THIS MEANS WAR
Well, that was disappointing. This Means War is tone deaf and pointless, the comedy is dumb, the action standard punch-shoot-punch that you have seen a thousand times, and McG has no sense of humor. More to the point, I was hoping for something incompetent enough to be entertainingly shitty, but no such luck there either. So I have little to discuss here about the movie. So let's talk for a minute about gay sex. The two men are gay, no question. This is not a bros bonding sort of thing - the men love each other with an intensity unquieted by ...
SAFE HOUSE
The Bourne films worked as well as they did due to an efficiency that bordered on fetishistic. Not a word or a shot wasted with all details used to forward the momentum, unless characterization was involved, which also provided a push. Damon embodied an assassin to perfection by following that ethic, every move calculated, every gesture speaking on his behalf. Any attempt to ape the Bourne films will stumble unless that efficiency is also copied. Along those lines, Safe House stumbles a portion of the time with too many lulls between occasionally engaging action scenes. Still, it is entertaining on ...
NOTHING SACRED
That the press will do anything for a story is hardly news, even to the moviegoing public in 1937. To paraphrase a great line from a great movie, anything is grist for their mill. Then and now, there is nothing sacred for a story, no means too ridiculous to get that story, and there are no limits in skewing that 'news' in serving the needs of the owners, investors, and advertisers in your media network. The inherent falsehood in news is not limited to the press - everyone is complicit, from the businesses that profit off goods related to the ...
CHRONICLE
Once a character becomes a protagonist, they tend to cease being a human. Flaws are sacrificed to maximize appeal for an audience, rendering the behavior of a character unrecognizable to someone from planet Earth. That this is dull beyond belief goes without saying. Having flawed, stupid, offensive, or otherwise shitheaded characters make stories far more involving since we can recognize a bit of ourselves in them. This is borne in mind in Chronicle, which posits a creation story for three kids who acquire telekinesis from an unidentified source. Most superheroes in pop culture got their powers at random, yet the ...
THE INDEFENSIBLE – THE HOLLYWOOD KNIGHTS
The Hollywood Knights has been labeled a virtual copy of American Graffitti, which is a fair accusation in that it is a nostalgia trip through the early sixties with a constant soundtrack seemingly lifted whole from AG. There are important differences, however, as AG is a shallow exercise in milking Boomers for cash (a task Lucas would perfect over the next few decades) that reaches awkwardly for profundity as the young protagonists stumble towards adulthood. Hollywood Knights, on the other hand, uses nostalgia as a frame on which to hang dumb jokes, clever pranks, and a welcome helping of T&A ...
THE INDEFENSIBLE – THE HOLLYWOOD KNIGHTS
The greatest generation deserved that flaming bag of dogshit.
SPAWN OF THE SLITHIS
Revenge of the Eisenhower Era filtered through remedial film school.
