Day 42: Apollo 18

{Looking back at Earth from the Moon} "Take a look at that. Really makes you think, doesn't it?"

Think about what, asshole? God damnit, this movie is an affront to all of my tastes and senses, most prominently my common sense. In the last five years, the found-footage horror movie has moved from an intriguing concept every couple of years to becoming a full on sub-genre. The success of the Paranormal Activity films, The Last Exorcism, and even this past weekend's $30 million-plus grossing The Devil Inside has made studio executives cream in their jeans over the prospect of giving some tech-savvy kids a million bucks and letting them make a movie that will turn them an instant profit.

Don't get me wrong, I much prefer the slow-building suspenseful horror sensibilities that these films are infused with to the torture porn genre that exploded after the surprise success of the Saw franchise, but just as all movements within a genre as vast as horror is, there are good ways to go about these films and bad ways.

Apollo 18 seems promising enough as a premise. In the early 70s, NASA declares that Apollo 17 will be the last mission to the moon, but in a top-secret venture with the Department of Defense, they round up the astronauts that were going to be the crew for the next trip and tell them that their mission is back on. An opening scroll tells us that in 2011, footage from this "last" mission to the moon turned up on a website called www.lunartruth.com (it's now defunct, so don't waste your time) and that the film we're about to watch was edited from that footage. Simple enough premise, it's got some promising elements to it, but it goes in the toilet almost immediately.

The biggest issue is that the film refuses to sit still for even a minute. The filmmakers seem to think that the key to suspense is constantly cutting to another angle or another shot. There must be over a thousand cuts in this 75 minute movie. It's incredibly frustrating, and there's nothing scary about it. It's not even realistic. If you're supposedly dealing with NASA camera footage, it would probably be a ton of static shots and moving something in the frame of a shot that's been static for a number of seconds is much scarier than constantly jumping from shot to shot to shot. But nevermind about that, that's not even the biggest issue this film has.

First of all, what is it with astronauts and fucking barbecues? Is there a bigger cliche than that for a movie about astronauts? Apparently if you're not training, you're just hanging out in your backyard barbecuing burgers. But whatever, yeah, they're trying to establish the characters and make you care about them I suppose, but am I supposed to give a shit about these guys just because they're friends?

The thing that made the grandfather of these movies, The Blair Witch Project, so effective is that all of it's time was spent with the characters and the almost immediate tension between them. We're made to feel like we're there with them, we choose up sides and think about what we would do were we in that situation ourselves. Very few of us can relate to astronauts. I say that not to be mean, but this is not a situation any of us would find ourselves in, so there's no visceral investment in their predicament.

So anyway, they go into space, go to the moon and two of the three take a lunar lander down to the moon's surface for some exploring and flag placing. Once there, they discover an abandoned Russian lander. One thing leads to another and they find a dead Russian cosmonaut. By the way, if I never hear the word cosmonaut again, I'll die a happy man, but I digress. They have some issues trying to get back to the ship and their rover and lander are destroyed by "something." There's a bunch of gobbledygook about them losing communication with NASA and the other guy still orbiting the moon, and the two dudes on the moon appear to be left there to die.

Okay, so the big surprise is that the rocks on the moon are really spiders of some sort that are attacking them. They essentially possess the one astronaut, I think, turning him into a monster, I think. Who fucking knows? Rock spiders? ROCK SPIDERS? It would have been more believable if they had gotten to the moon and discovered it was made out of cheese. That would have been easier for me to buy. Rock spiders? Don't insult your audience by asking them to believe in something entirely implausible in the year 2011. They might as well have had dragons and shit too while they were at it. Why stop at rock spiders?

All 3 astronauts are killed, I honestly don't even remember how the dude in orbit died, I think he crashed the ship into the moon trying to rescue the other guys. I stopped paying attention. Okay, I admit it, I fell asleep. Thankfully the film's oppressive sound design kept jolting me awake with it's constant attempts at jump scares. I was checked out from about the two minute mark on, so I can't say for sure, but NASA covered it up and these brave filmmakers found the footage, edited it, and released it in theaters.

How did this footage turn up? It's not like there was a live feed back to Earth. Who found this footage? The rock spiders? Then there was a scroll at the end about how moon rocks had been brought back from all the Apollo missions and given as gifts and now they're all missing. Fuck you! Don't try and justify your shitty science by saying something ridiculous at the end in an attempt to lend your film an air of credibility.

Don't go anywhere near this thing. It's not fun, it's not so bad it's good, it's just fucking dumb. It's a dumb movie made by dumb people. All the pseudo-science in the world can stop the film from being a lifeless turd on screen. For as we all know, in space, no one can hear you stop giving a shit.

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Day 41: The Trip

"You're stuck in a metaphor!"

The lack of crossover appeal in the United States for actor/comedian Steve Coogan is absolutely baffling to me. He is without a doubt, one of the most gifted comedic actors that the last couple of decades has produced, yet with the exception of some supporting roles in big Hollywood comedies like The Other Guys and Tropic Thunder, he has not really been embraced here the way he has in his native United Kingdom.

I've read some articles and profiles of him and he is very specific about what projects he picks, so it makes sense that he's not just throwing himself into some garbage comedy to broaden his appeal, but it's worked to his detriment to some extent as he's still largely unknown to many Americans. Hamlet 2 was one of my least favorite movies of the last few years, but at least it was brash, bold, risky and a perfect starring vehicle for someone of Coogan's considerable talents.

In 2010, director Michael Winterbottom along with Coogan and fellow actor/comedian Rob Brydon made a six part mini-series for the BBC called The Trip. The three hour series was edited down to an easily digestible 107 minutes and released theatrically in the US this past summer under the same name where Coogan and Brydon play, presumably, amped up versions of themselves.

Coogan is on assignment from The Observer to travel the British countryside reviewing several bed and breakfasts. Being on the outs with his current girlfriend Mischa (Margo Stilley), he calls Brydon, with whom he co-starred in the equally funny Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, to accompany him. Coogan views Brydon as someone who has sold-out so to speak, as he is mainly an impressionist and comedian, whereas Coogan views himself as an actor first. The two aren't great friends, at least in the film, but they do have a good rapport together.

Rob leaves his wife and infant daughter behind and the two set off for their first stop, where they dine on scallops and begin an argument over who does the better Michael Caine impression. This clip made its rounds on youtube last year and brought some notoriety to the film, and while it is very funny, it's hardly the best scene in the film. The film is essentially a travelogue, almost in the vein of Michael Palin's famous Around the World series, a clear inspiration for the three auteurs involved here. They travel from place to place, dine, bicker, sleep, repeat.

The best moments in the film involve some of the more serious conversations between the two. Coogan is constantly deriding Brydon for relying on what he sees as his hackneyed sense of humor, but in a visit to the cottage of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the woman working there recognizes Brydon, and Coogan is jealous of him for the first time. As the film wears on, Steve begins seeing that maybe Rob has qualities that he envies, and that might be the real source of his antagonism towards him. It's not particularly subtle, but it's effective nonetheless, and it provides the film with some heft beyond just being a dueling impression travelogue.

There are many laugh-out-loud moments, such as Brydon reading a review of one of the restaurants as Anthony Hopkins, or the two going at each other with dueling Ray Winstone impressions. The funniest moment in the film is when the two are talking about the many battles fought on the countryside they're traveling through, and begin a litany of "Gentlemen, to bed..." variations. Both Coogan and Brydon are reliably good in both the funny and serious moments, and Brydon probably emerges as the better man if for no other reason than he's a more unknown commodity than Coogan. His schtick is endearing, there's no doubt about it, and the more it wears on Coogan's nerves, the more it endears Rob to the audience.

If there's any complaint to be made, it's in the sheer repetition of the film. Over an episodic series, it's probably much less noticeable, but in a film, it becomes very repetitious. It was clearly designed as a series and would likely play so much better in that format. Unfortunately it's not been released on home video in America, so the feature film is our only chance to see this. It's not bad, by any stretch of the imagination, you can just feel how much better it must have been when it was on television. If for no other reason, watch it to see two wonderful actor/comedians go at one another, bicker, make each other laugh, and have a blast. It's infectious, and will have you laughing much more than a lot of other comedies released this summer.

Tomorrow I'm back to bad movies with the found-footage thriller Apollo 18.

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Day 40: Bloodrayne: The Third Reich

"Guten tag, motherfuckers."

Uwe Boll. The name alone makes me cringe. I quiver with fear when I think of Uwe Boll. In the span of nine years he's gone from directing video game adaptations that bombed upon being released in theaters to directing video game adaptations that go direct to video. Anyone familiar with the plot of The Producers will understand that he made films for the better part of a decade using a tax loophole in Germany that allowed a filmmaker to profit off of films he made even if they didn't turn a profit or better yet, bombed outright.

He has directed several of the worst movies of all time, among them, House of the Dead which is, in my humble opinion, the absolute worst movie ever made. He's been compared to Ed Wood, which is an absolutely unfair assessment as Ed Wood clearly had a love of cinema, he just didn't have the basic competence it took to make a film. Uwe Boll makes garbage and is utterly remorseless of the fact, calling his detractors "internet trolls" and dismissing anyone who doesn't like his movies as "fucking retards."

In 2006 he unleashed his film version of the "popular" video game Bloodrayne on the world, and it was as terrible as you would expect it to be. On a side note, it is worth watching for Michael Madsen's performance which fits the definition of phoning it in. He made a direct to video sequel two years later and in 2010, he completed his trilogy with Bloodrayne: The Third Reich.

The film allegedly had a budget of ten million dollars, but I find that hard to believe. District 9 was made for three times as much and looked about one hundred times better, but I digress. It's a bad sign when you're watching a movie and it takes you sixty seconds to realize that the film has started and you're not watching another trailer.

I imagine that Uwe Boll saw Inglourious Basterds and said to himself, "yeah, this is okay, but you know what would make it awesome? Vampires." That's essentially what this movie is trying to be. It's like Inglourious Basterds without the meticulous historical accuracy (not a typo).

The movie tells the story of Raine (Nattasia Malthe, who has a nice rack, and that's the best compliment I'll be paying anyone involved in the proceedings) a dhampir (basically a mega-vampire who can daywalk) that doesn't like Nazis. And who does, honestly? But she hates Nazis so much that she teams up with a resistance force of some vague sort to kill her some Nazis. Quick diversion, everyday on set seems to have been "bring whatever accent you feel like to work" day, because there's no consistency from character to character, let alone from scene to scene for some characters.

Anyway, she "accidentally" turns a Nazi commandant (Michael Pare, lo how the never mighty have fallen even further) into a dhampir while killing him and now has to face the potential for an entire Third Reich made up of dhampirs.

But how is this possible you ask? Well, the Nazis have a secret weapon in the form of crazy Nazi Doctor Clint Howard. His character has a name, but he's playing Clint Howard. Let's talk about Clint Howard for a minute. It's sad when his appearance lends an air of gravitas to a film, but he's pretty much the standard bearer here. He's been in good movies (all of them directed by his brother, but good movies nonetheless). Is it horrible of me to say that he looks right at home in a Nazi uniform? Anyway, Dr. Howard is going to take some of Raine's blood to Berlin to make Hitler immortal.

Beyond that, I wasn't able to glean any of the plot. I'm not even sure there was one. The script is beyond clumsy. It's screenwriting of the absolute worst order. Writer Michael C. Nachoff is a fucking asshole. I don't know him personally, I just know that only an asshole would write like this. The entire fucking movie is exposition. There isn't a single scene, that's not an action scene, which moves the plot forward. Every scene with plot points literally has people just standing around reciting them, or worse yet, regurgitating information that we'd been given a scene or two earlier. I would love to lay the blame for this fiasco squarely at the feet of Dr. Boll, but he didn't get any help from this script.

Let's talk about what an awful director he is though. The opening credits (which take up five minutes of screen time) feature Jews being brought to a concentration camp. Every time there's a credit, the screen fades to black and the credit appears. At first I thought this was a stylistic choice, but it turns out that Boll could only afford two boxcars, so he repurposed them on an endless five minute fading loop to look like an entire train. I rewound it just to be sure that's what he did. Boll seems to have gotten around to watching the last two Bourne films because he is a big fan of the handheld immediacy of those films' action sequences. He's unable to recreate that exactly though, so it's hard to tell what the fuck is going on in any given action sequence. His hard-on for The Matrix has yet to die, as evidenced by Raine's costume which looks like it was ordered from The Inner Sanctum's website. The dude needs to get it over with and just remake The Matrix already. I'll certainly be glad when he does.

Also, only Uwe Boll would cut to an expository scene involving Clint Howard in the middle of a lesbian scene. Oh yeah, did I mention there's a lesbian scene? There is. It's not terribly sexy and one lady involved has big fake tits that would not have been available for purchase in the 1940's. I don't need to sit here and justify my love of lesbians and their scenes, but this one felt totally tacked on and unnecessary.

This film is notable for featuring the god damned dumbest Nazis ever put on screen. These guys are the definition of incompetence. Maybe Uwe Boll just likes to see dudes like himself on screen, but nobody in this Third Reich was firing on all cylinders, that's for sure. I know they were evil bastards, but they weren't morons. They likely didn't run into gunfire the way the guys in this movie do. They more than likely didn't stand around waiting for a vampire lady with two swords to finish killing the guy she's fighting before attempting to disarm her. Just stupid.

The best thing I can say about this movie, beyond the fact that I got it for free (thanks Chad!) is that it's total running time was about 67 minutes. The opening credits were five minutes long and the end credit started right at the 72 minute mark. Somehow it managed to drag and be boring as shit, but at least it didn't overstay its welcome.

Yesterday I spoke about how bad movie fans need to see Old Dogs. Fucking no one with a pulse should see this piece of shit. It's a travesty, top to bottom. You can easily find the nude scenes online if you're thinking that's a reason to watch it. You can watch much better movies with Clint Howard in them. You can definitely watch other movies with Michael Pare in them too. Do not subject yourself to the horrors that await the poor, unsuspecting people who place a digital video disc of Bloodrayne: The Third Reich in their home entertainment players. This is a fate they've doomed themselves to, and I urge you to avoid it at all costs.

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Day 39: Old Dogs

"This is my crib. This is where I kick back, sink the three point shot, you know. Throw the TDs."

Motherfucking Old Dogs. If a worse movie has been made in the last three years, I haven't seen it. As far as woefully misguided career decisions go for both of its stars, this may be a low point. Apparently the film started out as an R-rated buddy comedy and upon testing poorly, was re-edited as a PG family comedy. I'm sorry to say that this not only sounds plausible, it's the only possible explanation for such a mixed bag of a movie. The film is filled with gay panic and geriatric jokes that would have no business being in a family movie, and its pathetic attempt at moralizing near the end will be completely lost on anyone watching under the age of ten.

John Travolta and Robin Williams play best friends Charlie and Dan, two sports marketing gurus. Really quick, what the fuck is sports marketing? The film never bothers to explain what it is, so I thought maybe someone else knows. Any help would be appreciated, as this appears to be a very lucrative vocation, and seems to require nothing resembling even basic competence. So yeah, they're sports marketing experts who are about to close some sort of big deal with a Japanese firm, again, the details of which are considered so superfluous that they're never explained beyond being referred to as the biggest deal of their lives.

Dan is reunited with an old flame, Vicki (Kelly Preston), whom he married several years ago during a night of drunken debauchery, but quickly had the marriage annulled. Vicki is off to prison for two weeks for environmental activism, but decides first to tell Dan that he fathered her seven year-old twins during their 24-hour marriage.

Dan meets the kids and, through a series of wacky happenings, ends up agreeing to take them while she's in prison. Since Dan lives in an adults only condo, he takes the kids to Charlie's condo. Then the hijinks begin as they are put through a series of rigorous set pieces that come and go so quickly, if you get up to go to the bathroom during this film, you're likely to miss an entire subplot.

Now, I don't know what it's like to live the free-wheeling, high-flying life of a sports marketing maven, but these guys are absurdly over-committed and over-extended. They don't seem to say no to anything, they constantly have something going on. Among the absurd shit they get involved in: A trip to scout camp (where Matt Dillon and Justin Long cameo), baby-proofing Charlie's condo for two seven year-olds (where Luis Guzman and Dax Shepherd cameo), attending a bereavement group (where Ann-Margaret cameos), an impromptu tea party with children's entertainer Jimmy Lunchbox (Bernie Mac in his last screen performance {let that set in}) where Dan is outfitted with a cybernetic suit that is controlled by Charlie for some unknown reason.

The sheer amount of shit these two do in roughly forty-five minutes of screen time is categorically ridiculous. Scenes come and go so quickly, for example, the kids mix up Dan and Charlie's medicine boxes, causing the most absurd side effects to affect them at the exact wrong moments. Dan has to go golfing with the head of the Japanese firm and he has no depth perception. This bit leads to no less than five nut shots in the span of three minutes of screen time. Five nut shots. There are entire slapstick comedies that don't have five nut shots in the entirety of the film, let alone slamming them all into a three minute sequence.

Dan's borderline psychotic behavior on the golf course inexplicably earns him the respect of the Japanese businessman, and the two companies sign their deal, in spite of the fact that Dan acted and behaved like a full-on fucking psychopath throughout the entire golf match.

Dan and Charlie send their protege Seth Green (I'm not bothering to look up the name of his character) to Japan to be their liaison in Japan, but he is hypnotized and becomes a slave to some sort of karaoke master in Tokyo and never shows up for his job. I'm not god damned making that up. It sounds like I am, but I'm not. He becomes a slave... nevermind, go back and re-read it and really take the time to absorb that information. Then think about the fact that this is happening in a kids movie. Then add in the fact that it's yet another fucking subplot in a film that is virtually all subplot.

Anyway, this forces the Japanese firm to ask dan and Charlie to move to Japan and take his place. This means Dan has to move to Japan right when he just started bonding with his kids and their mother is getting out of jail. It's a long fucking way to travel for a plot complication, but it's the road these writers took. Speaking of which, the "writers" of this movie have actually written other movies. Like six or seven of them. David Diamond and David Weissman, look up their imdb credits. They're not great movies, but there's more than just this abortion on their resume, so conceivably someone thinks they have talent.

Dan and Charlie get to Japan but flee when Dan blows their big meeting because he's preoccupied with thinking about his kids and they fly back to America, get into a fight, reconcile and then drive to Vermont to make it in time for the kids' birthday party at a zoo. The zoo is closed so they have to break into the zoo. They get attacked by a gorilla & penguins, before Dan buys a jetpack from a guy to fly into the party. Again, not making anything up. Now the jetpack malfunctions just before Dan can land, but just after Vicki and the kids realize it's him, and he crashes lands in a fountain. Wearing a jetpack.

This should have killed him. In fact, the only time I genuinely laughed was when I thought about how funny the whole movie would have ended up being had they gone this route. Imagine that, the guy quits his job, comes back to see his kids, commits at least two felonies and then dies, right in front of his new family. In the hands of better writers and a better director, this could have been a thoroughly effective ending and would have redeemed the preceding eighty minutes. Alas, they give us a tacked-on, afterthought of a happy ending with the guys getting their jobs back.

John Travolta and Robin Williams have been nominated for and won Oscars respectively. They are good actors when given the right roles. Here, they're unbearably fucking terrible. I mean it, these are two completely likable leading men and I hated their guts. And their hair pieces were awful. They deserved their own screen credit. They should both know better and hopefully have learned their lesson, and won't be starring in dreck like this again any time soon.

Bad movie fans, this is a movie you must see. It's blissfully bad. It's the kind of movie that bad movie aficionados get down on their knees and thank the heavens above for. It's not so bad it's good, it's so bad it's fucking awful, but with a couple of friends and a couple of beers, this would make a much better night than a lot of other movies I can think of. If you're not this kind of person though, avoid Old Dogs at all costs. Steer clear of it. Pretend it's a mustachioed man in a trenchcoat following you and your kid at the grocery store. Go nowhere near it for fear of what is sure to happen to you if you do.

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Day 38: The Magic Christian

"I've been fired before, but never in... Afghanistan."

Films like The Magic Christian are simply not being made anymore. This film is a ninety minute middle finger extended right at its audience and targets everyone imaginable. Mostly it's a damning commentary on the highest members of the upper class, but it shows us that pretty much anyone can be bought. My first thought immediately after it ended is, why don't the big stars of today do a film like this? And I suppose the reason is that the big stars of today are far too image conscious to bite the hand that feeds them. That seemed of little concern to this film's stars Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, and the superstars of today could take a page out of their book if they weren't so terrified of losing their A-list status.

The Magic Christian is as odd a film as you're likely to ever see. It's the merging of some of the greatest comedic talent that ever lived; Based on a 1959 novel by Terry Southern (co-writer of Dr. Strangelove), its screenplay was written by Southern, Joseph McGrath (who also directed), Sellers, and John Cleese & Graham Chapman of Monty Python. Sellers plays Sir Guy Grand, the richest man in Great Britain, who one morning stumbles upon a homeless boy played by Starr. Sir Guy strikes up a conversation with him and immediately adopts him, renaming him Youngman Grand. The two set out on a series of adventures with the overarching theme of finding out whether or not everyone's got a price.

The film is essentially a series of vignettes with the Grands going from place to place, trying to buy everyone from a traffic warden (Spike Milligan, Sellers' old Goon Show partner) to a Sotheby's auctioneer (John Cleese). It's actually next to impossible to explain the film to someone who hasn't seen it. The more I sit here and try to write about the plot, the harder it's becoming for me to articulate what the film is about.

The film gets its title from a luxury cruise liner that will be making a trip to America on Easter Sunday, and only the most wealthy people in Britain will be able to buy a ticket for its maiden voyage, making it the social event of the year. Of course Guy & Youngman will be on board, along with Guy's two sisters. The cruise takes some pretty exciting turns, and when the captain is attacked by the ship's vampire (Christopher Lee, hamming it up wonderfully), things erupt into total chaos. The seeds for the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail were clearly sown here as when the passengers abandon ship, they find that they've been on a soundstage the entire time and haven't left London.

Without lingering long on this presumed denouement, the film suddenly cuts to Guy and Youngman standing in a big open courtyard offering free money to anyone who would like it. The catch is that it will be dropped into a large vat filled with blood, piss and shit. Literally. Of course, lots of gentlemen take them up on their offer and plunge in for the money, all of them upper class gentlemen. Guy remarks that they are watching a fairly literal metaphor unfold in front of them, and I couldn't help but have drawn that conclusion myself. The film then draws to an extremely satisfying close that mirrors the opening of the film.

Wow, I don't even know where to begin. I absolutely loved this movie. It's sloppy and slapdash and looks like it was both hastily shot and assembled, but the film's heart is in the exact right place. It's odd how prescient the film is and how much I couldn't help but think of the 99% movement occurring now while watching a film made some forty years ago. Things never change, that's for sure, and Guy Grand and his adopted son try to affect some real change, but things will just go back to the way they were, the ending seems to suggest. I wish Peter Sellers were still alive to continue making films like this, they simply are not made anymore.

The song "Come and Get It" was written by Paul McCartney and performed by BadFinger for this film, which I never knew before, as was "Something in the Air" by Pete Townshend, both of which are used to marvelous effect in the film. Come and Get It is infectious and is used several times throughout the film, and you never tire of it because it's so well placed.

I can't say enough about how much I loved this film and how much everyone needs to see and discover it for themselves. Fans of absurd comedy everywhere will find themselves enraptured by its unrelenting silliness and how much of a progenitor it was for the Python films to come. Find this film, seek it out. I promise you, you will not regret it.

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Day 37: A Mighty Wind

"There was abuse in my family, mostly musical in nature."

Christopher Guest is a comedy legend. He's one-third of the most legendary fake rock band of all time and has made four almost wholly improvised films on his own, 1997's Waiting for Guffman, 2000's Best in Show, 2003's A Mighty Wind, and 2006's For Your Consideration. Waiting for Guffman is probably the best known, and deservedly so, at least in theatrical circles where it's attained a level of adoration that borders on psychotic. Best in Show was his first big expansion film, where he followed more than just five or six characters, and it's the most successful of his large cast films. For Your Consideration was the first non-mockumentary of the bunch and went with a straight narrative, and I'm being generous by saying that it's an unmitigated failure.

So where does that leave A Mighty Wind? Somewhere in the middle, I guess. It's got some pretty wild swings from hysterically funny to embarrassingly cringe-inducing. It tells the story of the death of a folk music producer named Irving Steinbloom, and the efforts by his son Jonathan (Bob Balaban) to stage a reunion concert for Irving's three biggest acts from the folk music heyday of the 1960s; The Main Street Singers, The Folksmen, and Mitch & Mickey.

The Main Street Singers are now The New Main Street Singers and are headed up by Terry (John Michael Higgins) and Laurie Bohner (Jane Lynch), and among their membership is Sissy Knox (Parker Posey, a welcome fixture in Guest's films). The Folksmen consists of Alan Barrows (Guest), Mark Shubb (Harry Shearer) and Jerry Palter (Michael McKean), the obvious novelty being the faux reuniting of Spinal Tap. And that leaves folk sweethearts Mitch and Mickey played by Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara respectively, comedy legends in their own rights.

The plot is a fairly straight-forward Guest plot, first giving the audience some history on the characters, then we meet and get to know the characters and then there's the big event at the end that brings all of the characters together, in this case the "Concert for Irving" at New York City's Town Hall. Some of the ancillary characters we meet along the way are the New Main Street Singer's manager Mike LaFontaine (Fred Willard, stealing every scene he's in), PR Managers Wally Fenton (Larry Miller) and Amber Cole (Jennifer Coolidge), Irving's other children Elliott (Don Lake) and Naomi (Deborah Theaker, also stealing most of her scenes as an emotionally unstable basket case), and Lars Olfen (Ed Begley, Jr.) the public broadcasting producer of the television broadcast of the concert.

I don't know why it is that so much of the film works and so much doesn't, and there's really very little middle ground in it. John Michael Higgins and Jane Lynch are a sublime pairing, combining their estimable comedic skills and playing off each other like a real married couple. They are without a doubt the best thing about the film. Catherine O'Hara is always wonderful and no less so than she is here. She carries most of the emotional weight of the film, if such a thing is possible, and creates a fully formed character even though she's only given a handful of scenes to do so. Willard and Theaker as I mentioned do a lot of scene stealing in their small roles, as do Miller and Coolidge. Bob Balaban makes the most of his small role too. Parker Posey is underused at best and totally wasted at worst. She's always great in these films and is given next to nothing to do here.

The real issue seems to be with The Folksmen trio. The novelty of seeing the three of them together again wears off quickly and most of their scenes do little to nothing to move things forward. A scene devoted to Mark Shubb's skin care routine is superfluous in the worst way as it's not even funny. There's tons of unnecessary bits in a film like this, but most of them are redeemed by the fact that they're funny. Any scene with Fred Willard does nothing to move the story forward, but his scenes are great because they're hysterically funny. The scenes with The Folksmen are just plain awful.

That brings us to Eugene Levy. For the first two films he did with Guest, he essentially played the exact same character. Here he takes a bold leap in a new direction and it doesn't really pay off. Levy isn't one for subtlety, and watching him try to do less is almost painful. He flounders as he tries to not be funny. He's a classic ham and I have always been a big fan of his when he's in his zone, but here, I'll give him credit for trying something different, but it just doesn't work.

The music in the film, however, is brilliant. Top to bottom, all of it is great, the most famous song being the Oscar-nominated "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow," which is a legitimately great song. Mitch & Mickey's other song "When I'm Next to You" is also great, as is the doubly prepared "Wanderin'" as well as the title song of the film, which ends with possibly the greatest line in the whole film. Any of these songs could have been an actual song of the era, and Guest has a lot of very talented singer/songwriter friends who wrote (and in the case of John Michael Higgins, arranged) some wonderful songs for the film.

Overall, I think this is only a film for the diehard Guest fans. Best in Show or Guffman are much better gateway films for first-timers. The film could have been a lot worse, but it could have been a lot better too, and the unfortunate thing seems to be that Guest's ensemble has just grown too large. He can't give everybody ample screen time to be great in the confines of a ninety minute film. But even still, he doesn't seem to have put the best stuff out there, and I wonder what got left on the cutting room floor. I hope that when he does finally get around to making another film, he reins things in and narrows his focus a bit. At the very least it'll be worth watching, and at best, it could be another Guffman.

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Day 36: Meek's Cutoff

"We're not lost, we're just finding our way."

About a decade or so ago, most people had declared the Western to be dead. Throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s, the Western genre had been one of the most popular, spawning some great talent from John Ford to John Wayne to Clint Eastwood. The generally accepted "death" of the Western was Eastwood's 1992 Best Picture winner Unforgiven. There were many westerns made after that from Tombstone to Lonesome Dove to Open Range, but it was generally thought that there wouldn't be a real renaissance for the genre and that it was all but dead.

However, in the last few years, there's been a resurgence of the Western, mainly through it's expansion into other genres. While Sam Peckinpah is widely regarded as the grandfather of the ultra-violent western, that particular sub-genre has been the most prominent recently as directors have been wanting to infuse their films with more "gritty realism." While some have been remakes like 3:10 to Yuma and True Grit, there have been some good originals too from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford to The Proposition to the HBO series Deadwood.

Director Kelly Reichardt seems an unlikely candidate to film a Western, but her films have a stark austerity to them that lends itself well to the genre. In 2011 she tried her hand at a Western with Meek's Cutoff, the story of a group of settlers in Oregon circa 1845. They have hired a guide named Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) to lead them over a mountain range, and he leads them over the plains in what he claims to be a shortcut. The group becomes increasingly hopeless and filled with despair as they are running low on water and have not encountered any in some time.

The band of settlers consists of three families, Emily (Michelle Williams) and Solomon Tetherow (Will Patton), Thomas (Paul Dano) and Millie (Zoe Kazan) and the Whites, the pregnant Glory (Shirley Henderson), her husband William (Neal Huff) and their son Jimmy (Tommy Nelson). They begin circulating rumors among themselves that perhaps Meek is leading them astray on purpose, but if not, he has definitely gotten them lost.

Meek is certainly the type of individual about whom such rumors wouldn't seem far fetched. He's given to braggadocio (always wanted to use that word in a review) and fits of egotism that are endlessly frustrating to the settlers. He is constantly berating them, particularly the women, telling them that they need to trust him to do the job they hired him to do. Before long, they cross paths with a Native American (Rod Rondeaux) and the group becomes instantly divided about what to do. Meek tells them that they need to kill him or he will surely lead them to his tribe where they'll be killed.

Meek has proven himself untrustworthy at best and negligent at worst, so the settlers offer the native a blanket in exchange for leading them to water. Meek continues on with them, but mainly it seems to be there when the natives kill them and he can say "toldja so." Their journey continues and they seem to be wandering as aimlessly as before, but the native is definitely leading them somewhere, so they continue to follow him. 

SPOILERS AHEAD... The film takes a turn in the last fifteen minutes when Meek tries to kill the native and Emily threatens to kill him if he does. Their standoff ends and the next day they arrive at a tree, a sure sign of water in the area. The settlers stop at the tree and the native continues over the hill and the film ends. Now I suppose this is open to interpretation, but I think it's pretty clear that the native was leading them to water as he was continuing on. Who knows? Maybe it was a ruse, but when he began saying a prayer over the ill and dying William two scenes earlier, I figured he probably wasn't leading them to a slaughter. SPOILERS END.

For the most part, I would say that it's a good film. It didn't hold me captive the way I wanted it to, but maybe if I saw it in a theater it would have been a better experience. The film is shot in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, so it gives the feeling that you are one of the women on the trail wearing the headdress with blinders on it. I would assume that's the rationale anyway as it seems odd to film a western in this aspect ratio in this day and age. It's effective, but of course having a widescreen tv, I wanted to see more of the landscapes and locales.

The performances are all very good, particularly Bruce Greenwood as Meek. He's a wonderful character actor and is given full reign to chew his way through the wide open scenery here. Michelle Williams is also very good, as she is in everything. I'm not sure how or when, but she has become one of the most reliable actresses working today. She does consistently good work and I hope that more directors are lining up to hire her.

Overall, I would recommend Meek's Cutoff for anyone who's in the mood for a slow, atmospheric Western. It's not as good as Assassination of Jesse James... but honestly, what is? It's a nice companion piece for it however and would make a great, albeit very long, double feature.

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Day 35: Beginners

"You point, I'll drive."

Mike Mills, not the drummer for REM, made a name for himself directing avant-garde music videos for artists like Air & Moby, before making the leap to feature films with 2005's Thumbsucker. Whether or not that film was based on personal experiences, he hasn't said, but for his second feature 2011's Beginners, he mined some pretty personal stuff to make a semi-autobiographical gem.

Oliver Fields (Ewan McGregor) is a graphic artist who has just lost his father to cancer. Five years earlier, his mother passed away from cancer, and almost immediately afterwards, his 75 year-old father Hal (Christopher Plummer) tells him that he's gay. He had been gay his whole life, he just put it to the side to have a normal, stable family life. 2 months after his father dies, two friends from work take Oliver to a costume party where he meets (cute) Anna (Melanie Laurent, Shoshana from Inglourious Basterds). Anna has laryngitis at the time and communicates to Oliver by writing in a notepad. The two hit it off and begin a relationship.

The film jumps around in time a lot, but it's never difficult to follow. There are three basic time periods that the film covers, Oliver's childhood (mainly his pre-teen years and his connection to his mother), the last five years of his father's life, and his relationship with Anna. After his father dies, Oliver inherits his father's Jack Russell terrier Arthur, who gives the dog from The Artist a run for his money as best supporting dog of the year. Arthur can't stand to be left alone, so Oliver brings him pretty much everywhere he goes.

The dog also speaks occasionally in subtitles which is a wonderful device as it shows the dog understands the people in the film better than they understand themselves. There's a lot in this film that I could see some audience members finding twee, but I think that almost all of it works. Another example of this is when Anna calls Oliver immediately after he leaves the party but still can't speak, so she communicates to him by pressing the keypad.

Ewan McGregor is a wonderful actor and never more so than when he engages an audience's empathy. We feel genuinely sad and conflicted along with him throughout the film. Oliver's central conflict seems to be resolving the people he thought his parents were with who they actually were. He seems unable to love and commit because he watched two people lie to each other for an entire 44 year marriage, so how does he know what true love looks like. There's a very poignant moment where Oliver talks to Hal's lover Andy (Goran Visnjic) about why Oliver hasn't called or talked to Andy since Hal died.
Andy thinks it's because he's gay, but Oliver tells him that it's because his father loved Andy so much.

As a child, Oliver seems to have internalized so much of the pain and suffering that his parents went through, that he was unable to truly cope with his father's new life. He and his father have a wonderful relationship on the surface, and Oliver is there for his father a lot at the end of his life, but in many ways, Oliver's uncomfortableness around his father's new friends has to do with the fact that he can't reconcile his father's true happiness here at the end of his life. Oliver seems to think, did my dad not truly love me when I was younger because he was not his true self? It's deep, heady stuff to deal with when you're also dealing with the imminent death of your father to boot.

Which brings me to Christopher Plummer's performance. He is sublime in this film, playing a man trying to finally embrace who he is. We can see the unabashed joy in his face as he tries to cram 75 years worth of living into his last 5 years of life. His wardrobe explodes with vibrant colors and tight fitting fabrics and he begins wearing neckerchiefs. In one great scene, he calls Oliver after having gone to his first gay bar and tries explaining to him what the music they played sounded like, then exploding with delight when his son tells him that it's called house music, writing it down so he can presumably buy some to keep in the house.

The reason that Plummer's performance works so well is that he underplays everything. He avoids the temptation that must surely exist for an actor taking on a role like this to chew all the available scenery and he imbues his character with so much more humanity as a result. It's a wonderful performance, sure to bring him a long-deserved Academy Award.

I can't recommend Beginners enough. It captures so well the difficulty that people have showing others their emotions, especially when they've been burned in the past. Oliver is one of the best written main characters in years because he has an incredibly rich and carefully hidden inner-life that bubbles to the surface every now and then just to be suppressed for fear of getting hurt. It's a brilliant film with tons of emotions flying around, yet it's also very funny and moves effortlessly for all of its 105 minutes. Anyone who's ever been hurt, anyone who's ever been afraid of getting hurt, anyone who's ever been terrified of truly feeling something can relate to these characters. They are you and me.

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Day 34: The Smurfs

"Someone's been working in dark and terrible magic in there."

There's a tendency by people of my generation to hate something before they ever even lay eyes on it. Now granted, we've been burned a lot by people mining things from our childhood for a quick buck and turning them into cheap cash grabs, but it's made a lot of us turn into cold, cynical human beings. I think that there's a thaw that occurs when we become parents though, and we somehow become more forgiving of these things because we can experience them again for the first time, vicariously through our children. Now, this is not to say that there are still a lot of lazy, cheap filmmakers out there making lazy, cheap films, but there's no reason for us to go around expecting every single one of these efforts to be lousy.

I would love to sit here and report to you that Raja Gosnell's 2011 live-action/cgi hybrid update of the popular 80s cartoon The Smurfs is just the film to convince you that you shouldn't be so cynical when approaching adaptations of this sort. It seems like a textbook example of the kind of film that would infuriate a cynical viewer, and don't get me wrong, there's a lot to dislike about it, but it takes a step in the right direction for updating properties like this one. The thing that this film nails that almost every other film of this ilk has gotten wrong is the casting of the live action characters.

When you look at a movie like Alvin and the Chipmunks and its sequels, they cast Jason Lee and David Cross to play the humans and to say they phoned it in is a polite way to put what they actually did in those movies. Ditto 2010's Yogi Bear which saw some talented comedic actors like Tom Cavanagh & Anna Faris flounder. Thankfully The Smurfs avoids this by casting the incredibly talented Neil Patrick Harris & Jayma Mays. Additionally, the film is aided in every way possible by one of the best performances of the year (and I am in no way, shape or form exaggerating when I say this) by Hank Azaria as Gargamel.

The plot is ridiculous, involving a harvest festival in the Smurf village called The Blue Moon Festival, which is interrupted by Gargamel who infiltrates his way into their village, destroying most of it. When fleeing, Clumsy Smurf (Anton Yelchin) takes a wrong turn and is followed by Smurfette (Katy Perry, <dismissive wank>), Grouchy (George Lopez), Brainy (Fred Armisen), Gutsy (Alan Cumming) and Papa Smurf (Jonathan Winters, wonderful as ever). A portal opens and sucks those six Smurfs along with Gargamel and his cat Azrael into New York City. There they must bide their time until the next blue moon, when the portal will open again and they can return home.

They meet up with Patrick Winslow (Harris) and his wife Grace (Mays) and get caught up in their lives as Patrick is trying to obtain a promotion on a deadline at work and Grace is pregnant and trying to get Patrick to understand. Their subplot is surprisingly heavy for a kids' film, but I don't think my daughters gave a crap about it, it's mostly there to give the adults something relatable, which is actually a welcome surprise in a movie like this.

Now, as for Azaria's Gargamel, it's the best thing that could have ever happened to the film. I would wager to say it's the reason the film was as successful as it was, because even children can laugh at how ridiculous everything he does and says is. Typically the bad guy in a kids film is either a total jerk with no redeeming qualities or a comedic buffoon that poses no real threat to anyone. Azaria deftly balances these two traits and creates a fully realized character who's a buffoon, but poses a credible threat to the protagonists.

His chemistry with the cat playing Azrael is great (I know how ridiculous that sounds, but when you see it, you'll know what I mean. The cat is usually a real cat, but is sometimes a poorly created cgi character, I think to let kids watching know that they didn't put a real cat in any danger. Azaria has some inspired moments, like a dinner he has at a fancy restaurant where he takes a champagne bucket from a waiter and treats it like a chamber pot. Azaria has always been an ace voice over artist on The Simpsons and even managed to steal The Birdcage from the bevy of comedic geniuses around him. Here he seems to have been given free range to do and say whatever he liked, and it pays off in gigantic dividends.

There are moments that are unbearable, like an extended Guitar Hero sequence set to the Run-DMC/Aerosmith version of "Walk this Way" with the Smurfs providing their own, groan-inducing lyrics. Also, the endless substitution of the word "smurf" was actually used sparingly on the original cartoon, but is used here virtually any time one of the little blue creatures opens their mouths. The lesson being spoon-fed to the young people in the audience through Clumsy's journey is all about believing in yourself and relying on others when you can't do it alone, is a good message, and is certainly better than having no discernible moral lesson.

I have a rule with films, any time the number of writers is more than two, you can start subtracting half a star off your review for each additional writer, and this film has six credited writers (granted two of them are repeats for story credit), but at least they were smart enough to give Hank Azaria free reign to re-write his character and to include a nice message for the kids out there.

I've been watching a lot of kids' movies over the last five years, and there's been a lot of dreck in that time. Granted The Smurfs is not the savior of mankind we've been waiting for, and thankfully we can count on Pixar to put out a smart kids' movie every year, and even Dreamworks has squeezed out some good ones recently. As a parent, I know I'm going to get dragged to these movies whether I like it or not, so at least the makers of The Smurfs had enough common sense to give parents like me something to have fun with.

And all you cold-hearted, Gen-X cynics out there like me, far more filmmakers have taken far greater liberties with your favorite childhood properties than this (G.I. Joe, Transformers, Yogi Bear, Alvin & the Chipmunks, Scooby-Doo, the list is endless). Give this film a chance. Yes, you'll have to steel your nerves at times & grin and bear some pretty annoying plot contrivances, but it could have been a lot worse.

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Day 33: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

"Give him a minute son, Dewey Cox needs to think about his entire life before he plays."

John C. Reilly is one of a select breed of actors, very few of whom exist. He is able to play the broadest comedy imaginable and yet he has also been right at home in some of the most serious, stuffy dramas. He made his screen debut in Brian DePalma's Casualties of War, gained a certain amount of notoriety for starring in the first three films from director P.T. Anderson, and earned an Oscar nomination for playing the serious and thankless role of Amos Hart in Chicago. Lately however, he's been working almost exclusively in broad comedy, starting with 2006's Talladega Nights. He also turned up in 2011's Carnage directed by Roman Polanski, which seems to be the perfect melding of his two talents.

The best of these late career comedies is 2007's Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. The reason the film is so successful is that it is a true parody in the vein of the Zucker Brothers comedies of the early 80s. Much like those films, writer/director Jake Kasdan understands that true parody takes an almost obsessive love of what you're parodying, in order to meticulously recreate that film's feel, style and mood, yet play it for comedy instead of drama, but never call attention to the comedy. It takes a lot of work and any filmmaker that wants to work in this style has to walk a very thin line that can break at any moment, but the most skilled at this style know the exact balance and strike it.

During the time when this film was released (and bombed at the box office) there were a rash of hit "parodies" made by two "filmmakers" that seemed to be in this same vein, but weren't even in the same galaxy. The movies they made (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans) were nothing more than an assemblage of familiar bits from famous movies, regurgitated by actors who kind of looked like the original actors. Those movies were the perfect example of the times we're living in... people don't want to put in the time, effort and work it takes to think about comedy, they just want to laugh at their familiarity with more famous movies. But I digress...

Walk Hard is a spoof mainly of the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, but it also manages to get in digs at The Doors, Ray, Don't Look Back, Great Balls of Fire and Beyond the Sea. It also spoofs some things that haven't been turned into movies, like Brian Wilson's mental collapse while working on "Smile," and the self-aggrandizing behavior of music stars in the 60s and 70s. The film tells the story of Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) who, as a youth, accidentally cut his brother in half with a machete. His father (Raymond J. Barry) disowns him, repeatedly saying "the wrong kid died," but his mother (Margo Martindale) supports him and when 14-year old Dewey wins a talent show that ends up sending his small town into a panic over his rock-and-roll music, Dewey runs away with his twelve-year old girlfriend (Kristen Wiig) to become a rock legend.

The film goes through all the beats that can be expected, his first audition, which is the funniest scene in the whole film thanks to John Michael Higgins as the man in the control booth who chastises Dewey for ruining "That's Amore." Here he meets the men who will become his band, played by a trio of underrated comedic talents, Matt Besser from Upright Citizen's Brigade, and Chris Parnell & Tim Meadows from Saturday Night Live. Dewey meets Buddy Holly (Frankie Muniz) and Elvis (Jack White, in a hilarious cameo), buys a monkey and a giraffe, has problems with drugs, is sent to rehab, has relapses, turns into a Bob Dylan surrogate, and turns into a Brian Wilson surrogate.

During this time he meets Darlene (Jenna Fischer) who is essentially June Carter to his Johnny Cash, as the sexual tension between the two becomes palpable. Dewey ends up marrying Darlene, but fails to tell her he's still married, leading both women to divorce him. His life goes into a downward spiral from there, and the sequences in the 70s are particularly funny with him reconnecting with his twenty-some children by playing catch with them. He also is challenged by his father to a machete duel and his father accidentally cuts himself in half, finally understanding how easy it was for Dewey to have accidentally done it to his brother. It all culminates in his big comeback at an awards show some decades on where he sings a song that will sum up his entire life.

The music is fantastic and written with such care that any of them could superficially pass for songs of the time. "Let's Duet" is filled with wonderful word play such as "In my dream you're blowin' me... some kisses," and his Bob Dylan-esque song "Royal Jelly" features lyrics like "my sense of taste is wasted on the phosphorescent orange peels of San Francisco." I urge you to seek out the soundtrack, it's fantastic.

The cast in pretty spectacular as well, with John C. Reilly giving one of the most underrated performances of the decade. I know it's almost ridiculous to say this, but he plays Dewey from age fourteen through his death, and all the various incarnations of his career, it's really a powerhouse performance. The rest of the supporting cast is great too, including a brilliant cameo from Eddie Vedder who introduces Dewey at his lifetime achievement ceremony at the end. The last title card is spectacularly funny as well, taking perfect aim at the self-importance of most music biopics.

Fans of Airplane, Top Secret, The Naked Gun, Hot Shots, and the like can rejoice that films of that ilk are still being made. Those who don't get those films, certainly never will, and should steer clear of Walk Hard at all costs. But for the rest of us, it's pure delight and endlessly re-watchable. Just as point of reference, I selected this as my number 8 film of 2007.

Tomorrow I'll be looking at my number 2 film from 1999, Tim Robbins' ensemble film Cradle Will Rock.

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