TAKING A LOOK AT.........BATTLESHIP

It'd be too easy for me to call last year's Battleship a dumb boring piece of shit, but the fact of the matter is, Battleship is a dumb boring piece of shit. I'm a believer that a film isn't bad because of what it is about but of how it is about it. It's easy to make fun of a movie because it's based a board game, that conceit alone is worth all the derision and scorn and make you feel like you're above the movie in every way. And while that's true, Battleship is bad not because it's merely based a board game but because it is a headache inducing bore. It was about the time the aliens' true form was revealed that I realized Battleship is the recent modern equivalent of that fucking Wing Commander movie from 14 years ago. It's everything studios think is cool at the moment; the trailers included dubstep, there's the "Michael Bay-lite" blue-orange saturated cinematography, big flashy special effects, low demeanor humor, the whole "made for the masses" feel, last minute gung-ho patriotism and Rihanna is in it. I feel like a lesser human being after having watched it. Fortunately it is not the inept travesty that was Pearl Harbor but that would have made it more interesting. At least there was comical wrong-headedness bordering on parody about Pearl Harbor, Battleship is just drab by comparison.

No one was surprised to how Rihanna showed up to the court proceedings.

I gave up on the work of Peter Berg after the nonsense that was Hancock, a terrible film that coasts by on the star power and charisma of Will Smith. It makes one wonder if Friday Night Lights and The Kingdom were happy accidents. Both are critical incisive looks at American thought, construction and lifestyle, one is about the over-importance and consequence of small-town sports and the other of American foreign policy. There are theories that suggest Battleship has the same critique and intelligent view of terrorism but about the time that an out-of-commission battleship piloted by a bunch of WWII vets cheer for the fiery destruction of  the lizard-cat aliens, all metaphor and theory went out the window. Having "Fortuante Son" be the end credits song of  Battleship isn't subversive but stems from the same kind of miscalculation and thought that "Born in the USA" is also a patriotic song. We can take some solace and faith that the film was a domestic flop costing over 200 million and making only 65 million total, you know, only 65 million dollars.

A good summation of what it's like watching Battleship.

If you've seen Top Gun, Transformers, Independence Day, Pearl Harbor, Annapolis, Wing Commander, Super Mario Bros, Street Fighter, or any blockbuster since 1998 then you've probably seen Battleship. Falling star on the rise Taylor Kitch plays some fucking idiot who is forced into the Navy by his brother played by Alexander Skarsgard of True Blood fame. Kitch's character is an over-confident cocky hot-head who is in love with the Admiral's daughter and must prove himself in order to marry her. He does this by learning leadership and blowing up a bunch of aliens. Rihanna plays a terminator, Jesse Plemons stars as Matt Damon and Liam Neeson plays a someone not giving a shit. I won't bother with the plot since the movie didn't either.

What's worth to note is how the aliens operate which is so subtle as to not make any impression at all. They're not a generic malevolent invading force, in fact they seem to do a lot things by accident initially. A pulse sound they emanate presumably for contact purposes is perceived as an attack, the falling debris of their crashing ships destroy half of Hong Kong, many of the on-foot aliens only attack in self-defense. There's just the bare suggestion that the aliens are doing what an American military force would do, set-up communications, destroy roadways, and let the opposing force save their wounded but again by the end all this shit is forgotten. We don't give a shit about understanding or communicating with them, they need to get blowed-up bad, also they look dumb.

Japanese baseball took a whole new turn.

Then the third act happens which includes one of the most sincere earnest crazy over-the-top set-ups to happen ever, after all their ships are destroyed, Kitch and his remaining crew gather on the museum battleship the USS Missouri to find some WWII veterans who are willing to help which leads to a montage set to AC/DC's Thunderstruck. It manages to be shockingly effecting while somehow not pandering but is also both embarrassing and endearing. It's exciting and propulsive in a way the rest of the film isn't. The scene illustrates Berg's respect and admiration for the veterans in a way that Bay wouldn't dare touch, the military are just toys to Bay, for Berg they're people. But again, this doesn't make Battleship a good movie, or even a noteworthy one but I think it's always best to keep in mind, today's trash is tomorrow's cult hit, since that explains what's going on with The Chronicles of Riddick.

"How'd I go from Ichi the Killer to this shit? Oh right, I was in Thor."

Olympus Has Fallen is mostly just stupid.

About a third of the way through the recent "siege on the white house" actioner I was ready to call it an ugly and stupid film. Fortunately as the movie goes on it just reveals itself to be as mundane and standard as any other entry in its genre. We already know the set-up is preposterous, Gerald Butler is a barely disgraced secret service agent who Die Hards his way through a bunch of stuntmen in ski masks in cheap dimly-lit hallways to save president Aaron Eckhart. The film is old-fashioned paranoid patriotic fodder; the American flag waves in slow-motion as sunlight shines through it, disaster imagery is used to stir emotions, Morgan Freeman makes some kind of speech and the words "people" and "nation" are exhaustively overused . Actually fuck it, the only way to make sense of this coffee-brown-shit tinted mess is through a good old fashioned Q&A.

Is the movie offensive?
It really depends on you sensitivity to what's being shown and presented. The movie seems to have a bare sense of social responsibility unlike the remake of Red Dawn from last year. Rick Yune plays the main baddie, a North Korean terrorist named Kang Yeonsak who disguises himself as a South Korean ministry aid who, as the movie glaringly points out, is not aligned with either county, is in fact wanted by North and South Korea for terrorist actions and whose mother was killed by an American landmine. Where Red Dawn presented a hostile takeover, King Kang as I will call him just wants to start World War III, or destroy America or reunite the Koreas, I'm not sure which as he kind of changes his mind throughout the movie.

Wait, that doesn't answer the question.
Oh, right. Well the movie uses pretty harsh imagery to get straight at our core, the Washinton monument is destroyed and falls and crumbles and lands on a couple citizens that borders on exploitative but that's the obvious intention of the movie. But it's all done in really shitty CG so it barely even registers, actually it's less offensive than just really stupid and unconvincing looking. The attack on the White House is visceral and ironically delivers the movie's best action scene, it's harrowing, relentless and blows the movie's action wad in the first 20 minutes. The film's most disturbing moment is when a suicide bomber blows up the gate to the White House allowing the takeover to happen. You won't feel proud of yourself after seeing this movie but you won't feel dirty either. The movie is so ridiculous and cartoonish and you can't possibly take anything you see in it with any validity.


How racist is it?
Just racist enough, King Kang is given pretty solid and valid motivation to hate Americuh but him and his group are portrayed as alien/foreign others. One of the white house staff turns out to be a traitor for profit or country ,again not sure which because the movie doesn't give a fuck which just reveals the awesome dumbness within. If he's for profit how the fuck does he plan on spending money in a nuclear wasteland? At least the movie was sensible enough to include a different colored bad guy even if the in house traitor is just another cliche. What's most strange is this comes from Antoine Fuqua who previously directed the quite good Brooklyn's Finest and the "liberal" action movie Shooter. Seriously, go fucking watch Shooter, it's the exact opposite of Olympus Has Fallen, the main bad guys turn out to be corrupt old white senators, the fact that they're made by the same guy is staggering.

Is the movie dangerous?
Only to stupid people.

How's Butler's facial hair?
It goes from non-existent to lightly stubbled, there's no Spartan beard in this one.

Would Spartan Beard have made the movie better?
Maybe.

How many head stabbings are there?
About 3 or 4, honestly there's not enough.

In the third act it's revealed the White House is a Transformer. (picture sourced www.latimes.com)

Why does the White House have rockets?
 Because fuck you that's why.

How bad is the CG?
TV movie quality, you sort of feel bad for saying it's shitty because the movie is trying very hard and pretending to be a bigger movie.

Would Bill O' Reilly masturbate to this?
I think so.

What should I watch instead?
Die Hard, Commando, First Kid

The 15 Best Movies of 2012

Another year has passed and that's means another 15 movies you probably missed, totally ignored and maybe didn't hear about. While my list isn't necessarily just only the the underlooked and under appreciated movies of the past year, as there will be a few mainstream and big hit releases on there, they're the movies that came out of nowhere, that did something new or unexpected with film.

Movies I totally missed last year: Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, Argo, Lawless, End of Watch, Coriolanus, The Woman in Black, Wanderlust, This is Not a Film, The Comedy, God Bless America, Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Jeff Who Live at Home, Liberal Arts, Lockout, Silver Linings Playbook, The Sound of My Voice, Not Fade Away, Anna Karenina, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning,  Rust and Bone, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Ruby Sparks, Seven Psychopaths, Klovn, Red Hook Summer, Sinister, The Sessions, Flight, Life of Pi, Hitchcock, The Intouchables, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Smashed  and The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure

15. The Grey - Originally sold as the "Liam Neeson punches wolves" movie, The Grey is so much more than that. At times it is a grim and bleak exploration of death with Cormac McCarthy-like aspirations while also being a gripping survival story. The film is a huge leap forward for director Joe Carnahan whose previous two films Smokin' Aces and The A-Team, have been fun diversions while The Grey is filled with an intense low-key sadness and melancholy. The film is the anti-survival story, it is about how cruel and mean-spirited and objective the world really is, but despite the utter hopelessness and desperation pervading the movie , you'll be glad you watched The Grey instead that "wolf punching Liam Neeson movie".

14. The Raid: Redemption - Despite whatever you think of the stupid subtitle, The Raid is a must see action movie in every regard. An intense and brutal experience that makes The Expendables 2 ,Taken 2 and just about every other American action film from last 10 years look like stale boring embarrassments. The speed and ferocity with which lead actor Iko Uwais  moves will leave you astonished. Earlier in the year I wrote an article comparing The Raid to a Thai martial arts film from the previous year, while I was a bit harsh and unfair to The Raid, I guarantee you will have the perfect action night double feature with Bangkok Knockout and The Raid. While it might not be ground breaking, it is bone-shattering and will leave you wanting more in the best way.

13. Cosmopolis - There probably wasn't a stranger or more off putting film in 2012 than David Cronenberg's return to the weird; it makes Holy Motors look accessible by comparison. Don't let the inclusion of R-Pat deter you, the movie will probably do that on it's own, at times it feels like it's being weird for the sake of weird and it mostly works in its favor. Cronenberg delivers a slavish effort to the source material by Don Delillo, you will see a giant rat, numerous conversations about capitalism and the economy, people delivering monologues in a robotic manner, a prostrate exam and Pattison getting pied in the face. While you may not agree or understand everything that's going on, the movie is an excellent reminder that sometimes we just need to be perplexed every now and then.

12. Beasts of the Southern Wild -  This is probably the most obvious choice on the list but it is one that was difficult to decide on. The movie is less about wonder and imagination than it is about harsh reality. Director Behn Zeitlin invokes the same imagery used in David Gordon Green's earlier southern gothic films. Beasts is a like a cross between the despairing Gummo and something from Terry Gilliam. The little moments of wonder will floor you and keep you with the film while at the center of it all is the rambunctious Quvenzhané Wallis who holds the film's emotional core not just because she's a small child but because she delivers an incredible and tear-inducing performance.

11. Compliance - Compliance is uncomfortable, extremely uncomfortable. It has all the tension and mood of a thriller and a horror film. Is it one? Who knows? What makes it special is how the majority of the film takes place in the stockroom of a lowly fast-food restaurant but manages to not make it feel like a gimmick or a stage-play. It's a small film but it's impact will stay with you for days.

10. Brave - Brave is more than a worthy effort in the long run of Pixar classics. The film works best when it gets near it's second half focusing on the relationship between Merida and her mother giving us an ulitmately positive message about parental concerns, choice, freedom and of course what it means to be brave. Some may take issue with the small scale and less than epic feel of the film but Brave is a personal story and when it gets away from the subplots and focuses on the heart of the story we're with it. It suggests a much bigger and magical world and I can only hope Pixar plans to return to it to show us more of Merida and where her adventures take her.

9. Skyfall - Skyfall is a strange film. It is a progressive, modern and stalemated examination of Bond in the current world but manages to do all this while also be campy and fun and everything a solid Bond movie should be. The movie revels and pays tribute to everything we love about Bond while critiquing at the same time. Bond gets his trademark Aston Martin but it is subsequent blown to pieces, the villain has a huge hideaway island but it's deserted and empty. It's sort of slow-moving and actionless before it gets to an incredible final hour once Javier Bardem's over-the-top Raoul Silva enters the picture. Bardem's villian runs away with film and turns a mostly good film into a memorable and iconic one.

8. Paranorman - After the terrible and pandering 9 I wasn't terribly excited for a new animated film from Focus Features. 9 was a dull style over substance exercise squarely made for the Hot Topic crowd and Paranorman unfortunately looked liked more of the same. To a pleasant surprise Paranorman is pretty great and it's criminally unfair the movie will be seen like it is riding the zombie-wave three years too late. It's not that at all, what you get is a warm and funny that puts on a welcomed spin on zombie tropes while being a legitimately fun tribute to horror films.

7. Killing them Softly - Andrew Dominick's follow-up to his 2007 masterpiece The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a completely different beast entirely. It is an angry and confrontational film that is blunt and as subtle as a sledgehammer. It works as an anti-gangster picture which portrays the criminals as desperate, petty and pathetic refusing to romanticize them in anyway, there is a mean and cynical streak running through the film that wants to shake audience out of their bored slumber and total desensitization toward violence. The performances and the writing are all top notch, with Pitt, Gandolfini, and Scoot McNairy delivering some career-best work. When the movie hits, it hits hard, the violence and cruelty are all impactful, it ain't pretty and you won't feel good about yourself afterward but we should all be damn glad this kind of movie was released.

6. Detention - Joseph Kahn's second film is an exhilarating wonder. Another critic described it as an episode of Community directed by Edgar Wright, it is a balls out, bug nuts film that never stops, it just gets crazier and crazier. A movie like this feels one of kind. There really isn't anything like it and succeeds in its kinetic style, it feels like Kahn pulls off what the Wachoski's have been trying to do with editing since Speed Racer, it's a movie that moves and pushes editing toward to the future, this is the kind of movie that should be influencing future filmmakers. In the least insulting way, Detention is the perfect movie about the internet generation made for them, it's ambitious, insane, and ridiculously entertaining.

5. Cabin in the Woods - Cabin is the kick in the ass horror and genre films needed. Director Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon have literally pressed the nuke button on every tired trope and unscary icon. It never feels  overly clever for it's own sake and it never gets bogged down in its own hyper meta-commentary. Cabin in the Woods just works and rewards viewers and horror fans with one of the best third acts in recent memory, one that leaves you exhilarated and the hope that from here on, nothing will be the same.

4. Kill List - Disturbing, unsettling, and nerve-wracking, if Cabin was the best movie about horror movies in 2012, Kill List is without a doubt the best horror film of 2012. The movie isn't really scary but it isn't about that, it's not out to scare you, it's there to make you deeply and horribly uncomfortable, things get weirder, stranger and more dangerous as it goes along. There is a pabable sense of dread that builds and builds until you can't take it anymore just as it reaches its shocking conclusion. If there's any movie on this list you should watch (but really you should watch all of them) , make it this piece of downright mindfuckery.

3. Chronicle - Chronicle is the best superhero film of 2012. There is a scene in the middle of the film when the three teenage leads discover they can fly, it's a moment that is filled with awe, wonder and pure joy. It's a scene that feels totally big and cinematic and inspiring, Chronicle does more in one scene for superheroes than either of those two other movies. And don't let the stupid aesthetic distract, Chronicle is well-shot and doesn't succumb to shakey-cam, while it doesn't do much for the "found-footage" genre it does make it actually watchable. The previews made this look like "Project X or Jackass with superpowers" but what you'll see is a well-written character-driven story where you care about what happens instead of just thinking about how cool everything looks.

2. Detachment - While Detachment made the festival circuit in 2011, it wasn't released in theaters until February 2012 and even then it was only on limited screens, it finally reached dvd in September of last year. With that factoid out of the way, Tony Kaye's second film after almost 14 years is despairing and hopeless. It's the kind of movie that'll make you angry, frustrated, and depressed but it's worth it. Detachment is leagues better than Kaye's first film, American History X, while he still has characters deliver obvious grand-standing monologues, there is graceful lack controversy for controversy's sake. It is a begrudgingly human film that isn't filled with the same over-bearing shock tactics and abrasiveness of his first.  He takes on public education in way that doesn't feel like you're being spoon-fed any kind of message, you won't feel insulted, this is not a movie about a heroic teacher who helps inner-city kids with school problems, this is a movie that's much closer to how complicated, depressing and fruitless everything is.

1. The Master - Invigorating. The Master is an incredible reminder of bravura filmmaking, it's confident and big and feels major. It strikes a weird balance between being focused and ambiguous  it's a "small" character study while also being a biopic of a major religious figure while also being a study of cults and fanaticism. Paul Thomas Anderson juggles all these things while doing his damn best to emulate Kubrick and Malick. The film isn't as iconic or flashy as There Will Be Blood, but it doesn't need to be. Phoenix and Hoffman deliver enthralling intense performances that captivate you all the way through. Shot on 70mm, scenes taking place in living rooms, and church meeting halls feel just as epic as anything in The Hobbit. The film can almost be summed up in the scene in which Freddie rides a motorcycle across a barren desert, it's a scene that is oddly tense, unsettlingly and utterly transfixing in a way that only a rare few movies ever reach.

Jack Reacher is safe, dull and disappointing.

Jai Courtney and Tom Cruise ready to thrown down in Reacher

Jack Reacher is boring but that doesn't mean it's terrible or bad; it is just achingly by the numbers. As Tom Cruise's comeback movie it is barely serviceable, essentially the film feels like you're watching the Cruise version of The Da Vinci Code, an airport mystery novel brought to life in the blandest way possible. As an action movie, Jack Reacher moves too slowly, plodding along as we wait for the lead character to catch up, so by the time the final shootout comes it feels too little too late. As a mystery it's terrible, just your average episode of CSI brought to movie length; if anything that makes it feel like Reacher is the most expensive TV movie ever. Jack Reacher is without a doubt the best version of Jesse Stone we're going to get for quite some time.

A much more accurate poster of Jack Reacher

The plot is straight-forward: a former sniper is accused of murdering citizens in broad daylight, when he's put in custody he tells the police to get Jack Reacher. As we're told Jack Reacher has got a history of military badassery, we expect he's going to come in, fuck shit up and set things right. Well, he does and he doesn't; he spends most of the movie telling people how stupid they are and how they are not as awesome as he is, while he stumbles from clue to clue not because he wants to but because people keep bothering him.

The movie doesn't need to be amazing or thrilling or reach for bigger themes to be entertaining, but as a straight-forward thriller it's barely functional. The fact that the movie aims so low as to just barely make it over the bar feels utterly annoying and frustrating. This is even more shocking when considering this franchise starter is directed by the smart and talented Christopher McQuarrie--seriously, just listen to his stories on the Kevin Pollack show, or his experience on writing Valkyrie (another collaboration between McQuarrie and Cruise from 2008, although McQuarrie just wrote that one.) This is McQuarrie's return to directing after a twelve year hiatus when he delivered his first film, the under-appreciated, Sam Peckinpah-homage The Way of the Gun. The film was violent and shocking and cynical in all the right ways while featuring an incredible third act shootout. Jack Reacher by comparison looks like it could've been made by anyone. The only piece of dialogue that sounds like McQuarrie is when Reacher threatens to drink Jai Courtney's character's blood from a boot (spoilers: he doesn't even follow up on that promise). There's nothing wrong with a movie that's unambitious, straight-forward or lean but the problem is the movie is just plain damn uninteresting.

Seriously the movie is worth rental for some Herzog greatness.

There are a few bright spots in the movie. One scene has Rosamund Pike's character recount the last hours of each of the victims, which is different and effective. The other highlight is the perfectly underused Werner Herzog as the big heavy, known only as "The Zec."  Herzog, who shows up one-eyed and two-fingered, does his best to suitably chew all the scenery he can in his few memorable moments. What's great is that when you view the movie you'll see that Herzog doesn't really do anything other than sit and stand around,  while looking totally scary or like plotting something really evil. However, despite his total lack of action, Herzog manages to command your attention and convince you of his evil backstory, a testament to his talent and awesome accent.

Jack Reacher just caps the year off in functional blandness, working it's biggest crime is being boring and unengaging. The film aims too low to not work for what it's doing. It's not great, it's not good, it's not bad, it's just okay but sometimes that's not enough and coming from the man who made something as exciting as The Way of the Gun , Reacher just doesn't reach hard enough.