Caught On The Flip Side: Exploding Trains, Smelly Werewolves, and Minotaur Junk

3 Quickies.

Source Code:  It’s like Groundhog Day meets Inception!

Colter Stevens (Jake Gylllllenhaaaaaaaal) is a soldier who wakes up in the body of another man, on his way to Chicago by train.  Eight minutes later, the train explodes.  Turns out this is the past and his consciousness has been sent there to discover the identity of the man who bombed the train so he can prevent future attacks.  But he only has eight minutes to get it done, over and over again.

I had it wrong through most of this movie.  I thought the deal was Jakey G. was reliving all of the aspects of some guy’s memories and was doing his best to notice the specific details that the guy might not have seen in this repeated 8-minute cross-section of time, and that made little sense to me since JG managed to physically go places that this guy obviously did not, and yet still gather enough specific information to solve the mystery at hand.  And although that annoyed me on a basic logic level, I still dug this flick.  Then, at the end, I realized I was dead wrong- Gylly was actually going back in time and literally affecting the outcome of these events with his actions, essentially changing the present.  This turned a pretty good flick into a great one, even though its reality is even more far-fetched the correct way.

Anyway, the former Mr. Darko, Michelle Monaghan (“Christina Warren”), and Vera Farmiga (“Colleen Goodwin”) all put in great performances.  The contrast between the dull fluorescent military lab and the oddly hyper-real colorful past-time sequences help you feel the confusion and frustration that Stevens feels.  And even though the movie is a series of do-overs, it never feels repetitive.  Very surprised by this one.  I scoffed at it when it was released back in March, and now I’ve gone ahead and eaten crow.

8 out of 10 Cross-Eyed Leading Men

Red Riding Hood:  It’s like Twilight meets The Village!

Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), a girl in a small village (“Daggerhorn.”  Ugh.), falls in love with a lowly woodcutter named Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), but is promised to Henry (Max Irons)- the son of a wealthy blacksmith.  And there’s a werewolf.  And a grandmother (Julie Christie).  And a red hooded cape.

This movie was directed by Katherine Hardwicke, who is responsible for Twilight, so I knew going in that I was to be handed a pork roll, egg, and cheeeeese (on a Kaiser bun).  Basically, the bar was set pretty low already when I pressed “play.”  And while what I got was certainly near said bar, I was still surprised that the movie sat on top of it instead of drowning beneath it.  Yes, the love triangle was Twilight-laughable, yes the performances from the two men in said love-triangle was so piss poor that I, more than once, uttered, “oh, Jesus CHRIST,” out loud with only my cats around to hear me, and yes, the “whodunit” aspect, by the end, was so poorly handled that literally everybody in the movie was a suspect, but, surprisingly, the negatives and positives almost cancelled each other out in such a way that I didn’t completely hate RRH.  Just… disliked it.  I enjoyed Amanda Seyfried, I enjoyed Billy Burke, I enjoyed Gary Oldman (duh).  I thought the scene in the cave was handled very well- atmospheric, tense, and scary.  I initially enjoyed the whodunit thing.  I enjoyed that fact that this was a very soundstage/set piece movie, because it added, in a positive way, to the whole fairy-tale aspect of it.  I dug the costume design.

But by the third act I had had enough.  “The killer has brown eyes!”  Oh, good- so I should watch reeeally closely to see who has… oh.  Everybody.  And when the wolf attacked the villagers I kept getting the image in my head from Army Of Darkness where the mini evil Ash clones were all running around frantically and screaming hysterically.  But I’m pretty sure I was supposed to feel suspense, not joy.  Oh, and again, those two guys were so horribly, sickeningly, completely awful.  Who cast this movie?  Was the idea to find not one, but two leading men that constantly have that “I smelled a fart” look on their face?  If so, gooooooooooooooooooooooal!  Oy.  And poor Gary Oldman.  You can literally see the precise moment where he stops chewing scenery and says to himself, “oh… fuck.  What in Jeebus’ name was I thinking?  Aww, fuck it.  I look good in purple velour.”

4 out of 10 Awkward Lucas Haas Moments (as opposed to non-awkward Lucas Haas moments?)

Your Highness: It’s like Lord Of The Rings meets Harold & Kumar!

I saw the Unrated version of this movie, FYI.

Lazy stoner medieval second-fiddle prince, Thadeous (Danny McBride), is forced to accompany his heroic brother, Fabious (James Franco), on a quest to save his maiden fair fiancée, Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel), from the clutches of the evil wizard, Leezar (Justin Theroux).  Along the way they cross paths with adventurer, Isabel (Natalie Portman), who, as it turns out, is also after Leezar.  Jokes about penises, vaginas, homoerotica, marijuana, penises, and penises ensue.

Odd, odd flick.  I think it was supposed to marry stoner comedies with fantasy… but, strangely, it decided to step further in the latter’s direction and tiptoe around the former.  Very strange.  Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely a movie that had it’s wacko-tobacco moments, like the Alice In Wonderland-esque Great Wize Wizard scene (which existed solely for first-time stoner college freshmen), and it sort of ambled along like a slacker-comedy, but it was the fantasy aspects that got the most love, directorially.  Problem was, the cinematography was about as flat and uninspired as it gets.  There’s only so many medium-shot scenes of people walking through a generic wilderness, interspersed with close-ups of James Franco (at his most awkwardly earnest) and Danny McBride (and his mullet) that I can take.   Any time a digital effect showed up it was in a lazy still shot where actors tried their best to portray lightning coming out of their fingers, or ducking under a naked minotaur’s punch, in that awkward, 80’s sci-fi way.  Good effects, poorly used.  Look, I wasn’t expecting a big-budget first-person perspective shot that tracks a sorcerer’s attack from his hands to his target’s chest, or anything, but I mention it because I think director David Gordon Green was.  Have you seen David Wain’s Role Models (if not, you should)?  Imagine the outdoor live-action role-playing “LAIRE” scenes from that movie, but with special effects thrown in.  That’s what Your Highness was.  Oh, and does Zooey Deschanel HAVE TO FUCKING SING IN EVERYTHING NOW?  I love Elf, but it started the trend, so it will always have a very small black mark against it.

Positives?  Justin Theroux was so great I wish he was in something with more substance.  Danny McBride was solid.  His sidekick guy was as well.  The aforementioned “naked minotaur” scene was pretty OK, and it’s continuing payoff made me laugh out loud a few times.  I dig Simon Farnaby, so even though he hardly spoke I’m counting his presence as a positive.  And it was funny, often.  It just didn’t know what it was trying to be.

Also, Natalie Portman’s thong put in a brilliant performance and deserves an award.

6 out of 10 Uncomfortably Overused Pedophilia And Incest References

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Caught On The Flip Side: The Bourne Stupidity

I’m starting to catch up on movies I missed in theaters this year through the wonders of Netflix.  I’m calling it “Caught On The Flip Side.”  Because, like, people say, “catch you on the flip side, dude” when they know they’ll, uh… see each other… later on… and stuff…

Forget it.

Also, I added a tab above for a quick reference to my take on spoilers.  Click it.

Anyway, this one will be quick.

Unknown:  Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) and his wife, Elizabeth (January Jones) arrive in Berlin for a conference.  When Harris realizes he’s left his briefcase at the airport, he hails a cab driven by a woman named Gina (Diane Kruger), and gets into an accident that puts him in a coma.  When he wakes a few days later, he finds his life being led by another man (Aidan Quinn), and no one, including his wife, seems to know who he is.  Harris tries to get to the bottom of his stolen identity, all the while chased by men with guns.

Generic?  You betcha.  Bad movie?  Yessum.

Liam Neeson shows up, gives it the ol’ college try for a bit, then mostly sleeps through this one.  Diane Kruger, a German by birth, plays a cab driver from Russia, even though the movie takes place in Berlin (read that sentence again).  January Jones plays Neeson’s wife, and by “plays” I mean sucks the life out of everyone and everything around her like a black hole with tits.  Frank Langella shows up near the end so his name could be on the poster… and is gone five minutes later.  Also, Aidan Quinn.

This was one of those movies where they set up a bunch of possible explanations to what happened to our protagonist, then, when the actual answer is given, most of the scenes that played to the other possibilities are rendered completely moot, negating any reason to have included them in the first place.  Example:  Neeson & Quinn have a scene where each is trying to prove to some scientist that they are the real Martin Harris.  They both have the correct answers to questions that only Martin Harris could know, and by the end of the scene they are literally spewing out paragraphs of identical dialogue at the exact same time.  Wow!  Can Harris B read Harris A’s mind?  Have both men been programmed from the same Matrix-computer, or something?  Not so much.  Once we do find out the true reason for the confusion (They’re CIA-type operatives.  Neeson’s bump on the head made him believe he was actually the person he and (later) Quinn were both pretending to be.  Sort of like Total Recall, but awful) the scene no longer works.  Two people simply adopting the same persona still can’t know, verbatim, what each other will answer, improvisationally, to an impromptu question.  Sure, they’ll know the basics, but, as any actor knows, no two people can color a role the exact same way.

Is that confusing?  Sorry.  I simply don’t care enough to explain it further.  I’ll give it this, though- the scene was unintentionally FUCKING HILARIOUS.  Director Jaume Collet-Serra should give up his horror/thriller resume and dive head first into Farrelly Brothers territory.

Anyway, there’s also some bullshit about some scientist freely releasing the genetic code for scientifically enhanced super-corn (yup, you read that right.  Super-corn), and a possible assassination attempt on some Saudi prince… and something about Gina wanting to become a German citizen, or something… but, really, it doesn’t matter.  This one’s a stinker.  There’s so much more I could say about what makes Unknown so bad, but I really have better things to do than spend any more time on something so thuddingly dull.

3 out of 10 Pointless Location Shoots