The Brewhaha on..."Bleach Movie 4: Hell Chapter"

Yamamoto:  "It's all your fault, boy.  Because of you, the world will soon become hell."

Ichigo:  "Oh, I'm sorry.  I had no idea it was my fault.  I guess I shouldn't have asked the bad guys to BEAT ME UP, KIDNAP MY SISTER, AND TAKE HER TO HELL!!!"

-The heroes of our story...

"Alright this movie was AQWESOME ICHIGO KICKED SO MHYCH ASSWHERE ARE THE ESPADA I THOUGHOUT THE ESPADA WOULLD BE IN THIS MOIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111""""
-tHE The typical fan's reaction

"Despite having the most hype of the four movies, it has gotten a mixed response from both Japanese and English-Speaking fans. Unlike the last three, which focused more on Character Development, this one was more action-oriented at the cost of a few jarring instances of Character Derailment."
-The TV Tropes entry on this movie

"Who are these fans and where can I find them?"
-Me, upon reading the TV Tropes entry


"Bleach" is an animal all its own, one of several anime series poised to take Dragon Ball's place as the longest-running shonen series ever.  It's a franchise which has spawned over 450 chapters of material (so far), a 300+ episode anime, a wealth of fans, seven musicals, and four movies, the last of which I plan on reviewing here.

It's also become one of the most controversial subjects as far as fans are concerned.  Drawn and written by "acclaimed" manga artist Tite Kubo, Bleach was first published in 2001, and after a few years it became a breakout hit in Japan, and later here in America.  Since then, it's starting sucking.  Hard.  To sum it up in so many words, Bleach is the heartwarming tale of a teenage delinquent named Ichigo who gains the power of a Shinigami, otherwise known as a "death god."  After a short (twenty episodes is considered "short" in Japan) introductory arc, Ichigo teams up with a five-to-seven man band of likewise superpowered individuals to participate in an escalating series of battles for his friends and the fate of...I dunno.  The world?  The afterlife?  A career in modeling?  Who knows?

Along with Dragon Ball Z, which has already become a household title here in the West, Bleach has been instructive in how an action-driven series can go so horribly wrong.  Fights become an arms race of power levels and special attacks, but as the physical stakes increase, the story itself has suffered.  Bleach has spent nearly half of its published life in the middle of a "war" story against the same antagonists.  Any individual battle between two combatants can take up to several weeks to finish (Bleach is a weekly series), and any one issue of Bleach will consist of reaction shots for ten pages, followed by one or two actual attacks; the sum of all these has been nearly five years of almost no plot development.  The anime itself has suffered, trying to pad out a twenty-minute episode based on twenty pages of reaction shots and characters staring at each other.

Since then, Kubo has spent the past year trying to bring the manga back to basics.  Ichigo has been (mostly) depowered, forced to face a group of relatively street-level antagonists in an effort to regain his powers.  The action takes place in the realm of us mere mortals once more, giving the impression that it's down-to-earth (although enlisting the aid of the other Shinigami may have ultimately rendered this moot).

The sum of these two elements is what makes up the fourth and latest movie, "Jingoku-Hen," or "Hell Chapter"--which tries so halfheartedly to reconcile the basics of the manga with the nonstop battles the series has ultimately become.  It doesn't help that, of all of the movies, it was endlessly hyped and billed as a fiery (pun intended), thrilling action movie, but for all of this it could have actually been a good movie.  Those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive (see "The Dark Knight," "Iron Man," "Goldeneye," etc.).

This blending of Bleach classic and Bleach/Dragonball Z could have been done well, and the juxtaposition of the two could have been much smoother.  The first minute and a half is a sort of action prologue, which shows Ulquiorra and a Hollowed-out Ichigo beating the crap out of each other.  It's smooth, it's brisk, it's well-animated, and it's exciting, something that few of the so-called battles in the series can boast anymore.  It also sets the tone for the movie:  it's going to be dark, it's going to be pitch-black, and you will see Hollow Ichigo before this movie is over...

Then, after the opening, we get Bleach Classic.  It looks like it's lifted wholesale from the first episode.  In fact, a buddy of mine (the same buddy who gave me those Bleach DVD's to begin with) thought it was the first episode ("Aw, not these guys again...").  This isn't a callback, it's blatant self-plagiarism.  That shouldn't even be possible.

The fight scenes are actually pretty good.  I wouldn't call them great, but they allow for a smooth back-and-forth between opponents, and they don't suffer from Kubo's usual trademarks, which usually involve one guy winning ridiculously easily while talking to the other guy about how ridiculously easily he's won (usually by having a stronger aura than the other guy).  Plus, since it's a movie, the fight scenes eventually have to...y'know, end?  It probably helps that the bad guys in this movie are from hell, and are therefore just "different," rather than just being outright stronger or weaker than the other characters.

It's when the action slows down that you start noticing things.  Like the fact that these guys from hell can just pop into our world whenever they want, even though they're supposedly looking for "freedom" from hell.  Or the one scene where Ichigo and Kokuto are traveling down some stairs, and Ichigo falls...somehow, and he tries to get back up, and Kokuto helps him up, and he's all like, "Let's go now, and forget this pointless twenty seconds of film ever happened."

Or the fact that a lot of the scenes in this movie are borrowed wholesale from the main series itself: you have the first scene in the series movie, Ichigo and his family's back-and-forth, and Rukia's "I-stick-the-sword-through-your-head" gambit during her main fight scene.  It's like they knew that this was just going to be a big old dumb action movie, and decided to give us just that while skimping on everything else. 

Nowhere is this more evident than the obligatory "boring talkie-talkie" scene between the hero and his "supervisor."  In the Yamamoto-Ichigo cop routine quoted above, Yamamoto calls out our hero for being a cowboy cop.  This scene is done to death in just about any movie where the hero is a loose cannon cop/FBI agent/U.S. soldier/bakery chef; the idea is that the authority figure is trying to minimize the damage our hero has caused, such as...I dunno, using his signature attack to BLOW OPEN THE HELLGATE AND UNLEASH HELL ITSELF ON THE WORLD!!!

Yamamoto makes a persuasive argument, considering this is the fabric of two worlds we're talking about.  But what he also forgets is that he, and his squadrons of Shinigami in general, can be overly bureaucratic when it comes to enforcing the rules of the Soul Society, and at one point, they tried to kill Ichigo and his friends upon enforcing said rules.  So Ichigo says "That was my sister they kidnapped!  You wanted me to just leave her there?!  She's my family!  You think a Shinigami can just look the other way when one of his own is in trouble?!  Well, I quit!  You can take this badge and shove it...."

Oh, wait, I forgot, Ichigo doesn't say anything.  Because power levels are all that matter in this series, and because Yamamoto has the highest power level in the series (with the possible exception of the main villain), and because Ichigo is all yelled-out from the last scene, and because he's a complete tool.  Why doesn't Ichigo say what we're thinking?  For that matter, if Yamamoto or any of Ichigo's mentors are so tough, why don't they go in there and take care of business?

For those of you who don't follow Bleach, what you need to understand is that Ichigo is one of those angsty, "down-to-earth" heroes who still has enough of that "idiot hero" in him to keep him from thinking things through.  He didn't used to be this bad before his inner Hollow (the...thing at the beginning of the movie) got out of control.  It might be an intentional piece of characterization in the movie; for my fellow Bleach fans out there, consider the "Deicide" arc in the main series, which takes place just after the events in the prologue and where we see him at his lowest point, and where he needs one final bout of training to break him out of his funk (and get his power level over 9000 at last).

A down-to-earth hero isn't a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination.  In the beginning, I think Kubo set out to write Ichigo as a character we could relate to.  But the thing about the shonen genre which Bleach is set in is that it's popularized the idea of an "idiot hero" who doesn't know what he's getting into, but faces it nonetheless.  At its best, any shonen manga or cartoon will give us a sort of "everyman," an audience surrogate who overcomes all obstacles in his path and climbs his way to the top through sheer, dogged determination; the ideal idiot hero will do this because he doesn't know any better.

Kubo tried to give us this.  Unfortunately, he also tried to deconstruct the ideas within the shonen genre, while still cussedly sticking to shonen conventions such as escalating power levels and unbeatable foes.  Halfway through the series, Ichigo's possible love interest Orihime is kidnapped; the bad guys basically did this to get his "attention" and lure him to his death.  Since he's an idiot, he falls for this hook, line, and sinker, rather than actually listening to the otherworldly beings around him, which is admirable, but in this series turns out to be futile.  From that point on, the latter half of the series is devoted to showing us just how much of an idiot Ichigo is, how weak he is against the real bad guys, and how much he just sucks in general.  (Plus, as many fans will tell you, he's doing all of this for some chick.)

At Ichigo's best, we think he's pretty badass, and in this movie I've somehow stopped discussing, he is.  At his worst, though, we wonder why he's the main character at all.  (It seems as though Spider-Man has the same problem.)  Just ask a fan who their favorite character in the series is.  Then ask them who their second favorite is.  Then just keep going like this until you reach around the fifties or sixties or thereabouts.

These problems with the main character aren't quite as prevalent in the movie, but for anyone familiar with the series, there's still a bitter aftertaste.  It doesn't help that the plot of this movie is a rehash of the infamous Hueco Mundo plot, which I've basically just discussed.  For the purposes of the film, though, it helps that the bad guys explicitly tell Ichigo that they need him alive, and they need the power of his Hollow (in the series, this sort of justification for Ichigo's continued existence was an afterthought, even if Orihime was around to heal him). 

In my humble opinion, his power-up at the end of the movie (unless you've seen the trailer, I guess I've spoiled you) actually made more sense than his final power-up in the series.  In the series, he just goes through three or so months of unforeshadowed training, and suddenly he can do it.  In the movie, they go through the trouble of showing you that hell somehow affects his unique biology, causing his Hollow powers to flare up (and if he can absorb spirit particles, why not?).  Both cases are anti-climactic, but in the movie's case, it at least makes sense.

The movie's villains are basically filler villains we'll never see again, which means they range from being cardboard cutouts and/or camp gay (re:  a purple-haired bishonen and a fat guy who attacks you with giant kisses) to fleshed-out, three-dimensional characters (albeit characters who still have to be put down like Old Yeller, eventually).  For all the faults with the movie, they nailed Kokuto.  He's got a cool design, he has great fight scenes, he's well-acted, he's badass, and he's an anti villain without being too sympathetic (anyone who's seen the trailers knows they spoiled the freaking ending).  There's a reason you don't recruit someone from hell to be on your team.

This brings us to hell itself.  Considering Bleach is a series about gods of freaking death, and considering the amount of time they've spent fighting bad guys (for given values of "bad"), hell has never really come up (Hueco Mundo kinda counts, but you can still come and go at will as long as you're not worried about Shinigami exorcising your soul).  Considering Bleach is a series about gods of freaking death, they've always played death fairly straight; it's based on a reincarnation cycle, where all souls go back and forth between our world and Soul Society, with two abberations:  the Hollows (souls who stick around here for a bit too long) and those who wind up in hell, which is what happens when you've done something so bad that the reincarnation cycle won't even touch you. 

The "sinners" inside hell can apparently make brief jaunts to the world of the living, but they have to wear masks or something over their faces, or else the "Hell's Will" drags them back inside.  Their face either has to be covered completely, or...not.  Either they have to do that, or they don't.  The group at the beginning needs their masks, but Kokuto only has his face partially covered.  Why?  (idk lol) 

It's a world of badly-rendered CGI blocks and kaiju are apparently the enforcers of hell (the Hell's Will), but it's still pretty damn scary.  The sick part is that you can die in hell, but you just come back right afterward, so "death" isn't really death in hell.  And this can happen so many times until you eventually just break, and stop bothering to fight (Himura Kenshin's good friend Shishio would be disgusted with these schmucks).  Why all these poor people can't travel to our world like the villains can is beyond me, although that's probably why Kubo withdrew his name from this movie (evidently even he has standards). 

The CGI blocks are on the first level of hell, with a vast ocean and sky in the second level below that, a dark realm with oceans of acid on the third level, and finally Dante's Inferno and/or the Mustafar system from "Revenge of the Sith" on the fourth level, which is where the bad guys are.  The actual sinners mostly stay on the first level of hell (again, with the exception of the bad guys, who are just that cool) and they won't attack you, but Hell's Will...shall attack you, and if you're just visiting hell and you die, you become a sinner and you're trapped in hell, even though you didn't actually...sin at all, hence the misleading name.  So you have to go through all these levels and avoid getting killed and if you press A + X + Y + A + A you can go Bankai for five seconds but if you press that combo + X + O + Z and then bang on your console five times you can stay in Bankai indefinitely and you fight this guy with swords of fire who shoots fire at you but you can Triple Jump and do your Finishing Combo from the third game which you should have loaded using the Jump Pak and finish off fire guy but watch out 'cuz there's a surprise bonus boss and he'll shank you if you're not careful!

So...TL;DR?

Obviously I'm a fan of Bleach, more or less.  It has potential, and some pretty good ideas.  It also has some terrible flaws, namely in its main character, and in its execution of its potential ideas, along with its general idea of what an action series should be.  The Hell Chapter is meant to satisfy fans more than anything, but even in the case of many fans, it begs the questions:  Why is any of this happening?  Why are these characters doing these things?  Why on earth does Ichigo look like a KISS reject?  It's like a lozenge to quell the bitter aftertaste of Bleach in general, but after two hours, you'll still feel it all over again.

It sounds like a cool video game, though.

Note:  The Brewsky kinda quit for...most of the fall.  Also, this page has no backgrounds.  See you in twenty.

The Brewhaha on..."Thor" (2011)

“Oh, no…this is Earth, isn’t it?”
-Thor, who clearly has no love for “Midgard”

“The standards for comic book superhero movies have been established by ‘Superman,’ ‘The Dark Knight,’ ‘Spider-Man 2’ and ‘Iron Man.’ […] Consider even the comparable villains (Lex Luthor, the Joker, Doc Ock and Obadiah Stane). Memories of all four come instantly to mind. Will you be thinking of Loki six minutes after this movie is over?”

-Roger Ebert

“I completely see how Thor could be a really fun character in an Avengers movie. With Downey Man cracking jokes he doesn’t get and feeling competitive with Hulk on strength and Black Widow wanting to get into his armor, he can be a lot of fun. And this film was not painful to watch… but it was no pleasure.”
-David Poland, Movie City News

“Thor, however preposterous, is never quite stupid—which, given the prevailing norms of contemporary action filmmaking, is a notable accomplishment. Hemsworth (an Australian import best know to American audiences for his role as Kirk's doomed dad in Star Trek) brings a dose of wit and charm to the lead role; Hiddleston underplays Loki nicely; and Portman, Skarsgard, Hopkins, and Dennings deliver their customary talents.”
-Christopher Orr, The Atlantic

The underlying premise behind “The Mighty Thor” when he was first created by Stan Lee and his mad geniuses at Marvel was the concept of a Superman-type character, a literal god sent to Earth.  He’s stronger than Iron Man, stronger than the Hulk, and definitely stronger than that wuss who webslings from building to building.  This is the basic appeal of Thor.  That, and the fact that he’s a goddamn Viking.

As noted in my Green Lantern review, though, there are thinkers and there are doers.  The mighty Thor is camped resolutely in the latter, impulsive and all but eager to unleash the full, unrivaled fury of his nigh-titanic hammer Mjolnir on any unwary enough to usurp ownership of the treasured postcards Odin has claimed from his journeys to the lower realms (Pittsburgh, St. Louis, really anywhere but Jersey), much less the kingly barbecue and deep fat fryer set kept in the hallowed halls of Asgard and used only to celebrate those foes, great and endless, vanquished in single combat when the Odinson should decide to “take it outside.”

But when, against the protests of his friends and family, Thor takes it outside one time too many, his father, who has vanquished multitudes of enemies throughout the nine realms and has aged into a wiser and more benevolent king of realms over the passing of the millennia, deems it necessary to strip his mightiest son of the hallowed Mjolnir, revoke his divine status, and banish him to the lower realm of Midgard, or what the mere “mortals” of that realm refer to as “Earth.”

It is at this point, this pivotal first glimpse his new life beyond the halls of Asgard, when the film starts, and it is indeed at this point when Thor, guardian of Asgard, son of Odin, keeper of the hammer Mjolnir, and battle-hardened conqueror of all who should set their unworthy eyes in his general direction, is struck by what the mortals refer to as a “car.”  Struck and fell not once, but twice, but not thrice, for the car would have learned its lesson the second time.  He is then also struck by the tazer of the fair wench riding in the car, but even this brief defeat was foreseen some time ago, for it was in the previews and thus all over the televisions of Midgard.

The greatest folly of the film, however, is the folly of its own personal superman, its mighty Norse star himself.  For as prudent as Thor’s downfall and exile to the realm of men is, so inevitable is the son of Odin’s eventual return.  The hallowed Mjolnir, nary Thor’s banishment and humbling spell of earthly existence, is still Thor’s birthright, a kingly armament which ravages all opposing armies and puts the finest weapons of the realms to shame—a weapon which Thor is destined to one day wield again.  How does a supposed filmmaker, a mere bard of the mortal realm, properly challenge a god?  What serial villains, what fevered imaginings of Midgard, could pose an appropriate antagonist for the mighty Thor himself?

Apparently, the finite, scrambling mortal minds of Midgard have deemed Loki, the trickster god himself, the villain proper for the great chronicle of Thor.   As well as a giant robot.  And…SHIELD. 

Why is SHIELD anywhere near this movie?  Am I the only one who remembers when SHIELD was confined as neatly as possible to the epilogue?  Why does every Marvel movie have to be a tie-in to all of the others?  “Iron Man” was the one to start this nonsense, and it was awesome when Nick Fury made his spoiler alert cameo, but since then, for some reason they can’t just make a Marvel movie that’s decent in its own right; it always has to be a tie-in to the damn Avengers.  Hell, Captain America is explicitly titled “The First Avenger.”  (To be fair, though, Loki sports the damn fine suit during the interrogation scene…)

Like any great tale, though, the legend of Thor is a clean, epic, and above all cautionary tale taken from the camp of the doers, the heroes who, if faced with Ragnarok, would rather die with Odin than serve under the devil, knowing little of caution and all of courage.  With every great hero, there exists between them and Valhalla not only the monsters without, but also the demons within—hubris, pride, bluntness, the lion who forgets to look before he leaps.  The Greeks had Odysseus, the Vikings had Thor, the Americans have Dr. House.  The film in question, in this tradition, represents Thor’s journey not simply to overcome the trickster god, but also to banish his hubris, recklessness, and blind willingness to start fights, just as Odin once banished him from Asgard.

And as befitting a Viking tale worthy of a god, like the plains spreading and growing in the spring thaw, a genesis of fine hair shall proclaim itself upon your chest.  The hot rush of battle, the cool malice of steel, the father’s love for his son, the son’s desire for wenches, the world-shattering clashes between gods, and the soothing power of the drink that must come afterward.  If you are a baby, a mere child in the ways of love, war, power, family, the many desires, sins, and vices of men and gods alike, you shall walk away that much closer to being a man.

Note:  The Brewsky is an enthusiastic contributor and movie reviewer, a man among men.  Many claim to be his equal, but...wait, is it "be" his equal or "be-eth" his equal?  I knew I shouldn't have droppeth out of school...

The Brewhaha on... "Horrible Bosses"

“I’m sorry.  I had no idea…”  *bursts out laughing*  “…that you called your grandmother ‘gam gam’!  I’m sorry…you didn’t get to say good-bye to gam gam!!!”

-Kevin Spacey, as himself

“The would-be assassins’ hopelessly bungling efforts produce a steady supply of laughs, though the jokes are often extremely rude and crude and the meandering plot doesn’t make the most of the film’s set-up. […]  Fortunately, the actors rise above the script.  Day’s shrieky performance is irritating, admittedly, but Bateman underplays beautifully and Spacey, Farrell and Anniston totally nail their despicable characters.”
-Jason Best, What’s On TV (U.K.)

 

“One by-product of a recession is that it traps people in jobs they don’t like under bosses they can’t stand, so the idea behind the comedy should have been timely and cathartic.  But here the script constantly sacrifices wit, heart and plausibility in pursuit of cheap laughs and filthy banter.”

-Chris Tookey, DailyMail.com

“Look at how crazy is the craziness we are doing for you. Isn’t it crazy? the movie shouts, and the more it does, the less you’ll laugh. This thing has a ‘The Hangover’ hangover.”

-Kyle Smith, The New York Post

Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and…that guy from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”…star alongside their opposites in Colin Farrell, Jennifer Aniston, and Kevin Spacey, the title characters of the black comedy “Horrible Bosses.”  Specifically, the title cartoon characters.

We, as moviegoers, don’t ask much of our movies—well, besides decent casting and acting, proper direction, consistent characterization and tone, coherent cinematography and editing, and plausible writing and plot-building.  As well as gratuitous action pieces, precise and thrilling fight choreography, and attractive, over-feminized love interests placed in threatening situations while gradually losing all but the absolutely essential articles of clothing.  (The use of rambling, pseudo-philosophical monologues is also a plus as far as film critics go.  On a related note, I’m seriously looking forward to the new Dark Knight movie.)

The one thing viewers (well, at the least the viewer writing this) yearn for, though, is that a movie doesn’t stray too far from its basic premise, the strength of many an “indie” film given to us by the Judd Apatow school of filmmaking.  “Juno” gives an interesting exploration of teen pregnancy, “(500) Days of Summer” is a questioning look at romance, and “Scott Pilgrim,” as completely ridiculous as it is, shows us just how annoying a 22-year-old slacker can really be, and how much you want to punch him in the face.

By contrast, while “Horrible Bosses” is an interesting look at what can happen when three beleaguered employees are pushed too far by their abusive, apathetic, or just plain amoral bosses, it’s not really the interesting look at such a situation.  It’s a black comedy, it’s just not the black comedy I was hoping it would be.  Even with Charlie and his two Jasons at the helm, these otherwise excellent leading men just can’t salvage the script, which is basically “American Pie” meets “Nine to Five,” or if not the latter, then at least some mid-season story from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” where the gang tries to off Frank or one of the other regular characters.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m simply tone-deaf when it comes to movie trailers.  When it comes to something like the upcoming “Cowboys and Aliens,” I can tell right away that it’s not going to be a typical cowboy movie, nor is it going to be a typical sci-fi movie (though with the onslaught of Hollywood aliens ever since Independence Day roared through theaters, one can never be sure).

But with something like…that one movie I must never speak of again…it was impossible for me to tell that there would be…ugh…romance to go along with the explosive spy action.  With this film, it should’ve been far easier to bridge the gap between my own expectations and what this movie would be:  the whole “gam gam” exchange, the scene where Charlie is trying to give Spacey the Heimlich maneuver, the prison interrogation where Bateman confesses to not being a good street racer—all of these were in the trailer, and should have been dead giveaways that this movie was going to be a bit too light on the “black” in “black comedy.”

The casting alone should have been another dead giveaway; Bateman and Charlie have built up cult followings over the years through their respective comedies of errors, “Arrested Development” and the above-mentioned “It’s Always Sunny.”  What the studio has given us is less a comedy involving murder and more simply a comedy of errors.  Charlie’s character is a reflection of this, in that he’s essentially the same character he plays in “It’s Always Sunny,” which is to say, a stammering, hopeless, somewhat well-meaning idiot.  And Bateman is essentially the same character he played in “Arrested Development,” which is to say, a condescending, wisecracking “generic” guy, and possibly the only sane character in the entire film.  And Sudeikis…I don’t even know.  He was in SNL, wasn’t he?

The same, thankfully, can’t be said of our antagonists, with some exception; as a president of sales who is despicable in every sense of the word, Spacey is at least channeling the now-overquoted nemesis of Superman in his latest role.  Meanwhile, Aniston, having left behind that one show all of my female friends keep referencing (besides Buffy) long ago, embraces her role as Nurse Nymphomaniac to an increasingly stammering Charlie, threatening to ruin his engagement to his would-be fiancé unless he has sex with her.  Rounding out the trio of bad bosses is one bald-cap-boasting Colin Farrell, who plays a coke fiend who abuses his new power as the company owner for…basically drugs, sex, and rock and roll (in other words, the Vince Neil approach). 

Completing the main cast is Jamie Foxx, who appears in a couple of scenes as a “murder consultant,” an ex-con who gives the protagonists advice on how to kill their bosses and how not to discriminate against individuals such as himself based on race.  Malcolm X he is not, though; he instead functions as a reminder of what happens when you walk into the first bar you find and try to find a hit man on the cheap.

The plot is the typical Hollywood fare, and the characters are written as such, dumbed down for the lowest common denominator.  Even before the halfway point of the movie, there are telltale signs of how much the story eventually spirals out of any semblance of control, tone, writing, or meaning:  for instance, Aniston’s character trying to mount Charlie in the middle of the exam room (the dentist’s office), Farrell’s character closing his office blinds and having an orgy in the middle of work, Sudeikis’s character shoving his genitalia into a pie.  (Okay, that last one might be from a different movie, but he might as well have…)  All of this typical Hollywood fare spirals into typical Hollywood hijinks, and then abruptly transitions into a typical Hollywood ending just when it seems like the story’s starting to resonate with its potential premise.

The end result is a movie that, while neither excellent nor horrible, is just ridiculously, absolutely, gratuitously typical.  An otherwise okay beginning transitions into an aimless hour or so, and then shifts abruptly into a near-incoherent and implausible ending; the sum of these parts is a lukewarm movie.  If nothing else, the actors, creators, and producers are clearly aiming for a darker version of “Hangover,” when all they’ve really given us is Hangover-lite.

Note:  The Brewsky is an enthusiastic contributor and movie reviewer.  And some day, I am going to kill him.  Or I will hire someone to kill him.  (Just kidding.  Okay, not really.)

The Brewhaha on..."Deathly Hallows Part 2" + "Transformers 3"

"This is a masterful and worthy final chapter in the best franchises ever put to film."
-Richard Roeper, on that first movie

"Tone is for single-purpose machines. Consistency is for Decepticons. Michael Bay's ideal movie shifts from action movie to teen comedy to political drama with the same well-lubricated ease that his cars become men."
-Charlie Jane Anders, io9.com, on that second movie

"What the hell have you been doing all summer?"
-A buddy of mine

This summer definitely hasn’t been short on blockbusters.  Having opted to lock myself in the closet of my local movie theatre for the past few months in order to avoid paying for tickets (you know how expensive they are lately?), I can safely say I’ve caught my fair share of the latest films.

For starters, the Part 1 I reviewed before the turn of the year has promised the long-awaited finale to the Harry Potter series (with all the related trailers, merchandising, and fans camping out for days before the midnight premiere).  7/15 serves for many an antithesis and antidote to 9/11, recipients are turning out in droves with invitations to Voldemort’s funeral, those first eight notes to the Harry Potter theme will be ringing in my ears for the next year.  The other day I saw the top ten Harry Potter quotes on the back of a passerby’s shirt; the famous “Not my daughter, you bitch!” line was only number eight.

I can only assume the film I ended up seeing on 7/18 (because I didn’t feel like camping out the night before 7/15) was fairly faithful to the book, with some exception.  For instance, with every “Not my daughter, etc.,” there should have been an “M-word” thrown in.  This racial epithet in question was left out of the film version in an ill-advised attempt to avoid offending the “Muggle” crowd, while arguably detracting from the character arc of a certain fan favorite.

Plus, unlike many fans, I came out (or rather, was dragged kicking and screaming out) of the theater not necessarily hating the epilogue.  It served as a nice coda to the series, establishing the characters we’ve come to grow up with as adult wizards in their own right while introducing us to a new generation of wizards not unlike the main trio back in “The Sorcerer’s Stone.”  It was almost as if the whole world was starting fresh again after the war against Voldemort.  (Personally, I’m looking forward to the ninth movie, in which Harry Potter treats his kid to Chuck E. Cheese.)

The war itself was handled like anything else in Hollywood—namely, with a lot of flash and noise.  If there’s a spell for sound and fury, this film pulled it off.  Harry Potter and co. have been on the lam for most of their seventh year, but their quest for the Horcruxes, picking up where they left off in Deathly Hallows Part 1, soon takes them back to Hogwarts, where one of the teachers randomly chases off the new, EEEVIIIILLL headmaster Snape.  (Why McGonagall waits for the better part of a year before doing anything is beyond me, though I suppose the EEEEEEVVVVIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLL Lord Voldemort being BAAAACCCKKK might have a lot to do with it.)

Then, as the main characters start trying to whittle away at old Voldy’s horcruxes, the film slowly rises to a climax, and then backs off of that climax, and then races back to try and retrace its steps, and then realizes it’s forgotten something back at the office, and then there’s some sort of…thing…snake?...phoenix?...giant spell made of fire our heroes have to outrun outfly, all while saving that one blond kid I grew to hate over the course of the series.  Then, as the film reaches its climax again, it’s had a few beers by now, so it stops and just starts pulling donuts in the parking lot, so you can’t tell which way it’s headed.

My point being, the life of a boy wizard is unbelievably awesome.  Depending on whether you’ve read the book or not, you may either share this view, or you may be waiting for Harry Potter to just jump in the fridge and wait for the nukes to go off.  Our boy wizard peeks back out long enough to watch Snape’s life flash before his eyes, and then the film, drinking some coffee to get itself “buzzed,” starts roaring toward the climax, a hundred miles an hour, and ends up ramming the fridge into a gas station.  Located next to a bus full of nuns.  Next to an orphanage.  My point is, there’s never a dull moment.

Speaking of dull moments, Molly Weasley got maybe two people in my theater (including myself) to clap for her.  That’s sad, isn’t it?  Neville Longbottom got a round of applause out of the right half of the theater, but Molly “Not My Daughter You Bitch” Weasley gets two people.  To be fair, Neville did take out a horcrux, and Mrs. Weasley…never really got that much focus in the movies anyway…

Another new movie I was looking forward to is Transformers 3.  I’ve seen the first, and while it makes for an okay action movie and an okay (if somewhat implausible) sci-fi movie, it probably isn’t the best Transformers movie, in that there’s too much focus on the humans and not enough on those giant robots they’re all either running away from, making friends with, or trying to blow up.

My comment about nuking the fridge comes to mind when referring to the second movie, in that Michael Bay went out of his way not just to nuke the fridge, but to try and nuke the sun.  I remember something about an old guy-type Transformer, wizened and hunched over, with a beard made out of little aluminum tendrils, but unlike the other two movies, I never saw “Revenge of the Fallen” in the theater, so I was actually spending most of that movie doing homework, checking my emails, and messing around on the all-consuming black hole that is TV Tropes.

“Transformers 3:  Dark of the Moon” was a back-to-basics approach in that it was an okay action movie and an okay (if somewhat implausible) sci-fi movie, but also not the best Transformers movie, in that there is too much focus on the humans and not enough on those giant robots that just got captured offscreen.  Also, Megatron is a punk in this one.  He is an absolute blight on movie villains everywhere, and every time he was onscreen, I either felt pity for the poor soul, or I just wanted to facepalm.  (Seriously, the Beast Wars version of Megatron would be disappointed.  Yeeesss…)

Where Megatron himself is lacking, though, the other Transformers have much more distinct motivations in this film, and the backstory (including the actual presence of Cybertron) seems more fleshed-out this time.  Mind you, even Optimus wasn’t someone I really felt like rooting for when it was all said and done, and all this film really did for me was reinforce the stereotype that machines will destroy us all in the future, but it introduced us to Transformers beyond “good guys” and “bad guys.”  Like big (i.e., car-sized) Transformers and the little ones Sam Witwicky’s been keeping with him for some reason.

Speaking of Witwicky, he’s kind of the hero.  He has some plot about a new girlfriend, and not being able to get a job, and there’s also this other guy he’s jealous of, but let’s face it, you’re not going to see movies like this for those meatbag human characters.  You came to see the robots.

The nice thing about Transformers 3 is that there’s at least an A-plot.  Mind you, the same thing could probably be said about the second one too, but the latest edition is quick to tie in the exploits of us meatbags (what with that whole “moon landing” we all make such a big deal about) with the war between the Cybertronians (or the Transformers, as us meatbags call them).  And while it still fulfills its role as a straightforward action movie, especially with a climax that just keeps dragging and dragging and dragging for upwards of the last hour, there are much darker undertones to this tale of boy meets city-destroying robots.  I know this because some characters died, some other characters betrayed the rest of the characters, and because Michael Bay said so.

A question to filmmakers, though:  What is the big deal about 3-D?  The trailers and commercials make better use of the 3-D technology than Michael Bay did.  Sure, the little CGI mascot demonstrating how our $3 glasses work just jumps off the screen, but the most we get out of Transformers is a little explosive debris headed our way.  Why so stingy with the visual effects?  If robots are destroying our world, I want to be able to feel like my fragile human form is about to perish at the might of headache-inducing action sequences.

Note:  The Brewsky is an enthusiastic contributor and movie reviewer.  He’s a cool guy.  Eh’s engaged to a girl at the local theater, and doesn’t afraid of anything.

The Brewhaha on..."Green Lantern"

“The one thing a Green Lantern is supposed to be is fearless.  That isn’t me…”
-Ryan Reynolds, as himself

“Is it possible that the comics franchise is inherently retrograde? Does the commitment to childish characters and mindless action prevent creativity, believability, intelligence? Hal Jordan’s magical ring of virtue, given to him by the intergalactic Green Lantern Corps is a talisman devolved from Wagner and Tolkien. […] The action stays superficial despite Campbell’s advance in the depiction of disaster as spectacle; disaster doesn’t just happen but is full of threat and, importantly, witnessed by many.”
-Armond White, New York Press

“Filled with unintentionally laughable characters, intergalactic gobbledygook, sudden pacing shifts and a hero whose superpower is downright cartoony, this latest comic adaptation makes something like ‘Spider-Man’ look both grounded and brilliant.  It's ‘Star Wars’ meets Tex Avery with blotches of feel-good therapy thrown in, garnished with light shows and destructo scenes.”

-Tom Long, Detroit News

“Overall, director Martin Campbell and his screenwriting quartet do a much better job with the film's Earth-based story lines - especially its gothic horror arc - than the portions set on Oa. Many of the effects are good, trippy fun, and the 3-D conversion is A-OK. But a movie that advocates the power of imagination might have tapped a bit more of the stuff itself.”
-Amy Biancolli, The Houston Chronicle

For something as potentially epic as a Green Lantern film, it’s sad to hear comparisons to the much-maligned “Daredevil” film.  There’s nothing particularly bad about the new “Green Lantern” starring Ryan Reynolds as the title character…but on the other hand, nothing particularly outstanding about it either.  It’s basically an unimaginative, by-the-numbers, CGI-filled superhero film.

"Green Lantern” was directed by Martin Campbell, who was at the helm for films such as “Casino Royale,” “Goldeneye,” and “The Mask of Zorro.”  On top of this, the screenplay was provided by nearly half a dozen writers.  So what could have gone wrong?

Well, if you asked me, and you asked my friends, not much, if anything at all.  Ryan Reynolds (not to be confused with his replacement in the 90’s, or the original one, or the black guy from “Justice League,” or the nearly 3,000 other Lanterns from all over the universe) gets his ring, gets the girl, creates a freaking machine gun out of pure willpower, and saves the day.   A couple of my friends went to see it in 3-D (which, even without the glasses, I could tell the filmmakers easily capitalized on) and were blown away.

The sad truth is that, for all of the glowing green cosmic power and emerald constructs at a Lantern’s disposal, and all the glowing green CGI at Hollywood’s disposal, “Green Lantern” never really boasts anything truly original or unique.

You might remember in my review for “Galaxy Quest” that I mentioned being “turned off” of anything sci-fi, specifically by one crazed Star Wars fan.  You see, every once in a while, you run into one of those Star Wars fans who will assure you that a Star Wars movie (or prequel, or game, or cartoon, or the endless list of EU novels) is “great” based on how much its characters throw around light sabers and Force powers.  When this friend in question decided to show me five…FIVE!!!…different endings for the Force Unleashed, I couldn’t have cared less about this secret Sith apprentice Vader has apparently had all this time.  In fact, I grew to hate the guy.  (And as they all say, hate leads to suffering…)

“Green Lantern’s” cardinal sin is much the same, in that they “Force”-feed us a Luke Skywalker-in-training-type character whose starting powerset alone would probably put the Super Friends themselves to shame.  There’s no tension when you basically have a magic “do-or-make-whatever-the-hell-I-want” button.

Comparisons to the original Skywalker aside, though, Ryan Reynolds is at least in that rare class of movie heroes (along with Iron Man, Superman, and possibly Spider-Man around the first hour or so) who seems to enjoy what he does.  The movie also benefits from the presence of fellow Lantern Sinestro (excellently portrayed by Mark Strong and himself not a great victim of the film’s overuse of CGI), no doubt a potential General Zod should a sequel ever come up.

I would agree with the general consensus that the Earth-based portions of the movie were the strongest, especially upon the introduction of a human villain, one Hector Hammond (who is played either by the guy from “Jarhead,” or Hyde from “That 70’s Show,” it was hard to tell).  One could argue he doesn’t necessarily make a great villain, but that’s probably the point; he’s basically the end result of an intellectual, introverted nervous wreck who ends up biting off more than he can chew, and he makes a disturbing contrast with the fratboy hijinks of Reynolds’s character—a contrast that doesn’t quite escape the attention of Hammond’s father (“Some people are thinkers, and some people are doers…”).

Other than that, though, there isn’t much to say about “Green Lantern” that can’t be said about lots of other superhero films, or other films in general.  Despite the conflict eventually degenerating into an almost embarrassing CGI-fest once Parallax finally shows up, the movie still manages to end on a high, if somewhat cheesy note.

Note:  The Brewksy is an enthusiastic contributor and movie reviewer. 

He wants you to see this movie.

The Brewhaha on..."Black Swan"

Nina:  “I’m sorry…”
Thomas:  “Stop saying that!  Stop sounding so fucking weak!”
-Nina and her director, in a nutshell

“Yes, Black Swan is a horror movie.  […]  It’s absurdly campy and intensely bleak at the same time. It refuses to give in to the ridiculous notion that a story about a woman must be of interest only to women, as so many films do by avoiding acknowledging that the authorities and madnesses of women are human, instead of something indicative of a peculiar female malady.”
-MaryAnn Johansen, FlickFilosopher.com

“Portman hasn't been this good since her early performances in ‘The Professional’ and ‘Heat,’ and is deservedly attracting intense Oscar buzz. Kunis brings to Lily a savvy sexiness, and Cassel is entertainingly smarmy.  As unsettling as it is stylish, ‘Black Swan’ may do for ballet what ‘Jaws’ did for beaches.”
-Calvin Wilson, STLToday.com

“Black Swan revolves around Natalie Portman, a great screen beauty of limited range who plays the same ‘who, me?’ neurasthenic quality in every scene, even in moments, like her first confrontation with Winona Ryder's has-been ballet star, where she might have revealed different sides of the good girl stereotype she's stuck in. She's monotonous, and badly used by her director, who's stuck in some netherworld of not-quite-exploitation and maybe-serious.”
-Dan Callahan, Slant Magazine

At the tail end of 2010, “Black Swan” was the movie of the year.  Anyone who was anyone in the movie biz was talking about it.  It was as if, in one smooth, symphonic, divinely-choreographed motion, filmmakers and cinema-goers alike decided to give a nice giant middle finger to those who would have you believe that only a testerone-driven male audience matters when it comes to filmmaking.

I don’t like “female” movies.  I just don’t.  A friend of mine comes up and says to me that “Burlesque” is pretty good.  So I check out the trailer, and I see some music sequences, and notice that Cher is in it.  And it turns out that a musical starring and/or featuring Cher is not something I would ever want to be caught dead watching.

So then I start seeing trailers for this new movie starring Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise.  It’s a romance flick, but it also seems to have lots of explosions and car chases and gun fights and Tom Cruise apparently embracing just how batshit insane he actually is.  And I think to myself, “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!  This is exactly the kind of movie I’ve been waiting for!”  And then I left the theater thinking to myself, “I shall end them!  I shall end them, and eviscerate them endlessly, for making me sit through that two-hour travesty!  I want my money back!”

Then, after a while, I start seeing trailers for this “Black Swan,” starring Natalie Portman.  I’m not crazy about ballet, but I hear nothing but good things about this movie, about Natalie’s acting, the rave reviews, the sense of mystery, Natalie’s apparent transformation, and I think to myself, “Well, maybe I should go see it.”

Natalie Portman’s Nina is a ballerina aspiring to be the star of “Swan Lake: Redux.”  For those unfamiliar with the original show, it features a princess trapped in the form of a white swan who must win the affection of a prince in order to regain her freedom.  However, a black swan seduces the prince, and in her grief, the white swan commits suicide.  Through a chance of fate (and that noticeable lip gloss), Nina is picked as the lead female in Swan Lake.  The rest, as they say, is a matter of the three certainties in life:  death, taxes, and humanity’s capacity to completely lose its mind.

“Black Swan’s” strengths come from its seamless blending of genres.  It’s a coming of age story and an updating (or a “redux,” if one will) of Swan Lake through the art of cinema, and an altogether unique effort to adapt the art of ballet to the big screen, the blending of the two becoming more and more obvious the further the film progresses.  It’s a tale of lust, betrayal, madness, and transformation, which will keep you guessing until the very end, and possibly even after the credits.

To try and sum up the plot is an absolute waste.  The “A-plot,” as summed up about two paragraphs ago, is concerned with her rehearsals and her efforts to perfect herself as both the white and the black swan.  But as Tolkien would have us believe, some stories simply grow in the telling—like, say, the ballerina who slowly turns into a swan, starts killing people, moves out of her home, and tries to take the One Ring back to Mordor where she can plunge the malevolent artifact into the fires from whence it came.

I’ll be frank, though; a large part of the appeal comes from learning just how hardcore ballet really is.  Like Rocky and his glorious inability to block all of those punches to the head, Nina has to take one for the team.  The sound of those foot bones cracking makes the casual viewer appreciate the kind of time, energy, and flexibility it takes to be a dancer.  And that spinning thing a ballerina has to do?  Evidently you can borderline twist your ankle just trying to do that.  So, yeah, it’s a lot like Rocky, if about five movies and a hundred rounds worth of heavyweight boxing were all concentrated on two dainty little feet.

Our Mick analogue is one director Thomas, the single worst coach a desperate and vulnerable ballerina could ever conjure up in their nightmares.  Think House, except much more of an insufferable genius and about a hundred times more misogynistic (or at the least, way too willing to give “the birds and the bees” speech to a twenty-something-year-old woman).  And French.  In fact, just think of him as the Pepé le Pew of mentors and you’ll have a pretty good idea what his role in the story is.

Thomas, as well as co-star Mila Kunis, helps bring about Nina’s transformation into the black swan, which is as amazing as it is disturbing, erotic as it is terrifying, and indecipherable as it is inevitable.  For better or worse, this transformation from the pure yet vulnerable white swan is brought about through her own sexual “liberation,” in the same vein as many a Lifetime love interest who, “over the next 90 minutes, will solve all of your problems with my penis.”  Such sadomasochistic, borderline predatory themes, if not downright evil, are still not for the faint of heart.

So goes the hype, the criticism, the conflict between white swan and black swan, and the seamless transition from cinema to ballet and vice versa.  It’s a visceral, sometimes maddening film, and an uncompromising glimpse into the psyche of the title character.  The Brewsky can give this nothing short of a glowing recommendation.

Note:  The Brewsky is an enthusiastic contributor and movie reviewer SWEET JESUS what is wrong with her eyes?!  Seriously, why are her eyes doing that?!

The Brewhaha on..."Plan 9 from Outer Space"

“Greetings, my friends.  We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.  And remember, my friends.  Future events such as these will affect you in the future.  […]  My friends, can your hearts withstand the shocking facts about grave robbers from outer space!”
-Criswell’s opening titles

“We haven’t always fired at them.  For a time we tried to contact them by radio, but no response.  Then they attacked a town.  A small town, I’ll admit, but nevertheless a town of people.  People who died.”
-The general, informing us that people die when they are killed

“Looks like we beat them off again, sir.”
-I’d expect this from aliens, but from a freaking U.S. sergeant?

“You stupid humans!  STUPID, STUPID!!!”
-Rorschach the alien overlord, basically summing up this movie

“The Stark County Treasurer’s Office is a mess!  It is in dire need of structure and guidance!!!”
-Phil Davison, basically summing up this movie

It’s very rare I see a movie so hilarious that it actually starts to physically anger me.  I wanted to lift my 30” TV and chuck it out of my third story window with my bare hands, this is how bad the movie is.

“Plan 9 From Outer Space,” in the same vein as the previously-reviewed “Manos:  The Hands of Fate,” has gone down in cinematic history as one of the worst films of all time.  This is despite the fact that “Plan 9” was created by someone with actual filmmaking experience, and actually appeared to have something of a budget (albeit a meager and very poorly-expensed budget, most likely all spent on Béla Lugosi).

We can start with simple things.  Like the writing.  Which is featured in the movie quotes above, and pretty much speaks for itself.  It’s easy enough to accept stuff like the abysmal staging, setwork, editing, and even acting, because those are the sorts of things that take some real, concrete work, but it’s inconceivable that a sane human being wrote this and expected his cast to follow this script at all.

The opening narration, given to us by a would-be Nostradamus who keeps getting the past and the future mixed up (in the same scene, no less!), basically establishes that this movie has a fairly loose grip on things like logic, or how time works.  His introduction to this warped movie, and his voice-overs throughout, are so hammy that it starts to taste like Christmas all over again.

Then we move into the actual plot, which by all accounts should at least be interesting, if not downright amazing in the hands of competent filmmakers.  People are coming back to life as a result of the advanced technology of aliens, who are seeking to make contact with humans.  It’s zombies (and one relatively hot vampire) created by aliens…

Why?  I dunno.  I think the aliens just felt like it.

Plan 9, as presented in the film, seems to consist of a trio of zombies.  As mentioned above, we have the relatively hot “vampire”-looking chick, as give to us by…“Vampira”?  (Oh, Wikipedia, I thought I could rely on you for stuff like this.)  The late (as of filming) Béla Lugosi and some other guy each double up in the role of Vampira’s deceased better half through the not-so-careful use of edits, and the most not-so-careful use of a cape since Spawn.

Rounding out their trio is Tor Johnson.  Tor Johnson was easy to remember because he gets quite the memorable (first) death scene, and that name kept coming up in the Rifftrax version.  He was also easy to remember by virtue of the sheer number of physical scenes he ended up in.  Just to be clear, though, Tor Johnson is not someone who is built for physical scenes, and is absolutely impossible to take seriously as a result (though his “love tap of death” during the film’s climax, and his overall "deer in headlights" expression, probably don’t help matters much).

Of course, Plan 9 is nothing without its planners, a trio of aliens who end up appearing throughout much of the movie.  All I can really say is that nobody plays an alien like that anymore.  Ever since Sigourney Weaver decided to go all commando on those chest-bursting creatures, you never see aliens that cheesy and bald and out-of-shape anymore.  Specifically, you never see redshirt-sporting aliens from the dreaded “space nipple” moon who can get taken out by Tor Johnson drifting lazily in their general direction.  (Worf might count…)

As my good friend Phil Davison would say, this movie is about as bad as it gets.  The chief conflict is driven by the aliens’ need to prevent humans from discussing a substance which, when detonated, threatens to render sunlight itself explosive and thus destroy the universe.  At first, they try making contact.  When that doesn’t work, they decide to resurrect the dead, claiming that they can finally get our attention that way.  Because the flying saucers hovering over our major cities surely wouldn’t do the job.

Beyond these basic plot problems, the mistakes and shortcomings in this film are numerous and well-documented, from the notorious boom mic featured in the cockpit scenes, to the film’s utter confusion as to whether it’s supposed to be night or day, to the gravestones actually wobbling during the cemetery scenes.  In other words, as far as bad filmmaking goes, Plan 9 is a freaking gold mine.

The Rifftrax version features three of MST3K’s and Rifftrax’s finest in a Nashville theater giving a running commentary on the film.  (And Tor Johnson.  And Béla Lugosi).  If you want to see it for free, you can find it here, or failing that, it will be put up somewhere on the IMDb page.

Note:  The Brewsky is an enthusiastic contributor and movie reviewer who enters people's homes at night to plunder their bedrooms.  But you too can beat him off by joining the Army, the finest military in the world.