Transformers 2 (I can't bear to give this movie the honor of a colon in its title) was eviscerated last week by longtime movie critic Roger Ebert, which isn't terribly shocking, but it's still a funny and catty read. So much so that I suddenly got excited to see a good bad-movie. And oh, did it deliver.
The primary culprits of this film's ruin are the excessive length and convoluted story, but then again, Transformers 2 is not what you pick if you want proper plot development; it's what you pick when you want to watch lots of explosions and cool robots performing classic kung-fu kills on each other (a Decepticon's spine gets ripped out! Optimus Prime decapitates with flourish!). In other words, Transformers 2 is like porn. You can't help but watch the plot scenes in-between because you want to witness exactly how bad the acting will be, and how preposterous of a situation will be created to inspire sex. In some ways, its an added pleasure to the experience. But just like a two-and-a-half hour porn movie would eventually get tedious and repetitive to watch, so does this epic battle between strange robots from space and some annoying college kid who whines about being the chosen one (Shia LaDouche, as I started calling him) and some girl that everyone is hot for, but I mostly ignored their attempts at romantic scenes. Rainn Wilson has a brief funny cameo, sporting five day scruff and showing how sexy tweed sport coats can be.
If you still have a soft spot for disaster movies and films in general that go boom, this movie might appeal to that inner fanboy or girl. For the rest, this movie might just make you feel old.
Whatever Works, Woody Allen’s newest homage to aging, neurotic Jewish men, falls back on some pretty worn-out clichés. Which is a pity, given that Allen recruited kvetch-on-high Larry David to play the lead, Boris Yellnikoff. As a crotchety, death-obsessed jerk, Boris is taken for a ride when pretty young country gal Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood) stumbles her way into to his quintessentially pessimistic world. Naïve, Southern, and well, dumb, Melodie falls in love with Boris and the exoticism of his biting sarcasm and wit. Unfortunately for Boris, Melodie’s loony, backwater family (played by Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr.) begins to arrive, culture shocked and verse spitting as to be expected. But New York will make born-again Bohemians of these country mice soon enough. It’s like one big caricatured Manhattan boot camp for the sexually and culturally repressed.
I’ll give credit where it’s due -- I was genuinely surprised that Woody Allen didn’t cast himself to sleep with someone a third his age. But I wasn’t surprised, or really entertained, by the yin-and-yang treatment he gives his one-dimensional characters. Allen’s own brand of biting sarcasm and wit definitely brings some cackles. But the whole narrative seems like a predictable cop-out. Maybe it would be wise to wait nine months for Allen’s next inevitable release.
When a shirtless Ryan Reynolds on the cover of this week's Entertainment Weekly greeted me in my mailbox yesterday, I wiped the drool and began thinking of the actor starring in this year's X-Men Origins: Wolverine as the assassin, Deadpool. Even more exciting, it was recently announced that Mr. Reynolds would be playing the lead in the Deadpool spin-off film franchise. In the EW article the actor talks about his love for the character and how he wants to do him justice by staying true to the source material in the upcoming film. With shirtless scenes (hopefully) already being storyboarded, I thought it would be wise to brush up on the history of Deadpool while waiting to see Mr. ScarJo in action.
With a name like Deadpool, you might think it'd be hard for the guy to be likable or friendly, but Deadpool is actually almost like X-Men's Spider-Man. Wade Wilson (Deadpool's real name) is a wise-cracking, pop culture junkie who regularly breaks the fourth wall and pokes fun at the absurdity of comic book superheroes in general. Marvel Comics was smart: they could've made the lethal mercenary a cold blooded, run of the mill mutant (a la Cable), but instead they went the lighter route and he became an instant fan favorite. Wade was an early test subject of the Weapon X program, where he met Wolverine, but the genetic process he underwent failed and he was left horribly disfigured (hence the face mask -- hopefully this will not happen with Ryan), but with the same healing factor that Wolverine possesses (in fact he's died three times in the comics) and the ability to absorb others' powers.
Since being introduced in 1991, Deadpool has starred in two of his own titles, both of which ran for a number of years, and a new title, Deadpool: Merc With a Mouth is set to debut in July. Though he is little known to the general public, Deadpool has a large fan base in the comics community, and with Ryan Reynolds playing the mercenary in Wolverine, and also spearheading the Deadpool franchise, it looks like 2009 could finally be the year that Deadpool gets his due.
The trailer for the documentary anticipated by fashionistas everywhere has finally leaked.The September Issue, dubbed by critics as a sort of real-life The Devil Wears Prada, follows Vogue head honcho Anna Wintour and her staff as they create the magazine’s largest issue ever. A official selection for both Cannes and Sundance, the doc opens in theaters August 28, 2009. Gird your loins!
Remakes, revisions, and do-overs are all the rage in Hollywood these days, and I've been doing some thinking. Forget Fame, Heathers, and Ghostbusters III. What the world really needs is Showgirls 2.0. But, like, toned down a bit for the pre-teens. Oh, and with the gay cranked waaay up.
Well, God exists and he must be a queen because he has bestowed upon us ... Burlesque. Variety reports that Steven Antin (Goonies actor and gay brother of Pussycat Doll–master Robin) will direct this musical cinema tour de force, which begins production in November. Set not in the seedy strip clubs of Las Vegas but in a neo-burlesque joint on Sunset Boulevard, it swaps out Elizabeth Berkeley for Christina Aguilera as a midwestern girl with big, overblown vocal dreams and Gina Gershon for Cher(!) as an aging dancer with the (good? evil?) power to make them come true. It's Cher's first movie role since 1999's Tea with Mussolini, and yes, she will be singing too. Presumably the plot hinges less on troublesome themes like the nutritional value of dog food and soul-prostitution, but that remains to be seen.
Last week, the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Chicago premiered Year One at the Music Box Theatre, complete with a miniature red carpet rolled out for director Harold Ramis who was receiving a lifetime achievement award for this work as an actor, writer, and director of comedy. The audience was filled with fans who cheered generously during the introductory montage film, and Ramis himself accepted it quite graciously, humbled by the hometown love, which was nice to see. So with a soft spot for Jack Black, Michael Cera, and Egon from Ghostbusters, I went into Year One with a very generous heart. Here is the preview:
The trailer could also be a short film called "The Funniest Parts of Year One." And that trailer is not that funny. It is, at least, not offensive, as it doesn't show us any of the horrible scenes with Oliver Platt, playing an effeminate, evil gay High Priest of -- wait for it -- Sodom, drenched in gaudy gold fabric and blue eyeshadow -- blue eyeshadow!! That is the most egregiously hateful characterization -- none of us who DO wear makeup would ever make such gauche choices. And then it gets worse when the gag is him sexually harassing Michael Cera by forcing him to rub oil on his prosthetically hairy chest. Ugh. The Hangover was offensive in many parts too, but at least it was occasionally funny. The best part of Year One is that it reminds you how good Monty Python or even Mel Brooks can be. Skip this movie, take Ramis's award back, and if you see Oliver Platt on the street, shoot him a very dirty look.
Moon, Duncan Jones’ (David Bowie’s son) directorial debut, is peculiarly innovative because, while grounded in modern day pragmatism, it’s sprinkled heavily with a dusting of sci-fi clichés. Set in the close-enough future, the thriller follows Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), an astronaut nearing the end of his three-year contract with Lunar Industries, the leading supplier of a moon-based natural element that has miraculously rid the Earth of its energy crisis. Space, in this sense, is no longer made a place of exploration, but rather a demystified resource, ripe for the mining.
Sam’s only friend abroad the space station is a talking, emoticon-flashing computer named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), who is given an unrealistically flexible set of moral characteristics. Aside from GERTY’s endearing, somewhat tongue-in-cheek relationship with Sam, the only real inter-personal communication Sam receives comes in the form of recorded videos from his wife and child on Earth.
The madness -- I can't think of any other word to use -- going on in Iran is difficult for me to even begin to wrap my head around. With such a complex situation made even more opaque by a lack (or blatant manipulation) of information about what's happening, we're forced to watch (or read twitters) and wait for the smoke to clear.
Be Like Others, a new documentary about young Iranian men who are choosing to undergo sex reassignment surgery airing on HBO on June 24, highlights one of the issues at the center of the storm happening right now in Iraq: attempting to live free lives under strict Islamic rule. Unlike homosexuality, which is punishable by death in Iran (read Out's feature story on Iranian gays who have fled to Turkey and Canada), being transgender became legal over twenty years ago when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (religious edict) making sex change permissible for "diagnosed transsexuals."
Iranian-American filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian follows several young men as they seek out help from the country's most prestigious reassignment surgeon, Dr. Bahram Mir Jalali and are counseled by 24-year-old Vida, a post-op woman who claims to be "reborn." The film shows the men as they prepare to undergo their transformations, as well as the aftermath of their decisions. In what is being called an "intimate" and "unflinching" look at life on the edges of -- and trying to fit into -- a unwelcoming society, Be Like Others could not be more timely.
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