The Gospel According to Prisco

God, again, another movie I really wanted to like more than I ended up.  I thought it would be a cute little indie-coming-of-age film, which is pretty much my fucking bread and apple butter.  I love me some quirky indie. 

It a film about a young boy with a stutter who is recruited by an overachieving girl to be partners on their New Jersey debate team so she can win States, and best debater.  The stuttering boy falls in love with the girl, and so he tries to be the best he can be at the debates.  He’s amazing at developing arguments, but he has such a debilitating stutter he can’t overcome.

What I loved about this movie is that it does not follow an easy or obvious path.  He doesn’t learn to overcome his stutter.  He doesn’t become the master debator and win the championship.  He doesn’t get the girl.  He doesn’t win in an obvious way.   The characters are so strange and bizarre and exist in this insane microcosm outside of Trenton, New Jersey.  It’s not a happy film, but it makes you happy. 

The problem I have is that it seems so intent of careening off the tracks into this hinterland to fly in the face of how a mainstream comedy would have handled this, that it doesn’t really go anywhere.  It sort of starts in the middle of nowhere, goes nowhere, and ends nowhere.  Sure, there’s plenty of character development and it’s wonderfully nice to see a movie that isn’t afraid to take risks.  But the problem is that there isn’t much to the movie, and so by the time it sort of drifts to a stop, you’re sort of shrugging and walking away from the movie none the richer.

I had a lot more hope for this.  It seemed like a great idea.  A fake documentary about a fake documentary about a documentary.  It really was convinced that it was a more clever movie than it was. 

It was imagineered by Zak Penn, screenwriter of many, many big budget comic book mistakes.  Zak Penn looks like Casey Siemazkso trying out for the Lex Luthor role in Superman Returns.  He’s essentially starring as himself as he convinces Werner Herzog to make a documentary about lies and what people will believe about the Loch Ness Monster. 

Every second the film starts to veer in what might be clever or thought provoking territory, it immediately takes a turn towards to absurd and cheesy.  And all of these moments involve Zak Penn.  I simultaneous admire the shit out him for making this movie, and hate the fuck out of him for ruining it with his own arrogance. 

The premise is pretty amusing.  Zak Penn convinces Werner Herzog to make a documentary about the Loch Ness Monster.  Herzog is pretty keen on doing it in his usually insane way, proving that people are lunatics.  Penn wants to secretly fake the documentary, using a rubber motorized monster, and “expert testimony”.  But then, the crew may or may not get savaged by the “real” Loch Ness Monster.  It’s played up like the Blair Witch, what might be true, what might not.  The problem is, it’s too uneven.  It tries to be a mockumentary, and it tries to be a horror movie, and it misses on both ends. 

The most amusing part of the movie is, of course, Werner Herzog.  He’s hilarious to watch, as he lampoons himself.  But the thing is, Herzog never struck me as someone who takes themselves all that seriously, so it feels really naturalistic.  It’s enjoyable to watch him.  Just not Zak Penn hamming his way all over the moors.

I do like me some beer.  I enjoy playing beer related games.  Card games, beirut/beer pong, other sorts of alcohol involved activites.  So I should like Beerfest, right? 

Wrong.  Incredible chugged amounts of wrong.  I can’t tell what’s more uncomfortable — grown men well into their 30s attempting to make something designed for frat guys to slam PBR tallboys to or the fact that you can tell that Broken Lizard could potentially be funnier than this.  

Jurgen Prochnow and Cloris Leachman are both in this, shilling so hard I just want to start a telethon or something to get a cinderblock wall with barbed wire on top built around them to keep the communism in and the comedians out. 

I’d explain the plot, but seriously, what plot?  It’s essentially 90 minutes of five idiots drinking lots of beer for no good reason.  For no reason.  It’s like the movie was designed to become a drinking game that would put stupider froshs in alcohol based comas.  It’s an embarassment in every regard, and I’ve got better things to do with my life than talk about it.

You need me, I’m going to be over here with a case of Miller Lite, swigging every time Bruce Campbell gets hit in the face during Army of Darkness.

I really liked the first two Saw movies.  I did.  Very much.  I thought the first had bad acting but a great plot and story.  I though the second had better acting, but not as good of a plot.  Saw III had some interesting gore, but other than that, the plot and story pretty much went right out the fucking window.  Then we’ve got this one.

SPOILERS OF THE OLD ABOUND FROM HERE ON.

Jigsaw is dead.  He dies at the end of the third movie.  They cut his throat, so the cancer doesn’t even get a chance to eat him.  But during his autopsy, they find a videotape imbedded in his skull.  It begins the games again.  But since Amanda dies in the third one as well, there must be someone else.

I assumed that this would pick up at the end of three, with Jeff wandering around looking for his daughter.  Jeff is nowhere in this film, not even mentioned, and only arriving at the very end.  I actually thought I might have accidentally gotten Saw V in an advanced copy.

Basically, this movie follows a black cop, who’s obsessed with finding his partner’s killer, who was the chick who got her innards outarded in Saw III, which was when Amanda had taken over.  This copy is attacked in his home, and told two of his fellow officers will be set free in 90 minutes if he cannot let go of his obsession with Jigsaw.  So then he ends up running the same fucking gambit the dude ran in Saw III, only this time, it’s interspersed with cutscenes involving how Jigsaw went nutsaw and his ex-wife being interrogated by the cop who will presumably be the foil in Saw V against the new Jigsaw neophyte.  I guess Tobin Bell will keep popping up, and I like him, so whatever.  I don’t Shawnee Smith like him, but that’s because he’s not a cute girl who was pregnant in Summer School. 

It weirdly finishes the loop set up in the other Saw movies, by killing off everyone except the folks who’ll be around for Saw V and Saw VI, which are both definitely happening.  If this was going to be like Final Destination, I’d be all for it, because no matter how awful the storylines and characters are in those movies, the murders are totally worth every fucking Rube Goldberg setup.  Saw has actually devolved into the realm of torture porn, which is unfortunate.  But it started the genre, so by all rights it should get to ruin it.

Now this one I liked.  Quite a bit.  It’s a really simple little heist tale, and it’s mostly based on the characterizations, so it really flows nicely.  There’s not a whole lot of complexity, or even originality.  You pretty much know how this is going to turn out, and it takes it’s time in the telling, but the performances are very good.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who earned back what he lost from me in Mysterious Skin (I have decided that Gregg Araki gets one more try from me, and then I banish him — loved Doom Generation, hated pretty much everything else) plays a young kid who was a former hockey star, who drove a carload of his friends and girlfriend into a combine.  He suffered brain damage, and so now he tries to get on with his life in the wake of the tragedy and the injury.  This is some heady shit, and he plays it well.  It’s pretty fucking daunting to watch him, actually. 

Basically, he lives with a blind smartass named Lewis, played wonderfully by Jeff Daniels.  With JGL throwing down, it’d be easy to overlook his performance, but at times I think it’s even more refreshing and enjoyable.  They are going to open a restaurant in an abandoned gas station, and need money from JGL’s father, who’s the town rich guy and who treats his son like a retard. 

Enter the baddies, a group of guys who seduce JGL with niceness and then trick him into helping them rob the bank he works at.  They lure him with a stripper, played by Isla Fisher, who’s name is Luvlee Lemons.  I shit you not.  But it works for this movie, and this movie alone.  So he feels like part of the gang, and when shit goes down, he wants no part.  There’s an arsenal of supporting characters and subplot that goes on, but I don’t want to ruin it for those interested in seeing it.

But don’t expect a daring car chase or some sort of elaborate switcheroo.  This isn’t that kind of movie.  It’s a bank heist movie, but it’s very quiet, and that’s what makes it work so well.  Check it out if you get the chance.

I haven’t seen a comic book storyline get raped this heartily since Brett Ratner rubbed his syphillitic dick over X-Men III: Season of the Witch.  Understand this first and foremost, I loved every cheesy cornhole moment in the Dolph Lundgren version.  So I had little hope that this would not suck harder than Thai hookers trying to gameshow their way out of servitude with a sleeve of golfballs and gardenhoses.  And I was not let down.

Where to begin?  Let’s see.  Well, first we have Thomas Jane, who does a serviceable job of looking hurt a lot and scowling like Christopher Lambert.  Seriously, when he wakes up from the coma after being gunned down and sports the beard, ask yourself whether or not he’s about to duel Brother Justin with a big ol’ butterknife. 

Oh, villianwise.  Hahahah.  John Travolta impresses the fucking hell out of me.  Every time he plays a villian in a big budget action movie, he manages to get even more cartoony and worse.  It’s amazing.  It’s like a scientific formula.  And it’s always in relation to how unlikely his protagonist is to actually be in an action movie.  First we’ve got Broken Arrow, against Christian Slater.  Then, it’s Face-Off, against Nicolas Cage. (Which I won’t lie, it still makes me laugh how much scenery John Woo let’s them chew in between loading up dove gun-fights.)  Then we’ve got Swordfish, versus Hugh Jackman.  But in this one, he manages to be so lame, it’s like he’s channelling Andy Garcia and Armand Assante at the same time, and the resulting swarthiness induces a stroke.  He kisses his dead son twice, presumably because he hoped for some tongue.  It’s so lame. 

Then we’ve got the plot, which offends me on three different imploding scales of WhatTheFuckery?  First, the Punisher is a cop whose wife and children are murdered, and so he goes on a vigilante rampage, destroying the business of the criminal who did him wrong.  He’s violent, and he’s crazy, and he doesn’t give a fuck.  In this one, they literally wipe out a family reunion.  Which is so over the top, I only forgive it because I got to see Roy Schieder with a shotgun again.  Smile, you sons of bitches.  But, then the Punisher goes to the cops and tells them he’s back.  Frank Castle is dead, he should be a fucking ghost, that’s what makes him scary.  He doesn’t confront the chief of police on City Hall steps in front of the press!  Then, they decide that he’s not going to kill up everyone in sight, but instead, he gets involved in this HORRIBLE revenge plot that’s convoluted and supposed to get Travolta worse.  He steals the wife’s car, and instead of driving it over her son, or into their house to kill all her cats, he sets up the henchman numero uno with it.  With a fire hydrant.  The Punisher should not have a fire hydrant unless he’s beating someone to death with it. 

THEN, as if it weren’t enough, they send a bevy of more cartoonish henchmen to kill him.   These are probably in the comic.  Yeah, if it was going to be a series, then it’d be funny.  First of all, the actors are not good.  I love Kevin Nash and all, but I seriously wished the Russian was Dolph.  But he dispatches them in incredibly cheesy ways.  What the fuck was El Mariachi doing singing him a song?  Was Spader and the Stopwatch not available?

Worst of all was the addition of the trio of mutants that share the fucking apartment building with him.  Not only were they terrible, but they were useless, and did nothing but bespoil the plot.  Ben Foster as some sort of pierced weirdo, John Pinette as a fat guy (because when is he not) and then Rebecca Romijn Lettuce as some sort of abused waitress.  This part of the movie offended me the worst, not because of the forced romance, not because of  the so-called cutesyness, but mostly the total flaming lack of logic.  It just doesn’t make sense.  Castle should have just killed them all. 

This movie was so offensively plotted and overlong and disrespectful to the comic, that by the time he got down to business gunning up the baddies, I was already too mad to care.  Yeah, yeah, he sticks a knife through a guy’s chin and you see the blade in his open mouth.  One good scene in a movie that sucked is not a good movie. 

I just hope Dolph Lundgren gets to kill them all in heaven.

This must have been one of those movies on Netflix that was in the whole “If You Like This Movie, Then You’ll Love…”  And more often than not I’m horribly spurned by these.   This was no exception.

It wasn’t just the bad acting, or the terrible story, or the Marilyn Manson home video quality of the editing interspersed with supposedly gorrific imagery straight out of every cheesy horror you’ve ever seen.  It was the fact that I called how the “clever twist” should happen to make the movie worthwhile, and it DID happen that way, and I was even more upset.  It’s bad enough when a movie goes cliche and fucks things up, but when they go original and STILL fuck things up, you’re in a whole new world of stupidassery. 

Madhouse is essentially about a young doctor who arrives at a mental institution run by Lance “Please Someone Give Me A Juicy Ian McShane-y Role” Henrikson.  Doctors start getting murdered up, and it may be because of the ghost of a boy who ran away from the institution, or it might be a patient escaping, or it might be the hot young girl who has to have hot young sex with her bra on being crazy.  But it’s up to Doctor Young Guy to figure it out.  I only offer this meager plot summary so that if you happen to come across the film in a Netflix/Blockbuster frenzy, you’ll save yourself the trauma.

I’ve been trying to watch this movie for two months now.  It’s not to say it’s not a good film, or ably made, it’s just that I constantly found myself with better things to do.  It’s got a pretty damn good cast, and it’s got a decent story, but it’s just…kinda there. 

It’s basically the story of four friends in the seventies who happen to be clamdiggers.  I mean, take any movie about four buddies and their families and friendships, and slap on a location and professions, and there you have it.  It’s a much better film than Wet Hot American Summer, because it’s not supposed to be over the top.  It’s quietly poetic, but perhaps a little too quiet.  It’s simple, it’s sweet, it’s got the right bit of ribaldness, and it’s solidly put together.

I just didn’t care enough about it to pay attention.  I stopped and started it about four times over six weeks.  I kept trying to watch it when I got home from work, or right before I was about to go to sleep.  And I my attention would drift elsewhere.  I know I’ll be called out for heresy on this, and like I said, it’s my cup of tea, it’s just not a particularly exciting flavor. 

I loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  I used to cover notebooks in school with illustrations of Shredder, and Splinter, and Casey Jones, and the four turtles, and Bebop and Rocksteady, and even Usagi Yojimbo (for those who watched the cartoons and read the comic books).  I even owned the original role playing game based on the Turtles.  I watched all three movies, which got progressively worse.  For the love of Christ, I even signed up for karate lessons in the child-like hope that one day I would step into mutagen and become some sort of martial-artist/mutant zoo-creature.  I even made my parents take me to the Philadelphia Art Museum so that I could learn about the works of Raphael, Michaelangelo, Leonardo, and Donatello.  I learned about ninja weapons, and could tell you the practical differences between sais and wakasashis and no-daisho.  I even developed a massive addiction to pizza.  As far as I was concerned, I was a Ninja Turtle. 

So I don’t know what the fuck this was supposed to be.  But, like most Republicans with the Holocaust, I’m going to pretend this didn’t happen.  I fell asleep, and blocked the memory of this from my head with a pizza gorgefest and a mix-tape featuring Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer.   

Upon the fervent scowling disapproval of the Pajibans, I finally got around to watching Slither.  And I was not disappointed.  While there are plenty of horror movies that are unintentionally hilarious, and others that slap on gore without having any sort of redeeming qualities other than seeing how many ways they can murder up stupid people, Slither joins the proud tradition of Freddy vs. Jason and Bride of Chucky.  I’ve watched any number of movies over the past few weeks that were desperately trying to achieve the horror comedy and failing like non-virgins trying to escape Jason Voorhees’ machete.  

Slither doesn’t make any sense.  Basically, some sort of alien symbiote lands, infests a local douchebag, and then impregnates a local whore with its seed, where it unleashes a brood of slug critters to turn people into murderous zombies.  Yeah.  But it’s fully aware that it is a ridiculous flick.  So, tongue firmly placed in cheek, the story rumbles on like a stupidly gleeful teen turfing up a nerd’s lawn.  It’s hysterical, and super-incredibly gore-filled.  Bodies exploding, heads spraying fluids, all sorts of menacing slithering creatures.  It’s a hell of a good time.  

The cast is excellent, headed up by Elizabeth Banks and Nathan Fillion.  It actually manages to have a few tense moments, squirm worthy indeed.  But the sheer joy in watching this film is knowing that it’s winking at you and having a hell of a fun time being told.