The Bourne Legacy (2012)

  Rob and I had a date night on Friday and went to see this movie.  He had really enjoyed the previous three in the series.  I was less enthralled with Supremacy and Ultimatum because of the overuse of shaky-cam but I was willing to give this installment a shot since it was a different director and all.

Holy shit, was this a boring movie.  More like Stillborn Legacy, amirite?  No?  Too far?  Seriously, I almost fell asleep before it was over.  Jeremy Renner has grown on me as an actor since I first saw (and hated) him in S.W.A.T. but there was nothing he could do to save this film.  Unless this makes a boatload of money overseas, this will probably be the last Bourne.

Now, concept-wise, it was neat.  They basically set it alongside the first three movies as an ancillary piece, kind of a what-was-happening-elsewhere while the main character was doing his thing.  But to do that well you kind of have to make the ancillary story interesting, otherwise you might as well show people in New Jersey going about their daily lives while newscasts of Jason Bourne play in the background.

Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) was a participant in a government shadow project involving gene therapy called Outcome which was spun off of Treadstone, the shadowy government project that created Jason Bourne (Sir Not-Appearing in This Film).  After the lid is blown off Treadstone, the shadowy government guys, led by Eric Byer (Edward Norton), start trying to cover their asses by killing off all the Outcome agents.  Aaron doesn't want to die but he is also out of the meds he needs to stay sharp.  Solution?  Rescue the pretty virologist who used to do a bunch of medical tests on him.  Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) was about to be liquidated when she is swept off to explain a whole bunch of the plot.  See, the second and third generations of Bourne knock-offs were enhanced by using viruses to manipulate their genes and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sorry, passed out for a moment there.

I love movies based on science almost as much as I love action movies and I do believe you can have both science and action in a movie and it be great.  However, the ratio of it has to be more action than science and Bourne Legacy was on the wrong side of that equation. 

The Women (1939)

  This is one of my absolute favorite old movies.  I remember being a kid, probably about 10, when my mother showed it to me on TCM.  I loved how catty and sharp it was.  That has only grown with time.

Mary Haines (Norma Shearer) has a great life on Park Avenue with a husband she loves and a precocious daughter (Virginia Weidler).  But one of her "friends", Sylvia (Rosalind Russell), overhears a juicy piece of gossip at the local nail salon that Mary's husband is stepping out on her.  With a girl from the perfume counter, no less.  Heartbroken, Mary learns that to survive in a woman's world, it takes ice water blood, nerves of steel, and claws painted jungle red.

I love this movie on its own merits but I also love the backstory.  It started life as a theater play written by Clare Boothe, based on a piece of gossip she overheard in the women's powder room backstage.  Now aren't you rethinking every idle piece of scandal you've ever rehashed in a public place?  You never know who's listening.

They tried to remake this movie in 2008, which I boycotted on general principles.  I don't know how you can do it justice just by slapping a bunch of new actresses in it but I still haven't seen it so I can't judge.  For my money, I'll stick with the original.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

I have no idea why this is now at the top of the page.  It was posted in Sep 2011, originally, and I have no clue how to make it go back.    This was Christy's pick for September.  See all of that shit at the top where it guarantees nightmares?  Lies.  I laughed my ass off at most of it and was bored by the rest.  Maybe I'm just a gorehound but movies where they don't show you anything don't blow my skirt up at all. 

Micah (pronounced Mee-ka) and Katie have noticed weird things happening in their house so Micah invests in a camcorder to try and catch it on film.  They also invite over a psychic to consult about it and Katie mentions that she's had the same crap happening to her since she was 8 years old.  Now, you would think that if you knew that you were being haunted you would possibly disclose that shit before you move in with someone but no.  A head's up, a "hey, honey, I'm so glad our relationship is moving to the next level but you may want to look into poltergeist insurance", or something to the effect may have been very welcome.   Especially once she reveals that her childhood home burned the fuck down. Micah, however, is convinced that they can fix it themselves and does various things to try and get the entity to reveal itself including a ouija board (catches on fire) and putting flour down the hallway (gets ostrich prints coming in but not leaving).  Events continue to escalate until the fairly inevitable conclusion.

I will say, the last minute or so of the movie was very good with an almost seamless visual effect that made me raise a glass and made my cousin sleep with the lights on.  Other than that, snoozefest.  Go rent the original Poltergeist instead.  You'll thank me later.

On a completely unrelated note, if you were wondering about the slow-down in posts, I'm neck-deep in season one of 24.  I hate the Bauer women with a passion.  They might as well have "victim" tattooed on their foreheads.  For a bit of nostalgia, I'm also watching the X-Men cartoon from the 90's.  Ah, Saturday mornings.  Good times.  Up to halfway through season 3 on those, just past the Phoenix saga. Frankly, the video quality is shit and the cartoons themselves aren't nearly as good as I remember them being.  I no longer have the innocent lens of youth to look through I suppose.

Also, bought X-Men:  First Class and Tangled blu-rays on Friday.

Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012)

Nominated for:  Best Animated Feature  It'll be Saturday when I post this, but I'm writing it on Wednesday the 22nd which also happens to be my birthday.  Yay, me!  I'm thirty!  And still watching animated films.  Don't judge me.    This was a super cute film from the same people behind Wallace and Gromit.  Rob and I had seen the trailer for it a while back and it looked fun but then I forgot about it.  He hadn't and picked it for our movie night on Monday.  

Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) and his merry crew of buccaneers are all set to enter the annual Pirate of the Year Awards, despite always coming last in previous years.  However, after viewing the competition of Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) and Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven), Pirate Captain knows that he'll have to really up his game if he stands a shot.  After a series of disappointments, the pirates board the HMS Beagle containing Charles Darwin (David Tennant) who is trying desperately to find something to present at the annual Scientist of the Year Award at the Royal Society in London.  Spying Polly, the beloved ship's mascot, he correctly recognizes that it is a dodo, not a parrot, and bribes Pirate Captain into letting him present the previously-thought-extinct animal.  Visions of prize money dancing in his eyes, Pirate Captain takes the crew into London, despite the protests of Pirate Number Two (Martin Freeman) that Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) loathes pirates, and enters her into the contest.  Darwin meanwhile schemes to steal Polly for himself to present her to the object of his affection.  Calamity and hilarity aplenty ensue.

This is an incredibly star-studded cast of British talent but none of them feel wasted.  If you'll recall, my chief complaint with Kung Fu Panda was that they had put a ton of stars in bit parts.  Maybe because the British are better at playing characters, it feels seamless here.  Not once did I get pulled out of the movie because I was thinking "What is she doing in that one-line part?"

It's a fun movie that you could watch with your kids (if you have them) without feeling like your brains have turned to mush or you could watch alone and claim you're a fan of claymation.  Either way, you'll have a good time.

Red Dawn (1984)

  Until last night, I had never seen the original Red Dawn.  I knew it existed and I knew they were remaking it but these facts really meant nothing to me.  It apparently means a great deal to Christy, however, since she can't stop herself from hissing at the screen every time she sees the trailer for the remake.  In order to sway me to her side, this was her pick for our nightly round robin of movies. 

Having only heard about it second hand, I was shocked to learn it wasn't a comedy.  Seriously, I thought it was supposed to be Home Alone but with a town instead of a house.  So, reading the opening crawl about how the USSR has suffered a severe wheat shortage, NATO has fallen apart, and all these other Cold War horrors I had to hit the pause button and ask my cousin when it was supposed to get funny.  Her response:  "It doesn't.  It's a drama, not a comedy." 

I was floored.  Seriously, how can you hear the plot and not think this is a wacky slapstick farce?  'Colorado teens retreat to the mountains and engage in guerilla warfare against Russian and Cuban invaders'.  That is hilarious on paper.  In practice, decidedly less so.

Jed (Patrick Swayze) is the leader of a group of teens who flee to the Rockies after their town is invaded by a Russo-Cuban coalition.  After a month, they return to town for news and find that the invasion has become an occupation.  The adults identified as troublemakers, by handy court records of firearm registration, are kept in re-education camps and the rest of the citizens are meekly submitting to the iron boot on their necks.  The kids decide to defend their country by staging guerilla attacks and spraypainting the high school mascot "Wolverines" on their targets. 

This plays like a who's-who of young stars with Charlie Sheen, Powers Boothe, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey, and Harry Dean Stanton making up the cast.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time here detailing all the ways this movie was ludicrous in premise because it's nothing but 80's fearmongering set to celluloid.  I will say that I think the remake is missing a golden opportunity to turn this into a campy teen comedy, though.

A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

  It was my turn to pick a movie last night and I decided to punish the people that I love by forcing them to watch old black and white movies from the 40s.  *Maniacal laugh.*

This was like Desperate Housewives but not as annoying.  Three upper class ladies, Mrs. Bishop (Jeanne Crain), Mrs. Hollingsway (Linda Darnell), and Mrs. Phipps (Ann Sothern), are about to leave for a ride up the Hudson on a field trip for the local school, when they receive a letter addressed to them from their dear "friend" Addie Ross (voiceover by Celeste Holm) informing them that Addie has run off with one of their husbands.  But which one?  Over the course of the movie, each of the three women reflects on their marriage and on the effect Addie has had, even in absentia:  there's the career woman who finds fault with her school teacher husband (Kirk Douglas) because she makes more money, the ingenue who is desperately afraid she's not good enough for her suave man-of-the-world (Jeffrey Lynn) and the gold-digger worried her loveless marriage to a department store magnate (Paul Douglas) might be just that. 

It's witty, catty, urbane and sly, managing somehow to be heartwarming without dipping into schmaltz.  The banter in this movie is fantastic, especially between Mr. and Mrs. Hollingsway.  I'm pretty sure everyone knows a couple like them where they bitch at each other so much you wonder why they're still married but you get them on their own and they can't function without the other one?  The other breakout star for me was Sadie the maid, played by Thelma Ritter.  She brought that character to life.  Also, I'm not going to call Kirk Douglas a breakout star because the man is still freakin' charismatic, as the 2011 Oscars will attest.  It was nice to see him looking so amazingly young and full of fire though. 

Payback: Straight Up (2006)

  I've seen the original release of this movie probably a dozen times and I love it.  I didn't even know there was a director's cut, much less one made 7 years after the first run.  I didn't expect there would be a lot of differences but I was wrong.

Plot is still the same:  Porter (Mel Gibson) is a thief fucked over by his partner Val (Gregg Henry) after ripping off the Chinese mafia for $140,000.  Val needs $130,000 to buy his way in to the criminal organization known as The Syndicate and Porter now stands in his way.  So Val and Porter's wife (Debra Kara Unger) shoot Porter full of holes and leave him to die.  But he doesn't die.  He gets a back alley doctor to fix him up and waits for his chance at revenge.

Here's where it gets different.  In the theatrical cut the opening scene is a voiceover from Porter narrating his intentions in a neat little pulp-noir type vibe.  Straight up:  no narration, just dialogue from the event like voices running through his head.  The director's cut removes nearly all of the humor, shows a lot more violence (including a scene where Porter beats the shit out of his wife), and cuts out Kris Kristofferson's role as the big boss completely.  I don't know if that was to remove the (admittedly weak) plot line of when Porter kidnaps his son to lure him out or if Kristofferson just refused to sign a release saying they could reuse his footage or what.  At any rate, the big boss is now just a voice on the phone and never gets seen.

I don't know that I necessarily agreed with a lot of the choices made in recutting this film.  It is very different in tone and message.  I can only assume that this is what Brian Helgeland intended when he wrote the screenplay but then got softened by the studios.  I guess it just depends on what flavor you like your Mel Gibson revenge fests.  Personally, I prefer mine played more lighthearted.

Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)

  This is such a cute fucked up little movie.  I showed it to Christy when we were taking a break from moving boxes and, once she got over the whole "everyone's dead" thing, she really enjoyed it.

Despondent over breaking up with his girlfriend, Zia (Patrick Fugit)  slits his wrists.  He wakes up in the Afterlife, a joyless wasteland populated by other suicides.  He meets Russian rocker Eugene (Shea Whigam) who offed himself by pouring beer into his electric guitar onstage and the two become friends.  When Zia hears that the girl he killed himself over, Desiree (Leslie Bibb), has also killed herself, he decides to go on a road trip to find her.  Eugene's car is a piece of shit with no working headlights and a black hole under the passenger seat (no, really) but it drives so off they go.  Along the way, they pick up hitchhiker Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon) who is convinced there has been some sort of mistake about her arrival in the Afterlife.  She is looking for the People In Charge but no one seems to know if they're even real.  They stop for a while at Kneller's Campground, a home of tiny miracles, run by Kneller (Tom Waits) himself.

It also has cameos by John Hawkes (Winter's Bone), Will Arnett (Arrested Development) and Azura Skye (bunch of TV show guest-spots).  I'm sure there are other people that I just didn't recognize.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite indie films and one of the few love stories that doesn't make me want to puke.

Total Recall (2012)

This was supposed to have gone up yesterday but we hadn't gotten the internet set up at the new place yet.  Don't ever move.  I'm just sayin'.    I started out kind of hopeful when I heard they were remaking Total Recall.  Especially after I finally got around to seeing the original.  Holy shit, was that misplaced optimism.  Yikes. 

They kept the exact same plot but took everything smart about the first movie and threw it out of the window.  Sure, they updated the effects (which was much-needed) but everything else kind of sucked.  I'm just going to go ahead and declare this whole post **SPOILERY** because I plan on getting into the details of where it went wrong.

1)  They completely tossed out the whole Mars angle in favor of setting the two warring factions on different sides of the Earth.  You have UFB (which is kind of United Kingdom plus a bunch of Europe) and the Colony (Australia).  All the rest of the Earth has been rendered uninhabitable because of chemical weapons.  But people have still got to get from one set-piece to another.  Solution:  a tunnel throgh the Earth's core.  I shit you not.  The minute I heard that, I knew it was all downhill from there. 

2)  Jessica Biel.  Call me crazy, but that bitch can't act.  She has zero chemistry with Colin Farrell and can not for the life of her pull off the love interest role.  She couldn't do it in The A-Team and she can't do it here.  Plus, in the original, Rachel Ticotin's Milena is a badass chick who is more than capable of taking care of herself.  Biel's Milena gets hit in the head a lot and has to be rescued by Farrell constantly.  Waste. Of. Space.

3)  The villain's plan is completely retarded.  Since they threw out the Mars terraforming angle, Bryan Cranston's Cohaagan has a plan to frame Colin Farrell's old identity as a terrorist responsible for a number of bombings so he can invade the Colony and ...replace their workforce with Synthetics (robot soldiers).  What?  How does that solve your overpopulation issue in any way?  All you've done is make all your people unemployed. 

There are so many other little stupid things that just make it an unenjoyable experience but there was one other point I wanted to make.  In the 1990 version, when Arnold finally confronts his evil fake-wife and shoots her in the face, his big line is "Considah dis a divorce!"  Which would be a snappy comeback if his accent weren't adorably incomprehensible.  In the new one, however, whenever evil-wife Lori is about to kill Hauser/Quaid, she says "Til death do us part, baby."  Maybe I'm reading too much into it but I found that to be a much more politically charged line, especially in the context of the "good girl" being all helpless and breathy.  No me gusta.

Kate Beckinsale totally rocked that shit as the evil wife, though.  It actually made up for two of the Underworld movies.  Not all of them, but at least two.

Corpse Bride (2005)

  Now that Christy lives with me, you're going to be getting a lot more Christy picks.  We're trying to set up a round robin type thing where she, Rob, and I each get to pick a movie a night.  That way everybody loses.  I kid, I kid!  You know me, or at least you should by now, more movies is always preferable to less movies.  Even if I hate it I always try to think of the experience as a cautionary tale for my readers.  I suffer through them so YOU don't have to. 

Until we're actually in the new apartment and she can unpack, she's kind of stuck choosing from either my collection or Rob's.  This is one of the former, so I can't complain too much. 

I saw this way back in theaters and, while I wasn't jumping out of my seat, I didn't actively dislike it.  Watching it again really only confirmed my previous opinion that Tim Burton was trying to recapture the lightning-strike success of Nightmare Before Christmas but couldn't.  In a way, I think he's still trying.  *coughcoughDark Shadowscough*

Victor (Johnny Depp) is arranged to marry Victoria (Emily Mortimer).  This match means greater social standing for his fishmonger parents (Tracey Ullman and Paul Whitehouse) and a much-needed cash infusion for her aristocratic parents (Joanna Lumley and Albert Finney).  What Victor and Victoria want isn't taken into account.  Still, the two shyly fancy each other and things look to be going well until Victor flubs his vows at the rehearsal and is kicked out by the minister (Christopher Lee).  Practicing in the woods, Victor finally manages to say them correctly while placing the ring on a finger-like twig.  Surprise!  The twig is actually the finger of a young woman who murdered before her wedding.  Convinced she has now found the man of her dreams, the undead beauty drags Victor down to the underworld. 

Even though I had seen it before, I was surprised at how much was set to music.  It feels forced, though, not organic like Nightmare Before Christmas and I think it would have been better off just being a stop-motion animation.  Also, and maybe I'm just confusing this film with something else I had seen, I thought that there was more of a revelation when it comes to the identity of the Corpse Bride's killer.  Specifically, I could have sworn that he had bludgeoned her to death with something that had his name on it and it imprinted onto her skull.  Maybe that was CSI.  Whatever. 

There were any number of things that could have been improved.  Unless you're a huge Tim Burton fan, you could easily give this one a pass and I would recommend doing so.

Stick It (2005)

  I don't know how many of you are watching the 2012 Summer Olympics, but I am.  I've been trying to, anyway.  Although I could really not give a shit about 90% of the events.  Just sayin'.  I really only like watching the Equestrian events and Women's Gymnastics, and since NBC has decided to air all the Equestrian bits while I'm working, that only leaves me with one.  My roommates, Christy and Rob, were watching as well and we kept getting stuck on the byzantine scoring system of green tiangles, yellow squares, purple monkeys, and whatnot.  Our frustration reminded me of this movie.

Haley (Missy Peregrym) is a rebellious 17-year-old arrested for some property damage.  As a minor, her father opts to enroll her in VGA, an elite gymnastics training camp, instead of military academy or juvie.  This is a blow to Haley, who walked away from the World Championship and the sport previously.  She is put in the care of Burt Vickerman (Jeff Bridges), the head coach of VGA who is better at dazzling gymnasts' mothers with pipe dreams of Olympic gold than he is with actually getting girls on the medal stand.  With the help of her two friends Poot (John Patrick Amedori) and Frank (Kellan Lutz), Haley will navigate the cutthroat world of competition gymnastics to find personal redemption and a chance to stick it to the Man.

This is a fun, fluffy bit of celluloid from the writer of Bring It On.  You probably won't remember a lot of it later but it'll put you in a good mood for watching Team USA (or your country of choice) on TV.

Strange Days (1995)

  We've seamlessly roped Christy in to our revolving duty of picking a nightly movie.  She picked Puss in Boots on Saturday so Rob and I watched that again with her.  Unfortunately, that means that she and I were subject to his pick.  FYI, this is a terrible movie.  Rob has been all over me to watch this for like a week now.  He was having a terrible time trying to find a copy of it so I actually bought it for him on Amazon before he managed to find a version online.  Looking back, I feel like the universe was trying to save us from it but of course we didn't listen.

Lenny (Ralph Fiennes) is a virtual reality clip purveyor in the wasteland of 1999 L.A. just before the year's end.  When one of his friends is murdered and the clip anonymously delivered to him, he becomes involved in tracking down her killer/s in between mooching rides off his friend Mason (Angela Bassett) and stalking his ex-girlfriend (Juliette Lewis). 

Honestly, this whole film comes across as beyond dated.  I mean, it might have seemed cutting edge at the end of the 80's but 95?  Come the fuck on!  Everybody knew virtual reality was a dead-end by then.  I'm fairly certain the sci-fi junk was just poor window dressing for Kathryn Bigelow (Oscar-winning director of The Hurt Locker) to make a movie about race relations in L.A. in the mid-nineties before she realized that she could just make the movie and win a fucking Oscar for it.

We're moving into our new apartment tomorrow!  Yay!  I wrote this post on Monday of last week but didn't get it done before my deadline so it carried over til today and then I almost forgot because I was busy doing all the initial moving stuff.  But it's up now.  So there.