It was a 2 movie Saturday: Evil Dead and GI Joe: Retaliation; I saw them so you don't have to see one of them.

So, on Saturday, one of my compatriots and I were on the way to the cinema, smelly movie theater - it's warm out, near my apartment, The Sanctum Skantorum.  Unnecesary exposition aside, we had originally endeavored to see the GI Joe, but then I had the revelation that we would be walking out of the theater saying, "Man, we should have gone to see Evil Dead."  So, we went to see Evil Dead.  We made the right call.

Buzz's Girlfriend...Woof?

Anyway, Alvarez's Evil Dead, technically the second remake of the first film (as well you've seen Evil Dead 2, right?), got the job done.  Yes, it's largely humorless and does not have that "screwball" *sigh* ethos and manic slapstickery.  What it does have though is a taught 90 minutes of reverent gore.  It truly is a modern version of the source material.  I say this as (I am by no means the first person to posit this theory) the majority of modern horror films and reboots, baring the resplendent Cabin in the Woods, are humorless affairs more concerned with the severing of tendons, grandest of guignols, and are by and large less concerned with the bon mots of burnt up dream hopping murderers.  By and large, that is the zeitgeist of the genre - largely humorless torture porn, although this film escapes being mere torture porn.  However, while the remake, reboot, regenesis, Rerun Berry does not have the manic humor, it is not joyless.  Simply put, this film grabs you before the credits; it makes you wince in that brief time, and you are sold when the hapless, expendable youths make it to the dilapidated cabin.  This is of course assuming that you're a fan of the original or the genre or most importantly a fan of the screen being painted in swatches of blood, carrion, mung.  You should not take this to mean though that the film is beyond reproach.  Yes, you will wonder about the decisions made by the characters.  Yes, some of the characterizations will seem rote; you will see some tropes, but it's a horror movie.  Just go in, turn the brain off, wince, tell your friends, go about your day.  You won't feel that you've wasted $11, and that is the highest praise of all.

The highest praise for GI Joe: Retaliation was that it was the second movie I saw on Saturday.  Okay, a bunch of shit blew up.  Some of the fight scenes were pretty cool.  I like that Flint does parkour now.  The Rock was The Rock; the plot was amazingly convoluted for being so insipid; a bunch of other shit happened; a bunch of people brought their little ass kids to the 10 o'clock; I remembered why I don't go to the movies downtown; I forgot most of the movie, but it was better than the first one... although I miss Scarlet as she was hot.  Lady Jaye is hot too though, I guess.  Much like Wooderson in Dazed and Confused there's just something about redheads.  My predilection towards the fire crotch aside, the movie was resoundingly eh, serviceable but unremarkable in any real quantifiable way. 

May as well I figured. For, you know, science purposes...boner science?

Flute Loop-er - Movies Rock the Nation.

And we're back again with gloriously bare film critiques.  This past weekend, there was Looper.  It was a movie.  People really seem to enjoy it.  Personally though, the one thing I noted when the film was discussed was the parallels with the film Drive  that were being made.  Yes, both films shared a similar release schedule, both were pot boilers, as my grandmother may have called the, and most strikingly, neither film is the one advertised to you.

As Drive was advertised, and notably litigated against, it was to be a taught, um driving centric, action film.  That movie though, should have been given the far more accurate sobriquet of CurbStomp or Elevator Beatings or Ryan Gosling is Beat Takeshi in etc.  The same is true of Looper.  It is not so much a time faring action thriller in the form of a literal battle of one's self, but a well crafted meditation on causality, with time travel.  Unfortunately though, it is impossible really to discuss some of the movie's finer points without totally excavating the movies twists and finer points.  So, in brief, I cannot in good conscience tell you not to see the movie.  It's worth the movie dollar.  It has an interesting presence, solid performances, and it does some terribly nifty things with time travel in the first half.  However, here is what I can say negatively.  The second half features a plodding, languid pacing to it that I found to be wholly disengaging, as the eventual reveals (relating to the well everyt6hing is spoiler redacted) are ungodly predictable.  I mean I can't say who is doing what and how and why but you will know how it plays out when that starts.  One would not need to ruminate on narrative structure to figure out the whys and hows; it just is.  That's really it.  So, pretty much in summation: totally worth the money, has a great taut introduction, then proceeds to not simmer during the second half, nor boil over; it just is.  Then it ends, and you're like that was pretty cool I guess.  Not the movie I thought I was paying to see, but still a solid flick.  Also, you get used to the Joseph Gordon Levitt prosthetics, and they didn't really take me out of things.  So, yes, Looper pretty good; fire bad.