Conan the Musical!

For you Conan the Barbarian fans, here's Conan the Musical. Thank you, Internet, I love you:

Splice (2010)

Tagline: The future is born.

Curiosity: Vincenzo Natali directed the cult sci-fi hit Cube and one of the shorts for Paris je t’aime. Dude’s credit is good with me.

Plot: Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Avonlea’s Sarah Polley holy crap) are scientists who do sciencey things, like genetically engineer new animals so they can harvest their proteins for a pharmaceutical company. When the lovers try to take their experiments to the next stage – using human DNA – the higher ups forbid it. They do it anyway, though, and create Dren (Delphine Chanéac), a human/kangaroo/frogs/whatever else hybrid. And for reasons never explained, she has a poison stinger tail! Keeping Dren a secret gets harder as she grows up, especially when she starts making googly eyes towards Clive.

Thoughts: I’m just drop a big ol’ spoiler here in all caps: INTERSPECIES EROTICA. Spliced has elements of Alien, Species, The Fly, and of course Frankenstein (ALSO, Jurassic Park, but I can’t tell you why). Because it recalls so many classics, Natali overreaches in his attempt to do something original. Sometimes that works, like when he throws some comedy into the sci-fi/horror blend. Sometimes that results in his characters doing things that are really fucking gross and uncharacteristic, like when they engage in INTERSPECIES EROTICA.

I mean, I like the principle cast. Brody is good, if a little too idiosyncratically New York-y compared to all the Canadians. Polley displays incredible range¸ switching from cold and clinical to loving and motherly (and vice-versa) in seconds (Also, she was on Avonlea! That show was so much more family-friendly than this!).

But about halfway through, the movie starts to go places I don’t want to visit. I was raised Catholic, man; I can’t deal with INTERSPECIES EROTICA. My girlfriend and I actually walked out after a thoroughly disturbing scene. I’d write about it, but it’s like the second-to-last scene. We really should have left sooner. We could have been fighting dinosaurs in Jurassic Park III in the arcade!

Reflection: INTERSPECIES EROTICA.

Straight to Hell (1987)

Tagline: A story of blood, money, guns, coffee, and sexual tension.

Curiosity: It stars Joe Strummer. ’Nuff said.

Plot: When three hitmen (Strummer, Sy Richardson, and Dick Rude) and their tagalong lady friend (Courtney Love. I know, right?) miss their mark, they dodge their boss’ wrath (Jim Jarmusch) by robbing a bank and fleeing to Mexico. There, they fall in with a band of coffee-loving degenerates (The Pogues… with sombreros?). But with fingers always near triggers, it’s hard for anybody to trust a body.

Thoughts: Given its cast, I wish Straight to Hell was a lot better. Strummer, Love (pre-Hole), Elvis Costello, Dennis Hopper, and The Pogues all turn in performances (Grace Jones too, but we know how I feel about her). But without a coherent script, it’s an awfully painful viewing experience.

Straight to Hell was completed in about four weeks. I mean the entire thing, from conception to post-production, took about a month. That’s not a good sign, and whole chunks of superfluous and/or badly recorded scenes attest to the ramshackle production. This movie could only appeal to devoted fans of Strummer and/or writer/director Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid and Nancy), and even then it’s not a sure thing. Hole fans are going to be let down by a screeaaaaaaacccchhhyyyyyy performance by Love.

Yet I intermittently appreciated the film. When it bothers to be funny, Straight to Hell’s absurdities are actually pretty great, from the ridiculously profanity-free dialogue to the bad guys’ addiction to… coffee. It’s so much sillier than heroine or cocaine, which I suppose was the point. Strummer’s actually not half-bad here, although Richardson is the one who consistently delivers the best takes (That he recalls Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction is a nice plus). The best thing I can say about Straight to Hell is that it made me feel OK with checking out Strummer’s performance in Mystery Train and, just maybe, Cox’s Hell follow-up, Walker.

Reflection: No, seriously, The Pogues are Mexican banditos. Really.

Book of Eli (2010)

Tagline: Some will kill to have it. He will kill to protect it.

Curiosity: Denzel Washington fights Gary Oldman over the Bible, only instead of using words, they use guns and swords. Also this is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Plot: Thirty years after nuclear war destroyed the world, Eli (Washington) is on a mission to protect what might be the last known copy of the King James Version of the Holy Bible. A mass book burning after the war has essentially reset history - a whole generation of people has grown up without an understanding of religion or science. There is no context. When local entrepreneur Carnegie (Oldman) learns about Eli, he does everything in his power to obtain the book. What follows is a battle of wills with some cool fight scenes and hammy dialogue about if religion should be used to instill faith or obedience.

Thoughts: Eli is better than I would have guessed. I’ll give it that. Directors/brothers Albert and Allen Hughes have a thin filmography, but their visual sense is pretty got-damn great. Nine Inch Nails/How to Destroy Angels collaborator Atticus Ross provides excellently NIN-ish music. The fight scenes are brutal yet economical – Washington moves with fluid movements. Sometimes that gets a little over the top, like when he starts plugging guys off buildings without even really aiming, but overall it looks cool. Of course, Washington makes everything look good. Oldman gets a little ridiculous, but the role kind of demands he do so.

Less successful is costar Mila Kunis. Just about every review I’ve read says she was miscast, and my girlfriend and I agree. Loved her in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but watching her act next to Washington and Oldman is just awkward. She’s just not on their dramatic level yet.

Kunis doesn’t sink the movie, though. There are plenty of issues with the film – the story is sometimes a little undercooked, especially near the end – but nothing truly ruins Eli. It’s a solid post-apocalypse movie.

Reflection: Now I feel guilty about not renting The Road. The book is so good! I’m afraid!

Big Fan (2009)

Tagline: Eagles suck! [Note: This is not actually the tagline.]

Curiosity: It’s my boy Patton Oswalt. I have to support him. And I liked – but didn’t love – The Wrestler, which writer/director Robert D. Siegel wrote.

Plot: Paul (Oswalt) is generally thought of as a loser by his family. A parking lot attendant, his life revolves around worshiping the New York Giants. He spends his days working on speeches that he later passes off as spontaneous missives for sports talk radio and his nights calling those stations in. His only friend, Sal (Kevin Corrigan), is there for it all, including a case of miscommunication that gets Paul beaten up by his favorite player, star quarterback Quantrell Bishop (Johnathan Hamm). When the beating gets Bishop suspended from the season, Paul is torn between receiving the damages and care he deserves and keeping silent so the Giants can play well, much to his family’s chagrin.

Thoughts: It wasn’t until the very end that I realized the filmmakers were perhaps fond of Paul. Everything leading up to that felt a little condescending, so while the ending validates the character and film, it doesn’t make Big Fan anymore than a one time viewing experience for me. It is intentionally bad – Oswalt knowingly delivers poor performances to mirror Paul’s own terrible acting, Siegel gives the character lackluster dialogue because Paul would never be able to say anything approaching poetry. It serves a point, but that point does not in turn justify the entire experience.

Big Fan takes a while to get, and in doing so, is a tedious film. It looks like it was done on the cheap too – some takes feel like decisions of necessity, not taste, wile the cinematography is grainy and wanting. The story sets out some interesting plot points but never finishes them, like the fate of Bishop or the migraines Paul develops after his beating. Just as in The Wrestler, Siegel seems reluctant to resolve his story, making Big Fan that much more of a drag: A lot of this stuff goes nowhere, and even the turning points that show up feel forced (Paul’s beating, in particular, could have used more build-up. I’m surprised Bishop hadn’t been caught sooner for assault, considering how quickly he flies at the titular big fan). But at least Paul turns out to be a good guy. Misguided and creepy, but he’s alright.

Reflection: Why the hell have I been watching all these sports movies lately?

Legion (2010)

Tagline: When the last angel falls, the fight for mankind begins.

Curiosity: Baby girl picked this one out. She told me she only wanted to see it for Paul Bettany’s abs, even though the movie poster to the right is thoroughly manipulated.

Plot: God is done with people’s bullshit, so he sends all the cherubim and seraphim to kill them. The archangel Michael (Bettany) think that’s a dick move, so he pulls a Kyle Reese and helps this preggers lady (Adrianne Palicki) save her baby so he can grow up to redeem mankind. But the angels have the same powers as the agents in The Matrix and fuck shit up! They attack the good guys with an ice cream man and an old lady!

Sadly, the two best characters (Charles S. Dutton, Alien³, and, weirdly enough, freaking Tyrese Gibson) don’t survive. But man does waitress lady smoke a shit ton of cigarettes in an effort to make her unborn child’s life difficult.

Thoughts: Well, now I know what the first two Prophecy movies would look like if they thoroughly cribbed plot points from the first two Terminator movies. Legion is too self-serious and unimaginative to function well as B-movie fare, and it mangles Christianity enough to be sacrilegious. Blasphemy hasn’t been this boring since the last Marilyn Manson record.

But I don’t necessarily care that the movie gets the Bible wrong. I’m more frustrated by simplistic filmmaking. Director/co-writer Scott Stewart often nickels and dimes his scenes to save time and money, resulting in action sequences that lack punch and dialogue exchanges that don’t feel fully fleshed out. Several times, my friends and I felt like there was a line or two missing, as if the characters were responding to dialogue that only they could hear. Same could be said for the story – Stewart often skips a couple plot points to advance the story without actually advancing it.

That scene with the possessed grandma was cool though. And Tyrese and Dutton are both so awesome. I wish this movie was about two black guys who kick the shit out angels, instead of the story of white trash screaming all the time. Michael Jai White, please correct this mistake.

Reflection: After a while, we just started quoting The Terminator furiously, and it was better than the real dialogue. Poop on this movie.

D3: The Mighty Ducks (1996)

Tagline: No Fear. No Limits. No Brakes. Just Ducks.

Curiosity: This film made me so got-damn angry when I was a kid. SO. ANGRY.

Plot: Charlie (Joshua Jackson) and some of the other Ducks are awarded full scholarships to the prestigious Eden Hall Academy (yeah, even the ones who don’t live in Minnesota). Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez), meanwhile, has accepted a job with the Junior Goodwill Games, marking the first time in four years that the Ducks will have to work with a new coach. Coach Ted Orion (Jeffrey Nordling) is kind of a dick – harsh but fair. The Ducks refuse to take any of his criticisms, though, especially once the varsity hockey team starts a war with them.

Growing up is a bitch.

Thoughts: While I certainly didn’t feel this way at the time of its release, I prefer D3 to D2. D2 was all about spectacle without realism, where D3 is about growing up, accepting change, and learning how to play good defense. The film centers on Charlie, and he is clearly the stand-in for Mighty Ducks fans everywhere. Of course Charlie would freak out when Bombay moved away. So did I. Of course he would lose his shit when Hans (Joss Ackland) died. So did I. Of course he’d wanna make out the metal-loving, politically active Linda (Margot Finley). She inexplicably likes Pantera!

D3 isn’t a perfect movie. It’s heavily reliant on voiceovers (the laziest form of storytelling in movies). It’s not a particularly funny movie. In trying to clean up D2’s mess, it has to make certain allowances, like having the entire team move to Minnesota to go to high school in order to further the characters. Most of D2’s lamest elements (the duck call, knuckle puck, that fucking cowboy) are either toned down or removed altogether in favor of a slobs vs. snobs story.

What really matters is the film’s main ideas about what it means to grow up. Friends will come and go. They’ll move away. They’ll die. They’ll fade away. But you have to hold on to what they meant to you in the moments when you were together, and in that sense they’re still alive and present. Let go, but hold on to what you need.

Reflection: HANS! HANS NO!