BadAss Movies Day 2: Winter's Bone

Don’t let the boring title or shitty poster fool you, this is an amazing modern day noir set in the Ozarks with some of the best performances of the year.

Why its badass:

-A great adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s novel by Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini.

-Jennifer Lawrence. Somehow she manages to be tough, maternal, badass and naïve all at the same time.

-John Hawkes' incredible performance as Teardrop. Nobody doubted his range, from Me and You and Everyone We Know to Deadwood to (of course) Eastbound and Down but his transformation here is so impressive its like he’s been getting into character for forty years.

-A banjo score!

-The beautiful bleak cinematography.

- Her reaching in for the second hand (you’ll know it when you see it).

Cinematic Relatives: Brick, Fargo

Check out BadAss Movies Day 1 here.

Two green movies and Thor

Here’s a quick breakdown of the upcoming superhero releases based solely on trailers and hearsay.

3. Green Hornet: Stephen Chow directing a Hollywood superhero movie starring Seth Rogen with Nicolas Cage as a supervillain, coming out Summer 2010? Awesome!

Then Chow drops 0ut, to be replaced by Michel Gondry? Okay, still cool.

Then Nicolas Cage drops out, replaced by Christoph Waltz? Still fine.

Then its pushed to dump-month January? Uh-oh.

The trailer is a bland-a-thon? I’m getting concerned.

And their post-converting it to 3D? Maybe it’ll be better than The Last Airbender.

Pros: The writers. Director. Hopefully practical effects.

Cons: Cameron Diaz as a plucky new secretary. Isn’t she 40?

2. Green Lantern: A dumb-looking purple alien gives Ryan Reynolds a ring and he gets a new CGI body that can project ‘magic fist.’

Isn’t Green Lantern the guy who’s allergic to yellow?

Pros: Ryan Reynolds seems very nice when not buried underground.

Cons: From the director of Vertical Limit!

1. Thor. Check out Anthony Hopkins' golden eyepatch. Then remember this is from Kenneth Branagh the director of the clusterfuck that is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I cannot wait for this movie b/c everything here screams high-profile train-wreck.

I will not look away.

Pros: Natalie Portman is so hot its dumb.

Cons: It’s Thor. There are no cons.

Cautious Optimism, 'Cowboys vs Aliens' be thy name

The Cowboys vs Aliens trailers hits the web on wednesday and i can't wait. I love westerns, alien invasion movies, genre mash-ups, explosions, director Jon Favreau and the cast. So what could go wrong? Well like a beaten dog, I've at least learned to taper my expectations. Here's why:

5. Wild Wild West: A Mega-budget summer tentpole that combines westerns, science-fiction, and 'comedy'? We've seen this before. Wild Wild West effectively killed Barry Sonnenfeld's (previously impressive) big screen career. The only things to walk away from this with any dignity were the theme song (which i can still sing) and a giant mechanical spider.

4. Jonah Hex: A mega-budget summer tentpole that combines westerns, science fiction and 'comedy'? We've seen this before. Jonah Hex effectively killed Jimmy Hayward's (never impressive) big screen career. The only things to walk away from this movie unscathed were the Mastodon score and Megan Fox's cleavage (see previous).

3. Iron Man 2: Jon Faveau's superhero sequel made a ton of money but anyone who argues its a good movie is lying through their teeth.

It's a boring mess filled with tedious action sequences, an incoherent story, f/x for f/x sake, and wall-to-wall one-liners that let us know the characters care just as little as the audience does. It's better than Wild Wild West or Jonah Hex, but then again so are a lot of things I don't want to stare at for two hours.

2. Vs movies: Freddy, Jason, Alien, Predator, Santa Claus, Martians, The People, Larry Flynt. The bar is not as high as we'd like it to be.

1. Space Cowboys: What if this is just a remake of a shitty Clint Eastwood movie?

Comedies with Zero Laughs Day 1: The Adventures of Pluto Nash

This movie is the equivalent to a sit-down dinner at Wendy's. Its sad and its quiet and somehow you feel worse when its over. 

The only thing sadder than when this movie aims for comedy is its sorry attempts at action sequences. 

Pluto Nash apparently cost over $80 million. Unless Eddie Murphy got paid 75 of that  I challenge you to tell me where the money went cause the sets and effects are at a high school play level.

Closest laugh:

(Someone breaks a WOODEN stool.)

Pluto Nash: Do you have any idea how hard it is to get wood on the moon? 

Seriously. That's what we're working with. 

Also Alec Baldwin has half a scene. I wanted to laugh. I genuinely did. 

Directed by Ron Underwood. Director of City Slickers AND Tremors!

 How could you Ron? 

Fuck Pluto Nash. 

(although props for having an 80 million dollar movie where randy quaid is the second biggest guy on your poster)

3 reasons NOT to be optimistic about Machete

Today was the premiere of the trailer for Robert Rodriguez's Machete, adapted from the trailer from Grindhouse and surprise -- it looks a lot like the trailer from Grindhouse. 

The movie could be fun. Michelle Rodriguez looks hot in an eye-patch, they cast the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man as Steven Seagal and they even got Robert 'I-haven't-shown-emotion-on-screen-since-Rocky & Bullwinkle' DeNiro. 

But despite people's affections for the original faux-teaser there are reasons to assume this movie will bomb. 

1. Irony: There's a difference between liking something and ironically liking something. Hipsters and internet trolls are notorious for their ironic love. This  is code for 'Maybe I'll download it while scanning through youporn.' 

Say what you will about 'Mainstream Culture' (aka people who watch Two and Half Men) but when they ironically love something they bring it the fuck back (see Betty White). 

When hipsters and nerds ironically love something you get Motherfucking Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane. In other words, colossal failure. 

2. Mexico: Nacho Libre, Man on Fire, The Mexican, Bandidas, 

From Dusk till Dawn 3: Hangman's Daughter. 

The 2000s have not been kind to Hollywood films set south of the border. 

3. Planet Terror: Didn't Rodriguez already try and make a celebration of b-and-c-grade movies that inexplicably had an oversized budget, an 'intentionally' bad script and recognizable stars. And wasn't that easily the worst part of Grindhouse? 

For the record, I love Death Proof but the best part was easily Don't!

(I can't stress enough DeNiro was really in Rocky & Bullwinkle, he even mocks his Taxi Driver scene)

BadAss Episodes: Alias 'Phase One' (2003)

I decided to finally check out a show that I completely ignored for all of its run. 

Season 1 of Alias is fun. Over the course of 22 episodes a series of small reveals and reversals finally all culminate in 'the semi-big twist' ('Mom?')

And for twelve episodes Season 2 seemed to be on the same trajectory.  Syd's mom's loyalties flip-around, no one knows what Sloan's up to. 

In fact by 'Phase One,' the post-Super Bowl episode, you feel like Alias is pretty much on a very entertaining variation of auto-pilot. (keep in mind Alias' version of auto-pilot puts Jennifer Garner in lingerie, and then tells her to change b/c it clearly isn't sexy enough)

And then J.J. Abrams laughs in our face just b/c he's smarter. 

From Syd's mid-air exploding plane escape onward the show does not stop. It gives you more plot than most series finales and at this point we're only halfway through the season. 

Why its badass: 

- Aforementioned lingerie / plane escape

- Sloan disappears. 

- He's replaced by the eternally badass Rutger Hauer. Who's smart enough to realize that Syd and her dad are double agents IMMEDIATELY. Because they are. And its obvious.

- Syd's dad gets tortured. Hard.

- Syd has to tell Dixon the truth, but doesn't have time to deal with the hundred-thousand follow up qts. He wants to fucking kill her. Also they're randomly standing by oil rigs.

- Sloan is chilling on a beach somewhere with his dead-again-live-again wife having pulled off the most inexplicable plan in history. (Did he place the wine glass in his bathroom in the earlier episode, if so who was he acting for when he almost dropped his towel in shock)

- Syd finally hooks up with vaughn (ending their boring looks of longing) 

- They take down SD-6. I thought there would be four more years of build-up. So glad I was wrong.

- And of course, Frannie, the chick who was there to -- well it never really was clear why she was on this show -- but she gets owned by her Face Clone. Amazing. (its never addressed but does the new double agent Fran continue to run her restaurant? Is she in any way qualified or prepared for that? I would like to see a cold blooded killer deal with a kitchen staff)

Anyway, I'm so used to incremental soap-opera like story telling on television I forgot how much fun it can be when characters actually do shit. 

BadAss Episode.

Movies to DRUNK by -- Day 1

This is a quest to find the perfect movie to make fun of while drinking with friends. There are certain criteria, violence, cool characters and a tone that takes itself pretty seriously. Why make fun of a movie already making fun of itself?

Todays Entry: Doomsday (2008)

What's it about: Neil Marshall (The Descent) makes an homage to every John Carpenter movie ever made (with the possible exception of Memoirs of an Invisible Man with Chevy Chase) 

Violence: 

Heads are smashed. 

Limbs are unceremoniously removed.  

A body gets run over by a tank and explodes like a blood-filled balloon. 

A fucking rabbit explodes! How often do you get to see that 

Grade: A

Characters: 

It's always nice to see Bob (Smee) Hoskins but he has nothing to do but waddle.  

Its a bad sign when the only memorable character is a chick with tribal tatoos and even now I can't remember if she actually has any lines (although her sendoff is pretty amazing). 

Rhona Mitra plays the lead and I'm all for movies about badass chicks, but her character traits are limited to 'can-remove-eye-and-use-it-as-a-camera.' 

The main bad guy has a decent Mad Max-vibe and although he's forgettable he wins points for having one of the greatest character intros of all time, dancing out in front of  crowd of cheering cannibals to the song 'Good Thing' by -- wait for it -- the Fine Young Cannibals (I just got it. Genuis). 

Grade: C

Overall: 

Even though Marshall's in on the joke, the movie takes itself just serious enough to make it fun to sarcastically rip on with friends. Unfortunately the movie completely falls apart in the last third when Rhona finds herself in the scottish countryside and the movie LITERALLY goes medieval. 

If you're not adequately drunk by the time Malcolm McDowell shows up, you're in serious trouble (but that goes for real life as well). 

Drinking Grade: B+

Actual Movie Grade: B-