F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, is the book, the novel that for whatever reason has become the forefront of the literary canon for, at this point I assume every single high school English class in the United States. The reason may be, actually, that Fitzgerald’s novel delves into the myth of the American Dream, the loss of one’s innocence and youth, the tumult of the modern age, the destruction that results from obsession, decadence, indulgence, greed, forbidden love, infidelity…and it does it all in a fairly accessible 150 pages or so. Baz Luhrmann, in his film adaptation, takes the brightest crayon right out of the box and straight to those pages, coloring furiously until his hand cramps. What results is a violent and uncalculated animation, a cartoonish diorama, in which the literature of the story, the meaning and the why, only occasionally peek through but is mostly suffocated by layers upon layers of smooth, waxy nothingness.

The trouble begins right away. The film begins by showing Nick Carraway, our narrator, in a sanitarium talking to a doctor, who has propped open his file enough for us to see that Nick is locked away because he is “morbidly alcoholic,” among other “troubled” buzz words. From the looks of Nick (the tiredly naïve Tobey Maguire), he must have walked right from the end of the film into this sanitarium because he looks not a day above whatever age Tobey Maguire perpetually looks. Here, with the help of Doctor Old Guy, Nick settles in to write his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. This framing device is wholly unnecessary, distracting, out of left field, and utterly meaningless. It takes Luhrmann a good twenty minutes to half an hour to abandon the return shots to the sanitarium, but he does, eventually, let it go, that is until the end of the film.

But this misfire is indicative of one of the larger problems of the film; Nick Carraway’s character is toyed with and ultimately flattened. In the novel, he is not the writer he claims to be – he is an insecure little man who, yes, becomes infatuated with the mysterious Jay Gatsby. But by placing him in a sanitarium and making him a novelist, Lurhmann throws Carraway out of the window and creates a new, Nickless Nick, a one note narrator with nothing in his eyes but curiosity turned reverence. This simplification, this disregard for nuance and complexity of character is not only present in Nick, and it makes the beginning of the movie rapidly hemorrhage meaning.

The party scenes are similarly problematic; for all their flash and movement and glitter, they forward nothing. In fact, those lavish spectacles are so over the top they become grotesque and circus-like. Clown cars of drunk flappers screech in the moonlight, painted faces dance wildly, and a bizarre and frightening characterization of Klipspringer bangs the organ. These scenes, though no doubt mesmerizing, seem Baz Lurhmann-y for their own sake and serve against the film. Instead of making Gatsby’s house seem like an ideal of luxury, a cloud of careless, indulgent fun, it appears disgusting and dirty and dangerous, not something Nick would aspire to or Daisy would adore. In the movie Nick likens the party to an “amusement park,” but a more accurate description would be a “sleazy carnival fun house.” The degree of vulgarity here is important – in the novel, the parties are decadent but not gross, like the apartment in New York Tom drags Nick to. But stylistically in the film, there isn’t much difference between the apartment and the party scenes at Gatsby’s. This, again, diminishes any meaning that could have been explored and makes these thrashing, glittery hot messes of scenes, just that.

Lurhmann settles down though. Once he gets it out of his system, he lets the story happen. And it is, in some places word for word, The Great Gatsby that Lurhmann gives us. Aside from the preposterous framing of the film, the story is there. He lets the actors act, and most of them do it very well. Leo DiCaprio is Gatsby. He always was Gatsby. And though Jay Gatsby is so tough to play because what we actually know about him is so convoluted, Leo knows exactly what he’s doing. Carey Mulligan catches Daisy well, and tosses her back at us with that breezy, aloof, barely disguised brokenness. Joel Edgerton is fiery and great as the brutish and sweaty Tom Buchanan, his mustache as tiny as his capacity for compassion.

The CGI throughout the film creates a sense of unreality, a Tim Burton-like dark, cartoon-ish world that seems so fake. There is no evident reason for the look except, perhaps, convenience. Gatsby’s house looks like a Second Life castle (not that I would know…), and the Buchanan house reminds me of a whimsical set from Burton’s, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It is truly a feat that the actors are able, for much of the film, to fight through the animated mess around them and actually act, creating real, human moments that capture Fitzgerald’s story.

It’s happened, folks. Baz Luhrmann has adapted The Great Gatsby. It is a film that exists now. It is a fact in our world. It’s out there. It is shot fairly ludicrously but does tell Fitzgerald’s story with loyalty and is acted quite well. However, it is one piece of the past that I think Gatsby would agree doesn’t need repeating.

Grade: C+

The post ‘The Great Gatsby:’ Oh Baz appeared first on The Blemish.

Inside sources* (*my brain) say that throughout the development of Iron Man 3, Shane Black (co-writer/director), Jon Favreau (executive producer of Iron Man 3, director of the first two Iron Mans, Pete from Friends, Mike from Swingers, and host of one of the greatest television programs of all time, Dinner for Five), and Robert Downey, Jr. (Tony Stark, Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chaplin, and cast member of the very worst season of Saturday Night Live), all lived in a hotel room together. There, they stayed up late every night, watched old movies together, had pillow fights, swam in the indoor pool, ordered a ton of pizza, drank soda and ate candy at night, and giggled in their pajamas. And that’s how Iron Man 3 got made.

Okay, maybe that isn’t actually what they did and that was a birthday party I went to in fifth grade, but it also could have been exactly what happened. Iron Man 3 is fun, funny, and full of so much bromance. Way more bromance than romance. And it is perfect that way.

I realized today that I may be the only moviegoer who cares not one bit for the action or the special effects in superhero movies. Yes, I can tell when it looks bad, when the effects are silly or really CGI-y, or something, but I don’t get disappointed when it does because it doesn’t affect my opinion of the movie. I don’t see movies for the quality of the action. I can be kind of entertained by it, but it really doesn’t do much for me. So I have no idea if the action in Iron Man 3 was great or not great or terrible. It was there. There was a bunch of it. I feel like it was probably okay.

I was entirely focused on the wonderfully witty Shane Blackiness of the biggest blockbuster movie to open in a good while. Shane Black, co-writer/director of Iron Man 3, also wrote and directed my personal favorite Robert Downey Jr.-bromantical-bromance, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which was Black’s directing debut. In fact, it is the only movie Black directed before this big one. From the very first second of Iron Man 3, Robert Downey, Jr. is Kiss Kiss Bang Bang-ing his way through a wry, self-conscious voice over narration. It immediately nestled me into this beautiful cocoon of Shane Black wit, and I was no longer worried.

Because I was worried. The first two Iron Man installments had Favreau at the helm, and if Favreau’s in charge, we’re all okay. Really, I would feel better if he was President. Of the United States. Of America. But I was worried about this one. Not that I didn’t have faith in Shane Black. As stated before, I love the guy, and one of the hardest times I have ever laughed in my life was while watching KKBB in my dorm freshman year of college when Val Kilmer yells, “Why in pluperfect hell would you pee on a corpse?!” (…grammar jokes really get me). But the trailers for this third Iron Man were not the least bit funny! There were no jokes, and Tony Stark seemed really sad, and Ben Kingsley had an awful, distractingly indistinguishable accent. I was worried.

But in Iron Man 3, Tony Stark proved almost immediately to be his biting, winking, smirking self, Ben Kingsley’s role is just simply magnificent, action-y things happen, and there’s even a funny minor plot with a little kid that Stark befriends, or, shall I say, bromances. I haven’t watched the first two in a while and I have a terrible memory, but I would venture to say that comedy-wise, Iron Man 3 is up there with the first one, if not even a little drier and more daring with its jokes (meaning more trusting of the audience). Villain-wise, it’s a little weak. Guy Pearce is just too tiny a person; he’s a little presence, and his background and the reason for his evil is lacking somewhat. But then again, without spoiling too much, Ben Kinglsey’s character sort of distracts from what’s missing in that evil and adds to the offbeat color and tone of the entire movie. Action-wise, I have no idea because I do not notice these things. And bromance-wise, it takes all of the cakes and shoves your face into them like your playful bff at your 21^st b-day bash! Tony and the little kid, Tony and Happy (Favreau), Tony and Don Cheadle’s mostly boring character…there is a network of bromantical veins that feeds the heart of Iron Man 3 and holds it together. It keeps the movie’s blood pumping, pumping out jokes, pumping out super cool superhero-y things, and pumping out massive amounts of bro love.

Shane Black has been collecting medals in bromance creation since he wrote the Lethal Weapons, and with this movie, he has melted all those medals down and molded them into a super-suit of witty, dry, lovable bromance medal armor with which he can now hug the world forever. And I am okay with that.

And oh my god I almost forgot! My actual favorite part of Iron Man 3 can be summed up in two, adorable words: ADAM PALLY.

Grade: A-

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In Oblivion, Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman is Splinter from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Olga Kurylenko is Catherine Zeta-Jones, Andrea Riseborough is thoroughly British, and Melissa Leo is the worst.

As you know from the trailer that you have inevitably sat through a bajillion times, Tom Cruise plays Jack Harper, a member of the “mop up crew,” a team of two whose job it is to repair drones and protect the resources left on Earth after an extremely vaguely identified war took place. Well, really Jack does all the exploring in his futuristic bubble plane while his assigned partner/lover?/wife?, Victoria (Riseborough), sits at a fancy, technological computer desk and looks worried. We do not know what this war was about or really whom it was against (though it is “explained” that an alien race, maybe, called “Skavs” are to blame for the trouble), it is made very clear, over and over, that we won the war. But we lost the planet.

Humans fled earth to Titan, where they live in a space society that, in my head, is not entirely unlike that of Zenon: Girl of The 21^st Century. Sally (Melissa Leo) gives Jack and Victoria their assignments from the Tet, the very official and pyramidal space station, through static-ridden, cult-ish videos in which she never fails to ask if they are an “effective team” and promises them admission to Titan once their mission is complete. On Titan, they will join the rest of humanity in using all the resources from Earth that Jack is protecting until they run out and the human race wastes away and is gone forever (that second part isn’t addressed in the movie. I’m just thinking ahead here).

The real problem is that Jack is a big softy who kinda liked Earth, and even though he went through the mandatory memory swipe, he is haunted by dreams of a mysterious woman who looks a lot like CZJ, and he reads too many books. Basically, he’s real emo. And as Jack begins to remember more, he also ends up face to face with Morgan Freeman, a caped and spectacled truthmonger. Jack learns that, surprise, surprise, the way things are, well, they aren’t really the ways things are.

Director Joseph Kosinski is primarily a commercial director, and I bring that up because there are some very well crafted thirty to sixty second clips in Oblivion, single minutes that would play well as trailers or ads, but offer little as far as being actual scenes in an actual movie. The story is vague and very character driven, although its main character is about as one dimensional as the picture on the screen we watch it on. The plot is like an eggshell, a thin and easily breakable outline that is filled with a soft, mushy semblance of an emotional character piece that could have been dressed up and interestingly flavored but is just pretty bland on its own.

A sci-fi movie with little in the way of character or plot should be saved by kick ass action sequences. But the visuals are bleak, and the action is mostly predictable and flat. And finally, it’s a sprinkle of the Oprah couch incident and a heaping helping of Scientology that make me just not even able to look at Tom Cruise and see anything but his public, fairly unhinged persona. He is now always cast as doggedly determined idealists who have a one-track mind, a penchant for getting involved in dangerous things, and a disregard for “the rules.” It’s all he can do anymore, and it is really very tired. I do not know what is next for Tom Cruise, but I hope it’s something…else.

Grade: C-

The post ‘Oblivion:’ That’s About Right appeared first on The Blemish.

I have been waiting for a great new baseball movie. I saw 42 this morning. …I am still waiting. The visible and audible problem with 42 is that Jackie Robinson is so much a legend, so much bigger than life, that there are no words to encompass what he did and who he was. So, instead of attempting something specific and meaningful but maybe not as grand, 42 tries to paint a picture of the bigness of this man, this time, this history that was made. This is not necessarily a wanton endeavor. However, the script, acting, and score are all incredibly trite and cheesy, and that leaves the movie substance-less, a pile of enormous, sweeping clichés with little in the way of character development or plot. 42 is a movie about glorifying how important this man was instead of being a movie about this man, who was important.

There is nothing revelatory, nothing interesting, that we get a glimpse of in 42. A spinning newsreel voice over montage starts us off and we are handed over to Dodgers GM, Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford with very bushy eyebrows), who simply declares that he is going to bring a black man to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Five minutes later, he declares that man will be Jackie Robinson. Five minutes later, he is talking to Jackie Robinson about playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Five minutes later, Jackie plays for Montreal and then, finally, makes his way to Ebbett’s Field, all the while being called names, being challenged by racism, running the bases real well, and kissing his wife. That’s all there is to this story. It is exactly what you would have predicted from an over-the-top, incredibly cheesy, inspirational sports movie.

There could have been so much more there. We could have learned something, anything. The reason he got the number 42, which is, ahem, the title of the movie, is not even addressed. Jackie Robinson is an absolute hero, a real life legend, and I learned nothing about him from 42, and it is over two hours long. I learned more about the man in the three-minute phone conversation I had with my dad after being disappointed by the film. He told me Robinson was a Republican – that he campaigned for Richard Nixon! Now that is an interesting fact. 42 may have wanted to stick to the glory and only the glory, but man did that make for a boring movie. I do not mean to say that the movie should have focused entirely on de-mything Robinson or exposing things about him for the sake of exposing them. But it could have been a little more grounded in reality, a little less a complete God-like portrayal, and more a character piece with interesting dialogue and relationships. You know, the stuff of actual life.

The most amusing part of this film is the cast. Not necessarily the acting of the cast, though most of it is passable, but the faces that pop up are surprising and sometimes hilarious. The Brooklyn Dodgers include Ryan Merriman as Dixie Walker, otherwise known as the star of such Disney Channel Original Movies as The Luck of the Irish and A Ring Of Endless Light and Smart House. Yeah. Another team member (who is awarded an inexplicable amount of screen time) is Hamish Linklater as Ralph Branca, though I recognized him immediately as the quirky brother from The New Adventures of Old Christine. T.R. Knight has a neurotic turn as a guy named Harold who wears tiny glasses, Dr. Perry Cox from Scrubs (his real name is John C. McGinley) is the announcer man, Chris Meloni is adulterous manager, Leo Durocher, and my personal favorite, Alan Tudyk, or as I affectionately call him, Steve the Pirate (his role in the greatest sports movie of all time, Dodgeball) plays Ben Chapman, Phillies manager/the most racist man alive.

To put it in baseball terms, 42 is like that sad pop fly that feels good when you hit it and you think it’s going places, but then it just dies in the air. And then you are out.

Grade: C

The post 42: The Number of Clichés in the Movie ’42′ appeared first on The Blemish.

“A horror comedy about a sleazy party clown who accidentally dies at a little boy’s birthday bash then comes back six years later to seek revenge on the same group of kids” is the plot of Stitches and also the greatest movie description of all time. I think every movie should be this. It is unequivocally awesome.

Stitches is directed by Conor McMahon and stars British comedian, Ross Noble, and a whole lot of fake blood. It’s low budget brilliant gore, a skilled and hilarious homage to those cheesy 80’s horror flicks in which death scenes warrant cackles and applause as opposed to crippling terror. And I cackled and applauded my way through the whole thing. Complete with corny slasher catch phrase (“Everybody happy?”), exploding heads, torn off limbs, blood spraying everywhere and always, and a fantastically choreographed umbrella death scene, Stitches does not disappoint.

It does exactly what it sets out to do and manages to be creative and exciting despite the fact that I sat down to watch it prepared to experience an off-the-wall, zany gorefest. Sure, it follows a formula, but it shakes it up and maintains originality through excellently tasteless death scenes (the aforementioned umbrella, balloon animal intestines, can opener to the skull, etc.) and surprisingly subtle and convincing performances from Noble and the young actors (Tommy Knight, Gemma- Leah Devereux, Shane Murray Corcoran).

The jokes and scares and special effects alike are dirt cheap in the most satisfying way possible. There are one or two moments in the movie that felt slow, because people were talking too much and no hilariously graphic mutilation was happening on screen. But other than that, Stitches absolutely delivered the (so bad it’s) goods.

Grade: A-

The post ‘Stitches:’ Everybody’s Happy appeared first on The Blemish.

The two words that best describe Evil Dead, the not remake but reboot of The Evil Dead (you can tell it is not a remake because there’s no “The” at the front, so it’s clearly much different) are:

1. SO

And

2. GROSS.

And that combination is the best thing it could be.

Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell produced and OK-ed, Fede Alvarez directed, Alvarez, Diablo Cody, and Rodo Sayagues written, Evil Dead is four amazing and rare things:

• A rated R horror movie!!!!!

• That is in theaters!!!!

• That is also SO INCREDIBLY GROSS!!!!!

• And they say really bad words in it!!!!!

FINALLY. I’ve been waiting a long time for one of these.

This Evil Dead takes a more straightforward horror movie approach than the 1981 original. It is not as campy or cheesy or funny as THE Evil Dead, which I usually gripe about, but in this case, it mostly worked. With the status the franchise has gained, it was due for a Hollywood makeover. But the filmmakers took care not to gussy it up too much for the new millennium. The effects are all practical – no CGI was used, and it is just infinitely better that way. Evil Dead is the goriest, bloodiest, most disgusting movie that has been in theaters in a long time.

Yes, there is an unnecessary plot line. Instead of a group of college kids on vaca (which is silly, I admit, but not as silly as…), a group of friends meet at that ol’ isolated cabin in the woods for one of those classic, “get your friend to quit drugs” getaways. Mia (Jane Levy, or as I recognized her, “the girl from Suburgatory”), is like, so gonna quit this time, so she, her registered nurse best friend, Olivia (the pretty annoying Jessica Lucas), their nerdy asshole teacher friend, Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), Mia’s darling skeptic of a brother, David (Shiloh Fernandez), and his blander than bland girlfriend, Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), head to the woods for the greatest, most awesomest intervention of their lives! Little do they know that the basement is filled with dead cats and a book that raises demons.

It takes its sweet time getting to the good stuff. There’s all this hazy exposition, replete with eye-roll worthy lines like, “Remember that lullaby mom used to sing us?” and, “You should have been there,” and, “She’s not going to survive another OD.” After about half an hour of that crap, the fun begins, with a reboot of that famous tree violation scene. And then shit gets cray.

There are some over-the-top silly instances that don’t seem to fit in with the straight gory goal of the film. And though I definitely jumped once or twice, there are several odd camera choices that seem to me to lessen the fright factor at certain moments. But once the blood bath begins, it doesn’t let up until the end. For every weird camera shot that cuts the creepiness a bit, there are about three shots of relentless, gratuitous gore from which the camera won’t turn away. You see it all. The gore is top-notch; it even made me, whom they call* “Old Iron Stomach,” a teensy bit queasy.

I want to refrain from comparing Evil Dead to the original too much because the filmmakers and producers have been adamant about maintaining that this is not a remake or another sequel, but rather a parallel story. After a sequel to this new one and a little film called Army of Darkness 2 (which will star Bruce Campbell), this new plot will merge with the original storyline into one, big super sequel. This reboot is the most brilliant way they could have gone about updating the audience and gathering new fans before re-subjecting the world to the ultra-campiness of the original. At least I hope it’s the plan to return to the feeling of the first one. You can’t really put Bruce Campbell on screen and expect anything less.

The impressive effects and gallons upon gallons of blood successfully drown out the silly stuff and make Evil Dead totally worth it for a fan of real gore. Take it from Old Iron Stomach.

Grade: B+

*I don’t know who “they” are…I made them up. No one calls me that. Except me.

The post ‘Evil Dead:’ SO GROSS! appeared first on The Blemish.

Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 is an explorative documentary and piece of literary criticism about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Told in nine chapters and woven together with differing theories from five obsessive critics, some more obsessive than others, Room 237 provides fans of The Shining, fans of Stanley Kubrick, fans of great filmmaking, fans of conspiracy theories, anyone who has a slight interest in film, and anyone who is the least bit curious about anything in the world, with a rich and fascinating collection of critical theses about one of the greatest movies ever made (that’s just a fact).

We are introduced to each of the critics in the beginning chapter of the film, though we never see their faces, because the documentary isn’t about them. It’s about The Shining and about Stanley Kubrick. The result of this tactic is that the theories become forefront, as does the filmic evidence. We are wholly sucked into the world of the Overlook Hotel and the thought processes and goals of a genius filmmaker.

What Ascher does brilliantly is let his critics talk, really just go off, about how The Shining is actually about the genocide of the Native Americans and the Holocaust and the number 42 and perhaps most zanily, the faking of the moon landing, and then he reins it all in and shapes and molds all the pieces into a cohesive, believable, and enlightening thesis that extrapolates what’s truly important about what these critics bring to light.

Sure, there’s a whole section about Native American imagery, which is fairly valid, but also not encompassing of everything the film offers. There is a Holocaust historian who provides evidence of Holocaust symbolism in the film, again, there but not everything. Then there’s the moon landing guy. Ohhhh, the moon landing guy. This critic provides textual evidence from The Shining and purports that Kubrick uses the film to express his internal struggle with having been part of the filming of the fake moon landing footage. Let me clarify: this man is convinced that the footage we saw of the moon landing was absolutely fake. He doesn’t necessarily think the landing itself was fake. He thinks we could have really gotten to the moon, but that the footage we saw was one hundred percent not real. He is further convinced that Stanley Kubrick filmed the fake footage. And he is convinced that Kubrick uses The Shining to tell us that he was the one who filmed the fake moon landing and that it was a tough job. Now, it seems, at first ridiculous. It seems, at second, ridiculous. It might even seem at third, ridiculous. But the beauty of the documentary is that this critic, like the others, is allowed to plead his case and is given as much consideration as the others. Some of what he points out is fun to think about and even slightly intriguing.

In addition to the overarching theories of these five critics, there are “extras” in the documentary, not quite these big theories, but rather things that people noticed while watching the film or comparing it to others. There is an exploration of the similarities between the beginning of The Shining and the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and vice versa. Someone thought to play The Shining forwards and backwards, superimposed over itself, and highlighted some fascinating symbols and structurally interesting occurrences. A critic noticed that there are subliminal messages to Stephen King in the movie, ones (in addition to the plot points Kubrick changes) that let him know that this story is Kubrick’s, not his, any longer. These tangents, these bits and pieces, are extremely interesting, super fun to realize, and also contribute to the documentary’s thesis.

Ascher is masterful in that he lets the film breathe, he lets these critics go on and he lets the half-ideas and silly considerations and sort of symbols flood your brain. He acknowledges that some of what is explored in The Shining may not have been done consciously by Kubrick, but also recognizes that he was a genius and that there is more to this movie than meets the eye. And then at a certain point, Ascher trims the fat. And what remains is an intellectual, fully formed and explored conclusion (which is recognized as debatable). What all these critics babbling leads to is the idea that The Shining is Kubrick’s attempt to “make something of a connection,” to allow us to connect emotionally with the past, to all of the things that these critics discuss that have, with the passing of time, become distant stories and statistics for most. The genocide of the Native Americans, the slaughtering of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, they are explored in the film to a certain extent, and overall, The Shining, and “the shining,” are ways to see and feel the past. The “extras” fit this concept too. For example, the way The Shining plays in opposition with 2001 supports this concept, with The Shining representing the past and 2001, the future.

What I especially like about this thesis is that it is optimistic in a way. The ultimate joke of The Shining is that it is a movie about hope. It tells us to connect with the past, but to recognize that the past does not exist anymore, that it is, as Dick Halloran tells Danny, “just like pictures in a book.” The Shining tells us to move on, and that the way to move on is to connect and feel, then learn from it and look to the future.

Okay, cool. I’m going to go watch The Shining now.

Grade: A

The post ‘Room 237:’ A Room with a Whole Bunch of Views appeared first on The Blemish.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Do not mistake Olympus Has Fallen for a “political” movie. It is not a “political thriller” or a “political action movie.” It may take place in and around the White House and the Pentagon, and the characters may all be politicians, Secret Service agents, and military personnel, but Olympus Has Fallen is a one hundred percent straight up action flick that happens to happen in Washington, D.C. If you go into this movie with any sort of expectation that there is a political statement the filmmaker is trying to make, or a political issue that will be explored, you will be sorely disappointed. If you sidle up to Olympus Has Fallen with a large popcorn and a hankering to see a whole bunch of explosions, you will probably have a grand old time. It is kind of a fun one on that level.

I don’t know what I was expecting. The movie begins with a terrible accident that seems quite significant. In a snowstorm, the car transporting President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) skids off a bridge, and Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is able to save the big guy, but not the First Lady (Ashley Judd, who, in the five minutes she was alive, makes me wish she could be a real First Lady someday). You think that this event will be important. It is not. Its only function is to establish Mike Banning’s sense of failure and regret, so that when ten minutes in movie time later, the White House is compromised by a really organized group of Korean terrorists, he has something to make up for.

I don’t know what I was expecting. If Gerard Butler is in a movie, that movie is about Gerard Butler. Even if the movie also has Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett and Melissa Leo (who ALWAYS makes EVERYTHING about her. Ugh. I don’t like her. Can you tell?). The car accident is about setting up Gerard Butler’s only character trait, besides badassiness, and nothing more. The attack on the United States of America, the full-blown takeover of the White House, only exists for Gerard Butler to single-handedly John McClane his way through a bunch of terrorists. There is no politics. There is no point. And once you realize that, you can have an okay time watching an action film punctured with about as many plot holes as bullet holes. It just bothered me that Banning hadn’t worked in the White House for 18 months, and he still knew all the passwords to things because they definitely didn’t change them. Come on.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but Aaron Eckhart is really handsome I mean plays a great President. He is alternatively scared and steadfast, giving a solid performance in a movie in which the end game is clearly not great acting.  Butler is himself, as in, the sometimes snarky, not quite convincingly American tough guy with a heart of gold and fists of steel and also a lot of guns. Melissa Leo and Dylan McDermott should start a comedy duo and have a show called Just the Worst because that is what they are, Melissa Leo in everything, Dylan McDermott in most things. I am convinced Morgan Freeman showed up to set for like, two days, did one take of all his lines, then booked it out of there. That’s what it seemed like, and that’s what he deserves. He’s Morgan Fucking Freeman. Angela Bassett is awesome, but wasn’t allowed to do much.

I don’t know what I was expecting. I should have expected the most shots of American flags waving in the span of two hours that I have ever seen ever, fluttering aimlessly in the most cliché fashion, as if to say, “Hey there, it’s the Flag. I know you have seen me do this literally a million times before in movies. It has to be getting old. I am just here because we have to pretend this movie is like, ‘Go America! Woo!’ Get past this silliness and I will get you back to Gerard and his ass-kicking ways.” The flag got it. The flag knew what we, as audience members, didn’t need to see, which was a half-assed attempt at coloring the movie with a patriotic hue.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but Antoine Fuqua made this. He also made Training Day, which is amazing, and he also made Shooter, which I haven’t seen, but my brother thinks it’s the best movie ever made, so it’s probably terrible. On the scale from Training Day to Shooter, Olympus Has Fallen is Die Hard. That sentence makes no sense, but basically what I want to say is that it’s a pretty solid action flick with a plot that is very much like Die Hard. But it probably will not have the same “classic” status because, you know, Die Hard already exists.

So, I don’t know what I was expecting. But if I can tell you not to expect too much, you might find Olympus Has Fallen is…aight.

Grade: B-

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I don’t know what it says that James Franco seems so much more at home in the role of a sleazy, hustlin’, cornrow-ed and silver-grill-ed Florida drug dealer named Alien than I’ve ever really seen him. But Spring Breakers, if nothing else (but actually, pretty much nothing else), restored a little bit of faith in the Franco. Maybe he does just need the right role, and maybe that role has to have neck tattoos and bad grammar.

Spring Breakers follows four raucous and restless bikini-clad college girls down to Florida for spring break. Selena Gomez plays the religious one who, when it gets weird, cries and goes home. She did produce actual tears. I was impressed. The other three girls (including another Disney vet, Vanessa Hudgens, who, similar to Franco, seems much more at home in a pool threesome than singing love songs to Zac Efron in a fake high school cafeteria), stick around and get involved, in all of the ways you can get involved (see above mentioned “pool threesome”), with Alien and his drug-fueled feud with another dealer.

The girls are reckless and remorseless – they hold up a chicken shack with squirt guns to get the money to pay for their trip, scaring the bajesus out of innocent people and running off with hundreds of dollars. Then they burn the car they stole to rob the restaurant! I just remembered that. Ugh. This part of the movie is an over-the-top exercise to show the gratification obsession, the fierce need to just be happy, to have stuff and money and more stuff. The girls find that kindred spirit in Alien, who at one point in the film, spends several minutes showing them the things in his house, listing off his machine guns and his tanning oils and his colognes like some twisted version of “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music. It’s a harsh depiction of the culture of ‘want,’ the society of ‘gimme.’

But the film is not cohesive. In a few brilliant moments, Spring Breakers gives up that social commentary thing and becomes a skilled parody of the drug/crime thriller. The only montage that works starts as a hilarious scene with Alien at the white piano that sits beside his pool, playing and singing Britney Spears’s, “Everytime,” and descends into a Spears-backed shooting/beating/drug-filled spree. But the movie doesn’t stay a parody either. In certain moments, the film is funny, in others, dark, and all in all, it’s exploitative and experimental.

Directed and (hardly) written by Harmony Korine, Spring Breakers is not only fairly muddled. It’s also literally one giant, poorly narrated montage. We get that it’s artsy fartsy and supposed to suck you in, supposed to make you feel like you are swept up in the spring break whirlwind, caught in the cycle of drugs and parties and beer bongs, constantly stuck and sandy and drunk, never really going anywhere. But when I say that the entire movie is a montage, I’m not exaggerating. Weaving throughout the 94-minute flash fest is an inexplicable amount of repetition of shots and of many of the terrible lines of dialogue, and it makes what could have been a visually stunning movie and an intense, emotional, breathing piece, just kinda boring to watch.

There can be substance in stylized exploitation, but Spring Breakers doesn’t do a complete enough job of reining it in and molding the pieces into a fluid film. If the point is pastiche, it doesn’t create meaning. And that’s why Spring Breakers feels flat. It’s a sometimes parody, sometimes thriller, sometimes social criticism, sometimes “Girls Gone Wild” take off, sometimes not any of that. Just because your characters are inarticulate, scary, and volatile doesn’t mean your movie has to be.

Grade: C+

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Oz: The Great and Powerful’s backstory includes a king that was killed and a prophecy that says a wizard is supposed to come save and rule the people of Oz. There are several witches, one who rules over one section of Oz, maybe? Or she just hangs out there, because they still need that wizard? Two of the witches are sisters, and they spend their time in the castle in Emerald City, but they’re not in charge either? Or are they? Where did this prophecy come from? This great wizard has to save the people from what, exactly? Good questions, me! These are a few of the many that are never acknowledged, let alone answered, in this vague, lackadaisical Oz-ish movie.

According to my extensive research (one article I read somewhere), L. Frank Baum, the author of most of the books in the Oz series, didn’t concern himself much with continuity, opting for flighty fun over the detailed world building that someone like that crazypants, J.R.R. Tolkien, did with Lord of the Rings. The filmmakers could have easily and rightfully taken liberties with the world of Oz, liberties that did not (or did!) contradict the 1939 film. Any decisions at all would have helped contextualize the conflict and solidify the plot, protagonists, antagonists, etc. Instead, we end up with a sort of prequel that doesn’t give us any further insight into the world of Oz. It’s almost like the filmmakers were scared to say anything new for fear of upsetting purists. Then why try to say anything at all?

The character development and relationships are tenuous and sloppy, perhaps as a result of not really knowing from where any of the conflict truly arises. The evil is trite and convoluted, the characterizations, meek and dashed off. Though sloppy, the structure is extraordinarily derivative of The Wizard of Oz. It begins in black and white, “at home” with our wizard, Oscar (James Franco), a con man and a circus magician. He gets lifted off to Oz in a twister, where everything becomes colorful, and he finds entertaining companions to journey with him to the Emerald City to defeat the evil witch. Then, he gives his new friends gifts at the end! There is no reason that this movie, a prequel of sorts, a NOT REMAKE of The Wizard of Oz, has to be structured like that. It plays off less like an homage and more like an attempt to grasp at familiarity and ally itself with The Wizard of Oz. It should have been an effort to create something new and fun and interesting.

James Franco. Why. He clearly stopped trying a long time ago. He is so self-conscious on screen, as in too much into the idea that it is himself on the screen, saying those lines. I don’t believe he was always like that. Ever since his little meta foray into the soap opera world and the worst Oscar broadcast in a long time, he’s just been kind of insufferable to watch.  Oz is supposed to be a conman. In order to con people, you have to have charisma, charm, finesse, attitude. You need much more than what James Franco has, which is really adorable eye wrinkles when he smiles, and that’s about it.

Zach Braff was the best part of the movie. He starts out as Oscar’s frustrated, sassy circus assistant, then becomes the voice of his mouthy bellhop monkey slave. Literally all of the jokes in the script, all of the funny lines, went to Zach Braff. And that character really is funny. It was almost worse that the monkey was that well written because then for the rest of the script, I was wondering where the snappy dialogue was.

Some of the visuals were good; the actual, physical details of Oz were well done and held my interest. Though for the first ten minutes or so we traverse the pathways of Oz with the wizard, the scenery looks like it could easily be the really cool next version of Temple Run.

I think the heart of the problem with Oz: The Great and Powerful is that it is unequivocally a kid’s movie. The Wizard of Oz is not. In 1939, they didn’t really have the luxury of niche targeting for films, but the original was much more skilled at appealing to a wide, able-minded audience that included adults and children (who, depending on their threshold for fear, may or may not have been scarred for life after viewing it. But you know, a good kind of scarred for life). Oz: The Great and Powerful tries to subdue the really dark and bring out the light and fluffy, but this results in a sometimes entertaining, pretty confusing, and mostly plotless movie shoved into a seven decade old structure and held together with a too thin thread of a funny monkey lines.

Grade: C-

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