century to empower small business owners and give them the chances they need to survive, and in rare occasions, thrive. He was not trying to say that your business succeeds or fails based on the federal government’s whimsy, that your hard work means nothing. He was asking us to look at what we’ve created together, small business and government.

Unfortunately, the average American is too fucking stupid to bother looking up the facts. They just assume that the major news broadcasting corporations wouldn’t dare lie to them. Here’s your news: the media lies. The media probably lies more than the government ever has and ever will, yet assholes still glue themselves to the television and pretend that what they’re hearing is the truth.

I suppose it’s most upsetting to me because there are a number of people I know–knew, grew up with, would still like to maintain friendships with, etc–who are among those aforementioned asshats who can’t be bothered or don’t want to know what the facts really are. No one cares about the truth, they only care about what they believe, or what they think they’re supposed to believe. They will then hold onto that belief in spite of anything that points to the contrary. Gravity, love, and stubborn ignorance. These are the most powerful and mysterious forces on Earth. Be afraid.

Maybe if the news aired impartial commentaries to help educate the public about current events we would have fewer slack-jawed mouth-breathers jamming their heads up their own asses by repeating what the paranoia machine tells them. And maybe I shit gold nuggets every half cycle of the moon.

Take this guy, for example:

He’s so proud of his business that he hangs a banner outside for everyone to see how much of a dipshit he is. I don’t even have to meet this person to know that they lack the capacity for cognitive reasoning. This is not someone I would be capable of having a conversation with because deep down I already know they’re just too stupid to help.

I challenge you to find the president’s unedited speech and watch it.  Understand it.  Then tell me the media aren’t just trying to blow smoke up our country’s ass to make people like Ray Gaster look like a fool.  Maybe he is a fool, or maybe he’s just as gullible as the rest of us.

The Hunger Games (2012)

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Shaky cam for the loss. Nothing pisses me off more than shaky camera work. We spend millions of dollars on research to figure out how to film movies better and then we hand a camcorder to some asshole and tell him to run around with it while filming. Okay, so it’s not as shitty as Cloverfield was in terms of camera stability, but it is still really bad.

Every scene is as zoomed in as it can possibly get, which sucks an ass because there are so many awesome costumes and outfits they have the characters wearing and you never really get to see them. It makes me wonder why they bothered hiring someone to make costumes in the first place if they were planning on filming the movie this way. If you thought Transformers sucked when seventy-five tons of steel roared by the camera and you couldn’t tell what the hell was even going on, you’ll be right at home hating this movie. Same god damn thing–characters roll past the camera and you can’t tell what’s happening in the scene. I assume the filmmakers thought it would lend a certain sense of urgency to the action–IT DOES NOT! It lends a certain sense of I just wasted money wanting to see this raging pile of shit and thanks to poor decisions by the creative staff I can’t even tell what I’m watching to begin with.

There was also zero character development outside of the primary actors. The little black girl who dies? I couldn’t have cared less because they didn’t bother to develop her character into something I gave two shits about. You literally get to see her twice for a total of ten seconds prior to Katniss saving her ass and then promptly not saving her ass five minutes later when she dies. Who. Cares.

My final complaint is “May the odds be ever in your favor.” Tag line, right? Seems fine. It’s used twice within five minutes. Then more as the movie goes on. The overuse of the saying reduces it to the realm of campy and stupid in a movie that’s not trying to be campy or stupid.

On the up side, Stanley Tucci was awesome, but that doesn’t surprise me and it shouldn’t surprise you either. The movie really is a shame because I could see what they wanted to do with it, they just never got there. The acting is decent and had the cinematography been worth a damn I would easily give the movie an above average rating. Unfortunately, someone didn’t get fired in time to save this mess and the movie descends into the realm of hard, unrelenting suck because of it.

One star.