Opening Everywhere: Mirror Mirror, Wrath of the Titans, Goon
Opening Somewhere: Bully
FilmDrunk Suggests: You’re probably going to see The Hunger Games for the first time or again, but people are going crazy over Bully if you want to go watch a documentary and feel like a dick for always picking on the fat quiet kid in your math class. What’s he doing now? Probably blogging.
Mirror Mirror
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 51% critics, 56% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
“Relying heavily on slapstick comedy for laughs, it’s fortunate that director Tarsem Singh (Immortals, The Fall) has assembled a brilliant ensemble cast who more than adequately rise to the occasion. As for the film’s leads, Armie Hammer, besides being an almost ridiculously perfect physical embodiment of a Prince, also proves himself to be a more than competent comedian, with props also going to Lily Collins for managing to make her often cornball dialogue seem somewhat credible.” – Catherine Brown, Film Ink (Props? I seriously hate bloggers sometimes.)
“This is such a delight this film, it’s been so cleverly written by Melissa Wallack and Jason Keller who’ve milked every opportunity for subversive feminist comedy. Director Tarsem Singh Dhandwar not only keeps the action rolling along he has elicited the most fabulous performance from Julia Roberts, and the rest of the cast are top notch too.” Margaret Pomeranz, At the Movies (I need to point out that no actual, legitimate critics have reviewed this film yet, and these reviews were both from Australia, where PR teams undoubtedly pay top dollar for poster quotes.)
[VINCE’S UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE!]
“Roberts’ queen sits around camping it up in acres of taffeta while lobbing dull one-liners, consulting her reflection and telling her retainer (Nathan Lane) to kill the girl. The queen doesn’t bother to check on the results, though she does turn the servant into a cockroach, which yields a joke about Lane’s character getting raped by a grasshopper.” -Kyle Smith, NYPost
“Not since Francis Ford Coppola slapped his daughter Sofia into “Godfather III” have we seen a lead performance this dull, whispered and charisma free.” -Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
Armchair Analysis: I wanted to be fair when jumping to conclusions about this film that I will probably be watching sometime around November, if you catch my drift, and so I consulted my own magical mirror to ask if this movie was worth watching this weekend. And my mirror punched me in the nuts.
[Vince’s Note: It’s interesting to note that Tarsem Singh recently told The Hollywood Reporter that he’s been purposely choosing scripts that were badly written to give him more leeway to pretty them up with crazy visuals, and he includes Mirror Mirror in that assessment:
Tarsem’s previous efforts include The Cell, The Fall and Immortals – three films hailed for their visual style but frequently criticized for weak storytelling. He admitted that he actively sought less complex material in the past so that he could imprint his influence upon it. “I told the guys involved at CAA that it’s going to get difficult for them, because from now, guess what? I would like to read responsible scripts,” he recalled. “People were like, ‘wait a minute? You mean we’ve given you crap?’ and I said yes.”
I’m sure his screenwriters were thrilled to hear that.]
Wrath of the Titans
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 44% critics, 93% audience (Based on people who are excited to see it, apparently)
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
“A charmless stream of battle and fight sequences that contorts mythic characters into blockbuster conventions. It’s comically late – literally the last few minutes – that the film even tries to slide emotion into the characters’ relations, as if attempting to hypnotize us before leaving the theater: Oh, that was a love story?” – Jake Coyle, Associated Press (…*sigh*…)
“I’d say it’s… two to three times worse than the first one.” -Laremy Legel, This week’s Frotcast
“There’s little about this picture to really endear the viewer after the whole thing wraps (unless you’re really hypnotized by Pike, or something).” – Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies (About that…)
Armchair Analysis: I have the biggest crush on Rosamund Pike. Oh my goodness, like, I want to send her flowers and read her poetry while singing bluebirds braid her hair. I would take her to dinner and actually pay for it. That’s how special she is. As for the movie itself, if you go to see this action film about Greek mythology expecting great acting and a magnificent script, go ahead and do something else with your $12, like buy a Miley Cyrus album and blast it outside of a crack house. Because, as I have long campaigned with other films of this ilk (Cowboys and Aliens and Priest being the most recent), this movie was made so that you could shut off your brain, sit in a dark room with stupid glasses and mumble to yourself, “Gee this is fun, and that Rosamund Pike sure is pretty.”
Goon
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 78% critics, 82% audience (Wants to see it… apparently that’s a new way of gauging if something is worth a snowball’s fart)
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
“I wish that Goon were more than a sports-comedy blueprint outfitted with some pretty funny lines. It’s a very slight movie, with the standard elements — rise to success, love story, competition with rival bruiser — all served up like side dishes on a plate.” – Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
“With Scott, Pill, Grondin and Schreiber — and Kim Coates looking like an NHL coach in the making — the pic has a first-rate team of actors who visibly enjoy their roles and the sharp dialogue by Baruchel and Goldberg. Tech package is decent, but shows its budget limitations.” – Robert Koehler, Variety
Armchair Analysis: I haven’t heard a thing about this movie since we first heard it was being made. That said, Seann William Scott and Jay Baruchel are two of the most underwhelming comedic actors around, so see you on Netflix, Goon.
Bully
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 95% critics, 91% audience (Again, wants to see)
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
“For all the real-life angst that ‘Bully’ presents, you can’t help but feel that a century of movies and sitcom episodes might be more help to these kids than the film’s ‘you’re no better than he is if you stoop to his level’ preaching. If bullying is predominantly a rural America problem, maybe rural America needs to get back to watching ‘Andy Griffith Show’ reruns.” – Roger Moore, McClatchy Tribune News Service (Or we teach our kids how to throw a punch like they did in the good old days.)
“Any one of them might have served as its own complete film. This is especially true of a tale that comes toward the end: that of Kirk and Laura Smalley, whose 11-year-old son, Ty, took his own life because of bullying. These are admittedly simple, small-town folks: avid hunters and St. Louis Cardinals fans with longtime family roots in the area who are forced to reexamine everything that defines them in a teary haze. Kirk’s honesty and purity of emotion are haunting, and our time with this family is tantalizingly brief.” – Christy Lemire, Associated Press (Brief, sure, but they still make Cardinals fans sound like pussies. We’re World Champs, WE ARE THE BULLIES!)
Armchair Analysis: Bullying is a hot topic in the media, so it will take a true contrarian dick to not gush about this film’s powerful messages. That said, even if I wanted to watch this documentary, I can’t, because I will just start ranting about the pussification of America and then someone will show up and shove me in a locker and call me Ashley the Girl. Never fails.
[Vince’s Note: Not to get too Serious Cat on you, and I haven’t seen the film, but the idea that someone committed suicide “because of all the bullying!” is obnoxiously simplistic, and blaming it all on a bully makes it a little too easy to not worry about looking for signs of depression or how to treat it.]