10+1 Reasons to Love 'True Lies'

• It is the best Arnold movie behind Terminator (1 & 2) and Predator. He is funny, self-aware, and still built like a mountain.
  
• Its humor made me laugh the first time I saw it (and still does).
  
• TOM ARNOLD: In the best role that I've seen him in, as a chubby sarcastic secret agent. Bill Paxton comes in second place as a comic relief co-star.
  
• Some just plain cool action scenes, including: The coolest scene in any movie featuring a Harrier VTOL fighter jet....

• ... A chase involving a horse and a motorcycle...
  
• ...A great brawl/shootout in public restroom, and...
  
• ...A great infiltration (and escape from) a snowy chateau.
  
• Did you know it was Eliza Dushku's breakout?
  
• The bad guy (pre-9/11) is a carbon copy of Osama bin Laden. Good thing this was made when it was, because it would have been trickier in a post-9/11 world to make a movie with a US Govennor beating the hell out of Osama bin Laden (and yes, eventully thwarting a terrorist plan involving a nuke and exploding pseudo-Osama into a billion tiny pieces of flesh).
  
• I like Brad Feidel (Terminator)'s soundtrack. You might not remember it, but it was exciting and fitting.
  
• Speaking of, this movie was a re-teaming of Arnold, Feidel, Bill Paxton and James Cameron from Termintor. How many bad movies has James Cameron made? I can't think of any (though I don't watch Titanic too often, personally).

What's not to like about this movie? What can I say, it makes me laugh each time see it, and the action is the perfectly balance between semi-realism and Hollywood ridiculousness. Casablanca, it ain't, but sue me.... I love this movie.

Worth Seeing: District 9 / PS: NO, Joe!

District 9 is produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Neill Blomkamp. It's a movie about an alien (the extraterrestrial kind) refugee camp in Johannesburg, South Africa. District 9 if the kind of movie that's more fun the less you know about it.


So I'll just say this: I think it's worth seeing. It won't spoil anything to tell you that the production design and effects are great, and that this movie can be enjoyed on any level from shallow (explosions!) to deep (Apartheid metaphor, barely veiled).


If you are simply in too much of a hurry to see the movie (or you hate aliens, or Peter Jackson, or ... um, Africa?), you can ruin it by watching the short movie that this big movie is based on: Alive in Joburg.


In other news, it seems that against everyone's wishes and plain common sense, GI Joe 2 is already in the works. While contemplating this tragedy, I figured out another reason I hated that movie: The fights remind me of Star Wars Episode I's battles (snap!!). A lot. Check it out:


The ninja's (analogous to Jedi) are really cool, and they flip around and sword fight like crazy. But you just don't care about these strutting personality-vaccuums, so when they're not fighting (90% of their screen time) you're bored with them.


Everyone who's NOT a ninja is fighting a big, cheesy CG battle that just feels... without consequence. When the Joes were battling, I think for a second I imagined Gungans (lots of Jar-Jar's) fighting battle droids, and it just made me want to... to... to pay my bills, or wash my wife's car, or watch SportsCenter, or balance my checkbook or something. The whole thing JUST DOESN'T MATTER.


I will leave you with this riddle: Which is less important, the subjugation of Jar-Jar's people, or the survival of a big CG Eiffel tower?


Just in case you were worried, even the little CG people visibly evacuated the tower first. There is nothing to worry about. Or care about. Or be excited about. Or prevent you from yawning.




Okay, I can't help it--I have to answer my own riddle. They are both infinitely unimportant. This is not a good thing to be thinking when you just paid $9 to be entertained.

Yo Joe!

I had to see it because I grew up in the 80's--so back off, okay?!

Here are the things you need to know about GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

It's cardinal sin (here's looking at you, Star Wars prequels) is that it just plain isn't fun. There was no point during this movie when the characters, the action, or anything else made me happy. It was just a chore, through and through. In a day and age when you can find eight billion fun or funny things on Youtube within seconds, a movie can't afford to be funless from start to final frame.

The actors are wooden. Channing Tatum seems born to play high school football players--there just isn't a lot going on in this guy's noggin. He falls blandly in a dull netherworld between the original Rocky (who you pity because he's dumb as a brick) and some sort of trendy 'Fast 'n' Furious' type rogue (the kind of character that is lost on me). But I liked what one reviewer said about Dennis Quaid's 'General Hawk': He barks out orders "like your drunken uncle at Thanksgiving dinner."

America is mostly safe. The Joes operate out of Egypt (maybe because real estate is cheaper there?). We spend most of the movie watching French Moroccan and British 'Joes' rescuing Paris and Moscow. Maybe it's the poor direction and pace of the movie, or maybe it's our current geopolitical state, but I looked around the theater during the "save the Eiffel tower" scene and nobody seemed all that concerned.

WOULDA COULDA: I would have set this movie in another timeframe. Maybe during, or just post-WWII, or maybe the Sixties (interesting setting for a patriotic fighting force) or even the Eighties. And we should have had older heroes. How could Channing Tatum have earned the 3,437 tour of duty ribbons he's wearing when he looks like he's 23 years old?

Bring on Michael Biehn! Protagonist of Terminator, and supercool military squad leader in Aliens, The Rock, Navy SEALS (movie: bad; Biehn: good) and The Abyss. Come to think of it, how was Biehn NOT in a movie about a supercool American military team? If there is one guy who can walk around with a gun in a movie that springs from 1980's nostalgia and make it work instantly (with the exception of maybe der Gubernator), it's Michael Biehn.

DEATH BLOW: I'm not trying to be mean when I say this--really. But you know your military movie is bad when the audience is wishing it was more like a Michael Bay movie. I was missing the guns (with bullets, not lasers) and standoffs between Michael Biehn and Ed Harris I remember from The 90's blue-camo-cheesy Rock.

Seriously, Stephen Sommers? You forced me write that you something to learn from Michael Bay? Yowtch.

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL: The movie ends with all villains surviving and vowing to get revenge in GI Joe 2: An Insult to Your Brain. This goes to show the one character attribute these filmmakers possess that I sorely lack: Unabashed, I-don't-care-what-people-or-numbers-say, hopeful-to-the-point-of-idiocy optimism.

Name that movie!

Tell me if you can identify this fantasy story (some of you know where this is headed already...):

Our tale begins a quaint village of little people (I mean, like, 'midgets'). They are enjoying food, drink, and the simple life... that is, until something very important comes into the possession of one such little person.

This item is of little significance on the surface, but a wizard identifies it as (foreboding drums...) the one key to toppling the Dark Lord who is coldly intent on ruling all free people. Let's call this item "The One Little Key to Intensely Evil Nature" (TOLKIEN, for short).

The little guy takes his closest companions and TOLKIEN on a quest far from his simple home. His plan is the get TOLKIEN out of his hands as soon as possible, because he's pretty sure he is not the guy destined to end evil.

On the way, one other little person's phileo (brotherly love) leads him to bind himself to the main heroic little person when other companions fall away for various reasons.

Also on the way, the little guys encounter a mysterious swordsman. Befriending this dangerous but skilled stranger may just plop TOLKIEN into evil's lap... or perhaps this rogue is more trustworthy than he seems at first glance.

As their company slowly deteriorates, they stumble into the woods and are befriended and encouraged by ancient, almost magical beings there.

From there, the remaining party members find themselves stalwartly defending a ancient white-walled good-guy fortress against an impossible onslaught of black-clad, inhuman, evil attackers. Things are looking pretty grim for our heroes, until...

... Norse-looking, red/blond-haired cavalry reinforcements ride in at the darkest hour to save our desperate heroes!

But it's not over yet. The rogue-swordsman-with-the-heart-of-gold has defended the good guys' castle, but now the little ones have an appointment at the Dark Lord's doorstep with TOLKIEN. While the swordsman leads a distraction-battle outside Evil's gate, the heroic little one enters the scary HQ of evil and puts TOLKIEN permanently out of the Dark Lord's reach.

Hooray!

The swordsman takes his place as king of the white castle (not the burger place) and the little hero returns home... having seen and done more than his entire village had in their collective experience, he's now the town hero.

You guessed it, the epic cinematic experience I'm referring to is...
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WILLOW!

Kind of makes you wonder how many original thoughts are actually floating around in George Lucas' noggin, doesn't it? See this link for someone another agreeing perspective.

This reaffirms my belief that George is not a 'visionary storyteller'... he is a mechanical recycler of old, great stories... and sometimes, he just gets lucky (or gets good help!) and his remanufactured pieces are better than the sum of their parts.

Contrary to what Obi-Wan Kenobi thinks however... there IS such thing as luck. That much is evidenced by the heartless, unoriginal, downright boring Indy #4 and Star Wars Prequels--which pale in the light of the old Star Wars movies and earlier Indiana Jones movies. Willow is a bit more lively than IJ4 and SW1-3, but as we see here, it's anything but original.

Ah, Sweet Incongruity

I was flipping through channels when I saw that Spike was airing the original Star Wars trilogy in HD. I stopped to watch a few minutes and noticed some things about 'old' (1970's, baby!) Obi-Wan Kenobi versus 'new' (prequel) Obi-Wan Kenobi. Let's check them out in a brief study in contrast.

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I recieved the Best Actor Oscar when you were 13, George Lucas... do not anger me.

New Kenobi (henceforth 'NK'): Try not to think about girls, the Council doesn’t like that. And whatever you do, don't make a rash decision!
Old Kenobi ('OK'): Leave your family--and planet--to attack the Death Star. Just you and me. We don't even have a ride there yet, but it will work out. Trust me.

NK: At six years old, you're too world-weary and corrupted to train as a Jedi. We only accept gelatinous, undeveloped brain-wash candidates.
OK: Nice to meet you. I recognize that as a backwater farmer, you are probably lacking the Sci-Fi equivalent of a GED but... you know what would look nice with that dusty tunic? A lightsaber--here you go!

NK: I hang out at Starbucks with the Evil Emperor every week, but he seems alright to me. I don't suspect him of anything worse than shoddy tax legislation.
OK: My sensitivity to evil is so well-attuned that I can sense fear in people I hardly know, and perceive the death of people light years from my location.

NK: I am so stupid I think that Stormtroopers are my friends.
OK: Stormtroopers are so stupid I can fold their feeble minds into taco-shell-shapes by waving my fingers.

NK: I sport various types of mullets and pony tails.
OK: I kill people who do that.

NK: I drink alone; the fate of all middle-aged single British librarians.
OK: I drink (and smoke) with the Most Interesting Man Alive from Dos Equis commercials. And Gandalf.

You can scramble the letters of my name to spell "Genuine Class." Bam!

Isn't the difference obvious? This comforts me, because it reminds me that these trilogies can't possibly coexist. Even the same characters are... different characters as far as these movies are concerned, which makes it that much easier for me to excise the new ones from my personal Star Wars canon.

See "Comment" link below to barrage me with nerd-related insults... but at least you hopefully agree that the 1970's version made for better cinema.

Michael Bay: If it exists, it can explode.

Transformers 2 is the 'big movie' these days, so I thought it was high time to give a shout out to the man, the myth, the Bay. You've seen his movies, but you can't remember a single character from any of them.

But who can forget the time he sent astronauts to drill a hole in a doomday asteroid to sink an A-bomb into it and save mankind? I remember it, and I wish I didn't. Here's looking at you, Michael Bay.

• Your movies average 26 explosions per hour--almost one every two minutes.
• Your movies always talk about and hint at sex, but stop short enough to maintain your PG-13 rating, so that you can convince half of America to see every reel you crank out.
• Your movies always try to tug at my heart strings, but are a mile from succeeding (see the tragic 'romances' in Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and Bad Boys 2).
• Your movies are too, too long. Bad Boys 2 needed about 3 fewer climactic actions scenes, I fell asleep during the 'climax' of Transformers, and I am passing on Transformers 2... which weighs in at TWO AND HALF HOURS.

Based on a 22-minute cartoon and you need 150 minutes to get your point across? Remember, Mike, brevity is the soul of wit.


But then, maybe I am misunderstanding your intentions. I perceive that 'wit' may be your third or fourth objective, behind "filming explosions exploding and hot chicks."

Alas, poor Yorick... I knew him, until Will Smith shot him 16 times whilst jumping through the air, only for Yorick to flail bloodied onto a nearby landmine and explode (twice!!) while Shia LeBeouf French kisses Megan Fox in the background, and two F/A-18's streak overhead. Poor, poor Yorick...

Here is the real dagger: The original Transformers movie (the cartoon one, from the eighties) killed off the hero in the first 8 minutes (THAT'S how you push a story forward), starred Orson Welles (true!) and still managed to wrap itself up in about an hour. People in their thirties are still traumatized by Optimus Prime's death in the cartoon, while Bay's forgettable Transformers movies leave us--er, 'briefly sleepy yet irritated.'

Do you hear me, Bay? While your movies feature giant war-machines from a technoligically-advanced planet punching(?!) the crap out of each other as the finale, the cartoon version had Orson Welles as a freaking planet that eats other planets. That's bigger than anything you've ever done, and the story was more economical to boot. Also jumping onboard this banner project were Eric Idle, Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack, Clive Revill (the original Emperor in Star Wars) and Casey Kasem. Booyah!



You are doing something right when Orson wants in on your cartoon.

Wikipedia says that Welles' Unicron is "neither Autobot nor Decepticon, [...] a prodigiously large robot whose scale reaches planetary proportions, and he is also able to transform into a mechanical planet. He travels the galaxy, seeking worlds to consume for nourishment."

He is big enough to EAT the combined pain-soaked mess of all 10 hours of your Bad Boys and Transformers franchises. Come, O Unicron... and consume Michael Bay.

Check out this video from Robot Chicken to see what Bay is all about.

Star Trek Wars

So, last week I saw Star Trek. I'll briefly preface this post by saying that I grew up a hardcore Star Wars fan, and that Star Trek fans were my school-yard enemies (Yes, even nerds have gangs).

The Star Wars franchise has aged (from about 1983 to present) about as well as an open bowl of chili sitting on a kitchen counter over a holiday weekend. Star Trek had some rough spots too, and its past couple of movies performed badly in theaters.

However, as the third major 'reboot' in the past few years, I highly enjoyed the last Trek movie. Sure, the science wasn't perfect (here's looking at you, Squid) but at least I had something I haven't had watching anything George Lucas has made in a generation: Fun!

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If I want bad computer animation to bore me to tears, I can manage that fine without paying nine bucks--here's looking at you now, Monster Quest!

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Here's my brief shopping list of things ST had, but by contrast Star Wars has lacked in the past couple decades:

More please...



• A prominent smart alec. Space opera, almost by definition, needs someone who doesn't take himself too seriously. Kirk did this. A bunch of stiff Jedi makes for a long movie... and an exponentially longer trilogy.

• Things exploding in space! How is it that my series has "WARS" in the title, but was seemingly bereft of the entertaining WWII space dogfights that made it big in the first place? ST delivered on this, even though they cruise around in a big science vessel. You're telling me that doctors and engineers and linguists get into better scrapes than ancient warrior fraternities?! Go figure.

• Space academy cadets ordering beer. While ST has moved from nerd-scape to mainstream, SW has moved from appealing to grown-up nerds and kids... to appealing to only tiny tykes. Today it is okay for a 'cool' adult to tell his friends that he (or she!) is going to see Star Trek. BUT... If you're going to a Star Wars movie in this millenium, you would be better off lying and telling your friends you're catching a matinee Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties.**

• Blue-screen, red blood! Despite requisite sci-fi blue-screen work, Trek has a bunch of people geting the hell beat out of them--and a good guy even gets tortured! Dull Lucas had his stable of actors interacting with absent costars and fake swords. Three long painful movies couldn't even cough up one good bar fight?! Plus, bonus points for Kirk losing most (all?) of his fights. Awesome!

Even Kirk's friends put the beat-down on him

I can't go on, because if I get started on how much I hate the Prequels, I'll get banned for posting a Gilgamesh-like 'epic' instead of a brief 'blog post.' Live long... and give me a little bit of fun for my nine bucks, okay?

**Bonus knowledge: Garfield: ATOTK fared terribly despite being based on not one, but TWO Dickensian masterworks. When a movie with a lot of CG aimed at kids does this badly, you have to wonder... was GL the clandestine hand behind the making of yet another insult to society?