Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Krystal Skull

Russian communists are upset about how they are depicted in this latest installment of a solid gold franchise. They claim Speilberg and Lucas are trying to start another cold war by showing Ruskies gunning down American's without remorse. I think grief over this movie extends beyond the former Soviet block. It is hard to come up with another movie that goes through the motions harder than this 4th installment.

How pathetic is it when the best thing people can say about Krystal Skull is that it "feels" like a Jones movie rather than it being one. It is one of the most unsatisfying movies ever made. A movie predicated upon the obvious existance of aliens, and yet at the end Lucas and SpeilBergo deny us even that satisfaction. Professor Ox "The Ox" Oxley pulls a Frank Darabount and states that these krystal skeleton aliens (13 of them are found at the end) are "interdimensional beings" from the "space between space."

I wish that was the worst of it. I really wish this movie did not exist. 20 minutes in I wanted to walk out. I knew it was going to desecrate my childhood and what I find to be one of the foremost movie franchises. Temple of Doom is often chided for being less than steller, but it is not the Matrix, Pirates, or Men In Black sequals.

Unfortunately, this Krystal Skull is. In the original trilogy, Indy had to fight through the whole movie to finally get his hands on on the prize, from Ark to Shankara Stones to Grail. He might possess it for the breifest of moments but then must fight to get it back. The krystal skull is picked up after 20-30 minutes, and except for a bout of hacky-sack in a cgi jungle, Indy keeps it the whold time.

Which brings me to CGI. What a wonderful innovation for filmmakers. It makes the impossible possible. It allowed Lt. Dan to really have no legs. It allowed Neo to dodge bullets in the coolest way possible, and it had led to Shia LaShit swinging through a CGI jungle with CGI monkeys so he can pefectly land a boot in Cate Blanchett's inconsequential face. Remember when a guy was literally dragged behind a truck for Raider's of the Lost Ark? Well, SpeilBergo wanted to keep the plot details of Indy 4 a secret and shot everything on sets with greenscreens. It does not help to have George "Attack of the Greenscreen" Lucas whispering in your ear.

I'm not going to talk about Mutt Williams or Marion Ravenwood because there is no reason they had to be in this movie other than to make another sequal and to get 40 and 50 somethings in the theatre. What do they do that is of consequence in Indy 4? Play with knives? Make eyes at Indy? This movie would have been an instant classic had Bergo and Lucas substituted Indy, Mutt, and Marion Jones with Harpo, Chico, and Groucho Marx. How much fun would it be to watch Chico swing through the jungle shaking his fists at the monkeys, or having Harpo freak out and lock himself in the lead-linded fridge.

Oh god, the nuclear bomb. Michael Dudley does a better job of summing up that scene than I will ever do. Apparently it has inspired the new phrase "Nuke The Fridge", a spinoff of "Jump The Shark". Read his analysis here:

http://www.alternet.org/story/86708/

So yeah, Indiana Jones 4 is a stinking pile of shit that I wanted to walk out of. I did not because my ride wanted to keep watching. A friend asked me if at the end the Jones gang have to do anything important to escape or do they just run faster than the danger. Unfortunately it is the latter.

Oh, and Cate Blanchett dies Raiders of the Lost Ark style from too much curiousity. She does not melt though. Something shoots into her eyes as she screams and disintegrates into a gold dust that is sucked into an interdimensional portal.

Sounds great, right. Just thank the richer than shit jerkoffs above for a time well spent.

Speed Racer

The cinematic equivalent of a child doing a flip into a pool and screaming at you for two hours to watch him do it again.

A waste of time, money, brain cells, and talent. Proof positive that the Wachowskis were a flash in the pan.

I haven't had a worse time in the theater since Alien vs. Predator 2.

Boring and stupid don't even come close to describing it.

Worst movie of the year has a good ring to it.

I'd rather blow a corpse than see it again sounds even better.

Paranoid Park

There's a lot to be said for film as art. A movie that has lasting emotional resonance is the pinnacle of the medium, and has the ability to make us forget the world around us.

Paranoid Park is not art. It's barely even a movie. It's the story of the world's most boring fifteen-year-old. A bad actor with doe eyes, the child does nothing to make you care about him. A shame, considering he's in every goddamn shot of the fucking movie.

Gus Van Sant is not a good director. He's a even worse writer.

Hours are spent staring at characters staring at each other. In slow motion.

Pretentious, ham-fisted, meandering tripe. Anyone that likes this movie must wipe their bums with cacti for the genre of this film is "torture."

The Two Jakes

This might be hard for you to do, but if you can, acquire a way-back machine and return to the year 1990, so you can not go see "The Two Jakes."

If you've never seen a good movie, I recommend watching "Chinatown," if only so you'll know what it feels like when you do see a good movie. If you've never been water-boarded, I recommend watching its sequel, "The Two Jakes."

Imagine if every scene in "Chinatown" had nothing to do with the one before it. Rub your face and dick with sandpaper while imagining this, and that's what "The Two Jakes" is like, except longer and sandier.

The basic premise of the film is that "Chinatown" made a lot of money. Jack Nicholson, pulling off the legendary trifecta of acting and directing while napping, remakes "Chinatown" almost beat-for-beat, even bringing back the children of characters from the first film so he can beat them up or fuck them.

Oh. And there's only one Jake. Harvey Keitel plays a character whose nickname sounds like "Jake," but he's actually called "Berman" throughout the film. It's really confusing, but Jack Nicholson, as auteur, had the foresight to include cast credits at the end so you'd know what this business of "two Jakes" was all about.

There are some delightful moments in this film. For example, at one point Nicholson tells the overacting Madeleine Stowe to shut up, get on her knees, put her ass in the air, and wait for him while he slowly puts the pieces of his bullshit mystery together.

Later, Nicholson wrestles in a police station with the son of the cop who shot Faye Dunaway in "Chinatown;" once he gets the other man on his back, Nicholson shoves a gun in his mouth and tells him to suck it. None of the characters in this scene, including Tom Waits as some dude, reappear in the movie or matter at all to the plot -- except Nicholson. It's the film's only recurring theme.

Both of these moments sound great when described, but believe me, Nicholson finds a way to make these scenes monotonous and awful. Maybe it was because he didn't want to direct the movie. Maybe it was because Robert Evans dropped out years prior and took the money with him. That explains why the movie seems like Nicholson woke up one afternoon and decided to make a "Chinatown" sequel with just five dollars and a bottle of quaaludes. Why not, that's five dollars more than they made "Chinatown" for, right?

Wrong.

From its boring as fuck plot to Nicholson's "I could give a shit" voice-over narration (highlighting minor characters and details that have NOTHING WHATSO-FUCKING-EVER to do with the story), "The Two Jakes" will forever have a special place in my colon as the most worthless fucking movie I've ever had to sit through.

Sorry, "Stomp the Yard." You're 18 years too late. Don't go see "The Two Jakes."

World Trade Center

I know this comes a bit late, but it's every bit as powerful as the first time I saw a quaint version of a horrifying event.

As you know, there were people alive on September 11th, 2001. Then later in the day a bunch died. Oliver Stoned and writer Andrea Berloff (with a little inspiration from Khalid Sheik Mohammed) remembered that it happened and on August 9th, 2006, premiered something equally as offensive as the September 11th attacks. The apolitical quaint version called "World Trade Center".

For those of you who have never seen slow motion or the last 30 minutes of Lord Of The Rings: Return of The King will get real acquainted with the time-honored film process. Maria Bello sniffing Nic Cage's dirty laundry, slow motion. The cops riding on the bus to the burning towers, slow motion. When Nic Cage yells "Run", slow motion. The picnic at the end of the movie, slow motion. It is a solid effort by Stoned to wring out every moment of tragedy for as long as possible. I haven't seen melodrama this palpable since Douglas Sirk.

Stoned and Berloff did their darndest to come up with an image that encapulates what America is while also raising questions of it's intentions. When the shadow of a hijacked plane flys over a billboard for Zoolander, Stoned and Berloff make you wonder if it wasn't a coincidence that it was in theatres at the time. Perhaps in the future Stoned will grace us with his feelings on Zoolander and if it has any correlation with the attacks.

Bottom line, Oliver Stoned should've killed 3,000 people to make this movie the right way.

P.S. Nicolas Cage lives.

Untraceable

Unwatchable. Unbearable. Unconscionable. Unconcoounablew.

These fews words capture the scope of Director Gregory Hoblit's and tireless screenwriters Robert Fyvolent and Mark Brinker's "Saw IV"-fucker "Untraceable". I'm sure Rita Wilson birthed Colin Hanks so she could see America vote for him to melt in a vat of acid. At least he was able to use morse code with his eyes through the internet to FBI Cyber Crimes Agent Diane Lane as he burned in the acid.

And there's that whole thing in the movie where who the fuck cares. And wait until you're skull fucked by the powerpoint FBI-Style presentation where Diane lays out that because the Killer's dad shot himself in the bridge here, and fell on a car here, and ate lunch here, and because his dad was was a college professor, and not dead before he was dead, that's why the Killer is killing people. Over the internet. In the same town where the FBI headquarters Diane works at is.

Make sure your Tivo and Onstar are working properly before you go outside because you might be captured and dangled over a running lawnmower by a cyber criminal.

P.S. Hey nerds out there, fetish this: There is are a lot of hand on mouse action.

The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass fucking reeks because it has one of the worst endings in the history of storytelling. It actually discards the book's cliffhanger ending in favor of a bores-cliffs-to-tears ending. That is how Chris Weitz rewards us for watching two hours of his poorly animated CGI animals, and the talented British actors enslaved to them.

AVPR

I just noticed every movie I put up here is a bad horror film I had unreasonably high expectations for.

That doesn't negate the fact that these movies are truly, deeply, offensively awful in the worst ways. Horror has the potential to be a good genre, see the original Omen, the Exorcist, etc.

AVPR sucks because it exists in a universe that shouldn't exist in the first place. Tying together the plotlines of four Alien movies and two Predators isn't interesting. Or relevant.

It's retarded. It's like seeing Michael Myers grow up for forty minutes in the Halloween remake. It makes the monster unscary to know a lot about it. Especially when the story conceived for it is hokey and boring.