Review // INVASION USA - Reagan-era fever dream

I've seen Invasion USA at least a dozen times since I was a kid, and yet it never fails to shock me. It's as bad, nonsensical (really, really nonsensical), cheesy and cheap as any other Chuck Norris movie of the period (or say, ever), but it has a viciousness and an almost lucid, nightmare logic that distinguishes it as a particularly interesting piece of cold-war fear-mongering that has unsettling reverberations in our post-9/11 world. Invasion USA is about wholesale terrorism, unrestrained and impossible to rationalize or predict (for anyone except Norris himself who begins showing up to thwart each attack with no explanation of how he got there). As a result, it becomes accidentally meaningful in the same way 1999's unsettling The Siege did after the fall of the Twin Towers. Both are movies that could likely never be made again and for the same reason-they cut too close to the bone, dramatizing (in the case of The Siege) and fantasizing (in the case of Invasion USA) America's underlying xenophobia and terrorism fixation. Invasion USA is also useful as a barometer for how much culture has changed in the 25 odd years since its release, with our climate of political correctness showing the film's simplistic and blatant hatred for the "other" to be both shocking and comical.

While some of his action movie peers occasionally made inadvertently political statements, Chuck Norris was always overtly political. His films were the action-movie equivalent of "message" films, and his messages were always bluntly stated, simplistically patriotic and of course violent. He was (and still is) a hard-right activist of sorts, using his movies to proffer an isolationist, pro-gun, love-it-or-leave-it vision for America, always with himself as its soft-spoken, roundhouse-kicking savior. From the Missing In Action films, to Delta Force and perhaps most transparently with Invasion USA, Norris, who often wrote the screenplays, used his movies as both vehicles for his own inflated ego, as well as vessels for his heated, rhetoric-fueled political views. As a result, Invasion USA plays like a Reagan-era fever dream with Russian thugs storming the beaches of Daytona and bazooka-ing families in their suburban homes as they trim their Christmas trees. In one scene, these godless communist dogs start shooting up a mall, that holiest of ground for capitalist freedom-lovers.

Obvious comparisons can be made between this film and Red Dawn, which similarly had a large scale Russian invasion of America. But from what I remember, Red Dawn featured a perspective on the conflict, that of youth trading their MTV-era frivolity for grim patriotic duty. But Invasion USA is unmoored from such grounding subtext. Chuck Norris' double-uzi wielding hero is as unknowable as the Russian terrorists who for some reason choose Florida as ground zero for their invasion. In fact, the Russian baddies actually have more lines and screen time than Norris, who ends up feeling like an avenging spirit who simply materializes out of thin air wherever evil decides to show its face (he also never changes out of his Canadian Tuxedo the entire time).

Invasion USA is really a political exploitation film that shows some of the worst the 80's had to offer in terms of unrestrained and callous violence. It's the type of movie that Republicans of the day would've held up as evidence of Hollywood's assault on the morals of the country, except it's message of fear hewed so closely to their own that it practically feels like state propaganda juiced up with thousands of blood squibs. It's warning of Russian terrorist waves breaking on American shores was probably topical enough to tap into the anxieties for the day, providing a little extra context for action crowds with low enough standards to be Chuck Norris fans. In 2011, Invasion USA looks almost quaint compared to our current global fears and Islam-aphobia. And yet if someone made almost the exact same movie, subbing in Muslims for cold-war Russians, it would likely cause all manner of hell to break loose, with political pundits and interest groups gnashing their teeth at each other across cable news desks.

As an action movie, Invasion USA is a fucking hoot. As a time capsule, it reveals some often forgotten qualities of the 1980's, an era we tend to associate more with neon and spandex than nuclear fear and cold war paranoia. What's even more interesting is how much Invasion USA shows that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Review // PREDATORS - Toothless hunters and bland prey. Also, I'm a grown-up now.

Predators showed me that despite all other evidence to the contrary, I am in fact maturing. You'd think this would be obvious enough without the help of a cynical cash-in sequel/prequel, retread/reboot. I mean, I'm now 32 and a husband and father. But lately I'd been wondering if I was ever going to grow up. Stacks of comic books and video games are piled in my living room. I still treat the acquiring of a back issue or sophomore record with the same obsessive focus as I did with movie posters or laserdiscs in my youth. In many ways I'm still the kid who poured over the Consumers Digest toy catalogue, circling coveted items and making ordered lists of toys I hoped to one day possess. I look around at guys my age, friends and acquaintances, and I see pretty much the same thing. None of us really recovered from the pop culture that blew our pre-adolescent minds, and like addicts, we seem to be perpetually chasing the T-1000 (insert whatever nerdy pop culture reference applies to you).

I don't know if this is good or bad. No wait, I'm actually pretty sure it's bad.

When I saw the trailer for Predators, I received a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe I was going to become an adult after all. Why? Because I didn't give a fuck. At all. And while this may not be a shocking revelation for most, its a BIG DEAL for me. The original Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of those childhood obsessions I was talking about above. I was already mad about all things Arnold, so when Predator came out (Arnold vs. an alien!) and it was PG-14, meaning I could actually see it in the theatre, I was bouncing off the walls. Seeing it for the first time (the first of many) in a darkened theatre all the way back in 1987 is one of my fondest memories from my childhood. It was the Saturday that my public school was putting on the Summer Fair, a day of games, baked goods, prizes and the ever-popular "cherry picker" ride on a fire truck crane. The plan was to attend the fair and then hit an afternoon show. Naturally my best friend Andrew Palkovic and I came prepared. We spent the day at the school fair dressed in head-to-toe camouflage fatigues, our faces painted with the same commando black stripes that Arnold sports on the poster, and carrying our arsenal of plastic machine guns. The fair was fun and all, but we were counting the minutes until show time.

At the appointed time, Andrew and his mother, Betty and our other other friend, Andrew Mitchell took to the Canada Square theatre to line up for the afternoon show. The appearance of 3 public school commandos in full military fatigues, armed to the teeth and standing steely-eyed and stony (we were all three of us acting the part of Arnold) seemed to really entertain the adults waiting in line. They gave us "thumbs up" and tittered as we checked and re-checked that our plastic bullet magazines were full of invisible ammunition. Naturally Predator rocked our fucking world. Betty was a little concerned that for all my pre-show enthusiasm and Arnold fervor, I wasn't quite ready for PG-14 movies on the big-screen due to my curling up into her lap during the scene where Arnold and his team uncover the skinned and hanging bodies of a chopper crew. But I quickly bounced back from that momentary blip of genuine fear once the action-shit hit the action-fan and Arnold chased that "ugly motherfucker" alien straight into the jungles of my heart.

So if you can't already tell, Predator means a great deal to me. Predators was bio-engineered in a lab to exploit the Predator-y emotions of 80's action movie fans like me. It's a new, bad strain of an old drug mixed by retarded chemists who confused their compound volumes. It's a concoction that packs absolutely no punch for experienced users and has little hope of hooking in those that haven't already had their brains fried by the original. In fact, Predators is so bland and boring it causes the initiated to momentarily ponder what they ever found cool about the franchise's premise in the first place. The sum total of Predators innovation is to add the letter "s" to the title. That's right, while Predator managed to please with only one big game hunting extraterrestrial, Predators bores you to tears with scores of them.

From the opening frames, things don't look so dire though, in fact it shows promise. To say the film hits the ground running is almost entirely accurate, since every character falls out of the sky in the first 4 minutes, and after dusting themselves off, begin shooting at things and doing a fuckload of running. I don't think I've ever seen a movie just start like this before, fulfilling it's genre and franchise requirements before most people have set their phones to vibrate or made it back to their seats with their popcorn. It's almost cool. More action films should eschew expository buildup and try to swim the channel with one big gulp of air like this. However, I quickly realized that the economy of Predators opening is really just laziness. Producer/writer Robert Rodriguez is merely hedging his bets that if you paid to watch Predators-plural, well then you've likely already seen Predator-singular and therefore all his world-building has already been done for him by a much better director (John McTiernan). From the whiplash excitement of the opening, the rest of the film seems content to nonsensically race from one fan-service beat to the next until the whole thing begins to resemble a sweded youtube homage with a $40 million dollar budget. I was actually insulted throughout, considering I watched it under the perhaps delusional pretense that it was made solely for me. They thought this is what I wanted? Predators digests every individual ingredient that made the original film cool and then regurgitates them one by one, unapologetically serving them back to you with a smile and a wink. It's like a Greatest Hits album put out around Christmas time by a band that really doesn't have enough hits to justify a whole CD. The whole thing just reeks of cashing-in.

If there is one interesting thing about Predators (besides personally, how it made me feel really old and also showed me why it's finally time to let go of my childhood for FUCKSAKES) is what its Action Hero casting tells us about the difference between 2010 and 1987. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the hero of Predator, while Adrien Brody is the hero of Predators. Hold on, maybe that statement wasn't impactful enough, so let's do a visual comparison.

Action Hero - 1987

Action Hero - 2010

I think this clearly speaks to the Wussification of our culture and how boys no longer have clear representations of masculinity to aspire to. Gone are the Clint Eastwood's and Charles Bronson's. The Lee Marvin's and Steve McQueen's. Hell, even the Jean Claude Van Damme's and Steven Seagal's. In 2010, Adrien fucking Brody seemed an appropriate surrogate for Arnold fucking Schwarzenegger. Jesus. What happened?

Review // THE EXPENDABLES - Nostalgia and flesh stretched to the breaking point

I recently wrote about how watching the shitty knock-off reboot Predators felt like being reluctantly ushered into adulthood by way of its brand of cheap nostalgia pandering. My viewing of The Expendables was similarly depressing, making me feel suddenly quite old and somehow also mocked, like the pop culture passions of my youth were being made to look silly instead of celebrated (they of course are silly). Much like Predators, The Expendables was created to milk a strain of nostalgia that is particularly potent right now, as GI Joe-hoarding, Rambo-quoting children of the 80's go from being 20-something boy-men to 30-something man-boys. Written, directed and starring Sylvester Stallone, it also serves as particularly embarrassing and naked upper mid-life crisis therapy.

Along with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone is a cinematic icon and former box office champ. His face (or at least his former face) is known around the world and his alliterative name is synonymous with action. He is the diminutive yet pumped body behind two hugely successful franchises in Rocky and Rambo, both iconically charged and yet diminishing film series' that boiled down complicated issues of masculinity, personal determination and pride into one-word sub genres that spawned legions of clones. At various times in his career, Stallone has not just played both Rocky and Rambo, but inhabited the archetypes these characters represent. Like Rocky, he pulled himself up out of obscurity and struggle to become an international sensation. And like Rambo, he has been an outsider forgotten by the former system that propped him up, going it alone in the business of being Sylvester Stallone, choosing to finance and helm his own pictures. And like the shirtless, monosyllabic Rambo, Stallone it seems is getting to have the last laugh. His Rocky Balboa, Rambo 4 and now The Expendables were all made on the relative cheap and managed to once again regain the lustre of his 80's box office receipts. Stallone of course can't let go of his former glory, and so The Expendables is yet another futile attempt to stay relevant (and also pay for another renovation on his 5th chin)

If bajillionaire megalomaniacs made for good underdogs, you'd likely be cheering Stallone on. But at least in the case of The Expendables, what appeared to be a genuine love-in for 80's action movie nerds is actually just a poor, derivative action movie. It was promoted as a celebration and a sort of send-up of the tropes of the genre--an action movie Woodstock attended by the biggest names in action. Except it doesn't really seem very self-aware at all and in fact betrays the stock underpinnings that we nerds love in favour of a new douche aesthetic. Yeah there's plenty of faceless henchman getting shot up, but there's also serious Ed Hardy, screen-printed Eagle vibe coming off this thing. And as for the guest list? It would seem that most of the A-list invites didn't bother RSVPing. Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal are both no-shows. Where's Kurt Russell? How about Chuck Norris. Or fuck, I don't know, even Micheal Dudikoff? Instead we get a UFC guy, a WWF guy, precious little of Dolph Lundgren and Terry Crews, who to my knowledge is not even a bit player in the action genre. Since I was a little kid I have dreamed of some po-mo commingling of all my favourite action heroes. My fantasy movie was John McClane joining forces with Dutch and Frank Dux and Snake Pliskin and Mason Storm and on and on. Basically a big fucking orgy of muscles and one-liners and slo-mo roundhouse kicks. The Expendables could never hope for that, but promises something along those lines, and fails to deliver. Whereas Rambo (2008) distinguished itself with liquefied ultra-violence, The Expendables really doesn't make much of an impression at all beyond a gallery of ill-advised close-up shots that prompt "holy shit can you believe how much plastic surgery BLANK has had" moments. It's a toss up between Stallone himself and Mickey Rourke, but Eric Roberts is no slouch in the fucked-up face department either.

How does that saying go? "You can never go home again"? Well apparently you can never watch your childhood heroes shoot blanks at stunt men again, either.

Review // THE AMERICAN

The American is a very handsome letdown.
As far as HD Blu-Ray's go, you can't do much better than this gorgeous transfer of photographer-turned filmmaker, Anton Corjbin's take on the Lonely Hitman movie. It's precisely the static, patient shooting style of Corjbin that distinguishes him from the pack of new directors pulled from the music video world, and it's what makes this film pop on disc. There isn't a lot of flash or frenzy like there is in most modern spy/assassin movies. This is no Bourne movie with steadicam blurs and headache-inducing "verite". Corbjin prefers to rely on his expert eye and sense of exquisite composition, grabbing and holding your attention with his striking images. However, it's only the images that are worthy of attention because the story of a disconnected hitman is dead-on-arrival.

Like I said, the movie looks fantastic, transforming your flat screen into a window onto old-world European vistas that will make anybody want to strap on their backpack and dust off their copy of Europe On $10 A Day. The problem is that the movie can't succeed on beauty and window-dressing alone. The American is cold right through to the center and unsatisfying for not breaking with the cliches of the moralizing hitman movie formula. If The American had've been released in the late 60's, it would probably be hailed as a classic. But in 2010, it feels old-fashioned and more than a little derivative. The Lonely Assassin cliche has continuously popped up in pop culture in either subtle hints (Day of the Jackal), sentimental character explorations (Leon, Road to Perdition) and even comedic deconstructions (Gross Pointe Blank). The American is definitely the brooding, sentimental type and casts Clooney as a killer and fixer who lives apart from humanity, darting in and out of the shadows of society's fringe. We are meant to pity his solitary life filled with paranoia, night terrors and haunted conscience. I think we are even meant to pity the fact that this chosen life has forced him to murder his girlfriend in order to ensure his own survival, which is a bizarre request to make of an audience in return for only the handsome despondency of Clooney. And when again Clooney reaches out for human contact, to a stunningly hot prostitute no less, I believe we are meant to approve of his character's almost defiant grasp to regain his humanity. I don't know about all that, but I certainly approved of his love interest's full 70's bush.

The American wallows in the loneliness of a hired killer's life, trying to create a mood piece, but really just delivering a downer. And Clooney reaching out to a priest and a prostitute--thin archetypes--strips the film of even more credibility--I may not have, but I feel like I've seen this character triangle a hundred times before. Clooney's character wears a constant mask of sadness and self-pity, making him a slave to emotions that he should feel, not necessarily the ones he would. If at least 50 years of cinema has taught us anything, it's that assassins are fucking cool, if maybe a little warped, and yes, sometimes lonely, but fucking cooool. But Clooney's assassin, while skilled and cunning, is such a sad-sack that it calls into question the very motivations of an assassin or why anyone would turn to it as a life choice. The American takes the implied sense of isolation and dislocation to such melodramatic heights that it actually made me see the absurdity of the profession for the first time (and like everyone else I've seen a shitload of hitman movies). Sleeping on dusty cots in rustic quarters, waking suddenly in a cold sweat with a gun at the ready, murdering the woman you love just to cover your tracks--WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS JOB?

I like Clooney as a movie star and I think this type of movie is exactly what he should be doing, but The American needed to match its gorgeous visuals with something new to say. Telling us that the shadowy people who kill for a living get awfully lonely is something most of us already grasped 30 or so movies ago. The "twist", which is telegraphed in its lead up, is also heavy-handed and makes you call into question quite a bit of what you've seen previously. By the time the climax rolls around, with Clooney chasing his prey through the village's religious ceremony, the sense of deja vu and disappointment becomes overwhelming.

2010 RECAP

I started this blog at a very odd time. About 3 weeks after my son Harry was born, out of nowhere, I sat down at my computer, signed up on Blogger and wrote my first review.
Maybe it was a rebellious response to the encroaching responsibility and stress that our little bundle of joy represented. Perhaps my inner child was fighting for dominance, trying to retain some corner of my mind while the rest filled up with thoughts and worries about Harry. Whatever the reason, this blog was an important outlet for me in those early days of fatherhood, a way to keep my mind active while the rest of my life morphed into a series of responses to the needs and nurturing of a newborn. But as the year went on it became harder and harder to maintain the pace of reviews, and frankly, less and less important to me. My wife and I survived the first year of parenthood, perhaps even thrived to a certain extent, and so Cinema Con Carne lost some of its significance as a coping device. There just wasn't enough time to write about movies. It got to the point where I didn't want to watch any movies because I knew I had to write a review of each one and I already had a consistent backlog of 5 or 6 reviews to write. This started to really annoy my wife Jenn because movie-watching became an even more important relaxation outlet for us once we became parents.

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things with new posts, because I enjoy thinking and writing about movies--always have. But with this blog I had a mission statement: to write a review for every single movie I watch. But as I said above, I failed at this. As I start to work on new posts, all the unwritten reviews are haunting me and fucking with my OCD. So this post is a recap of all the rest of the movies I saw last year that I failed to writer proper reviews for.

The Other Guys
Will Ferrell and Mark Whalberg as hapless cops fumbling their way through a big case. The Other Guys is a cop movie spoof shot through with nostalgia for the buddy cop movies of the 80's like Lethal Weapon. This is a return to form somewhat for Ferrell and reunion with his most successful collaborator, director Adam McKay. Ferrell took a public whipping last year and saw his celebrity stock price fall for the failure of Land of the Lost, the ridiculously big budgeted remake of the the cult 60's show. The studio and filmmakers should have seen its failure coming, the whole package just made no sense, but like most cinematic whipping boys, the critical backlash against Land of the Lost is mostly unwarranted. There are laughs to be had and genuinely weird moments aplenty. Anyway, The Other Guys is Ferrell on much safer ground and trying to win back the public. Like most of Ferrell's McKay movies, a lot of jokes are thrown at the wall and some stick and others slide off in silent, laugh-less void. But the percentage of decent jokes is fairly high. I'd rate it better than Talladega Nights, but not as good as Step Brothers.


Jagged Edge
One of the big things, well actually the biggest thing, that happened in terms of movies this year for me was the introduction of Netflix to Canada. My passionate and fiery (and sometimes abusive) relationship with Netflix should really be explored in its very own post, but let's just say that it has significantly changed the way I watch movies and many films on this list and in reviews to come are going to be things I streamed off this service. Jagged Edge is one of those movies that I would never in a million years rent (it would probably prove difficult to find anyway) but when I saw it on the Netflix list I jumped at the chance to check it out. I actually have a weird early relationship to Jagged Edge that provided a funny context for this viewing. One of my most vivid childhood memories is when my parents rented this back in the 80's, but wouldn't let me watch it, waiting until after I had gone to bed before starting it. My bedroom was across the hall from the TV Room, so when they fired up the VHS copy, I snuck out of my room and watched the movie in the reflection of the window directly across from the TV. Maybe it was the danger of sneaking around, or maybe it was the slight distortion of the picture reflected in the glass, but for whatever reason Jagged Edge completely terrified me from the opening scene, which features the brutal knifing of a woman set to a very pounding score by John Barry. In fact, this opening scene messed me up so much that I abandoned my plan to watch the whole thing reflected in the window, and I actually ran back to my bedroom and crawled under the covers, shivering with fear. But the sound of the movie followed me into my bedroom and I lay in a cold sweat, paralyzed and terrified, unable to escape it. I wanted to get up and run into the TV room and beg my parents to stop the movie, but I was actually too scared to move. Watching Jagged Edge 25 years later, my terror obviously seems ridiculous. It's not a horror movie, its a Glenn Close legal thriller for godsakes. But during the opening scene, when the score kicked in and the black-gloved hand begins stabbing the woman, I got weird tremors of remembrance. This is a pretty unremarkable movie in every way and is perhaps only notable because it was the first time sleazy screenwriter Joe Eszterhas tried out his Sexy-Murder formula that he would later perfect with Basic Instinct, Sliver and Jade (depending on your definition of perfection).

Death Wish 3

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this, considering the nerd-fervor surrounding it thoroughly turned me off during its release, and also the fact that I considered director Edgar Wright's last movie, Hot Fuzz, a major letdown. Maybe it was the fact that it's one of the only Hollywood movies to unabashedly declare its love for Toronto, shooting in our streets while still retaining their names. It was somehow weirdly cathartic to see the CN Tower un-cropped from the skyline for once. The movie's hyper, giddy un-reality uses cutting edge CGI in the right way, lifting the mundane into mythical. There's just an infectious goodtimes vibe that survives even the slightly long run time, and for once the patented stuttering awkwardness of Micheal Cera doesn't wear thin. Unfortunately, the love story between Cera's Pilgrim and indie-rock goddess Ramona Flowers is supposed to be the fuel that propels the story through hyperdrive, but its the most underdeveloped part of the movie. Ramona doesn't seem particularly worth fighting for and their relationship has no spark, making each and every battle with her seven evil exes feel more like an overly constrained plot function and not the hyper-real relationship odyssey it's supposed to be. The other thing that kinda irked me was that the video game aesthetic that defines the movie seems arbitrary and doesn't have any real connection to the characters and the story. Perhaps this connection was explored with more satisfaction in the comic on which its based, but the film doesn't provide it with a meaning and treats it as a given that people of a certain age see their lives through pixelated nostalgia. Besides Scott Pilgrim mentioning Pacman once, he doesn't seem to be a character shaped by videogame culture. In fact, he has a much more tangible connection to indie rock and music culture, which makes the visual references to videogames all the more perplexing. I liked the aesthetic, I just felt letdown that it seemed to be coming from a place of nerd-appeasement and not one of character.

Max Payne
Scott Pilgrim is informed by videogame culture (for some reason), while Max Payne is a videogame adaptation. Scott Pilgrim is proudly set in Toronto, while Max Payne uses and abuses Toronto like every other Hollywood production, stripping it of character (it has character right? sorta) and molding it to look like Anycity USA. What's odd about Max Payne is that for a videogame adaptation, and especially one with such a clear visual motif (bullet time) it doesn't seem particularly interested in adapting videogame aesthetics. It has two very exciting and memorable visual sequences, but neither of these draw inspiration from either the Max Payne series of games or even videogames at all. One is a typical fight scene in the hallway of Payne's apartment. Darkly lit, briskly edited and unremarkably choreographed. But with each impact, director John Wells adds flashes of red frames amidst the blue-black light of the scene. It's more comic book-y than even Sin City achieved and in a weird way recalls the pop art visuals of the 60's Batman show. I wanted it to continue throughout the movie, but sadly it didn't. The second sequence is even more brief, but really mesmerizing and struck me as one of the first real, meaningful additions to the visual language of action films in long, long time. Max Payne (Marky Mark Whalberg) is hopped up on a pharmaceutical drug that turns people into viking killing machines (don't ask) and he charges out of the shadows of a parking garage firing at his enemies. In my lifetime I've probably seen 100 parking garage shootouts, but none quite like this. It's hard to describe what Wells does, but it's almost like he manages to fix the camera to Whalberg but yet at a distance and not in a steadicam rigging as we've seen before. And as Whalberg runs and fires his double pistols, the muzzle flares become the only light and give off a strobe effect, amplifying the speed and violence of his attack. It's nuts. The rest of the movie is not as inventive, shifting between shit we've all seen a hundred times and new, bad ideas that never should have made it into production. And the villain is Beau Bridges. You know a movie is fucked when Beau Bridges is the main bad guy.

It Could Happen To You
Thanks to Netflix, I watched this 90's rom-com again for maybe the 5th time. I realize now that I've seen it at least 3 times too many. Before watching it I kept telling my wife that it was one of my favourite "90's movies" and a really sweet little comedy. It weirded her out a little because there's no twist to the rom-com formula, no cool element that makes it worthy of repeat viewings. It's a totally straight-ahead, sappy love story. While watching it, she kept asking me, "so how many times did you say you've watched this?". I can't explain it. It just always gets me. And this is the rare Nic Cage movie where he plays it totally straight and doesn't ever get Cage-y, which is unfortunate, but also still weird in its own way to behold.

The Juror
Now this is what I'm fucking talking about! Bless you Netflix. I had zero interest in this when it came out in '96. Demi Moore was garbage to me and I had wrongly assumed by its name alone that it was a trashy Grisham adaptation. Its boring poster and boring name basically kept me away, but when I saw it on Netflix I jumped at it because I've been kinda wanting to go on an Alec Baldwin binge and this was the perfect place to start. This movie rules! It's not an outright courtroom thriller as I'd expected and obviously its still part retarded, but it feels just odd enough to distinguish itself from the pack of 90's studio thrillers. And a big reason for this is Baldwin's performance and character. He plays a fixer for a New York mob family, a shadowy enigma called simply "The Teacher" and it's his job to fix a jury that's going to decide the outcome of an upcoming state case against a mob figure. From the list of jurors, Baldwin picks out Demi Moore's single mom artist as the perfect candidate to become his puppet wit in the jurors chambers. He threatens and intimidates her until she agrees to try to sway her fellow jurors toward a "not guilty" verdict. This is pretty familiar stuff, but it's just a jumping off point for a much more interesting exploration of the delusions of power. Baldwin falls for Moore, but he is unable to comprehend how his threats of violence cause revulsion within her. He also genuinely believes that he is the only one who can protect her, despite the fact that he is exactly who she needs to be protected from. Slowly a portrait of a lonely, detached weirdo begins to emerge and Baldwin's character goes from creepy one dimensional psycho to a far more interesting sad case who doesn't know he's a psycho. When I started this movie I had no idea I would be so entertained or that this legal thriller with mob bosses and hitman would end up in the jungles and ancient temples of Gautemala. It's also worth noting that Demi Moore actually looks like a real woman in this movie, perhaps for the last time because she followed this up with both Striptease and GI Jane which saw her wildly vacillating between two extreme visions of femininity. Here she wears baggy cargo pants and has curves and is quite plain. A far cry from the bizarre Frankencelebrity she has become.

Only You
Cute pixie Marisa Tomei and unpredictable live wire Robert Downey Jr. stumbling across Europe and falling in love. From a middling rom-com standpoint, it sounds like a relatively safe concept. But veteran director Norman Jewison fucks it up in pretty much every way possible. This really sucks. Everything about it is awkward and all of its convoluted plot contrivances aren't properly paid off. Coincidences and mistaken identities are all standard, accepted cliches in this genre, but Only You carries them off in deflating ways. It's hard to believe this is from the same director as Moonstruck, which steeped itself in Italian-American romanticism and became a beloved classic. With Only You, Jewison decides to double down on the romantic Italian atmosphere by actually shooting in Italy, but that seems to be his only stroke of inspiration. Also, Downey is kinda subdued here, and much like Cage in It Could Happen To You, he doesn't really sketch outside the lines in any ways that would make it worth bearing the rest of this boring package.




Go
Yeah, this hasn't aged well. I remember at the time this was described as the "Pulp Fiction for the rave generation". Well it basically sucks as much as that sounds. It piles on the irritating character quirks and non-linear plotting that fucked up the latter half of the post-Tarantino '90's and it has a Fatboy Slim song and Taye Diggs. So yeah, not good.






Jennifer's Body
I can't exactly pinpoint why this movie was spurned by the mainstream. Critics savaged it and audiences ignored it. This is odd for several reasons. For starters, writer Diablo Cody, one of the few celebrity screenwriter personalities in Hollywood, was fresh off a whole shitload of acclaim for Juno (dubious as that is) and even won an Oscar (dubious as that is). Critics who had lined up to fawn all over her work just two years earlier, reacted to Jennifer's Body with near unanimous disdain. Plot and thematic differences aside, I see very little distinction between the gratingly clever Diablo-speak that critics championed in Juno, but chafed at in Jennifer's Body. And I don't think that Juno is any more effective as a dramedy than Jennifer's Body is as a horredy (new term?). The other reason that Jennifer's Body's failure is surprising is because of the Meagan Fox factor. I've never really got the Megan Fox thing. She always struck me as like the prettiest girl at the midwestern mall foodcourt-type, and not a starlet worthy of the legions of boners she's managed to inspire. But for whatever reason, Meagan Fox became and American sex symbol in just two movies. Those two movies, Transformers and its sequel, ogled her body in a very PG way and gave her nothing more to do than hold Shia Laboeuf's hand as he pulled her through explosions. Her role as useless female sidekick didn't tap into her badgirl image or the bitchiness that came out in her public persona. And yet along came Jennifer's Body with Fox as a slutty, literally man-eating cheerleader possessed by a demon and teenaged boys did not come out in droves to make the movie a hit. There was even a lesbian scene between her and Amanda Seyfried, the curvy blonde yin to Fox's bony brunette yang, and it still didn't strike box office gold!
The obvious answer seems to be that Jennifer's Body is just bad and deserved it's failure, but I call bullshit on that. It's not great, sure. But it's certainly competent and by times clever and biting. It was clearly inspired by the dark teen comedy of Heathers, but was never even close to unseating that film's status, but it's pretty good for what it is. The Diablo-speak, which was a deal-breaker for me in Juno, is much more at home here and there were some genuinely funny lines, especially the ones delivered with absolute relish by Meagan Fox, who is in full camp mode here. Zombieland made 10 times the money that Jennifer's Body did and it's not nearly as funny. It also doesn't have a lesbian kiss. No, I think the reason this movie failed to connect with audiences was that even in the trailers (and obviously in the title) a strong feminine perspective came across. When looking at Jennifer's Body, people didn't see a trashy horror movie, they saw feminism dripping corn syrup and red food colouring. To audiences, Jennifer's Body could've literally meant Megean Fox's weirdly hard fake tits, or just as easily be a metaphor for menstruation. So people stayed away, including women. In retrospect, I guess this movie's failure isn't so surprising.

Havoc
Holy shit. This is so funny. I think everyone involved believed they were making a searing account of teenagers living on the edge. Havoc is probably technically considered a drama about a culture clash between affluent whites and gangsta street culture, but it's unintentional camp comedy through and through. I mean it's funny right from the opening scene and just keeps getting funnier. Anne Hathaway was looking to tarnish up her Disney princess image so here she plays a spoiled rich brat who snorts coke and fucks losers from both sides of the tracks. She even shows her tits like 7 times for good measure. It's too bad she isn't acting in the impactful drama she signed up for though. Havoc reminded me of Reefer Madness in its hopelessly simplistic view of just about everything, and its hysterical, moralizing tone. I'm also pretty sure its final thesis was that pretty, rich white girls shouldn't mix with latin crack dealers because they'll get gang raped in the ass and feel really sad about it for awhile aferwards. As a moralizing character drama about children of privelidge cross-pollinating with gangsta culture, Havoc is a fucking disaster. As a laugh-out-loud comedy, it's a smashing success. Havoc takes itself very seriously, but after watching its failed attempt at documenting this cultural offshoot (or abortion) I would be amazed if anyone could make a serious film about Wiggerism (new term). It's an inherently funny subject and its roots and causes are so obvious that it seems almost pointless to document them. Strangely, Havoc pulls its punches by avoiding the obvious (and juciest) cultural collision between white trust fund kids and black inner city hustlers and instead opts for latino gangstas, which as far as I know, no wigger has every modeled himself after.

Out of Sight
For the last, oh 7 months or so, I've been engaged in a foolish quest to read every single Elmore Leonard novel. I read 13 of them so far, but he's written over 50. I'm going to continue, but my progress has slowed a little. I read Out of Sight and then of course wanted to return to the movie, which I remember as one of my favourites from the 90's. It held up. This is maybe Clooney's best role and it's sure as shit Jennifer Lopez's best work. It's actually a really interesting movie because it wears the skin of a hip crime film, but it's actually more of a date movie at heart. You're always more engaged by the romance between Clooney's veteran bank robber and Lopez the US Marshall than you are with the heist that drives the story forward. Forget the guns and the double-crosses, this is about opposites attracting at its heart, which is really the bread-and-butter of rom-com's, not crime films. And yet when Clooney and Lopez share scenes together (which isn't often because the plot keeps them apart), the movie plays with the heightened sexual and romantic tension of their situation better than most, if not all the rom-com's that have come after it.




The Paper
Man, this is sooo '90's and sooo Ron Howard. It's always nice to see Michael Keaton and everything, but this movie is bullshit. Also, it has Robert Duvall in all his over-acting glory.






500 Days of Summer
500 Days of Summer presents itself as the quirky, youthful alternative to Hollywood's traditional, stuffy, high concept romantic comedies. After suffering through this bullshit, I'll take the middling old school rom-com any day. This somehow accomplished the feat of being worse than I thought it would be, and I really thought this would suck a lot. I knew from the trailer that it would disgustingly quirky and artificial, but for some reason I thought it was going to also be somewhat visually inventive, perhaps even innovative. But it's pretty drab and has all the visual flair and humour of a Mentos commercial. Actually, I take that back. That's an insult to Mentos commercials, which are actually funnier than this. The movie is littered with pop culture references ranging unadventurously from Joy Division and The Smiths to Star Wars, all of which seem engineered to give boring people moments of recognition. There is a scene early on where Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zoey Deschanel (those names were annoying just to type) are in an elevator together and he's listening to The Smiths on his ipod and she begins to annoyingly coo the words of the song, much to his amazement. He's all, "oh my god, you like The Smiths too?" and she's like, "Oh yeah, I love The Smiths, they're great". And then she walks out of the elevator and he's totally bowled over by the encounter. HOLY SHIT, 2 PEOPLE LIKE THE SMITHS, WHAT ARE THE ODDS??? It drove me fucking insane. This movie is an anti-love story. He's a giant pussy asshole and she's a total aloof cunt and you hate them both immediately. Not only did I not care how and why they fell in and out of love, but I was left wondering how even their parents could love them.

The Burbs
I actually saw this out in the "burbs" when it was released in the late 80's for a friend's birthday party. I hadn't seen it since, but it totally held up. Joe Dante doing spooky comedy. Tom Hanks when he was actually funny and before he had designs on respectable dramatic career. Corey Feldman making teenaged blow money in a Universal picture about nosey neighbors and homicidal shut-ins. Fucking great stuff. Seriously, Tom Hanks is so funny in this. He gives such a terrific, physical performance, it'll make you even more resentful of the 50 Oscar Bait movies he's made since this.




Prince of Persia
Jerry Bruckheimer--the man, the brand--is one of the most winning producers in Hollywood. As sure as the Earth revolves around the sun, one can expect at least one mega-hit Bruckheimer movie every summer, a pact with popcorn munchers he has been observing since his former partner Don Simpson kicked the bucket and he began following his bliss straight to the bank. It's pretty clear that with Simpson out of the way, Bruckheimer was freed up to put more films into production and starting in the summer of '95, he began carpet-bombing multiplexes with high-gloss, effects-laded confections. This run started out pretty great with Bad Boys, The Rock, Con Air and Armageddon. But then shit began to go pear-shaped with Gone in Sixty Seconds, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and straight through into Prince of Persia, which has to be the worst thing he's ever put his name on. There's no point in talking further about this. If you've seen it, then you know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't than you have exactly 2 hours more life left to live than I do.

Clash of the Titans
This is nearly as bad as Prince of Persia with lead star Sam Worthington coming off merely bland as the hero, whereas Jake Gylenhaal with muscles and a sword is hilarious. The one saving grace comes from both Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson hamming it the fuck up as a gods in what looks like a shitty Linkin Park music video. Seriously, everytime Fiennes is on screen we were howling with laughter. Than we realized that both Fiennes and Neeson probably made something like 20 grand per word of script they spoke, and we stopped laughing and got super bummed out.





52 Pick Up
This is another entry in my Elmore Leonard adventure. I read the book then wanted to check out the movie. The book is better obviously, but this is definitely an under-appreciated crime film from the 80's with a great fucking cast, including Roy Schieder, John Glover and Anne Margaret. Gritty shit.








Chopping Mall
I never got to see this as a kid and finally caught up with it thanks to the generosity of my friend Andrew and his stellar DVD library. This is pretty fun shit, with experimental security robots going haywire in a mall, hunting a group of teenagers who have stowed away in the shopping complex after dark to party and fuck. I was surprised to find some early, satirical scenes that felt like a precursor to Robocop, with arrogant corporate interests willing to place the keys of society into the robotic hands of cyborgs.








Sleepaway Camp
Most of this was pretty standard slasher shit. Uninspired and a little boring. But the final shot... holy shit! It's so fucking nuts you just have to sit through the whole movie to get the full pay off.






House
Look at that poster! Look at it!
The actual movie is even crazier believe it or not. A bunch of Japanese schoolgirls head to an aunts house out in the country and all manner of fucked up weirdness occurs. I'm not even going to try to attempt summarize the events in this movie because most of what I'd write would make no sense. You just have to see it (and Criterion just put out a gorgeous Blu Ray transfer of it). House looks like an obvious inspiration for Sam Raimi and his Evil Dead films, marrying manic, slapstick comedy with traditional haunted house horror and a liberal sprinkling of surreal absurdism. The fever dream visual style and inventiveness of this film is really something to behold. I've never seen anything quite like it. And in the tradition of a particularly dominant strain of Japanese pop culture, House has a steadfast commitment to sexualizing school girls in the most hilarious of ways, with wisps of wind blowing the clothes off the terrified girls and forcing them to fight ghosts half-naked.

Knight and Day
Last, but certainly not least, is the summer action movie Knight and Day, which is the Cruisers latest attempt to climb back up to the peak of Blockbuster Mountain. It failed to put Cruise back on top of the pack and it's a now characteristically desperate display of water treading. I wonder how many nights he's lain awake, tormented by the memories of the Oprah couch-jumping incident that totally fucked up his career. I imagine him having duplicates of that Oprah couch manufactured just so he could blast them apart with shotguns in some Scientology compound in the desert. I bet that would be a cathartic, Thetan-cleansing ritual for him. I really wish that Knight and Day was the movie to put Cruise back on top, but it obviously wasn't. Cruise is a great fucking movie star and I think we'll mourn the loss of his ilk when he's finally replaced by the Channing Tatum's and Robert Pattison's that pass for movie stars these days. But Knight and Day simply isn't good enough to re-launch Cruise as the big star in the stratosphere, it really didn't deserve to be a hit and when you get right down to it, it's a bit of a mess. There's definitely some fun sequences, but the whole thing seems scotch-taped together.

Review // INCEPTION - Dreaming small

There are many, many moments in Inception where characters spout pages and pages of gobbeldygook exposition that is so silly and leaden it could rival the biggest groaners in any second rate sci-fi movie. And yet these attempts at metaphysical and liminal exploration, however clunky, can almost be applauded for at least trying to inject some brains into the summer movie blockbuster mould. Almost.

The real problem with Inception is that it asks much more of you than simply suspension of disbelief, it requires you to endure an almost total suspension of entertainment. It lays out its inelegant concept in words, not actions. Inception seems relentlessly hellbent on avoiding anything resembling fun, and for a movie about dreams (a cinema sub genre itself) it's shockingly unimaginative. When characters (and I use that term lightly) aren't talking in streams of nonsense, which is rarely, there is a surplus of un-special effects on display, all in service of dreamscapes that surely must be the drabbest ever committed to film. The dreamworlds of Christopher Nolan are beige and muted and un -fantastic. There is no attempt on his part to interpret the language of dreaming into a visual or auditory hallmark for the film, as others have tried (and perhaps failed) to do. This is why the film wont' be remembered.

Like all Nolan's movies, he continues to needlessly tie the fantastic and ridiculous to some grim, semblance of reality. This is his vision and voice as a filmmaker thus far. Whether it's Batman stalking an un-Gothic Gotham or Leonardo Dicaprio rummaging through the bland hotel rooms of people's subconscious, Nolan seems to want to keep fantasy cloistered from whimsy and playfulness. I think for a time this was even interesting in comparison to the rest of the landscape of mainstream film. But after yet another appearance of MichaelCaine (I have an irrational dislike for him) and another high-concept tethered to the ground, I think it might be time for Nolan to change up his game.

Beyond all its metaphysical leanings, Nolan also wants Inception to be an exciting action movie (or perhaps Warner Bros. did), but the story and very concept don't support it. When faceless men with guns show up in the dreams of the mark (Cillian Murphy) that Dicaprio and his team are working on, it's a very deflating and disappointing turn. Perhaps if the men had literally been faceless it would've been a more interesting addition. To reduce subconscious defenses to henchmen firing machine guns seemed like a particularly lazy shortcut, and yet another way that Inception doesn't try to define itself or differentiate from the typical or rote. It feels like the ticking off of a checklist for nervous studio heads investing 200 million on a brand-less idea.

1. Must have guns and explosions.
Check.

Nolan continues to try his hand at action when he has no real affinity for it. His direction of gunplay or car chases feels like a phoned in 2nd unit performance. There is no sense of space within the choreography like there is in a McTiernan picture or the movies of John Woo. Characters are constantly shooting at each other from the sides of successive frames. Danger never seems to be inhabiting the same frame as the characters. Current Brit du jour , Tom Hardy becomes a one-man army at the end of the film and Nolan keeps the camera close on him and constantly cuts into his heroics late. It's supposed to be a balls-to-the-wall sequence, but it's drained of all context and excitement. Nolan also seems to be cribbing from the playbook of the Scott brothers, which is simply to shake the camera a whole shit load in order to simulate visceral movement, instead of building in visceral movement organically. It's clear from his movies that action scenes are a necessary component, but a component that doesn't seem to interest him all that much. His interests clearly lie in developing a legacy as the intellectual alternative at the multiplex. And yet nothing here matches the smarts, freshness or pure joyful inventiveness of The Matrix, perhaps the definitive Hollywood movie to meld action and metaphysics. The Matrix was a game-changer. Inception changes nothing. The next ten years of mainstream film will not bare the marks of Inception, the way that the 00's owed themselves to the Wachowski's vision. Compare the storming of the high rise at the end of The Matrix to Inception's third act siege on a snow fortress, which surely must count as one of the most lifeless and dull sequences of the year. Nolan could have dreamed up anything for this set piece, it exists in the subconscious of a character after all, and what we get feels about as exciting and relevant as an episode of the old GI Joe cartoon.

Inception is a movie that takes place almost entirely in dreams. So why is this movie so damn dull? The characters are constantly expressing wonderment over the images Nolan is creating, despite the fact they aren't particularly worthy of wonderment. There are very few, if any eye-gasms to be had in the 2 and half hours of Inception. This is really an unforgivable sin. A city block folding in on itself is as grand as things get and somehow the conclusion of this image even becomes quite unremarkable. Some will argue that there's a practical, story-driven reason why Inception never breaks loose inside it's dreamscapes. Their reasoning, and perhaps Nolan's, is because the dreams are supposed to replicate reality in order to trick their marks into giving up their secrets. Except this doesn't hold with what we know about dreaming and what the characters themselves tell us about dreaming in some of that endless exposition I was talking about. While dreaming, we accept what we're seeing and feeling as real. One minute you could be talking to your boss in the office lounge and the next you could be marrying a neon blue ox and both events feel as real to you in the moment as anything you experience in your daily life. This is why we get upset in our dreams. They aren't just movies playing in our minds that we passively watch. We feel fear, we feel remorse, we cry in a dream and wake up crying. We feel pain inside dreams. The events of our dreams, no matter how far-fetched or fractured, always tap into some emotional part of our true selves and we interact with them accordingly. The dream is not a dream while you are dreaming it--it is reality. LeonardoDicaprio says as much in one particular scene. This simple fact of dreaming, something that even a child knows, gave Nolan free lisence to let his imagination run wild. But there is precious little imagination on display, especially when it comes to the visuals. There is plenty of philosophical musing and subtext, just as there is in The Matrix. But while the Wachowski's sheer force of vision made you practically giddy to explore their first year university philosophy, there is no such excitement prompting you to muse the myriad questions of Inception's premise.

Look at this trailer for the great Terrence Malick's new film, The Tree of Life. It's not a dream movie (at least I don't think it is) and yet like all Malick's films, there is a dream-like quality and poetry to the images. Something that is sorely lacking from Inception.



There are flashes of a great dream movie to be had within Inception. Dicaprio's character being dunked into a tub of water in one level of dreaming translates into geysers of water crashing through a building in another level. This image of him centered on screen with great tidal waves spraying from the corners of the frame comes early in the movie and is one of the only wow moments to be had. It also connects with what we know about dreaming. Your alarm clock going off from your bedside table can become a booming voice from god in your dreams. Another great and relevant idea is the constant rain that's pouring down in the shared dreamscape of the team's Chemist, all because his sleeping body is registering a need to piss. This is what I was looking for from the movie, more dream piss. Also how can you make a movie about dreaming and not have one of the characters appear naked in a public place?

There were consistently two things being said about Inception at the time of it's release:
1. It is a masterpiece.
2. It will confuse dumb people. If you are confused, you are a dummy.

Well, Inception is no masterpiece. I have a hard time believing that it will morph over time into some cultural touchstone that appears on list after list for the next 50 years. And as for the conventional wisdom that it's complicated or confusing or somehow draws a line in the sand between the idiots and intellectuals among popcorn munchers, well this is also bullshit. Inception doesn't so much fill you with questions, as it more bores you with answers to questions you didn't really care to ask.

I really wanted Inception to be the masterpiece people were talking it up to be and I really do want Christopher Nolan to be the great white hope of genre movies. I was rooting for this movie and for him. It may be a Leonardo Dicaprio vehicle with a 200 million dollar budget, not exactly an underdog, but it's also an original idea (not based on a preexisting brand) and that's sadly a rare thing these days. But Inception is a major let-down. However, under the dark cloud of the mainstream's current creative bankruptcy, I can see why this film was mistaken for a ray of light. In our Ratner-ified era, I can see why a director like Nolan is being hailed as a genius. I can sorta see why people want to build him up to take on the mantle of the next Stanley Kubrick or something. Nolan certainly shares Kubrick's chilly, impersonal cinematic demeanor. He even nods to one of Kubrick's iconic images from 2001: A Space Odyssey, that of the bedroom where Louis XVI decor meets futuristic panels of light. But the culture's readiness to compare Nolan to Kubrick says less about Nolan as a filmmaker and more about how hard-up we are for anything resembling genuine inspiration. We desperately need the mainstream to be driven by a singular creative voice. We want our auteurs back. But sadly, the era of the auteur intersecting with the mainstream doesn't appear to be coming back any time soon. Inception is not the herald of a change to come, no matter how hard we wish it to be.

Review // IT'S COMPLICATED - The complications of being really, really white and really, really rich

Let me just start by saying that I'm not against these types of movies out of any kind of principle. My masculinity (what little there is of it) does not cause me to chafe against product that is clearly intended for the fairer sex. The fact that I have a dick and an Adam's apple does not preclude me enjoying films of this ilk. Chick flicks, I believe their called. No, I watch these kinds of movies here and there and I was fairly interested in this one in particular. It has Meryl Streep, Steve Martin (without a bad French accent for once!) and Alec Baldwin. That's a pretty stacked cast in my books. So the problem isn't that I just happen to be outside the target market for the movie and therefore immune to its charms. I was ready and willing to be charmed. The problem is that its charmless. Don't get me wrong, its very engaging. But only because you find yourself engaged in the act of wishing, praying and chanting for horrible calamities to befall the characters in the film, anything to weaken the vice-like grip they have over their sense of entitlement.

It's Complicated really lives up to it's title, though not in plot, but in intent. It's a dramedy that's meant to make you sniffle through the laughs, but it's neither dramatic nor funny. It's a romantic comedy that is more creepy than romantic and with laughs that are in most cases unintentional. It's also supposed to be a Feel-Good Late-Bloomer movie, except Streep's character seems to have everything in the world so it's impossible to empathize with her want for more. (Her character is designing her "dream" kitchen with the help of Steve Martin's lovelorn architect, despite the fact that her existing kitchen would make Martha Stewart pant with orgasmic abandon.) The most complicated aspect of the film is sorting out what if anything writer/director Nancy Meyers wants us to feel for these characters, because everything they say and do seems calculated to illicit overwhelming hatred --so obnoxious, spoiled an disconnected from reality are the blindingly white rich brats that populate this sunny, sterile utopia it feels like a parody of affluence. I kept expecting/wanting a dashiki-clad Jim Brown to kick in the door to Streep's cottage-style mansion and scream "die whitey!" before blowing everyone away with a Mac-10. And therein lies the real complication: does Meyers want us to hate these jerks on purpose or is she just one of them and therefore oblivious to how abhorrent they are? It would be much more fun to believe Meyers is a clandestine agitator hiding in plain view, mercilessly mocking and assailing the mindsets and lifestyles of the people who make up her target audience. But sadly I don't think this is the case.

When we meet Streep's character she is trying to balance her career as an upscale bakery owner with the stress of renovating her insanely gorgeous home. You know how it is. She's also trying to juggle both the hurt and duty she feels towards her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) and observe the tenuous peace treaty they must uphold for the sake of their children. Normally this would be a palatable dramatic dilemma, but the divorce took place a decade ago and the children are grown fucking adults with financial safety nets made of silk and satin. Everyone in this movie is a whiny asshole and its impossible to care about any of them, including Streep's character, Paisley McRichLady. I've expressed my totally uncontroversial love for Streep on this blog before, but It's Complicated represents a new low, even for her current frivolity-focused career readjustment which includes such gems as Prime and The Devil Wears Prada. The plot revolves around a drunken one-night stand between the two exes, Streep and Baldwin and the "complicated" affair it leads to. Baldwin has entered into full-on midlife crisis mode and remarried a younger, hotter chick (who is also a one-dimensional bitch to boot) and naturally this doesn't sit well with Streep. When they find themselves back in bed together she is simultaneously vindicated and guilt-ridden at suddenly becoming the "other woman". The scene where Baldwin and Streep get it on, or I should say the post getting-it-on aftermath provides the first genuine laugh in the movie and it's all because of Baldwin's late-career commitment to self parody. As they lie in bed together--Baldwin satiated and Streep horrified--he reaches over and grabs a handful of Streep pussy over top of the sheets and sighs "it's good to be home". It's an amazing little moment and prevented me from turning the movie off, but it probably wouldn't have worked with any other actor doing the scooping, or being scooped for that matter.

Alec Baldwin is no longer an actor. He no longer plays characters. Alec Baldwin only plays Alec Baldwin anymore. He's his own brand. At one point Baldwin seemed poised to be the Next Big Movie Star. He had leading man looks, he had chops and he had a potential franchise in the Jack Ryan character. But let's face it, those leading man looks can play more like creepy-asshole in the wrong light and he's got as much attitude as hair on his chest. He's famous and rich so it all worked out fine, but in some parallel universe he's doing his 7th Jack Ryan movie and James Woods is in 30 Rock. 20 years ago Baldwin's voice, like fine cognac cascading over gravel, was the key to his short-lived sex appeal. But presently, that same voice has become a car commercial brogue--he's speaking English, but its just so comically husky that you can't take anything he says seriously. It's one of the key reasons he's fucking killing it on 30 Rock. With It's Complicated, every line he utters becomes a joke, even if its not written as one. If he doesn't exactly save the movie, he keeps you watching despite your instincts telling you to run.

Anyway, as Streep's planning out the kitchen of her dreams (as it turns out us regular folk don't dream big enough) she's courted by Joe Pesci's white-haired Asian cousin. No, no, I'm mistaken, that's Steve Martin. WHAT THE FUCK STEVE MARTIN?!? You were one of the good ones! I remember you hilariously ripping the phoney, superficial Hollywood elites at the Oscars like it was yesterday. And you go and slice up your face and get it all g-forced? Comedians are allowed to get facelifts now? When did this happen? When was it decided that people who made their livings out of making fun of things were allowed to make their actual faces into jokes? Christ, I'm so depressed now all of a sudden. So, Steve Martin with a facelift plays Streep's wussy architect and they begin courting each other despite the fact that she's still riding the Baldwin train in secret. Naturally this leads to all sorts of complications. One of hese complications is Streep's kids finding about the unusual affair and getting all confused and conflicted. There is literally a scene where Streep spends the day in bed consoling her sobbing, adult children because they are all confused that daddy stuck his dick in mommy again. The kids are all like 30 and it's actually played for dramatic effect with swelling strings and everything. It's insane!

You don't know who Nancy Meyers is. Her name doesn't register the way that Nora Ephron's does (or did). But in just 4 movies Nancy Meyers has made half a billion dollars in box office and, intentionally or otherwise, created two sub genres of chick flickage: Baby-boomers-Gone-Wild and Real Estate Porn. It all started with What Women Want, so far her biggest hit to date, but more than likely just a work-for-hire gig. Get this: it starred Mel Gibson as a high powered executive who suddenly is able to read the thoughts of women. It was insane back in 2000 when it opened, I've seen it 3 times, and I'm sure it's only appreciated in value in light of recent events. From there she made Something's Gotta Give, with Diane Keaton as a super white, super rich lady pinballing between the throbbing cocks of Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves. After that she made The Holiday, which was a depressingly bad rom-com that posited Jack Black as a perfectly suitable love interest for Kate Winselt. This is nothing against Jack Black. But it's everything against Kate Winslet. And now with It's Complicated, the spiritual sequel to Something's Gotta Give, Meyers has made her definitive anti-statment. It blends the elements of the two sub-genres I mentioned, with the 60+Meryl Streep tapping her inner slut against a backdrop of House and Home boner-popping centerfolds.

I'm sure Myers' next movie will be called It Is What It Is and star Meg Ryan as the CEO of a perfume empire trying to decide which of 3 mansions she should buy, meanwhile she's fucking her son's college roommate played by Robert Pattison, and loving it!