The Lion King (1994)
VERDICT:
9/10 Circles of Life
If Beauty and the Beast never happened, this might be the best Disney movie out there.
The Lion King is about a lion cub growing up in the wilderness of Africa under the watchful eye of his father who reigns in harmony over the animal kingdom. Everything’s going swell for the curious young cub and his parents, but then there’s his power-hungry uncle who decides to take matters into his own paws now that his right to the throne has been passed down to his nephew. Before long, the evil uncle decides to put his plans into action, tragedy strikes, and because sometimes uncles just suck, he convinces his innocent little nephew that it was all his fault. Guilt-ridden and devastated, the cub runs away in shame while his uncle has his way with the kingdom. Years go by, the cub grows up with his new jungle friends, and when his old life tracks him down, the young lion is forced to face his demons and return to the life he left behind.
The first time I saw this movie was in a theater with my mom in 1994. I liked it, she loved it, we bought the soundtrack, and it didn’t leave our car’s CD player for the next three months. The second time I saw this movie was last Friday with 3D glasses on and a 17-year age difference amidst a gaggle of kids who were quoting and singing the thing verbatim. I have absolutely no idea why it took me so long to revisit this movie, but it probably had to do with a teenage misconception that Disney movies are for kids. Although the upside of the bias is that I’d pretty much forgotten everything about this movie aside from a bunch of the songs that I couldn’t forget if I tried. It wasn’t quite the same experience as watching Beauty and the Beast for the first time in two decades, but it sure made me feel stupid for taking so long.
On that note, the great thing about movies like these is that they don’t cater to a demographic. If you don’t like musicals, just wait ’til “Hakuna Matata” starts up. If you equate animation with child’s play, then just wait ’til those tears start a-flowin’ when Scar gets down to business. Sure, I doubt there were many adults who nudged their kids and said, “Can we go see that?!” when they first saw the trailer, but this is right up there with Back to the Future in terms of movies that will please regardless of who’s watching. And it’s hard to point to one aspect of this movie and say, “That’s why adults like it,” because when every aspect is as phenomenal as the next, you might as well keep that finger up the whole damn time.
For the sake of not rambling, the artwork and visuals are stunning, each new song is as memorable as the next, and the voice acting is top notch (even if I’m still not sure about Matthew Broderick). And for an experience that was always envisioned in two dimensions, it does happen look great in 3D, even though it doesn’t really add much to what made it great to begin with. But the one thing that really blew my mind is the way it drops some serious knowledge in deceptively simple ways. The one scene in particular is when Rafiki smacks grown-up Simba with his stick because Simba’s too afraid to return home. When Simba rubs his head and asks, “What was that for?,” Rafiki responds, “It doesn’t matter, it’s in the past.” Simba says, “Yeah, but it still hurts,” to which Rafiki replies, “Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it.” Rafiki then swings at him again with the stick, but Simba dodges it this time.
Lesson learned, Simba sprints back to the Pride Lands to start taking care of business.
I’m not usually one to quote scenes ad nauseum, but that was a freaking epiphany for me. 99 times out of 100 I could walk out of a movie involving humans and never learn anything as profound and true-to-life as that ten second exchange between a lion and a monkey. Yes, there are a lot of lessons to be learned from this movie, but it’s rare that one actually teaches you something and makes a light switch go on. That’s like Yoda from Empire stuff.
And come on, it’s a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. How legit is that for a “kid’s movie?”
So the story, the music, the knowledge, the characters – they’re all top-notch. But alas, the only reason this isn’t a perfect 10 is that it doesn’t tap into its full potential until Timon and Pumbaa show up 30 minutes in. It’s still great up until that point, but once the comic relief gets thrown into the mix, that’s when I realized how well this had aged. That’s when I started laughing out loud, tapping my foot to the songs, and savoring every minute thereafter with an ear-to-ear grin. Maybe it’s my affinity for Beauty and the Beast and the way I still laugh my ass of at the “Gaston” song that came in right early and left me with a cracked rib, but with a movie like this that has to win over the adults from the get-go to stand any chance of breaking the mold, you need to get the adults laughing just as much as the kids. The good thing is that it totally gets there, it all comes together, and it keeps hitting all the right notes once it does, but I wish it had gotten there earlier is all.
I’ve already said a lot, but The Lion King is one of those rare movies that really speaks for itself. Right from the unbelievable opening sequence at Pride Rock to its final moments of redemption as it comes full circle, I can’t imagine anyone walking out of this without being affected by everything it brings to the table. Folks, it’s just great to watch a movie and have your biggest complaint be that it should have kept going for another 90 minutes. If you never got the chance to enjoy it in theaters with hundreds of other kids in age and kids at heart, you don’t know what you’re missing.
And I can’t be the only one who loved the Sega Genesis game of this, right?
Drive (2011)
VERDICT:
8/10 Evil Knievels
About time Gosling got to play the badass that he is.
Drive is about an LA stunt driver who rolls cars and fixes junkers during the day, and makes some dough on the side by moonlighting as a getaway driver. Through a course of chance run-ins, he starts to get cozy with the new girl down the hall, things seem to be going swell, but then her husband gets out of jail and screws everything up. Lo and behold, the husband starts getting his skull thumped in because of some unpaid debts from his time in Sing Sing, so being the softy that he is, the driver decides to help the guy out by doing a job with him. As luck would have it, things don’t exactly go according to plan and the driver has to muscle his way out of an unfortunate situation before the West Coast mob kills him and the girl next door.
So I’m just gonna cut to the chase and get to the one thing in this movie that everyone wants to talk about: Ryan Gosling, the best thing to come out of Canada since poutine. Yes, he’s one of the few men on this planet that I admit to having a man-crush on; yes, I’m sure I’m not alone on this matter; yes, that is probably part of the appeal. But the thing about Gosling is that he’s more than just the looks and he’s more than just cool. He just is. The more I watch movies, the more I realize that it’s not all that unusual to find guys who are badasses that make it look easy. Gosling’s got that when he walks down the street and I really don’t think anyone can argue otherwise, but what sets him apart here is his character…and a totally bitchin’ jacket.
I’ve gone over this before, but one of the qualities that drives me crazy about human beings in general are those who don’t know the benefits of shutting the hell up, who just talk for the sake of talking. Here, as “the kid,” Gosling is the antithesis of that. When he speaks, it’s ’cause he has to, and even then you’ll probably have to ask him twice just to get a one-word answer that roughly translates to: “Settle down, child. I’m Ryan Gosling.” There isn’t a lot of conversation to be had in this movie, but when there is, it either cuts to the chase or is so funny that all you want to do is keep listening. It’s a beautiful thing, really, and it’s a really accomplished script from the bottom up.
I don’t know if this is gonna get him a second Oscar nod like some think it will, but this role has been a long time coming for Gosling and he flat-out destroys with every chance he gets (which is all the freaking time). But the weird thing about it is that this isn’t even Gosling’s show. That honor actually goes to director Nicolas Winding Refn. If you haven’t seen his Pusher trilogy, Bronson, or Valhalla Rising, here’s what you need to know. Nicolas Winding Refn makes movies about mean motherfuckers that are as stunningly gorgeous as they are brutally violent. This is one of those movies.
The way Tarantino took a modern-day setting and made it feel like a trip back to the ’70s, that’s exactly what Refn does here, only fast-forward a decade and take out all the stuff we’d rather forget about, like Members Only jackets. From the hot pink font in the opening credits to the synth-fueled soundtrack that works so much better than it had any right to, this sucker makes Miami Vice look like a Wham! video. More so than the performances or the writing, the way Refn frames every scene, moves it along, and sets the tone by keeping things simple is what makes us completely forget that the stolen tag line isn’t the only similarity this movie has to No Country for Old Men. Really, what an unbelievably good-looking and expertly controlled movie this is.
As far as the action scenes go, there’s only a few, but while they lack in quantity, they more than make for it in quality. Some seriously intense stuff that had my heart in my throat and took no prisoners. I mean, all you really have to do is look at Albert Brooks as the villain in one of the best against-type roles I’ve seen in ages. When I think of Albert Brooks, I think of Marlon from Finding Nemo or his flop sweats in Broadcast News. I don’t think of a ruthless mobster who smiles as he guts you and considers it business as usual, but it comes to him quite naturally and he ends up making for one awfully memorable sonofabitch. And even though you can blink and miss Christina Hendricks’ role, there’s actually not a weak spot to be found in this cast, and that’s just fine.
So the story’s nothing new, the violence is a bit much, and you’re setting yourself up for disappointment if you’re looking for non-stop car chases (probably could have done with a different title for that matter), but Drive is some kind of ride alright. It’s an exercise in minimalism that’s got attitude, style, and character to spare with a cast who knows how to work it. There’s really something to be said for a film maker who can take something we’ve seen before and turn it into something that just makes you go “Damn.” I could have said it a lot more than I did, but this movie is just cool as sin. Who cares if the action scenes are over and done with in all of 60 seconds? When they’re done this well and are buffered by this much substance, it quickly becomes a non-issue.
And the best superhero movie of the summer is…
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS!
Still not sure if I’d vote for this or Cap, but what a freaking upgrade from the last couple X-Men movies, huh?
Poor Green Lantern. Even with Peter Sarsgaard, you never stand a chance.
RESULTS:
– X-Men: First Class: 15 votes
– Captain America: The First Avenger: 12 votes
– Thor: 5 votes
– Green Lantern: 3 votes
Four superhero movies in one summer. Good gravy…
Point Blank (2011)
VERDICT:
8/10 Desperate Measures
The cinematic equivalent of bungee jumping on speed.
Point Blank is about a French safecracker who gets framed for a murder he didn’t commit and barely escapes with his life before ending up in a hospital. That same night, one of the guys who set the safecracker up tries to take him off life support, but a male nurse shows up just in time to save his life. The following morning, a guy breaks into the male nurse’s apartment, knocks the male nurse out, and then kidnaps the male nurse’s pregnant wife. In order to get his wife back, the male nurse now has to break the safecracker out of the hospital, become a wanted man in the process, and work together with the safecracker to clear their good names, not die, and turn the tables on whoever it is that wants them dead.
Going in, the only thing I knew about this movie is that it was French and had the same title as a 1967 Lee Marvin movie that’s apparently as badass as they come. Didn’t know what it was about, didn’t know who was in it, expectations were at an all-time low. So when the lights dimmed, the movie started, and I had to remind myself that if I didn’t exhale I was going to die by the five-minute mark, I knew I’d found myself a winner.
With that being said, you don’t really need to know much about this movie going in. When the title disappears and the movie punches you in the solar plexus the very next millisecond, that’s all the explanation you need. From that point forward it does not stop, it does not calm down, and that’s the beauty of it. This is Run, Lola, Run, this is The Bourne Ultimatum, this is how you strike that rare balance between action thriller and drama by pacing it like a runaway freight train and developing characters with each new crossing it crashes through.
On top of that, it manages to be nuts while remaining realistic. No one knows kung-fu, no one’s a trained super assassin, and whenever there’s a chase (which is all the freakin’ time), it’s always done on foot. And that’s just awesome. Nothing against car chases and ninja assassins, but good old fashioned foot chases that place average Joes in a life-or-death situation carry an energy that you can’t get with four wheels and a katana. Even though I went in blind, the last thing I expected was the sensation of getting a syringe filled with cheetah adrenaline jammed into my forehead for 84 minutes. I’m fairly certain the element of surprise weighs into why I liked this movie so much, but even knowing full well that this is exactly the kind of ride you’re in for, you still won’t be properly prepped and that’s not even counting the constant twists and turns that follow.
But by the same token, the story doesn’t quite measure up to the film making. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good story and the writers move the plot along brilliantly by throwing the male nurse into one dead end situation after another until everything he holds dear is at risk of getting a bullet to the brain. Unfortunately, it’s not really one of those stories that leaves you feeling anything of significance when it’s all over, there’s not that emotional touchstone. But even with that minor complaint that might only exist because the film making is so effing slick, this is operating on a whole ‘nother level as far as thrill rides are concerned. It won’t change your outlook on life and it doesn’t quite have that emotional impact you tend to take away from a good drama, but you’ll be invested, you’ll still feel different when it’s over, and you’ll probably want a sedative on hand to balance yourself out.
It also helps that the characters are good, that they’ve got a surprising amount of growth and development going for them, and that the cast happens to kick ass, too. Since I still haven’t seen Tell No One for some reason, this is the first time introduction to Gilles Lellouche who plays the male nurse on a mission, and here’s a guy who seems to know a thing or two about intensity. He’s always terrified, he never turns into some kind of superhero, but he’s quick on his feet and he will stop at absolutely nothing to get his wife and his life back. I like that about him, Lellouche makes it believable, and so is the unlikely alliance he forms with the safecracker played by Roschdy Zem, who happens to quite the stone cold badass. Alone and together, these two are a real asset to the movie from the top to bottom and do at the very least do a bang-up job of keeping the tone at a constant state of “MOVE!”
And as much as I hate having to mention this every time a good foreign film comes my way, yes, it is in subtitles. Then again, the upside is that this is one of those movies that barely needs dialogue to begin with. Just glance at the bottom of the screen every once in a while, get a general gist of what’s going on, then go back to enjoying the insanity. Easy peasy Japanesy.
Folks, Point Blank is just plain wild. There’s not much to be gained from it in terms of substance and message, but it ain’t too often that a non-horror movie leaves me cowering in my seat and clenching my jaw ’til my gums hurt. Not that it’s shocking or overly violent by any means, it’s just as intense and exciting and finely tuned as they come. If Red Bull was a movie, it would be this, and if there was one movie this past Summer that I wish I’d paid to see twice, damn right it would be this.
Warrior (2011)
VERDICT:
6/10 Family Feuds
A poor man’s The Fighter that’s saved by its cast.
Warrior is about two estranged brothers who parted ways as kids when the eldest stayed behind to live their alcoholic father while the youngest skipped town with their mom to escape their abusive household. Years later, the eldest has a family of his own and works as a high school math teacher, and the youngest, with nowhere else to go, comes home to live with his now-sober dad after a stint overseas with the Marines. Because the eldest is in danger of having his home foreclosed upon, he starts competing in mixed martial arts tournaments to make ends meet; and because the youngest has nothing better to do, he makes a name for himself in the same circuit after joining his old gym where he and his brother used to train. Lo and behold, they enter the same best-of-the-best mixed martial arts tournament and have to fight their way to the top while repairing old wounds.
Word on the street is that this was originally supposed to be released in the Fall of last year, but since The Fighter was already on its way, you can probably guess why the studio took a raincheck. And for the sake of not turning this into a “Here’s why The Fighter‘s better than Warrior” review, I’ll just start by saying that the comparison is unavoidable and it suffers extra for it.
It’s not that I’m crazy about The Fighter or was expecting this movie to fail because of the natural comparison, but the weird thing about this movie is that it made me appreciate the The Fighter more than I ever thought I would. When the characters here were talking, I kept thinking “Man, the dialogue in The Fighter was freaking awesome.” When the younger brother’s wife gets put on the back burner while the men steal the spotlight, I kept thinking, “Man, Amy Adams was a freaking badass in The Fighter.” When I started rolling my eyes at all the schmaltzy crap that goes down during the last half-hour, I kept thinking, “Man, this would have been so much better if it had been a true story like The Fighter.”
So in those regards, Warrior was kind of screwed before the gloves were even on. But that’s not to say it doesn’t put up a fight.
As far as its strengths are concerned, writer/director Gavin O’Connor should be thanking his lucky stars that he got Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte to sign on. If you’ve already seen Bronson, then I don’t need to tell you what a goddamn beast of an actor Tom Hardy is. If you haven’t seen Bronson and only have his scene-stealing turn in Inception to go off of, than this should do the trick and then some. Hardy plays the younger brother and former Marine, and talk about a guy who knows a thing or two about looking tough and acting tough and making it look easy. It doesn’t hurt that his neck muscles are bigger than my thighs, but Hardy runs away with it early on with all his collected rage and I wouldn’t be all too surprised if this even landed him an Oscar nod come February.
And if you ever doubted Nick Nolte’s status as one of Hollywood’s most outrageously under-appreciated powerhouses, get ready to feel shame. Much like Hardy, Nolte very much looks, sounds, and acts the part of a washed-up recovering alcoholic who’s continually pushed two steps back every time he tries to inch forward into his kids’ lives. He’s arguably the most interesting character of the bunch and the guy is just a vet when it comes to commanding the screen, getting vulnerable, and giving it his all. Like the rest of the cast, he eventually overdoes it a bit, but that’s far more the writers’ fault than it is his.
Joel Edgerton is also good as the older brother and family man, but he ultimately gets overshadowed for two reasons. The first is that it seems like he has two facial expressions to work with, and they both look exactly like the other. The second is that he’s definitely not as built as Hardy, doesn’t have nearly the same kind of fighting experience, yet he still manages to destroy in the ring because he has so much heart. It wouldn’t be an issue if he could dodge punches like Peter Parker, but for all the hits to the brain he takes from beginning to end, Edgerton should have been breathing out of a tube long while the doctors pieced his skull back together long before Kurt Angle entered the picture.
But for the most part, the script is good. Up until the end, the dialogue is believable, the character development is as strong as it is complex, and for a long time it does a really good job of not making this seem like Rocky mixed with The Fighter. The plot isn’t exactly anything new, but thanks to the fleshed out characters and the performances backing them up, it feels different. But alas, there’s that last half-hour I keep tiptoeing around…
If you made a list of all the things you loved about Rocky that have turned into one sports movie cliche after another over the years, let’s just say you’d have yourself quite the completed checklist by the end of Warrior. It gets really melodramatic, it gets really formulaic, and it gets way too lovey dovey for its own good. On top of that, the movie is 140 minutes long, and that’s just bad business. By the time I started seeing Tom Hardy finish three different fights in the exact same way and listened to him chew out his dad with the exact same speech he gave in the first ten minutes of the movie, it seemed like blowups and makeups were getting thrown in there just because. It’s a damn shame that this script goes down the road it does to wrap up all the loose ends and emotions, ’cause it was really headed towards something fresh.
But all things considered, Warrior is still a good movie, it does nothing but favors for the MMA world, and up until everyone started saying “I love you,” it was cruising at a solid 7 and had the potential to snag an 8. If you haven’t seen The Fighter and if you haven’t seen Rocky, then there’s a very strong chance that you’ll flat-out flip your knickers over this movie. But even if you’re the majority that’s seen ’em both, there’s still Hardy and Nolte, and those two just kill it.
And the best American movie President is…
HARRISON FORD FROM AIR FORCE ONE!
Now that’s a dude who could solve a freakin’ debt crisis. Swell voting and God bless America.
RESULTS:
– Harrison Ford, Air Force One: 13 votes
– Bill Pullman, Independence Day: 9 votes
– Terry Crews, Idiocracy: 8 votes
– Michael Douglas, The American President: 6 votes
– Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon: 6 votes
– Leslie Nielsen, Scary Movie 3 & 4: 6 votes
– Kevin Kline, Dave: 4 votes (AWESOME President)
– Jeff Bridges, The Contender: 3 votes
– Morgan Freeman, Deep Impact: 2 votes
– Jack Nicholson, Mars Attacks: 2 votes
– Robert V. Barron, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure: 2 votes (very wise man)
– Morgan Freeman: Deep Impact: 2 votes
– Donald Pleasance, Escape from New York: 1 vote (hard to recover after The Duke makes you look like a total bitch)
– Other: 1 vote for Billy Bob Thornton in Love Actually (what a douche!), 2 votes for Martin Sheen in The West Wing (different medium, awesome President), 1 vote for James Naughton in First Kid (sure, why not?), and 1 vote for “Pedro – Because voting for him will make all of your wildest dreams come true:)” (kid would have made a fine President).
Black Death (2011)
VERDICT:
8/10 Missions from God
Succeeds and destroys where so many others have failed.
Set in England during the height of the bubonic plague, Black Death is about a young monk whose devotion to his faith is tested when the girl he secretly loves goes away to find a town that is free from infection. So when a band of holy knights show up looking for a guide to lead them to a town that’s supposedly immune from disease, the monk jumps at the opportunity and saddles up. But once they’re on the road, the knights drop a bomb on the monk by telling him that they’re not looking for a sacred village, but rather seeking out a Satanic village that they believe is the root of the fatal epidemic sweeping the land. Rather than go back to the monastery looking like a bitch, the monk stays the course and has his being tested in ways he never could have imagined.
Now, I don’t watch a lot of movies like these, because movies like these tend to suck. Season of the Witch, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, King Arthur – all those movies that take the awesomeness of medieval knights running train and somehow manage to turn them into laughing stocks that just don’t get it. Granted, I’m no film maker, but it seems like a pretty difficult formula to fuck up. Yet that’s exactly what happens more often than not, and the overwhelming surprise that this was a total exception to the rule played a big part in why I’m still so freaking crazy about Black Death.
One thing I was expecting from this movie and ended up getting in spades was violence. Not that I have a bloodlust in need of quenching, but the title was a dead giveaway and a bodycount just comes with the territory. With that being said, the few battle scenes we’re subject to keep very much in line with the rest of movie, meaning that they’re totally ruthless and don’t hold back. It’s a lot, but it works on a couple of levels because everything’s choreographed very well and our band of knights dispose of their enemies like they’re just taking out the trash for the big man upstairs. The Achilles’ heel of all those crappy movies about knights seems by and large to be a wonky tone, and as evidenced by the brutality and seriousness on display, the tone here is dead on.
But a movie can only work for so long on severed heads and rivers of blood alone, and that’s where the story comes in. These days in the good old 21st Century, you can just Google “bubonic plague” and find out that the whole damn thing was just caused by rats. But back in the 14th Century when you’d be burned as a witch for just sneezing the word “Google,” they had no idea what the hell was going on. All they knew was that if you were bleeding from your armpits, you were gonna die, and the best way to prevent that from happening was to pray like gangbusters.
Looking back, one can only imagine the kind of apocalyptic paranoia people were experiencing at that time, so having that blind quest for answers and salvation as a driving force behind the story is just a great freaking premise for a movie. It’s that contrast between faith and savagery, it’s watching “good” men justify their evil actions because they’re doing it in the name of the Lord, it’s watching Crusaders put everything on the line for a cause they believe in when they’re really just chickens with their heads cut off. These are not men of mercy, they’re men of God, and nothing is going to stop them from achieving what they set out to do. Folks, it’s as awesome as it is nuts.
For a movie that could easily be written off as “greasy he-men killing stuff for two hours” from the outset, it’s that much more impressive how strong this script is from head to toe. There are a lot of characters here and a whole lot of them die, but they all serve a genuine purpose, even when they’re taking dirt naps. Whether it’s establishing the imminent danger they’re always in thanks to the plague or just putting a face to these holy killers, they really do work and they all need to be there. There’s good character development, there’s strong dialogue delivered by stone cold actors with a twisted sense of humor, and there are a surprising number of twists here that I didn’t see coming whatsoever and left me pretty taken aback by the time it was all over. Seriously, where the hell did this movie come from?
I mean, you see Sean Bean on a poster and he’s still doing the whole Boromir shtick, originality isn’t exactly what comes to mind. But not only is that what I got, but Sean Bean was also a bigger badass than I ever knew he could be. Part of it is just the way he carries himself like a man who’s been slaughtering villages since infancy, but he’s an actor who manages to get a lot out of a little and he damn well knows it. Eddie Redmayne also has some highly memorable moments as the naive young monk, but Bean cannot be stopped and absolutely commands a cast of bonafide hard knocks that do not take shit from Satan.
There’s a rare satisfaction that comes with finishing a movie and liking it so much that you clear your schedule and start it right back from the beginning because it was just that good. For a sub-genre that’s horribly lacking in credibility and badassery these days, Black Death is the example by which all others should be measured. It’s a haunting experience, it’s no effing joke, and while I can’t quite give it a 9 since the violence jumps the shark a tad towards the end, I kinda loved this movie. I’m not really sure what the general consensus is, but the fact that it took so long for a someone to get this subject matter so right simply makes my head spin. Hat’s off in a big ol’ way to director Christopher Smith and Dario Poloni for this one.
Our Idiot Brother (2011)
VERDICT:
5/10 Happy Hippies
Didn’t love it, didn’t hate it, almost forgot I even saw it.
Our Idiot Brother is about a glass-half-full kinda guy who goes to prison for selling weed to a uniformed officer. After getting out early for good behavior and having nowhere to go since his ex turned into a raging hippie bitch, he starts shacking up with his sisters who all have character flaws and hangups of their own. Lo and behold, all his sisters end up regretting the day they ever lent a helping hand to their ex-con sibling when he keeps ruining their lives by opening up his big, stupid mouth.
For the sake of starting off on a good foot, what’s not to love about Paul Rudd? Sure, he plays the same role every time and his latest turn as Ned is no exception, but he’s got the “endlessly endearing nice guy” shtick down to a science and I think we could all eat him right up for it. If I saw him in a bar, I’d buy him a drink, and I don’t think it’s crazy to say we’d be best buds from that day forward because that’s just the kind of guy Paul Rudd is. Maybe it’s that signature smile, maybe it’s his sense of humor, but as much as he works as a comedic leading man, Paul Rudd can only carry a crappy script for so long.
There are a number of bummers about this script and the way it plays out, but the most glaring of which is that it’s a one-trick pony that starts out old and is practically in a coffin by the time the end credits roll around. The CliffsNotes version of the script goes like this: “Paul Rudd goes to live with his sister, but then he accidentally says the wrong thing and puts a mirror up to his sister’s flaws. Even though it’s his sister’s fault for not facing the music in the first place, she blames Paul Rudd and kicks him out of her house. Repeat the exact same formula two more times with two more sisters, have everything come to a head, then fix everything with the powers of self-reflection, and throw in a side plot with a dog named Willie Nelson.”
It really is like watching the same short film back-to-back-to-back, and it wouldn’t be so bad if the story had at least some originality going for it the first time around. And on top of all that frustration, you’ve got a misleading title and a surprisingly thin sense of humor. I don’t know about you, but when I hear that there’s a movie coming out called Our Idiot Brother, I start prepping myself for some Three Stooges shit. Then when my preconceived notions are further confirmed by a trailer where Paul Rudd idiotically breaks his nephew’s fingers with a well-place karate kick, it was quite the disappointment when I realized it was all a ruse.
Not to say that the movie isn’t funny, it’s just one of those unfortunate instances where every last laugh is already in the trailer. As much as I’d like to point the finger at the ad campaign for that one, there’s something terribly wrong with your comedy’s script if all your laughs can fit into a two-minute clip reel. Combo that with a story that ended up being way more serious than I think anyone could have expected, and you’ve got yourself a minor mess that could have been worse if I’d had some expectations for this movie. Seriously, the last time I was so thrown by a movie’s title was when I realized everybody was not fine in the highly forgettable and totally un-Christmassy Everybody’s Fine.
But on the bright side, the cast is good and they get it done, regardless of the fact that they’ve all been much, much better. The two exceptions to the rule are a scene where Rudd flips his lid like I never knew he could, and a guy who I didn’t even know existed up until now named T.J. Miller. He plays an organic farmer hippie who makes Rudd’s character Ned look like Gordon Gekko in comparison, he not only does he have the best delivery of the whole cast, but he also has the best lines, all of which sounded ad-libbed. A bit sad considering he only has about 10 lines while everyone else keeps on yappin’, but he sure gets the most out of ’em.
The other thing I that I liked about this movie – borderline loved, even – is Ned’s outlook on life. He tries his best to live by example, he loves everything and everyone unconditionally, and he continually gives others the benefit of the doubt because he believes with every inch of his being that people are innately good. Despite the fact that the writers insist on using all these qualities as a vehicle for the same lame gag or conflict time and time again, Ned is nevertheless a character worth swearing by, a character I totally dig and empathize with when he can shut the hell up.
So if Our Idiot Brother had itself a different title, it could have been a 6, and if it hadn’t regurgitated the same effing storyline three times in a row, it could have been a 7. It is sweet and it is funny in its own ways, but it really astounded me how quickly this movie erased itself from my memory banks, as though the guy at the ticket booth zapped me with Agent K’s neuralizer on the way out. Being the completely unspectacular, mediocre movie that it is, the biggest compliment I can give it on a whole is that it exists and serves a purpose. As to what that particular purpose is? I’m gonna go with some decent life lessons and naming a dog Willie Nelson.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)
VERDICT:
4/10 Dust Bunnies from Hell
Goes from flat-out terrifying to flat-out awful and just gets worse from there.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is about a little girl who goes to live with her dad and his new girlfriend in a big old mansion. Since she hates her dad, hates his new girlfriend, and doesn’t have any friends to play with, she gets super curious when she goes to the basement and starts hearing little voices coming from a sealed-off furnace. Not long after, she goes ahead and unseals that creepy furnace with an ear-to-ear grin that can only mean “PLAYTIME HAS BEGUN!” But then her new friends visit her that night, she realizes their idea of playing means snuffing her out and eating her teeth, and it occurs to the little girl that she just fucked up big time. From that point forward, the little girl has to survive and protect her family before they’re all totally toothless and super dead in a creepy ass house that they never should have bought in the first place.
If you’ve seen this movie advertised in some way, shape, or form, then you’ve already had Guillermo del Toro’s name seared so hard into your brain that you’re muttering it in your sleep. Call me crazy, but it’s not often you see a cast of relative A-listers get completely overshadowed by a movie’s co-writer/producer. I mean, he did produce The Orphanage, and that was one of the scariest movie’s I’ve ever seen, so I guess the studio was banking on the off-chance that everyone’s on that highly unlikely bandwagon to prevent this from being yet another haunted house movie. But whatever the reasoning was, that’s one hell of an unorthodox approach and I should have known that some shit was up.
Because, at the end of the day, this is just another haunted house movie that’s just as problematic and unoriginal as the last one you’ve already forgotten about. But in its defense, it wasn’t like that from start to finish.
During the first half-hour or so when we don’t know what the creatures look like and we just have our imaginations to run wild with, I could barely look at the screen. There’s lots of slow tension, lots of unseen terror, and to say I looked like a total bitch in my seat is an insult to female dogs. It wasn’t breaking the mold, it was just doing scary well and that worked like gangbusters as my index fingers jammed into ear drums.
But then that first act wraps up and we get our first full-blown view of the little monsters as they try to take down a grown-ass man. Lo and behold, these monsters are in fact bite-sized Gremlins that bear the scare factor of mutant hamsters with scoliosis. This marks the moment when I instantly grow a pair, straighten up in my seat like a big boy, and realize that I have just witnessed a movie jump the shark. And not only does this revelation occur way too early on, but everything after that point just isn’t scary in the slightest.
Considering how strong it starts out despite its same-shit-different-day premise, it really is a damn shame that the remainder of the movie never recovers. If they had brought out a queen little monster that was eight-feet-tall to mix things up, that would have been one thing, but instead the film makers leave us with more and more little monsters in the vain hope that sooner or later they’ll stop being lame as hell.
And then you’ve got the cast that barely even got a mention after Del Toro. After sitting through four seasons of Dawson’s Creek recently (that’s just how us good boyfriends roll), I’m not exactly heading up the Katie Holmes fan club, but by the same token, something’s gone terribly wrong when Katie Holmes is a cast’s strongest asset. Guy Pearce phones it in as the dad, Bailee Madison is content doing her best Samara the whole time, and Holmes is fine as the new girlfriend.
Although the performances aren’t even the worst part. That honor goes to the characters they’re playing. It’s the “creepy kid spends the whole damn movie trying to convince her stupid parents that the house is haunted but they don’t- believe her so they all end up dying at the end” bullshit plot that we’ve all seen before and frustrates us to tears with each new time it gets put into action. Aside from it being ridiculous, aside from it displaying behavior that reminds us all why Social Services exists, it’s just beyond me why screenwriters are still using it, especially Guillermo Del Toro of all people. There are a couple times in this movie where it sidestepped some obvious pitfalls (like using light switches against monsters that are weak against light), but this is just one of many instances where it swan dived right into one horror cliche after another.
It’s just so exhausting to watch a horror movie while swearing under your breath because the characters are the stupidest sonsabitches this side of Ernest P. Worrell. If this movie had ended at the 30-minute-mark or if someone had advised director Troy Nixey to go watch Alien and appreciate all the great things that happen when you don’t show the audience your monster, then Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark could have been awesome. But alas, none of these wishes came true and here we are with another forgettable, unoriginal, and laughably disappointing haunted house movie that’s outrageously tame for its R-rating. I’m sure there are worse haunted house movies out there and it’s probably not the worst horror movie that’ll come out this year, but Del Toro can do so much better. Anyone can do so much better.
The State of the Crap
Hey Everybody,
Since I’ve been busy as hell writing movies news and features at the job as of late, the content over here has been lacking to say the least. I feel bad about this, I wish I still had the time and drive to write reviews at the pace I once did, but so it goes, I suppose. So to catch you all up on why this site has been a borderline ghost town, here’s where I’m at:
– After spending two years writing about other people’s movies, I’ve been taking some time buckle down on my screenplay that’s been collecting dust for a good three years now. Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop reviewing altogether, but the urge to pursue my contribution to the world of film is far outweighing the urge to review everyone else’s movies at the moment. Not sure if that makes sense, but this is long overdue.
– Unless my work schedule changes drastically in the near future, chances are I won’t be reviewing any older movies for a while. A total bummer all around, but it’s enough right now just keeping track of these new releases.
In a nutshell, Cut The Crap lives, the reviews will return starting next week.
In the meantime, feel free to check out what I’ve been up to at Moviefone over the past few months.
Thanks for being so patient, thanks for being so awesome, and continue to keep it real.
– Aiden R.
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