The Death of Mainstreamin

In case you haven't noticed, it's been a few months since I've written anything here.  For that I am sorry.

You see, I was asked to be the 'movie guy' over at DrunkMonkeys and I jumped so fast at the opportunity that I didn't even leave a goodbye note on your pillow. 

Yes, I am still doing film reviews.  But no, I am no longer posting them here.  I may revive the site sometime in the future but right now all my efforts are split between giving Drunk Monkeys them the highest quality writings I can provide and working to revive my poor, totally abandoned site Planned Random.  

I'm not done reviewing film.  Far from it.  This year I've set the goal ridiculously high for myself in terms of quality and content.  But I really want to reinvigorate the part of me that still longs to write other stuff.  So I'm going to be fair to myself and my benevolent overlords over at Drunk Monkeys.  

If you're still interested in my film opinions, please check out all the awesome stuff I've already done over at their site (especially if you like horror!  I did thousands of words on horror from the 1920's to now).  Then please stick around and find out what I've got in store for you this year.  (Oh yeah, and they also have awesome other stuff, but you won't need me to tell you about it.  Just a few minutes browsing their site will sell you on it.)

As for all my non-film related material, it's going to Planned Random.  Fiction, horror, non-fiction and opinion pieces will adorn its shiny surface.  I'm going to use it both as a place to ramble on as well as a way to polish myself in 2014 and hopefully beyond.  I would love your support at both places as well as your opinions.  

Thanks again for being so amazingly supportive of Mainstreamin'.  It was a pleasure.

Pacific Rim

            It's going to be difficult writing this review without sounding like I'm gushing.  But whatever, screw it.  It's about time I loved a summer popcorn flick that didn't have the Marvel name attached to it.

            On to the review!

            This weekend I found a very excellent reason to not see GrownUps 2.  That reason is that I don't hate myself.  Instead, I went to check out Pacific Rim for 3 reasons.  First off, I'm a big fan of Guillermo del Toro.  Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth were both great movies (for totally different reasons).  Secondly, it looked like an action movie that was actually fun.  Thirdly, giant freaking robots. 

            I love giant robots.  Which is weird, because I'm really picky about which anime I watch that involves giant robots.  Both Gundam Wing and Evangelion bored me to death and Rahxephon never kept me interested enough to actually finish it.  But stuff like Tekken Toppa Gurren Lagann and even the recent Suisei no Gargantia entertained me to no end.  (Fun fact, Gurren Lagann is both my 3rd favorite anime of all time and the cause of the biggest fight I've ever had with a loved one in my life.)

            Aaaaaanyways, Pacific Rim has giant robots beating up aliens, and it was directed by Guillermo del Toro, and it's an action flick.  I wanted to be there on opening day, and I was.

            The movie starts off with a run-down of what happened to get the planet to its current state.  It starts in 2020 and picks up several years later.  Fortunately, even the prologue is action-packed enough to keep just about anyone interested even while cramming information down the audience's throats.  We need to find out what's up with the aliens (Kaiju) and get some clues as to where they came from.  This spins us up on why the robots (Jaegers) were built.  It also gives us some clues as to the main character's mindsets and attitudes.

            Interestingly, there's a lot going on for a simple action flick.  There's the main character's quest for control and redemption.  There's also the grizzled old warrior, a hotshot kid, a mysterious lady, the experienced soldier, and even two scientists looking for answers.  Yet somehow Pacific Rim merges all these characters and storylines together into a cohesive unit and an entertaining story.  Yes, it is totally a summer blockbuster bubblegum flick, but it's one with half a brain.

            At 131 minutes, it could have been just as dreary and boring as The Lone Ranger, but del Toro did what Gore Verbinski could not: he paced everything out properly.  There are no 20 minute dialogs.  There are no yawn-inducing moments or shitty characters.  Basically, there is no wasted space.

            While I could easily go on about every character in the film and how entertaining they all were in their own right, I just want to briefly mention a few of them.  Charlie Hunnam was fine as Raleigh Becket, our main character and voiceover guy.  Yes, he was wooden.  I can't deny that.  But he almost seemed like a cipher placed there to keep the story moving.  But yes, he was genuinely overshadowed both in acting and story.  Idris Elba (as Stacker Pentacost) was the perfectly cast, perfectly played old commander, and Rinko Kikuchi was just fantastic as Mako Mori, the mysterious girl with a hidden past. 

            While I enjoyed everyone else, I really have to say that Charlie Day was the heart of this film.  As Dr. Newton, he tries to figure out why the Kaiju are attacking, while everyone else focuses on how to destroy the threat.  During his travels within the film, he ends up delivering a large chunk of the humor as well as a few memorable lines.  I gotta hand it to the guy, he's definitely becoming a singular reason to check out a film.

            So, before I spoil any of the plot, let me just say that I enjoyed Pacific Rim very, very much.  It is now the very first film of 2013 that I intend to purchase when it comes to video.  It is also the first summer film of the year that I highly recommend seeing in theaters, because the special effects are way too great to see them for the first time on a tiny TV set.

            This is no Independence Day.  Pacific Rim purposefully avoids nationality and becomes a "Humanity, fuck yeah!" celebration.

            Also, apparently you should stay for the credits.  I didn't, but then I heard that you should.  Guess I'll just have to go see it again.

The Master

             I viewed The Master on Saturday in an effort to have a nice 'movie-swap' last week; the new film review went up on Wednesday so why not put up an 'older' film on Sunday?  Because Paul Thomas Anderson makes things difficult, that's why.  I absolutely adore his films.  I really do.  There Will Be Blood, Punch Drunk Love and Boogie Nights are some of my favorite films.  But holy shit can this man create an unreviewable film.

            On to the (un)review(able)!

            So, it is 1950, WWII is pretty much over, and Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is having a hell of a time fitting in.  He’s got anger issues, some serious PTSD and one hell of a drinking problem.  He can’t keep a job, he can’t keep his hand out of his pants, and all he is actually good at is making drinkable alcohol out of things that should not be turned into alcohol.

            One day he sneaks onto a small ship looking for work, the next morning he wakes up and discovers that he’s piqued the interest of the ship’s ‘captain’, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman).  Lancaster, you see, is an all-around genius.  Ph. D., M.D., nuclear physicist, writer, thinker, poet, philosopher.  He’s kind of a big deal.

            Oh, did I forget to mention he’s also the leader of a new ‘religion’ ‘cult’ ‘group of self-discovery’?  Because he is.  He also has a wonderful family that fully believes in him as well as followers throughout the United States and beyond.  They really, truly believe in what he has to say.

            Aaaaaand…that’s it.  Freddie really likes Lancaster and honestly believes in him, and he truly believes that he can become a better person by following the ‘Master.’  But all of this is interspersed with, well, everything else.  Even though the story is fairly linear, it more-or-less only follows Freddie, so we’re constantly jumping from one location to the next, often missing days or weeks during which we have no idea what happened aside from what the characters allude to. 

            The Master isn’t a bad movie.  Far from it, it was one of the most painfully earnest films I’ve ever seen.  Amy Adams, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix all deliver amazing performances, and even the ‘smaller’ parts are perfectly played by their actors.  It’s just that this is an incredibly open movie, and that makes it difficult to digest.  There isn’t so much an ending as an end, just as there’s no set climax or even a real beginning.  It’s as if someone simply filmed a year in the life of Freddie, edited it half-assedly and called it a film.

            While I thoroughly enjoyed The Master (although the first 30 minutes or so are really difficult to stomach due to just how bleak they make Freddie’s life out to be), it’s not a movie I would recommend to anyone who wasn’t interested in ‘challenging’ movies or art house fare.

The Lone Ranger

            Hey, Disney!  You know, you do a lot of good stuff.  You really do.  I like a lot of the films that you help to get onto the silver screen.  But it just doesn't look like you're cut out for summer blockbusters.  Maybe you should take a year off and really concentrate on getting the next Star Wars film done properly.  Because this is your second year in a row with a potential flop on your hands.  At least JohnCarter was a decent film, you guys just didn't know how to advertise it properly.  But The Lone Ranger?  Yeah, you really screwed the pooch on this one.

            On to the review!

            The nicest thing I can say about The Lone Ranger is that it never runs out of ideas.  Too bad most of those ideas are terrible.  Clocking in at 149 minutes, it's about 60 minutes too long and half as clever as it thinks it is.

            For the updated Lone Ranger mythos, lawyer John Reid (Armie Hammer) joins his brother Dan (James Badge Dale) on a manhunt to recapture wicked criminal and possible cannibal Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner).  Things go poorly, some mystical stuff happens and he ends up as a masked outlaw/hero, accompanied by the mysterious Tonto (Johnny Depp), a Native American who also wants to see Butch brought to justice.

            Oh yeah, and before all that happens, there's a lot of stuff on a train.  Not to be confused with the later part of the film where there's a lot of stuff on a train.  There are also several shoot-outs, some genuinely clever action sequences, bits of humor scattered throughout and a supporting cast that, on paper, should add depth and entertainment to the movie.

            Sadly enough, the only thing all this stuff added was bloat.  The Lone Ranger tries so hard to be the first film in a franchise that it absolutely stuffs every single idea into itself.  Who is his love interest?  What's Tonto's background?  Why did John become the Lone Ranger?  What does he stand for?  Why the mask?  Who farted?

            Yes, there are a few funny scenes and stabs at running jokes (the mask becomes a conversation point one too many times).  But if your best actor ends up being a horse, you've done something wrong.

            Just half a page in and I'm already sick of talking about it.  I saw the movie an hour ago and it's already begun to slip from my mind.  Gore Verbinski needs to calm the hell down.  Rango was awesome!  Why'd you remake it into a shitty wannabe-comedy-western?

            Though the Johnny Depp drawing power will most likely skyrocket The Lone Ranger to the top of the charts this weekend, you would be better entertained by hunting down My Name Is Nobody on Netflix.  Now THAT is a fun, funny, entertaining western.  It's also under 2 hours long.

White House Down

            I'm getting really sick of your shit, Roland Emmerich.  Your characters, your plots, even your scripts are so formulaic.  Plus, who would have thought that you could come up with something even more ridiculous than 2012?  What really pisses me off the most is how much fun White HouseDown turned out to be.

            On to the review!

            If you didn't know, White House Down is this year's second film about the president being in mortal danger thanks to terrorists.  After having to see Olympus Has Fallen I had little hopes that this would be any better.  Looks like I'm eating crow tonight.

            White House Down stars Channing Tatum as Cale, an ex-military man who desperately wants to work for the Secret Service; not only as a career jump but as a way to impress his daughter Emily (Joey King).  Unfortunately his interview doesn't go so well and the lady in charge, Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal) lets him know that there's absolutely no way they can trust him to protect President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx).

            Even worse, while Cale and Emily are touring the White House, terrorists decide it would be a great time to start some shit.  Eventually, it's just Cale and the President.  Cale is torn between the need to save his daughter and the other hostages while also knowing that he has to get the President to safety.

            Now, I really have to give some respect to the trailers that I've seen as they actually don't spoil the plot.  There are a ton of awesome actors in this film like James Woods, Jason Clarke, Lance Reddick and Richard Jenkins but I'm not going to say shit about what side any of them are on. 

            As for the actors, I have to give credit where credit is due.  Jamie Foxx is genuinely entertaining as the President, and his soft-spoken style benefits the film.  He's pretty much the only person who isn't yelling, and that's a nice thing.  While I still feel that Channing Tatum is at his best in comedic action roles (21 Jump Street) he actually does a great job here.  While he does occasionally fall back into super-serious mode, his character is just wisecrack-y enough to stay on the right side of entertaining.  There are a few genuinely funny moments in White House Down and that right there is why I liked it.  Olympus Has Fallen was terrible partially because it took itself too seriously.  There's none of that here.

            If you're going to watch one movie this year that involves the White House and explosions, I highly recommend this one.  I mean, it's no Die Hard, but it actually comes closer than any film in years of straddling action, entertainment and humor.

Netflix'd: In A Glass Cage

            Well, it’s certainly been a while since I’ve been so bothered by a film that I had to pause for breaks at regular intervals.  Fortunately In A Glass Cage was there to rectify this situation.

            On to the review!

            In A Glass Cage is a Spanish film about…well, it’s about suffering, really.  Years after WWII, Dr. Klaus (Gunter Meisner)  is in hiding from his Nazi past.  Himself, his wife Griselda (Marisa Paredes) and his daughter Rena (Gisele Echevarria) live a very isolated life within a Spanish villa.  Their only visitor is the maid and she only comes three times a week.

            Well, Klaus, for whatever reason, decides to step off the roof of his villa in an apparent suicide attempt.  This doesn’t go so well because he’s still alive.  But now he's paralyzed and stuck inside an iron lung.  Griselda was already miserable before this so now she insists that a nurse be hired to take care of Klaus so that she can concentrate on raising Rena. 

            Enter Angelo (David Sust): a young, handsome local boy who manages to convince Klaus that it would be in his best interest to hire the boy on.  While Griselda does not agree, Rena seems to like having someone in the house closer to her age and Klaus is insistent.  Unfortunately Angelo is kind of the opposite of a nurse.  You see, he wants to be just like Klaus.  Klaus, the pedophile Nazi who raped, tortured and murdered children.

            Yeah, see why this movie made me uncomfortable?  It is a 108 minute festival of discomfort.  It never outright terrifies like a slasher flick or a ‘true’ horror film does.  What it accomplishes is a slow burn of discomfort.  The kind where you find yourself shifting in your seat, wondering if there’s something that needs done in the kitchen just so you can get away.  It may not be A Serbian Film but I definitely put In A Glass Cage up there with Happiness in terms of subject matter and general depressive atmosphere. 

            So check it out if you want to see a challenging film.  I mean, any movie in which the pedophile Nazi becomes the sympathetic character is a terribly disturbing one.

World War Z (in 2D)

            Let's get this out of the way:  I am a huge fan of zombies.  I love zombie movies, games and books.  However, I like to think of myself as a discerning fan.  Sure, I'll play/watch/read damn near anything with the undead in it, but I have standards damn it.  I only want the best of the best of the undead menace.

            So when I heard that World War Z was being made into a film I got pretty excited.  I fully believe that this book was responsible for helping kick-start the latest zombie craze.  Despite being one of the first 21st century zombie books, it's still one of the best.  The audio-book version is simply the best audio-book ever recorded thanks to amazing talents such as Mark Hammil, Nathan Fillion, Carl Reiner, Simon Pegg, Alan Alda, Martin Scorsese, Henry Rollins, Kal Penn, John Turturro, a million other fantastic individuals and Max Brooks himself all lending the perfect voice to their proscribed characters.

            It was, then, with very high hopes that I eagerly awaited the film version of World War Z in which Brad Pitt himself was going to make sure it happened.  But oh, how was a book of short stories that happened to overlap and tell the tale of mankind's struggle against the undead going to work on the silver screen?  Easy!  By dumping the entire concept, writing a completely new character and just keeping the name of the book!  Shit.

            On to the review!

            Like I said, I'm a fan of zombies.  28 Days Later, Fido, Sean of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead all take a look at the sociological, psychological and physical reactions of mankind when faced with nigh-unkillable, slavering versions of ourselves.  But at their heart, all of these films focus on individuals simply seeking ways to stay alive (or in Fido's case, live together in harmony).  World War Z attempts to give us a super-hero in Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) and make him the savior of mankind. 

            Strangely enough, the first half hour of the film is just freaking amazing.  As the outbreak begins to spread, Gerry and his family are just living a normal life.  With his wife Karin (Mireille Enos) and two daughters Constance (Sterling Jerins) and Rachel (Abigail Hargrove), they're perfectly ordinary individuals who happened to be stuck in Philadelphia traffic when the zombie menace breaks out.  This first portion of the film focuses solely on how Gerry tries to protect his family. Getting medicine, finding somewhere safe to hide, figuring out who to trust.  This is the stuff that matters and its small-scale is perfectly suited to the actors and the story. 

            Unfortunately for us, things take a turn once Gerry and family are rescued by his friend Thierry Umutoni (Fana Mokoena) who just happens to have a lot of pull and gets Gerry's entire family safely bunked on a U.S. warship.  Oh, did I forget to mention that Gerry is a retired World Health Organization official who was the 'best of the best' despite us never really knowing what the hell he did for the W.H.O.?

            In order for Gerry's wife and kids to stay on the ship, he has to help figure out the location of the outbreak as well as help to find a cure.  With that, he is sent off with a small squad of military specialists and a brilliant doctor.  Their job?  Save the world!

            Of course shit goes down and people start to die left-and-right, but for some reason Gerry gets to just stand there like a smug douche and be nigh-untouchable, even in the most dire situations.

            Look, the locations are amazing, the special effects are not quite as shitty as they appeared to be in the trailers, and the acting from everyone who is not Brad Pitt is actually quite good.  They even tried to throw in a few facts from the books to placate those of us who actually wanted an adaptation of the novel.  What they didn't bother with, however, was making the movie any fun.  Brad Pitt stone faces his way through the entire movie, and the ending is never in any doubt.  It's not a zombie movie.  It's an action-packed outbreak movie (like Outbreak!) that focuses on a team of super-special individuals trying to save the world from a deadly, tiny menace.

            I was surprised by the beginning and really got into it, and then the rest of the film fell flat, got stupid, and hurt my feelings.  Sadly enough I may be in the minority as the theater was absolutely packed at the noon showing I attended. People actually gave it a standing ovation while the end credits rolled!  So give it a try.  Maybe you'll like it.  I, however, would rather watch 28 Days Later again.  At least the zombies in that movie didn't create fleshy tidal waves.