Phew, a lot of movies coming out this weekend, including two I’ve actually seen. I’ve got your breakdown below, but if you take anything away, it should be this: if, with everything on offer this weekend, you still choose/allow yourself to be dragged to the new Kate Hudson yuppie abortion, you do not deserve to procreate. Movies covered: Thor, Something Borrowed, Jumping the Broom, Exporting Raymond, Hobo with a Shotgun, The Beaver
THOR
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
Thor, a film that absolutely should exist, but for entirely commercial reasons. Past that it has no real momentum, no life force, no undefinable quality which makes it in the least bit remarkable. –Laremy, Film.com
“Thor” is the most entertaining superhero debut since the original Spiderman. -Richard Roeper
The last 25 minutes of “Thor” aren’t much better than the first. But that hour in between – tasty, funny, robustly acted – more than compensates. -Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
Armchair Analysis: Well, you know what I thought. It’s not perfect, but I liked it. For some reason, I have a feeling it might not be totally successful for some of the exact reasons I liked it. I liked that there wasn’t a lot of macho posturing (well, not as much, anyway) But Fast Five opened twice as big as any other movie this year and that was basically COME AT ME, BRO: the movie. We’ll see. In related news, Hopefully Thor can grow some f*cking chest hair before The Avengers.
SOMETHING BORROWED: Ginnifer Goodwin’s platonic friend that she’s always had a crush on is about to marry bitchy Kate Hudson. Gosh, I wonder what will happen. Terrible drinking game: drink every time a black person shows up.
Rotten Tomatoes: 15%
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
She plays an alcoholic. This is as clear as day. […] Among the danger signals of alcoholism must certainly be playing badminton on the beach with a glass of wine in your hand, sitting down in a bar and ordering six shots of tequila, and drinking in every scene where she is not literally being fitted for a wedding dress. -Ebert
“Something Borrowed” is something … ew. -Newark Star-Ledger
Something Borrowed is a snappy rom com about intersecting desires among a group of twenty-something friends. The film is terrific: smart, sexy and funny, and it should serve as nice counter-programming by Alcon and Warner Bros against the comic book tentpole Thor. –Alcon’s Marketing Department Pete Hammond
[See Also: Plot of Something Borrowed Recreated with Scathing Reviews]
Armchair Analysis: I would rather blow my skull fragments through the wall of truck stop restroom than have to talk to anyone who would seriously entertain the idea of seeing this movie for a single second. “Something Borrowed” sounds more like a parody of a rom-com than an actual rom-com.
NEXT PAGE: HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN
Rotten Tomatoes: 77%
It may sound silly, but watch Hauer go from shuffling, hesitant outsider on the fringe to vigilante hero raining down justice in the streets with his 12-gauge and you see one of the year’s best, most heartbreaking and unhinged performances thus far. -Jen Yamato, Movieline
Will leave most viewers bored and uneasy, especially in scenes like the burning alive of a busful of young children. –Mike Hale, NY Times Some Pussy
Total garbage, of course, without a single redeeming factor. Quite the most appalling piece of junk I have seen lately, Hobo With a Shotgun just lies there like an autopsy. -Rex Reed, NY Observer. (not enough of Zac Efron’s perfect blue eyes for old Rexy, it seems)
Armchair Analysis: This was the other movie I saw and reviewed that’s out this week. It’s gory to the point of being hard to watch, but part of the appeal of a film like this is that people like Rex Reed are going to hate it. Beyond that, I think it’s a much better film than Machete. Rutger Hauer is perfect.
NEXT PAGE: EXPORTING RAYMOND
EXPORTING RAYMOND [Now playing in Scottsdale, Encino, Irvine, La Jolla, Pasadena, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Philadelphia, and New York]. Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal goes to Russia to help the Russkies adapt his show, hijinks ensue. (trailer here).
Rotten Tomatoes: 74%
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
Exporting offers an intriguing outsider’s document of Russian culture reinventing itself from the outside in; its main export, however, seems to be good old-fashioned Ugly Americanism. -Time Out New York
“Exporting Raymond” is interesting, and even enjoyable, precisely because of the Russians, whose lives and work Mr. Rosenthal generously portrays alongside his own neuroses. -Mike Hale, New York Times
The culture clash that ensues is so fascinating that Exporting Raymond nearly succeeds despite itself. -Scott Tobias, NPR
Armchair Analysis: I want to see the sh*t out of this. Though Phil Rosenthal does have a uniquely obnoxious voice/accent, so I can see it being possibly grating.
NEXT: THE BEAVER
THE BEAVER: Mel Gibson has a beaver on his hand. Now playing in these cities. I’d put them here for you, but since it’s flash, I can’t just copy and paste, and I don’t feel like copying a whole list of theaters. Two awesome things official movie sites do: 1. Have a trailer that autoplays as soon as you hit the site, as if clicking “trailer” is so far above everyone’s pay grade. 2. Put the list of theaters not in text so that it isn’t searchable, and to make it harder for people like me to spread the word. I expect the dumb flash crap from people who run restaurants, but you’d think people at movie studios might be smarter. (trailer here)
Rotten Tomatoes: 70%
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
Now. The ending. In keeping with The Chicago Manual of Style, I have opted to disguise the spoiler in the form of a centaur chief giving a motivational speech to his battalion of centaur troops who are under siege by a wizard and forced to survive on oats and hay like common beast-horses. Just take the first letter of every word, string them together, and you’ll find out the secret ending of The Beaver starring Mel Gibson!
Hello, Eager Centaurs. Understand, This Siege Has Ignobly Sullied Our Warlike Nature. Aaaaaaaahhh! Really!? Munching Oats For Food? What?! It’s Truly Humiliating. A Folly Unprecedented. Cats, Kings, Imps, Newts! Great Shame. All Weep. -Lindy West, one of my favorite reviews ever.
Delivers more than it promises-namely a performance that draws on exceptional skill as well as what one irresistibly takes to be the real-life anguish of a movie star whose own life has come to ruin. -Joe Morganstern, Wall Street Journal
An emotional runaway of a film that carries neither the insight nor the uplift to make the weight of its dark journey worth it. -Betsey Sharkey, LA Times
Armchair Analysis: I was excited about this project when I assumed Mel Gibson with a talking beaver on his hand would be a comedy. Now that it looks like a serious drama about redemption, it seems only useful as raw material for mash-ups where the beaver shouts mean things about the Jews.
NEXT PAGE: Jumping the Broom
JUMPING THE BROOM: I had never heard of this film before I started researching this post. Does that make me racist? “A collision of worlds when two African-American families from divergent socioeconomic backgrounds get together one weekend in Martha’s Vineyard for a wedding.”
Rotten Tomatoes: 51%
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
Politicians concerned about the sanctity of marriage should consider trying to boycott this film, lest impressionable youngsters watch and be led to believe that all weddings are as awful, soulless and interminable as what’s onscreen. -Luke Thompson, E! Online.
Instead of being a wild mixture of tones, it has very little tone at all, and moments of dramatic or comic intensity erupt awkwardly and then fizzle out. – AO Scott, NY Times
Proof that you can have a movie like this without a polemic against successful women, or some man in a dress threatening to take off his earrings and pull out a gun. -Stephen Witty, Newark Star-Ledger
Armchair Analysis: I find it weird and a little racist that the marketing department segregates movies like this so much, as if white people would be incapable of enjoying a film with only black people in it. That said, I’m probably not going to see it.