John’s Movie Musings

Have you grasped the cultural significance of the original Predator?  Released way back in 1987, it starred two(!) future governors.  Had Carl Weathers not starred in Action Jackson a few years later, there may have been three.

Predator has also survived some of the crappiest sequels ever imagined. The Alien franchise is still trying to recover from its unfortunate couplings.  But after going back for seconds, I kinda feel like the friend who told my buddy to stay away from that girl the first time around.

So after all this time, Robert Rodriguez  comes along to reboot the franchise.  OK, it’s certainly due.  But he reboots it by keeping the first one intact.  You see, Predators is a direct sequel to the original.  All those other movies?  Pretend they never happened.  But really, I think that’s the only way you could reboot this.  Keep the awesomeness of Arnold’s “Get to the choppah!” and forget everything else.  That’s how everyone remembers Predator anyway.  So, win-win.

For a Predators reboot, we need a new action hero.  Someone who embodies the testosterone of the 80s action star.  So Rodriguez brings us Adrien Brody.  Wilco. Tango. Foxtrot.  OK, not my first choice (nor my twentieth).

Brody plays a mercenary (*laugh) dropped into a dense jungle with a bunch of other military/criminal types.  And Topher Grace.  While they all try and figure out why Topher Grace was selected with the rest of them, you’re trying to figure out why Topher Grace is in a Predator movie.

Obviously Predators has some… interesting casting choices, but they all work.  Adrien Brody even convinced me he could fire a gun without rubbing the “owie” on his shoulder every time.  Better still, the story works.  Now, this is Predators we’re talking about, so you better realize what you’re getting yourself into.  But if you’re looking for a great hunter/hunted flick, this’ll do nicely.

Grade: B+

That’s it.  I’m done with Shyamalan.  The cred he earned from The Sixth Sense, Signs, and Unbreakable (well I liked it), has been obliterated by Lady in the Water, The Village, The Happening, and now The Last Airbender.  He’s the only director I know that has consistently released a film that’s worse than the one before it.  Even Uwe Boll (a man financed by corporations looking for a tax write-off) manages to show some growth between releases.

I’m late with this review because I really didn’t want to talk about it.  With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 8%, I figured it would die a merciful death and we could all forget it ever happened.  Party conversations would be like, “Hey, remember The Last Airbender?”  “What? … … Wanna see me stick this quarter up my nose again?”  It would be bliss.  But no, the film’s made over $100M so far and looks to make a profit after all is said and done.  That means the sequel will get made.  People, for all that is Good and Right, we cannot let this happen.  Stop paying money to see this.  You’re destroying humanity.

If there’s to be one good thing to come of this aberration, some of you might get introduced to the cartoon.  Called Avatar: The Last Airbender (before James Cameron started filming with two cameras and stole the name), the three-season story arc explored themes of love, death, friendship, vengeance, jealousy, and family wounds.  But ultimately, the story centered around a 12-yr old boy struggling to accept a burden he never asked to carry.  All of these heavy themes were written perfectly and delicately wrapped in a kid’s cartoon.  It had no business being as good as it was.

You’d think with all of that powerful source material, making a movie would be simple.  But M Night made the decision (or lacked the mental faculty) and stripped the emotional weight from every scene.  He changed the character name pronunciations (Aang rhymes with bang, not hung), and his actors couldn’t decide on how to say ‘avatar’ – even in the same scene, by the same character.  And as one final, fecal-shaped exclamation point, M Night changed the ending, proving he had completely missed the point of the story he was telling.

If this blog shows anything, it’s that I’ve seen a lot of bad movies.  The Last Airbender is easily in my top five worst of all time.  It even made me angry.  The cartoon was like a vintage automobile, full of memories.  Shyamalan bought that car, gutted it, replaced the original seats with a La-Z-Boy, and set the whole thing on blocks in the front yard.  Most infuriatingly, he was proud of his work.

Grade: F-

Don’t you just love to discover great, little-known movies?  Usually a friend will say something like, “You have GOT to see this!!”   That usually comes with an odd twitch in the eye that adds an unspoken subtext of, “or you’ll never see your puppy again.”  I embrace my friends’ recommendations, but I often wonder if they followed up their viewing with a ransom note.

Actually, we all love to give our friends movie suggestions.  Hell, it’s part of why this site exists.  We give our loved ones a bit of happiness when we share good movies.  So think of these reviews as “Free Hugs” signs.

By now you know Moon is one of these movies I’m talking about.  I was late to the party on this one and had several friends recommend it.  But as each person told me I needed to see it, they reminded me of what makes these little gems so special.  No one can say a damn thing about anything.  Remember when a friend said you needed to see Memento?  It probably went something like, “You need to see Memento.  It’s about a guy with memory issues and that’s all I’m gonna say.  I probably ruined it just by saying that much.”  For Moon, all I got was that there was this dude who was on the moon.

And that’s all you’re gonna get.  It’s on Netflix’s Instant Watch, so go take advantage of that.  Quickly.  Unless, you’re not attached to your puppy.

Grade: A

I caught Shrek 4 a couple of weeks ago on a whim.  I had a bit of time in Portland and there was this theater nearby called “The Living Room Theater.”  With a name like that, I had to check it out.  Every seat in the joint were those comfy leather ones you buy for your home theater.  And if that wasn’t enough, they served lunch and beer.  Granted, an Oregon stout (or two) may not have been appropriate at a noon show, but I was the only one in the place and well, it’s Shrek.  I figured a little libation would help the humor.

What’s your opinion of Shrek these days?  The original was pretty funny.  Shrek 2 introduced some funny characters, but Shrek the Third was forgettable.  They should have stopped there, but what else are Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy gonna do?  Dudes gotta eat.

Here’s the problem with Shrek 4.  How do you make it funny?  Stupid question, for sure, but Shreks 1 and 2 relied mostly on pop culture jokes.  Funny, but not by the time they hit DVD.  They tried to get original in the third outing and failed.  So for this one, they rip off It’s a Wonderful Life (not a bad thing) and focus the humor on…wait for it…Donkey’s singing.  /facepalm.  It gets so overused, I was begging Norbit 2 got greenlit so that Eddit Murphy won’t be available for Shrek 5.

All this ranting aside, Shrek: The Final Chapter, or Shrek: Forever After (whatever it’s called) is better than Shrek the Third.  Let’s just hope it’s the last.

Grade: B-

The definition of insanity is expecting different results from the same action.  Hollywood is clearly insane since they keep churning out movies based on video games, hoping for a hit.  Yeah, that’s a weak joke, so you want better evidence?  Ridley Scott is making a movie about Monopoly.  Yeah, the board game.  I rest my case, Your Honor.

Video games aren’t known for their stories.  If you listen to the mainstream media, games are horribly violent endeavors that reward you for killing hookers and puppies or having lots of alien sex.  Story arcs are non-existent.

None of this is true, of course, so when I first heard Prince of Persia was headed to the big screen, I thought it made a lot of sense.  If you don’t know, the story is about this magic dagger that has a magical button on it.  Pushing the button releases magic sand that magically sends you back in time one minute (Persia’s a place of Magic and Mystery).  This concept worked great for a game.  Miss that jump?  No problem.  Just use that dagger and try again.  The idea could just as easily work in a movie, and it did.  The dagger scenes were visually satisfying, well thought-out sequences.  The kind you hope to see in an action-adventure movie.

Unfortunately, those scenes were all I enjoyed.  The plot got a little predictable, but that wasn’t the problem (Though surprisingly, the game’s plot was far better).  No, my biggest problem was with the humor.  There’s an ostrich scene in the middle that didn’t come close the tone of the story.  Everything starts out with an Indiana Jones kind of feel, but shifts into a campy, “Hey, we’re making a movie about a video game!!” vibe.  The jokes were forced and took me completely out of the story.  I never got back in.

I’ve heard Bruckheimer and Co. are hoping this franchise can take the torch from The Pirates of the Caribbean.  With Jake Gyllenhaal as the only big name and a weak first chapter, I’m not sure it’s got the legs.  But hey, they made a sequel to Tomb Raider, so maybe the asylum will spit out another.  Guess we’ll find out after Monopoly.

Grade: C

Roland Emmerich hates smart people.  Exhibit A is 2012, but let me take a step back and walk you through a brief history of Mr. Emmerich’s work.

You may remember him initially from Independence Day.  A classic film, to be sure, but if you watched it with anyone in IT, they walked out saying the movie was completely unbelievable – due to the computer virus, not the aliens attacking the planet.  This was our first indication of Roland’s prejudice, but no one paid any attention because you were making fun of the smart computer people you saw it with.

His next project was Godzilla, a movie where cinema nerds flipped out over the rapping of a Japanese classic.  It was easy to miss the attack on smart people here because, well, Godzilla insulted everyone.

Next came The Day After Tomorrow.  Here, the target of Roland’s ire were climate scientists and geologists.  We should have seen it then, because real scientists were doing interviews on CNN saying how sad and wrong this movie was.  But we didn’t listen.

10,000 BC arrived a few years later.  Historians took the brunt in this one.  Fortunately, they didn’t pay much attention since they were still trying to recover from the last Indiana Jones.

Finally, we get to 2012.  Having defecated on every other university subject, Mr. Emmerich targets Astronomy, Mythology, Geology (again), and Physics.  Oh, let’s throw Drama in there too, since acting and plot suffer.  I’m sure that wasn’t intentional but when a drunk man starts flinging poo, bystanders get hit.

I know a few of you will see anything John Cusack is in.  So should you see 2012?  You know to check your brain at the door, so let’s discuss the special effects.  No.  Let’s not discuss anything.  They’re lame.  Maybe I’m getting spoiled, but when the earth blows up, I want more than a crack in the sidewalk.  Even the volcano sucked.

In short, nothing sated my disaster movie snobbery.  Maybe I should get some help.

Grade: C+

Emerging from the womb with a penis comes with few downsides.  Oh who am I kidding?  There are no downsides.  Being a guy is awesome.  But we do have one flaw.  Well, not really a flaw – more of an annoyance.  Like scoring one goal shy of a hat trick.  Headgear would be nice, but you still got first star of the game.  No need to be greedy.  Back to my point… Men are completely unable to understand most everything about women.  Yes, everything, but for here, let’s focus on Twilight.

If you haven’t been living under the influence of estrogen and thus, have no clue what I’m talking about, the Twilight series is all about the castration of vampires.  There were four books  on the subject and now, we’re on the second movie.  It’s just like the first one, but this time the author goes all Lorena Bobbitt on werewolves.

OK, that’s not exactly true.  In New Moon, Buttercup and Sparkles break up, with him going to Italy to futilely search for his manhood.  Buttercup is sad, so she decides to lead on Teen Wolf.  That doesn’t work out, so everyone heads to Italy where they are shocked to discover Dakota Fanning has all grown up.

Now as a dude, none of this makes any sense to me.  That’s why I watch these movies with the accompanying Rifftrax soundtrack.  What is originally two hours of confusion and pained expressions on my face, turns into hours of comedy gold.  It’s so good and so funny that when the trailers for Eclipse come on, I get all giddy with the rest of the girls.

New Moon Grade: F

Rifftrax Grade: A-