This week we’ve got a fairly typical mix: A couple movies snubbed by the Oscars, some middling Hollywood fare, the latest Happy Madison abortion, an indie or two, weird straight-to-DVD flicks, Vince’s twinks in trouble, Larry the Cable Guy, and of course, Danny Trejo.
Here are the DVDs:
Jack and Jill
Immortals
Footloose
Like Crazy
The Skin I Live In
Senna
Tooth Fairy 2
Wyatt Earp’s Revenge
Recoil
Jeremy Fink And The Meaning Of Life
Columbus Circle
High Road
WWJD II: The Woodcarver
Mercenaries
1313: Bigfoot Island
1313: UFO Invasion
For new choices in streaming, clickJack And Jill
Let me be absolutely clear: I am not recommending this, I am warning you that it is out. Don’t buy it, don’t rent it, don’t stream it, don’t watch it for free on cable, and don’t even torrent it. Burnsy awarded this (along with the rest of Happy Madison’s 2011 output) the 2011 Seltzer/Friedberg Lifetime Achievement Award and he was too kind. I haven’t seen it and no one should. This is the movie that inspired the phrase, “Rated ARG For Pirates. F*ck You.”
The new Superman goes up against Mickey Rourke in this 300 knockoff directed by Tarsem Singh. I’ve never seen it, but I hear you’d be better off watching the director’s previous effort, The Fall. On the other hand, you could wait for his next movie, the god awful looking Mirror Mirror. With such a declining track record (The Cell notwithstanding), he’s like the Indian M. Night Shyamalan.
I’ve never seen the original and this remake still pisses me off. How the hell do they get off using a tag-line like, “This Is Our Time” for a f*cking remake? How about, “This Was Our Parents’ Time And We Have No Generational Identity Thanks To Eating Up Crap Like This And Twentysomething’s Nostalgia For Pop Culture That Isn’t’ Even Theirs About Which To Be Nostalgic”? Luckily it seems to have been largely forgotten already. Nobody will ever play “Six Degrees of Kenny Wormald”.
I’m almost hesitant to mock this movie because Vince loved it so much. In his alarmingly sincere review he gave it four out of five writing chairs, but let’s be honest about what’s going on here. At one point, Vince’s review spells it out:
“…because when you’ve got Anton Yelchin’s Jewy ringlets and rugged pastiness, the world is your vagina oyster.”
Make a movie about a movie blogger finding a coupon for a free Big Mac while getting the Velveeta stains out of his sweatpants and Vince would love it too. [Wait, you’re saying I only liked it because it’s about a guy with a sad mop of Jew curls who nevertheless gets to bang both Felicity Jones AND Jennifer Lawrence??? I never considered it before, but I’ll admit, you make a lot of sense. -Vince]
Antonio Banderas plays a plastic surgeon in this Spanish film from Oscar-winner Pedro Almodóvar. Banderas develops a synthetic skin that holds up to any kind of damage. I’m sure Melanie Griffith’s horrific visage has nothing to do with his choice to play out this fantasy. Check out this film the Oscars ignored in a DVD/Blu-ray combo pack.
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Senna
This documentary about legendary F1 driver Ayrton Senna is another movie that people feel got snubbed by the Oscar nominations. Watching the trailer all I could think about was Sacha Baron Cohen’s character from Talladega Nights. Spoiler alert: The Dictator looks awful and Senna dies.
Larry the Cable Guy stars in this sequel. I haven’t seen the original starring The Rock, so I don’t honestly know if a sequel was warranted. I’m guessing not. This film’s director, Alex Zamm, has also directed Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, Dr. Dolittle: Million Dollar Mutts, Inspector Gadget 2, and Chairman of the Board (starring Carrot Top!), so he’s probably got some self-loathing issues to deal with. Kind of makes you appreciate your own life decisions, you know?
Everybody knows that Val Kilmer probably gave his best performance as Doc Holliday in Tombstone. What this movie presupposes is, maybe he didn’t? Kilmer tries to recapture past glory by playing old Wyatt Earp this time, but don’t feel bad for good ol’ Val. He’s already finished acting in Goat Island, a movie about naked kids on an “odyssey of discovery and self-discovery.” Good god, I’m not even kidding.
Danny Trejo plays Drayke, the head bad guy in this ‘Stone Cold’ Steven Austin flick. Honestly, Trejo is the only thing that might make this worth watching. Hearing he was playing a character named Drayke made me wish they had cast him as The Drake in Hobo With A Shotgun. Hobo Hauer vs. Trejo would’ve been a match-up worth seeing.
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Jeremy Fink And The Meaning Of Life
What fascinates me about the marketing for this kid’s movie is the supposition that there are any people out there who see the box art or watch the trailer and are somehow still on the fence about watching it. I like to imagine that there’s some six year old kid who’s completely unimpressed until he sees that it stars ACADEMY AWARD WINNER Mira Sorvino and EMMY AWARD WINNER Joe Pantoliano. It’s like the film makers are as surprised as the rest of us that these two have won acting awards.
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This thriller stars all the hottest young talent from the year 2000. Selma Blair! Jason Lee! Amy Smart! Giovanni Ribisi! The cast also includes Kevin Pollak, and I’ll be honest here, I fully expect that at the end of the movie his character ends up being the bad guy so they rip off his face Scooby-Doo style and find out he was Julia Stiles all along.
Upright Citizens Brigade co-founder Matt Walsh directed this stoner comedy from an improvised script. It’s pretty simple really; keep your feelings about UCB comedy in mind and watch the trailer. If you see the cast involved and go, “Hey, that guy! Awesome, her too!” check it out. If you go, “Ugh, him? Jesus, her too?” then skip it.
First of all, it should be called WWJD II: The Second Coming, regardless of whatever the plot happens to be. Secondly, what would Jesus do? He would be a better carpenter in the first place; it was his family business after all. You know what else he would do? Ask everyone to stop presuming to know what his feelings and actions would be, and definitely stop using those presumptions to justify their own agendas.
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I’ll say this about Billy Zane: he knows his place in the entertainment world. You don’t see him giving delusional interviews about his accomplishments like Steven Seagal. Zane’s a D-lister, and he knows it. It pays the bills and he’s not complaining. As for this Billy Zane action flick, I’m a little OCD and needed one more new DVD to feature or the formatting for this post would’ve been all f*cked up.
After Vince’s post a while back, there’s really nothing left for me to say other than that this and the next DVD I feature are finally available today. As of this writing, there is only one Amazon.com review and it isn’t positive. ‘Toasterlad’ calls the series lazy because the trailer for this one doesn’t even feature any guys in their underwear. Fairly warned.
I’ve watched the trailer and Toasterlad will be pleased. I also have to commend whoever edited the trailer. Even under the supposition that these flicks are targeted at horny women, I fully expected there to be talk about alien anal-probing. Your restraint is commendable; I salute you.
Of the new DVDs, you can stream Senna and High Road if you so desire. If you’re in the mood for something else, here are a few new additions since last week’s post:
Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation of King Lear. If you haven’t yet seen a Kurosawa flick, you might as well start with this one. It’s not as well known as Rashomon or Seven Samurai, but it is still a great movie.
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They Might Be Giants
George C. Scott stars as a man who believes he is Sherlock Holmes. This is the movie that gave the band its name; that’s reason enough to see it.
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Religulous
Some people criticized this Bill Maher documentary, saying it focuses on shooting religious fish in a barrel. What those people won’t tell you is that the barrel started out with only two fish, but ended up overflowing and filling 12 basketfuls!
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Big Money Rustlas
Vince watched this Insane Clown Posse western over the weekend and was fully enjoying himself until Dustin “Screech” Diamond showed up. He is now working on a Kickstarter campaign hoping to fund a journey on which he hunts Screech down so he can punch him in the face.