One of the most overused expressions when describing a comedy is to say that it’s explosively funny. Most of the time, what that means is someone on screen is merely doing something out of character, which rarely makes sense in context with the rest of the story. It’s the laugh for the sake of a laugh, which is to say it’s a cheap laugh. Good comedy needs to be based, however tenuously, in reality.
Heaven help us if anything resembling “13 Tzameti” (the ‘t’ is silent and the ‘e’ is soft, so it sounds like an Italian dish) takes place in real life. The events in Gela Babluani’s low-budget, grainy black & white thriller may have been shot on the cheap, but few things you’ll ever see come with a steeper price than the one that the lead character pays here.
It’s always nice to see someone make an animated feature that forgoes the toddler set in order to try something more grown-up. However, making a movie that’s not appropriate for kids is not the same as making a movie for adults, and that is where “9” loses its way. It contains some dynamite animation, along with action sequences that make “Jurassic Park” look like, well, child’s play. But who is this movie’s target audience? The story doesn’t have enough meat on its bones to satisfy adults – which makes sense, considering it was originally a short film that its creator Shane Acker has fleshed out to make an equally short full-length feature – and the tone is far too bleak to appeal to teenagers. Goth kids might like it, though. No wonder Tim Burton signed on as producer.
It’s not often – on the big screen, anyway – that director McG traffics in human emotion. His films are mostly about the slam and the bang, so his attachment to a movie like “3 Days to Kill” is a bit surprising at first. This is not to say that the movie doesn’t have some slam-bang moments (it does), but that it operates at a different speed than McG’s other work. The father-daughter relationship comes first, though murder isn’t far behind. The story, by Luc Besson (“The Professional”), bites off more than it can chew, and it requires “Taken” levels of disbelief to excuse carnage that our government would surely have to answer for on a public stage, but the acting performances elevate the material from ‘predictable’ to ‘predictable but fun.’
If you told us that the script for “2 Guns” had been collecting dust in Universal’s vault since 1997, it wouldn’t surprise us in the slightest. Between the reluctant but chatty partners, the non-linear timeline, the quirky but deadly spooks, the unconventional interrogation, the lone female character of importance-turned-hostage, the Mexican standoff, and most importantly the complete disregard for logic, movies don’t get much more ‘90s than this one. Thankfully, it’s also a lot of fun. It may not have an original thought in its head, but it has Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, and they sell the hell out of it.
It’s well established that “Fifty Shades of Grey” began life as fan fiction by a “Twilight” devotee who was frustrated with the lack of sex in the books, and that’s fair; there is but one sex scene in the entire series, after all. However, this married mother of two (!) didn’t just write about Bella and Edward (here named Ana and Christian) having sex: she wrote about them having rough sex, BDSM-type stuff that tries to present itself as a confident woman owning her sexuality, when in fact the sex is completely about him, and he is constantly looking for reasons to “punish” her. Christian Grey is basically the Patrick Bateman (“American Psycho”) of sex, to the point where “American Psycho” author Bret Easton Ellis saw so much of Patrick in Christian that he actually begged “Grey” author E. L. James for the right to write the film’s screenplay. She turned him down. That’s unfortunate; he might have made something watchable out of this.
So, it’s probably going to be a while before anything is posted here, since I gotta, like, get organized and plan the layout and all that stuff. Eventually, this will serve as an archive for everything I’ve ever written that exists online, which includes Bullz-Eye, ESDMusic, Premium Hollywood, Popdose, and PopMatters. Until then, hello world. See you soon.
After a terribly disappointing fourth installment in the popular teen death series, New Line does the unthinkable by not only making a fifth “Final Destination” but, horrors (see what we did there?), casting old people as the leads. You know, people who are, like, 30, and even some born in the ’70s, ewww. Who wants to see old people die?
As it turns out, it was a very savvy move. “The Final Destination” was in a tough position in that its predecessor ramped up the death scenes’ difficulty factor (Rube Goldberg would have been proud, then probably ashamed) while maintaining self-awareness. “FD4” tried to maintain the planned chaos, but it was undone by bad dialogue, poor acting, and too much foreshadowing. From the very beginning, “Final Destination 5” does two things to separate itself from the previous movie: it casts grown-ups in the lead roles (David Koechner and Courtney B. Vance, holler) and gets serious in a hurry after a premonition on a suspension bridge leads a group of white collar drones to hop off the bus, Gus. Also, there are no bad last lines like “I’ve got my eye on you” (poor, poor Krista Allen), and while a death may be triggered by a chain reaction, the cause of death itself is often something normal (fall, fire). Don’t think they didn’t get creative, though; one of the women suffers a particularly gruesome accident that is impossible not to react to.
They’ve also changed the rules – which is ironic, but for reasons we cannot divulge – when coroner William Blodworth (Tony “Candyman” Todd, returning for a third tour of duty, fourth if you include his voice work in “FD3”) suggests that the survivors can cheat death by killing someone else, a la “The Ring.” It adds an interesting wrinkle, since you get a glimpse of what people are willing to do in order to stay alive. Do not under any circumstances watch the bonus features if you haven’t yet seen the movie, otherwise the big surprise, which is a good one, will be spoiled. Definitely check them out afterwards, though, as you’ll get a glimpse of Koechner adding some of his natural comic flair. A welcome return to form for what was presumed to be a, um, dead franchise.
(3 / 5)
After becoming wisely self-aware in its third installment, the “Final Destination” franchise has taken the tongue that was firmly planted in cheek and impaled it on a 3D stick. Everything takes a back seat to the effects here, and that is the rule of 3D, but is that the right play? As Roger Ebert once said, the effect alone doesn’t matter, but whether the audience cares about the effect. When it comes to “The Final Destination,” the answer to that question is a resounding ‘no.’
The movie takes place at a well-worn race track, where Nick (Bobby Campo), his girlfriend Lori (Shantel VanSanten), and two friends are watching a NASCAR race. Nick has a horrific vision of a series of events that leads to the deaths of dozens of people. He urges his friends, and his insistence inspires a few bystanders, to leave at once, and within seconds after leaving, his premonition comes true. However, Death is not content to let his victims get away, and the survivors soon suffer equally horrific accidents, in the order that they were originally “supposed” to die.
The premise, as you can see, is identical to the other “Final Destination” movies, with one added detail: Nick continues to have visions before each person’s death, though he doesn’t see any of the details well enough to know which survivor is next or where it will take place. This gives director David R. Ellis, who helmed “Final Destination 2” as well as the immortal “Snakes on a Plane,” the opportunity to go nuts with the 3D – he even has a snake slither to the tip of your nose, yuk yuk – but these sequences wipe out the tension of the death scenes before they even have a chance to build, since the audience now has an idea of how the next person will bite it. The dialogue is also painfully bad, even by “Final Destination” standards (and padded with unnecessary ethnic slurs, to boot). The acting isn’t much better,
In fact, the best part of the movie is the opening credits, where Ellis uses X-ray-type graphics to re-enact deaths from the first three movies. (Strangely, the best death from “Final Destination 2,” involving the teenager and the sheet of glass, was not included.) Ellis also sets up a Sam Raimi-type kill shot that was good for a laugh. Most of the death scenes, however, are just lame, and writer Eric Bress inserts an awkward, self-referential scene in a 3D movie theater that’s as subtle as a sledgehammer. He also recycles at least two weapons from previous installments, though one of them is admittedly a classic. It doesn’t appear that a lot of thought was put into “The Final Destination,” outside of the 3D. It is this approach to moviemaking that causes 3D to go out of style almost as soon as it’s back in style, and it’s surprising to see New Line handle one of their most profitable franchises so carelessly. Of course, New Line is a shell of the company it was when the first “Final Destination” debuted, so in a way it makes sense that this installment would be equally vacant.
(2 / 5)
Q: How does a snowboarder introduce himself?
A: He turns around, waves and says, “Sorry, dude!”
Obviously, a skier wrote that joke, but even the skier who came up with that joke would find lots to love about “First Descent.” There is some exhilarating camerawork of the best of the best doing things that they didn’t even know they were capable of doing. The easy way out would be to describe it as a Warren Miller movie for ‘boarders, but it is actually much more than that. While it deals with the stars of the present, it also includes a comprehensive history of the sport’s origin and evolution, which makes it part Warren Miller and part “Dogtown and Z-Boys.” If only it had been about 20 minutes shorter.
The setup for the movie is that five of the world’s best snowboarders – Shawn Farmer, Shaun White, Hannah Teter, Nick Peralta and Norway’s Terje Haakosen – travel to Alaska to do some hardcore mountain skiing, the likes of which the 18 year-olds White and Teter have never attempted. This 10-day adventure is broken into chapters by interchanging storylines on the history of snowboarding and the backgrounds of the five snowboarders. Given the range in ages of the five main players – White and Teter are 18, Farmer is 40 – you get a lot of different takes on what snowboarding means to them and how much it’s changed since they started ‘boarding.
Farmer is easily the most fascinating of the bunch. Looking like the bearded love child of Flea and Pete Rose, Farmer (no one calls him Shawn, and that’s not in deference to wonderboy Shaun White) has a raw enthusiasm for the sport that belies his years. Sometimes this gets him into trouble – after one wipeout, his left arm looks like something out of a Joe Theissman clip, without breaking the skin – but it leaves the viewer impressed just the same. White is impossibly composed for an 18-year-old. A five-time X Games winner, he is uncommonly graceful about his success. When he meets NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon, and Gordon tells him that his boots are Shaun White boots, White is clearly bowled over. “Gordon’s getting a free board for that comment,” he jokes later.
Of the two devices that cut up the action, the historical overlook, narrated by Henry Rollins (it is surely not a coincidence that “TV Party” appears as background music), is the more compelling. The shots of the early ‘70s gear is hilarious (riders held a rope attached to the board’s nose to keep their balance), and the clips from skiers in the ‘80s, disgusted that they have to share their slopes with these punks, are even funnier. Throughout the timeline are shots of incredible freestyle moves and footage from the early snowboard videos which, as one of the stars of those videos says, were indeed “Jackass” before there was “Jackass.” The most jaw-dropping moment comes when White’s buddy Travis Rice does a run from a nearly pristine mountaintop, and in the process creates a monstrous avalanche that nearly takes him under. They show it three times from two different angles, and not once does the gravity of the moment lose its impact.
If “First Descent” has a fault, it’s that it doesn’t know when enough is enough. In their attempt to make an all encompassing doc on the sport, filmmakers Kemp Curly and Kevin Harrison didn’t know when they had outstayed their welcome. By the time you got to Terje’s “flashback” (all five skiers were shot spending time at home one month before the Alaska trip), you realize that, while they all came from vastly different backgrounds, their upbringings, surprise, were very much alike, and as a result were quite dull. Terje’s story, though, will open the eyes of many to the fact that there is surfing in Norway. Who knew? Besides the Norwegians, that is.
Still, only skiers and non-snowboarders will bellow about the movie’s length. “First Descent” (yes, it does end with one ‘boarder making the first drop on one steep-ass mountain, but I won’t give away the details here) will thrill anyone who’s ever strapped a board on a slope. But speaking as a fellow skier, would it kill these guys to not run over our skis when they pass by?
(3.5 / 5)