Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
This movie certainly had its funny moments (the sequence with the faux-Beatles played by Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Jason Schwartzman and Justin Long being paramount), but in the end there just aren't enough laughs. This is the third film of the year from comedy god Judd Apatow and its easily the worst. I think the reason this failed is because parody is an inherently absurd genre, and Apatow just isn't built for comedic absurdism. His best work is totally grounded in real human dynamics and situations and, as a result, Walk Hark tries too much to inject pathos into the proceedings, but as soon as you've introduced the absurd elements of film parody, it reduces the impact of any sort of character depth or interaction. If Adam McKay, an Apatow collaborator, director of Anchorman and Talladega Nights, and the foremost practioner of absurd comedy in Hollywood had made this film, it would have been a riot.
Score: 6.0
Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem
Goddamn it, this shit shouldn't be so hard! The platonic ideal of a predator fighting an alien is inherently awesome, and yet, in two straight films, made by two different production teams, professional filmmakers have managed to fuck it up beyond redemption. Why do they keep insisting on spending the majority of the film with boring, lame human characters? Motherfucker, it's not called Aliens Vs. Predator Vs. Annoying Douchbags. And when are they going to hire somebody who can shoot a fucking alien fighting a predator and make it remotely possible to tell what the fuck is going on? I know that it's easier to hide special effects gimmicks if you shoot a scene in a cave or a sewer, but howsabout someone sit down with a fucking slide rule and figure out how to show these fuckers fight in less that complete darkness?! The shit of it is, if they do another one, I'll definitely watch it.
Score: 3.0
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4 comments:
I'm not so convinced that any "vs" plot really works. There's a good discussion of precisely this problem in a DeLillo novel I just read where one of the characters like talking about animal fights--the stuff of cougars vs lions or bears vs. sharks. Said character finally gets challenged by someone who says that such ideas assume way too many things about the playing field where said fight would take place. Anyway, I'll post it if you care.
Who wins tonight in Iowa? This is the more important question.
These movies teach us one thing: aliens fighting predators is not awesome on the following playing fields: subterranean antarctic ziggaruts, spaceships, sewers, spark-shooting powerplants, and darkened hospitals. Beyond that, I think there's still promise: maybe on top of a hot air balloon.
I totally called Obama winning, and now that's he's won Iowa, he's pretty much a shoe-in for the nomination unless he shits in the mouth of a toddler in Nassau, New Hampshire in a few days.
As for the Republicans....fuck if I know, dude. Huckabee is hated by the money-men of the party, but there's no clear agreed-upon alternative. Maybe the cloned corpse of Augusto Pinochet? (nah, that fucker spoke Spanish)
The Republicans must be shitting bricks. Who would win in a fight? The zombie corpse of Ronald Reagan? Or the zombie corpse of Jesus Christ?
This is the Republican dilemma.
Well, the reason they ALL pine for Reagan was that both the Wall Streeters and the Christ-crazies thought he was with them. Of course, in reality, he operated just like Bush: lip service to the Christians while delivering like dominoes for the plutocrats. The dilemma this year is that the guy who scratches the Jebus-itch, Huckabee, doesn't have the same guaranteed faith in deregulation and tax cuttery as the other Republicans. What the terrified money men are finding out is that their foot soldiers care more about abortion and prayer in schools than they do about upper class tax rates. They'll probably end up rallying around one of the more conventionally laizee faire candidates (Romney if he manages to win New Hampshire), pour money into his coffers, and bury Huckabee with a South Carolina/McCain-style smear campaign.
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