"After Earth": A Movie That Scrambles My Feels

There are good movies, mediocre movies, and bad movies. But those labels are averages. A good scene, a bad scene...good acting, terrible writing...bad special effects, but an amazing story...there are all sorts of ways that a movie can average out to one of the three.

Some of my favorite scenes and characters come from terrible movies (Raul Julia in Street Fighter, 4 life). And there are parts of good movies that I absolutely can't stand. Anyone who's heard me talk about Thirteen Days knows I love it, knows I love the political intrigue, the drama, the stakes (the highest stakes EVER, arguably), but Kevin Costner's Boston accent sounds like he's playing a goat, particularly on the vowels. And that takes me out of the movie.

OITHER OF YOU GAWT A CAYN AWEE COULD CHEW?

My point is that usually, I evaluate a movie not just as the sum of its parts, but as a complex interplay of elements, and I'm quick to point out elements that I like over elements I don't, even when the overall film may be a bad one. And then, those various impulses somehow average out to my impression of a movie, although I give more weight to stuff like acting, writing, and production design. But I always at least give credit to elements that capture my attention, even if every other thing in a movie sucks hard.

After Earth seems on its surface like a movie I would like. And there were parts of it I did like. I summed it up to my roommate Adam when I told him, as we were watching the climax, that literally every part of this movie is cool except for Jaden Smith and the plot. And therein lies the rub, and the limits of my charity.

Whargarbl 4: Live Free or Garbl Whar, or, My Long-Belated Thoughts on "Man of Steel"

As a follow-up to my incredibly virulent defense of Ben Affleck, I thought I'd also do a post about Man of Steel, the recent reprequeboot of the Superman franchise. I know it's been a while since it came out, but there was plenty of butthurt and there still is regarding some of the plot, and I've been on a running butthurt theme lately. Not to mention several blogs and websites this week have featured Zack Snyder's defense of the calamitous destruction of Metropolis in the climax of the movie.

I liked Man of Steel. At times, I loved it. At times, I think Henry Cavill perfectly captured the spirit of classic Superman if he was met with real-world situations. The scene that comes to mind is when he gives himself up to the military. Now, let me explain something about Superman, which will be referenced several times: Superman is crazy powerful. How crazy? Throughout all of the continuity resets DC did, he's been shown to shrug off nuclear strikes. Before the 80's continuity reboot Crisis on Infinite Earths (the grand-daddy of all “event” miniseries) he was even shown moving planets around.

My Reactions to Miley Cyrus' VMA Performance: A Pictorial Facsimile

I may or may not write a longer blog post discussing the reservations and various visceral reactions I had with Miley's performance regarding her appropriation of black culture, her performance's objectification of black women, and the various touchy areas regarding her sexuality and "slut-shaming". It will depend on whether I can be asked to devote any more emotion, care, or even the basic ATP needed to fire my neurons to think about Miley Cyrus.

For now, these are reaction images that sum up my feelings. If you'd told me a couple days ago that I would be seeing Miley Cyrus gyrate in underwear on stage at the VMA's, I probably woulda been like:

WHARGARBL 3: GARBL WHAR With A Vengeance

It's been a while since I've done a WHARGARBL post, but I guess it's been a while since there's been a WHARGARBL on the internet so powerful and unjustified that I felt the need to address it. Until today. And I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually ashamed of people on the internet right now.

I didn't think I could feel shame anymore for what people say or do on the internet...it's basically pointless. I mean, we're all at least conceptually aware of what Penny Arcade termed the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (G.I.F.T. for short). G.I.F.T. says that if you give a normal person anonymity and an audience, they turn into a cancerous fuckwad. It's why little boys on Xbox Live whose balls haven't even dropped feel confident in reminding me the number of times they've had prolonged sexual intercourse with various members of my family. It's practically a daily part of internet life. But a very special outbreak of butthurt and assholery is currently soaring through the internet today.

Epic Venting: My Thoughts on "Grown-Ups 2" Beating "Pacific Rim" At The Box Office

I'm going to make this short and sweet.

Grown-Ups 2 beat Pacific Rim at the box office. If you are a human, thinking, feeling agent...and you decided to see Adam Sandler Pads The Budget For Another Fartapalooza To Prop Up His Desperate Hack SNL Buddies' Drug Habits And Egos 2 instead of seeing literally the most fun I've had at the movies since I was a child, a product of love, a revolutionary and iconic piece of production design, not to mention the most heart I've seen in a blockbuster possibly in at least a decade, then the blood of cinema is on your hands. It will never go away.

You can wash, and you can wash, and you can make excuses. But they're shit. There are no excuses for Grown-Ups 2. Every summer, when another Lone Ranger or Jack And Jill 2: Christ Just Slit My Throat Already comes out, when another Transformers 2: Let's Set Back Some Civil Rights makes hundreds of millions at the box office, you will look at your hands and see the stains. They're brown, by now...blood does that when it dries. You'll use that to push it out of your mind...couldn't be blood! Blood's red, and this isn't the same color anymore. But it is blood. Every movie trip...every time Hollywood repackages a kids' cartoon or a 60's TV show; anytime they head to the Rights Graveyard and crack open the coffin of anything, fucking ANYTHING that they recognize, you will stare at your hands and see the rusty streaks from when you walked up behind cinema and stabbed it through the back, between the ribs. It tried to cry out, you see...but it can't. You collapsed its lung. And the blood, it just flowed and flowed and flowed...you didn't think a thing could bleed so much. But it could.

I guess what I'm saying is, Adam Sandler is a hack, and possibly a war criminal. Pacific Rim is tits. It's everything I ever wanted out of it and more...I smiled with an innocence, wonder, and giddiness I didn't know I still had. My screening was at 5:30 on a Sunday and the entire theater still cheered and applauded multiple times. It deserves your time and your money. Grown-Ups 2, if it were a person, would deserve a life-long and calamitous case of dysentery. The choice is clear.

Christian and Bruce In: The Advancing Case of Butthurt

“Advancing” having the disease-related meaning. See, I think Bruce Willis and Christian Bale both suffer from a similar career ailment.

I was dicking around on Youtube and happened upon the entire pilot of “Moonlighting”. Not to narc (WACHUN THINGS FO FREE IS WRANG), but for those of you who are unfamiliar, “Moonlighting” was the big break of Bruce Willis. What's shocking is that he doesn't play a beleaguered lone wolf cop, he doesn't play a cop who plays by his own rules, he doesn't even play a police officer who routinely disregards the procedures of his department. He plays a smarmy, charming private detective, who will mug at any opportunity and sounds like he walked out of His Girl Friday. And he's a god-damned revelation. He's hilarious, and you wonder what the hell happened to that side of him. I'll tell you: Hudson Hawk happened.

This Movie's Underrated: George Romero's "Day of the Dead"

Chances are that most of you have seen at least one type of zombie movie whether its tone tended towards actual horror, like 28 Days Later, comedy, like Shaun of the Dead, or ruining good things like World War Z. Given that variety, it's surprising that essentially the entire zombie genre as we know it today can be traced to one film: George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. This film established literally every rule about the modern conception of a zombie, as well as the modern conception of a zombie apocalypse: they shamble about, their heads are their only killing zone, they crave human flesh. Even the idea of a zombie as an exclusively undead creature (as opposed to voodoo zombies, which are basically brainwashed people) owes its existence to Night. Night's sequel, Dawn of the Dead, went even further, exploring the breakdown of society and government in the aftermath of a zombie outbreak, and codified basically all of the tropes you usually see in zombie apocalypse movies. Hence, it's easy to see why Night and Dawn are undisputed classics, even though the effects in Dawn have aged about as well as DOMA.

TOPICAL!

Help Me I Don't Even What Is This: “Full Metal Jacket”

Memorial Day just came and went, and usually I watch war movies to celebrate. But specifically war movies that convey the idea that war is hell, even if it is sometimes justified. In past years I've watched “Paths of Glory”, “A Bridge Too Far”, and “Saving Private Ryan”, but this year I thought I'd pop in a war movie that's constantly referenced and considered a “classic” but that I hadn't seen yet, and that's Full Metal Jacket.

So do the prostitutes, as the movie makes abundantly clear.

Iron Man 3: The Last Alien

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Video Game Review: "Star Trek"

You know, I wasn't even going to finish this shit. I was fully intent on never thinking about this piece of electronic sod again. It was a transient horror, and I could take solace in the fact that I only rented it, and returned it with weapons-grade satisfaction. But I can't avoid it, because an innocent girl handed me a poster advertising it today at Free Comic Book Day. And that girl told me, not knowing my horribly unsatisfactory experience in renting it, that I could try out the game in the trailer parked outside the comic book shop. I cannot possibly replicate the noise I made in print.

Help Me I Don't Even What Is This: "Neon Genesis Evangelion"

So I'm starting a new column. I think of myself as a film person, but there are plenty of “classic” film and TV series that I haven't seen. Lawrence of Arabia, The West Wing, The Adventures of Ford McFarlane: never seen 'em. So, as a combination personal journey/excuse to write, I'm going to watch, every week or so, a “classic” and review it.

Now, if you read this blog, you know I loves me some giant robots. I'm all about that Gundam shit, and I love Macross too, as well as more obscure stuff like Dragon's Heaven. But I'd never seen Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Which is weird, because I love schoolgirls!

Neon Genesis Evangelion is arguably the most influential anime of all time, next to Mobile Suit Gundam. If MSG is Japan's Star Trek, NGE is its Twin Peaks, a mindfuck series full of dense symbolism. Superficially, it's about a teenage boy who is coerced by his distant and emotionally abusive father into piloting a giant bioengineered cyborg to defeat aliens known as “Angels” that are attacking what's left of humanity. And for the first half of the series, that's all it is. Every episode is a different battle against whatever weird abomination is coming for humanity this week. But around the halfway point, the series begins to turn inescapably depressing and intense. Monster-of-the-Week battles give way to a razor-sharp deconstruction of the mecha genre and a brutal dismantling of the psyches of the main characters as their every flaw and trauma are analyzed.

This Movie's Underrated - "2010: The Year We Make Contact"

Awwww jyeah, son. Barring Outland, basically every movie I've reviewed in this column has been seen as indefensible by a number of people. But this is a whole other animal. 2001: A Space Odyssey isn't just a classic, isn't just a great movie. It's a turning point in the sci-fi genre. It's a cultural touchstone. It practically created the media trope of a computer gone mad, and its effects can be felt today, even down to its production design. Apple based the aesthetics of damn near every product it's ever released on the clean, sterile white and black of the Discovery, and even named the iPod after the globular rides of Bowman and Poole.

2001 is nebulous, dense, sparing, and does a tango over the line between style and substance. It asks the biggest questions of all: are we alone in the universe? Who made us what we are? And where the hell are we going next?

And what the HELL is a "bush baby"!?

The Lords of Suck: Or How I Learned To Stop Watching and Walk Out of the Theater

I've never walked out of a movie before. Seriously, not once. Not during The Covenant, not during The Chronicles of Riddick, not even during Master of Disguise. Some of the bad movies I've seen, like The Covenant, are at least fun to make fun of. Plus, each movie had their redeeming qualities. And you've read on this blog before that I consider several movies to be underrated that others would write off immediately. At the very least, I consider them worthy of examination, if only to find out what went wrong.

Picture unrelated.

I'm not sure anything went wrong with Lords of Salem, the newest film by Rob Zombie. I'm sure everything went exactly according to the way he wanted it to go. But that's the biggest problem. And that's why I walked out.

THIS SUMMER...The Hamburglar has had ENOUGH