Movies, movies, movies

SuckerPunch (D-) I don't want to give this a flat-out 'F', because the production design is just too good. But the movie itself is just so awful and mean-spirited, I found myself yelling 'Fuck you!' at the T.V. screen. I'm reminded of a cartoon by Sam Henderson, which shows a young woman looking offended at her boyfriend's collection of superhero comics, with the usual big-titted, wasp-waisted women in high heels and thong bikinis on the cover. "But I thought you liked depictions of strong women!", he complains. (Actually, the great Kate Beaton and some friends of her have summed up that whole 'Strong! Female! Protagonists!' trope up nicely, and here it is: (http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=311)



What I find most offensive, and I wouldn't call myself any type of feminist, is the underlying message that the story seems to be giving us. and that is that women are only fuckholes who can relate to men by either seducing them with their seductive wiles, or chopping their heads off with gleaming swords and blowing holes in them with sexy, high-tech guns. While dressing like the DVD cover of a porn movie. Yeah. No character has anything like a personality, or any depth, or any defining characteristics that would make me give a shit about their goals or problems. I think what happened is that director Zack Snyder doodled a bunch of 'Heavy Metal' cover-type sketches in his sketchbook. Stuff like a teenage girl in a Japanese schoolgirl outfit with a samurai sword and an H&K MP5 sub-machine gun strapped to her back, standing on the side gun platform of a B-17 bomber, firing off rounds from a .50 caliber machine gun. While a dragon circles around in the back of his sketch, breathing fire. Then he let out a satisfied grunt and mumbled, "This'd make a Kewl fuckin' movie, maan." Then he took a hit off his bong in celebration.



So the story is this girl named 'Baby Doll' (urgh.) is sent to an insane asylum because she accidentally killed her little sister while trying to rescue her from the attentions of her step-father. It seems as if her step-father has paid off a guard at the asylum named 'Blue', to get her a lobotomy. It's set in some stylized version of the 60's, where the film stock has that slightly yellowish look to it, like a dog peed on the film stock. While B.D. is at the asylum, I guess she goes into a fantasy world-or maybe it is really real, man. I don't know.-where the asylum is a front for a nightclub/brothel where the girls dance for customers who will later purchase their services. I think. So then-(phew.) B.D. apparently has this sexy dance that's so seductive that everyone who sees it is in awe, if they're a female, or they ejaculate their testicles out their pee-holes if they're a guy, I don't know. Because we don't get to see B.D. do her sexy dance. Instead,she goes into some weird fantasy reverie during her dance where her and the other inmates/stripper-whores (Strong! Female! Protagonists!) are in some fantasy world where she's fighting giant samurais, or German WWI zombie soldiers, or dragons, or in a Bell Huey chopper trying to defuse a bomb. It's porn movie plotting, where the whole movie is a setup to get to the 'fantasy' elements. It's set like a video game, too, where the girls have to get some items to escape from the brothel/asylum so they can get to the Next Level and Power Up.



Anyway, turns out that Baby Doll doesn't actually escape, because all the girls except her and one other get killed off - The story is so disjointed at this point that I just threw up my hands in despair- so she distracts the asylum guards-or were they gangster thugs? so her friend can escape. Oh, and Scott Glenn's the 'mentor' figure who sends the girls on their fantasy missions, and he shows up in the end as a kindly bus driver who lets the last girl on his bus to avoid the police. And Zack Snyder's kid scowls at her. Really.



The big problem here is that why does Baby Doll have to fantasize that she's in a brothel when she's in an insane asylum? Either have her stepdad sell her to a brothel in the first place, or keep her in the asylum. The extra layer of fantasy just tangles up the story without adding anything to it. (It's not 'her' story, either. Another girl escapes owing to B.D.'s sacrifices, thus rendering the past eighty minutes we as an audience spent investing in her character moot.) Maybe it's Snyder's attempt at an 'Inception'/'Matrix' like plot? If it is, I don't buy it, for the ham-fisted way it's crammed in.



Another thing I've noticed is that some professional film critics have positioned that this film is, in fact, a sly satire of the Summer Blockbuster, like Paul Verhoven's Starship Troopers. That the gratuitous titillation and Kewl 'splosions are in fact Snyder's meta-narrative commentary on pandering to an adolescent male movie audience. I don't buy that argument, because it seems more like Snyder's trying to have his cake and eat it too. "I was being IRONIC, DUUUDE", I like to imagine him shouting at his computer screen, reading negative comments about 'SuckerPunch' on some movie bulletin board.



If there's one constant theme in Snyder's movies, it's that he is the most literal-minded director in contemporary film making. (It's probably why he was the only person who could've directed the 'Watchmen' movie.) You could say that '300' was told from the point of view of the surviving Spartan, Dilios, so as to inspire the other warriors in an upcoming battle. That the Persians were portrayed as evil and decadent, and the Spartans as idealized supermen, with naught but giant shields to protect their gay-porn physiques. (The real Spartans were armored like tanks.) But Snyder says in the DVD commentary that he took the look of the film straight from Miller's comic book. To Snyder, 'Subtext' is a type of sandwich sold at Quizno's.



You know what? Fuckit, I'm giving this steaming turd an 'F', after all. Admiring the production values of a movie like this is like complimenting 'Triumph of The Will' for its cinematography. I hate to think of some poor woman in the production department of some special effects company having to wade through a mountain of political bullshit where she works, only wanting to earn a living in the film industry, working at least twice as hard and twice as long as the guys in her workplace to get to where she is and getting stuck working on this lump of shit. I notice that its rating was 'pg-13', which is a small mercy. What the fuck a 'R' rated version of this would be like, I can't begin to imagine. (I can imagine, actually, and if Zack Snyder cast porn stars in this, after it came out, they'd be worried about the effect it would have on their day jobs.) The only audience that could possibly begin to enjoy something like this would be 14-year old boys who were still gaping in awe at the wonder of body hair, and even then, they'd be made uncomfortable by watching this. Fuck this movie, fuck Zak Snyder, and fuck Legendary Pictures and Warner Brothers for not talking him out of making this steamer. 'Hobo With a Shotgun' had endless scenes of people bathing in blood, and it didn't make me feel as a tenth as dirty for watching it as 'Suckerpunch' did.





Big Bang Theory (C+) As far as generic three-camera sitcoms go, I've seen worse. It's not unfunny, but the writing takes the straightest line between two points that I've ever seen in my life. It's created and produced by (guy) who's responsible for 'Two and a half men', that Charlie Sheen sitcom where...yeah. Put it this way: If I were the type of person who plopped himself in front of a T.V. every evening, and 'Big Bang Theory' came on just before a show I really wanted to watch did, (Like 'Breaking Bad' or 'Boardwalk Empire'), I'd feel the extra half hour I spent watching it wasn't wasted. It's a kinda condescending description, but there it is. For the record, I thought Grahame Linehan's 'The I.T. Crowd' is funnier, mainly because Linehan is better at avoiding 'straight line's' in his plotting..



It's got some press for having an actual physicist on staff to fact-check the nerdy guys's lines for accuracy, and the writers make sure that the pop culture references are accurate, but. One thing did occur to me about the internal logic of the show, and here it is: So the premise is that you have these two young theoretical physicists, Leonard and Sheldon, living in an apartment in Los Angeles , and working at CalTech. A very attractive and personable young woman named Penny has moved in across the way, and in spite of their social hang-ups, Penny and the nerds become friends. I understand Leonard and Penny start dating in the third season. Anyways, Penny is making ends meet working at a Cheesecake Cafe while chasing her dream of becoming an actress in L.A. With me so far? Okay. So. Explain to me why two guys with doctorates working in a prestigious university who should be making about sixty thousand a year are living in the same building as a woman who makes minimum wage plus tips from her job? ($23,000, according to Ehow. Thank you, Ehow!) There's a line in the first season that Leonard and Sheldon are saving money on rent by rooming up, but given the salary they should be getting from their jobs, there needs to be a good reason why they're living in the place that they are. It's a minor point, to be sure, but from what I've seen of the series, there's no explanation for why the nerdy physicists with Phd's have the same living arrangements as a struggling actress. (There's a 'brick joke' about why their apartment building's elevator is not working that ties into the characters, by the way, so perhaps the reason for Sheldon and Leonard's living arrangements is set up in a later episode.)



Captain America: The Next 'Avengers' movie teaser. (C) Meh. I don't say that in a snotty or dismissive way, mind you. It's just that the whole movie is split into two parts. In the first half, we meet Steve Rogers, weedy nerd from the 40's who's aching to get into the fray to give the Nazi's what for. A scientist working on a super-secret project for the Allies just happens to hear him earnestly express his desires, and brings Steve on board. Steve shows the Army guys and the scientists his worth during his training by displaying his ingenuity and his willingness to sacrifice himself. He's then injected with a super-serum that makes him bigger and stronger. All well and good. Then the movie just plods it's way to the end, from action piece to action piece. Then Nick Fury shows up at the end to offer him a job with the Avengers.



The whole movie feels like it was originally four hours long, and that they cut out a bunch of scenes to make it to theaters. Steve hits it off with the Strong! Female! Character! two-thirds of the way through, and it's treated as they connected between scenes in the film. Same with him gaining the respect of the other soldiers and the grizzled Army officer leading the project. The movie loses all momentum once Rogers becomes Captain America, and just listlessly marches from scene to scene until the end. I guess it's supposed to pump us up for the upcoming 'Avengers' movie. If Marvel is joylessly cranking out these type of movies, why should I care?



Speaking of caring, the movie puts a lot of thought and energy into the production design. Perhaps too much thought. The first half has a bunch of clever bits of business replicating the naivete of American propaganda during WW2. And everything has a solid 40's look to it. Then they go to Europe and we get Super Nazis with laser tanks and dis-integrator rays. Yeah, it looks cool, but it just has the feel of 'Oo! Let's put this in, or the audience will get bored!'. I was relived when the credits ended. (Maybe there was a teaser bit after the credits, like with Iron Man, but I just didn't care at that point.)



Writing Movies (Redacted:for fun) and Profit. by the guys who created 'Reno 911' and then went on to write 'Herbie: Fully Loaded' and 'Night at The Museum' (C+) To be fair, as insider guides to Making Your Mark in the Movie Industry go, this one has the best practical information that I've ever seen. And they have a sense of humour about what it is that they do. Namely, to put asses in seats. I've been tempted to pick up those guides like Robert McKee's book and the like, but then I've realized, "Hang on. What movies have the authors of these screenwriting 'how-to' books actually have made?" Then I look 'em up on IMDB, and realize that these are the people who write scripts to movies I wouldn't watch on a dare.



At the end of the day, and the 'Night at The Museum' guys are guilty of this as well, they all fall back on the whiny defense of 'My movie made a hundred million at the box office! So there!'. Which is like the argument that dog shit is better than cornflakes, since a billion flies eat dog shit, and you eat cornflakes for breakfast. My point is, if you want to really learn how to write for movies, look at the movies of writers like Leigh Brackett, Preston Sturges, and William Goldman. You'll learn a hell of lot more, and you get to enjoy some good movies, too.



Hobo With A Shotgun (C+) Here's an interesting bit of movie trivia for you: Did you know that in the 70's and 80's, Canada had a lot of tax credit breaks for its film industry? That's right! And remember how that turned out? Remember what a powerhouse of World Cinema Canada came to be during the 70's and 80's? Oh, right. Let me put Canada's contribution to the world of film during those days like this: If you watch enough episodes of 'Mystery Science Theater 3000', you'll notice most of the movies from the 70's and 80's that they make fun of were, at the least, produced in Canada.



Which brings me to 'Hobo With a Shotgun'. Which, if it wasn't shot on Hi-def video, you would swear had been gathering dust on the back shelf of some mom-n-pop video store in the early 90's. So the question remains: Is it any good? Well, put it like this- It's based on the fake trailer the original filmmakers shot for Tarantino's 'Grindhouse'. And it lives up to the over-the-top trash that the trailer promised. So there's that. I wish the people making this had put a little more effort into their sound production- Don't they rent clip-on mikes in Nova Scotia, fellas? But it's got Rutger Hauer as the Hobo of the title, being his usual intense self. And 'Ricky' from 'Trailer Park Boys' makes a bloody cameo early on. So there you go.