My Suzy weighs a ton son carry it: The Man with the Iron Fists reviewed

So, I heard you liked kung fu movies... memes aside that's really the heart of the film.  You're either in one of two camps when it comes to loving kung fu movies.  A) You've seen Enter the Dragon and think it's neat.  Well, of course you do.  It's Enter the fucking Dragon.  It's got actual production values, John Saxon, Mr. Handy-Man, and a peerless martial artist that can act, in English no less.  Or maybe it's Legend of Drunken Master  or some other kung fu movie from the upper echelon.  If you fall into this camp, well frankly, the camp of The Man with the Iron Fists is not necessarily for you.  As this movie is made squarely for those of us that fall into camp B, which as someone using the sobriquet of B I fall into.  Those of us in camp B have slogged through literally every kung fu movie available.  Our DVD collections are littered with ill advised purchases because person 1 in the movie choreographed or trained someone we loved in another kung fu film.  IT is frankly a slavish devotion to the genre.  It is akin to being frankly a kung fu zombie.  IF you are consumed with an undying fever that can only be cured by jump kicks and terrible dubbing then The Man with the Iron Fists  is your movie.

Because dammit why not?

Not to say that it will not appeal to the casual fan of the genre, it may.  Moreover though, it is made with the hardcore disciple of Shaolin in mind.  The best way to describe it in terms is that it is an amalgam of humor and over the top gore, and that is all it sets out to be.  It is in this simplicity that we find it.  It is part grand guignol with elements of odd comedy and asides.  It is not without flaws, but at the same time, if you are looking for a rollicking tale of violence and archetypes and bloodletting and ribaldry then this is your movie.  Also, Russell Crowe is fat, but I would never say that to his face.  It's a solid matinee choice if you're looking for an homage to this genre that you truly love.  It's not high art, but there is an artistry to it's violence.  It is the essence of the kung fu movie of wildly varying quality but with better production values.  That's it.  It's exactly what you think it'll be.  Also, Silver Lion kinda steals the show, and it's obviously got the best fight scenes you'll see this year. 

Fine, More Star Wars - What's so Funny about Apathy, Your Childhood, and Cash Grabs?

When I was a wee lad, I loved a certain trilogy of films.  I also had contemporaries with a predilection for paste in those days too.  I mean while I was a clever child I was still, at heart, dumb as shit.  Now, while I'm not going to say that the Star Wars franchise of films at the time were dumb as shit, I will argue that the combined opus of six films is, as continually groused about on the internet since restarted in 1999, kinda assy.  Look, let's cut it to brass tacks here: the prequels are shitty movies.  Now, I have never been accused of a lack of sentimentality. Hell, this sentimentality, or hoarding as it's called by some, almost got me on Comic Book Men (I may have overestimated my efficiency at keeping accessories when I talked to central casting, pointless story for another day.).  THe point that I'm laconically making is this: George Lucas already fucked our childhoods.  The mythos of Star Wars, while engaging in it's original form, could not stand without our warm fuzzy feelings.  While some of the ancillary properties that it has spawned since it's inception have actually been pretty solid in my estimation: Knights of the Old Republic, the Rouge Squadron series, the Gendy Tartikovsky Clone Wars films etc, they work mainly because of the talents involved.  This point is backed up, frankly, by the number of times that it has not worked: KOTOR 2, the prequels, a lot of the ancillary material, every other Star Wars book, Masters of Teras Kasi, etc.

If you throw in a keyblade, I'll have kittens.



Moreover, at their heart, the original trilogy of films worked because they captivated our imaginations by combining the tropes of samurai films with the sensibilities and settings of classic serials of Lucas' youth.  Moreover, it is not the story that made Star Wars iconic; it was how it was told and how it makes you feel.  IT is comfort food on celluloid, frankly, and comfort food always has gelatin in it.  I'm not trying to marginalize the tale or the characters, as your connection to them is what fuels this and they are vividly rendered on the screen; it's that the story and themes are some of the most well worn in history.  But it is a tribute to the filmmakers that this tale in particular of the force and gay robots revolutionized popular film and became an iconic part of the last fifty years of Americana.  Pretty much, the original trilogy should be lauded, but somebody already took a big messy dump on your childhood and continually whipped and milked a dead horse for much of the last fifteen years.  So why worry?  Who really cares?  No matter how many times they futz with the original trilogy you'll know that Han shot first; Jabba is only in Jedi, and the Max Rebo band is not fronted by a fraggle or whatever.


So look, the well has been dry for a while.  I mean while compelling for three movies that's all the juice Lucas could get out of them, before forcing me to spend thirty dollars watching inert tech demos on opening weekend during the late 90's/00's.  At the same time there is hope.  And that hope has been mentioned as when in the hands of competent talents there is a life and vibrance within this universe, but this ain't the fucking be all end all.  It's a universe with like 8-12 well realized characters that are at their heart still archetypes following a logical heroic arc, but they're our archetypes that we grew up with.  While the intricacies of the Jedi, the tech, and the geoplitics of it were compelling, um fucking midochlorians are a thing that happened.  I mean the reason that we keep coming back to Star Wars as individuals and a culture is that we loved Star Wars.  Lucas knew that, and Disney knows that, and there are still stories to tell within that universe, but we will always go anyway no matter what, but maybe they'll get someone who can wring some life out of it.  We've seen it done before, and we've seen it bungled on every level, but who cares?  We'll always have the Star Wars that we loved no matter when Greedo shoots or how many ancillary and contradictory scenes of mobile Jabba that they edit in but not on Blu-Ray, but you can't win them all.  So don't worry; your childhood has already been vigorously sodomized for the purpose of fattening the coffers of Kenner and Taco Bell.  We survived because it's a series of movies that you loved when you were 8 or 18 or 38 or legally dead and nothing more, and some pretty good video games and some cartoons of wildly varying quality.  And who knows, maybe these movies will be competently directed or actually have a plotline that can justify the creation of a new trilogy or not feature so much walking and talking and terrible decision making and filler, so much filler, and old timey racism and characters doing neat fight scenes that in a sense invalidate the fight scenes of the original given that Obi Wan is seen flipping around in the prequels and then has an awkward ass sword fight in A New Hope and sure he's old but Count Dooku was old and doing flips in the second and third prequels, and Vader building C-3po, and Obi Wan knowing R2-D2, and Yoda knowing Chewbacca which none of them ever bring up because this was obviously not planned out in advance.

And that's it really.  I don't care that they're making new Star Wars; I've seen good and bad ones.  Just cherish the good times.  And who knows, maybe they'll be good.  If not, they're fucking movies, and you've got real problems, probably. God knows I do.  So that's it.  Your childhood got banged; we're all going to give up the cash, and who cares really?  Also, Disney pretty much let's Marvel do their thing, so I mean you don't buy a company to savage it. 

"Do the Charlie Brown"

                In film, the wayward, stodgy protagonist finds his pragmatic, joyless existence upended by some sort of free spirited member of the opposite sex.  Typically, one learns from another; there is some sort of spat where one’s free spiritedness leads to let’s say a blown meeting for the other, or someone is entirely too doggedly dry for some sort of hot yoga convention, or a soufflé is horribly burned when a work associate is coming over, or Dharma gets AIDS, somehow.  Maybe Dharma gets AIDS from Greg’s stationary, somehow.  I don’t write television, but it could happen?  McWorld?  It’s a bit bleak, but people tend to enjoy that sort of relatable impact, a digestible form of current strife.  The horror of this befuddling modern world through the lens that is situational comedy is a fairly well-worn trope. Anyway, this is bullshit, utter rubbish as our compatriots across the pond would call it. 

                For my own tale, as convention would dictate, it was a mildly dreary afternoon, and I was feeling the intolerable weight of my, predictably, drab existence.  I had left the sterile confines of my one bedroom apartment with institutional décor of white walls and nothing and ventured into the hazy, confounding, pointless miasma of another work day.  The only fundamental shift really was from the white walls and institutional décor, nothing, of my one bedroom apartment to the white walls and institutional décor, nothing, of my office space.  Actually that’s inaccurate; there was also the ideological shift from being on the giving end to the receiving end of petulant phone calls.  Fortunately though, most of my telecom abusers are believers in the theory of word economy, which I am not.  When they limit it to merely, “Die cunt”, I imagine that they’re talking about radishes, exceptional radishes, the most marvelous radishes ever, the kind of radishes that a grown, vocally porcine man would scream about. 

              
          Needless to say, it was an excellent day for radishes. As my horticultural experience wound down, I made my way out of the building and on to the streets of my illusory and nebulously defined city.  Past the bank, the marijuana dispensary, and the animal clinic there is a small bar that I frequent.  It is a nice shift from the institutional décor of a sanitarium to the institutional décor of a small dive bar.  There are a jukebox and some pictures.  Normally, I slink in, think hellos to the patrons, and slump in a booth near the back.  As such, today was appropriately normal.  I sat with my tumbler of rail rye and my pint of domestic lager and watched a judge show, shown silently, and imagined what was being litigated.  It was usually, “Shuckie Duckie, Quack, Quack.” I would only do this for white plaintiffs though, as to free my inner monologue from accusations of racism from my superego. 

                As I was sitting, mired in deep thoughts of punitive damages and freedom, I was aurally accosted by a young woman.  This was not normal.  I have now surmised that she had mistaken my deliberate Old Hollywood style stoicism for crippling depression which she oddly reacted to with sympathy, women.  Visually, she was not unattractive.  There was a certain reddish discoloration to her skin that connoted girlishness to a modern person and bawdiness to 13^th century British authors.  Her facial features were those of a catalogue model for something practical like parkas or possibly dinettes, nothing gaudy, but pleasing on a Rockwell level or like the more restrained Playboy cartoons of the 70’s.  She stated that her name was Apple, and noting her severe lack of a British accent, I postulated that her parents had merely hated her due to some sort of prenatal transgression. 

                After a brief intermission of platitudes and exposition, she had a suggestion for me and improving my mood.  She said plainly, “You need to do the Charlie Brown.”  My first reaction was a slight, yet palpable, turgidity in my swimsuit area.  As it had only led me wrong a slim percentage of the time, I went with it.  The first step on this adventure was to get into my Ford Fiesta, which had been sold to me under the pretense that it was a Quince on wheels, without the transition into Hispanic womanhood.  As we entered the car, my heart sank slightly as I realized that “Charlie Brown” was not a euphemism for heterosexual sodomy or heroin.  No, the first step of the “Charlie Brown” was to drive forty five minutes into a pastoral hamlet outside of the city.  The second step was to meander through our bucolic confines to find a small hill. 

                It was with the third step that things grew odder.  As we sat and waited on this hill exchanging pleasantries and belying our trepidation related to accompanying a stranger to a small town on a whim on a Wednesday, I saw it.  I saw why she had brought me here. It was a Klan rally.  While I thought the synergy between unassuming attractive women leading strangers to kKan rallies was odd, it had worked in this case.  Noticing my obvious confusion, Apple reassured me that, no she was not a headhunter for the klan which was a mild relief.  What came next was slightly less relieving. 

                Apple, to this point an archetype  of improbable male fantasies related to the crushing skull drudgery of American male adulthood for the middle class non meth addicted segment of the country borne into reality, picked up a surprisingly large, softball size, rock.  She made the international sign for being quiet and then led me closer to the congregation of white supremacists.  Fortunately, our innate whiteness allowed us to blend in.  As we stood in the back of this mass of irked Caucasians, Apple began to motion.  She began to spin the rock as a softball pitcher would.  As her centrifuge of descent whirred, I was mildly distracted by licentious Sapphic thoughts that have mired the perception of women’s sports in this country.  As that second transitioned to the next, I was startled by the striking rapidity the rock had now taken when released.  I marveled at the wet damp thud that it made on the back of that Klansman’s head.  As the crowd noticed the crumpling of the Klansman, all eyes shifted back to us.  Apple then yelled out, “All I got was a rock!” We started running, really fucking fast.  My only thoughts at the time were that Apple had done this frequently enough to have a term for it and Sweet Jesus; I do not want to die. 

Party like it's 2005...kinda - AVX Retrospective.

As the leaves change, so to does the landscape of comic bookery.  It is inevitable.  Every year, every thing changes.  It is the mutability of the beast.  Before us, it transmutes into a chimera.  This sloughing beast has many names: New 52, Dark Reign, and now...um Marvel Now.  But6 how did we get here?  What was the impetus for this monumental return to a prior status quo?  Punching space gods in both the face and genitals; that's how.  But how does all of this interstellar nard punching make us feel?  Well, to answer that you can start your own blog I guess, and I'll read it fair, illusory reader.  Now though we will deal with how I feel.

It was okay I guess

I mean it didn't leave the typical flavor of carrion, from pummeled equine, that a lot of events give me.  Part of this was just due to the fact that it didn't really up my pull, as I was reading most of the books anyway.  The other part was that there was less truly ancillary filler. Granted, there was a lot of expounding on the meteoric crackle of fists between say The Thing and Namor, but there was less of say, Jackpot, fighting a Skrull that was a hodgepodge of B-list Spider Villains.  So, yes, that's a plus I guess.  Pretty much, these comic super events are typically a bloated mass of vestigial tales, bloat, and laconic droning.  This event at least stayed on topic for the most part with the tie-ins.  Sure, some of it was kind of filler, but it was competent filler usually, and it all dealt with the main conflict, more or less.  As for the plot, they probably could have tightened the thing up a scooch, as the most interesting concept, beloved X-men making the slow burn from magnanimous cyphers of an ill defined space god to fascistic, man thonged, tyrants was left on the side for more punching.  THe reason for this is that well after the X-Men made that full, inevitable, heel turn you knew where this was going.

 

  Sisqo saw all of this coming

 As for the events within, there have been some decent moments and interactions sure.  I do look forward to some of the new books coming out of this, but yeah pretty much this:  Charles Xavier died way more convincingly, given ephemerally, in Messiah Complex; the Phoenix lost way more meaningfully in um The Dark Phoenix Saga; The Thing punched Namor way harder in the 60's when men were men, and women knew their place.  I mean, yes, characters come from literally out of left field in the last issue, and I mean I almost called the resolution to it Spoiler it's just that they didn't say "Fine, More Mutants" but "More Mutants" and "No More Phoenix" as it's good to be the Deus Ex Machina.

We all would have preferred it ending with "Fine, More Maggot"...No?

You Should buy AVX Versus #6

It's got Squirrel Girl and Pixie, and Domino beats up Rulk.



So...

In summation, AVX was who we thought it was.  It was Avengers and X-men punching each other and eventually coming together to fight a common enemy, some of the X-men.  Wakanda got leveled; Hope knows Kung-Fu; Spider-Man can take a punch to the face; fine, More Mutants; Cyclops' arc has made him both more interesting over the years/ kind of a dick;  I guess as the heavy handed allegories for civil rights go, that makes Wolverine MLK Jr?   I don't even know any more.  So, in closing, it was better than last year's events, as Fear Itself was instantly retconned after publication/ inconsistent and Flahpoint, seriously what the fuck just happened?  Wait?  What?  Sot that's what you missed in AVX.   

No, Seriously, what the fuck?  I still don't, what?

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. 

And we're back... I guess. Short ass Movie Reviews.

After an interminable hiatus fueled by apathy, malaise, booze, outdoor activities, templar conspiracy, duck sauce, etc. I have returned to mildly amuse the majority Russian, odd, readership of this blog.  As such, on to the briefest movie reviews imaginable, but not really, of films in current release and those relegated to bargain theaters, due to my reticence to post. 

The Expendables 2
  It's a bunch of old dudes walking with guns.  I mean it's what you expect it is to the tee.  Whether it is winking satire of action genre tropes or not is entirely subjective.  But yes, every traditional action movie note is hit.  Not to give too much away, but the cues for plot development are all there.  When a character says he's two days from retirement, well you know what's coming next etc.  With that said though, the affability of the characters is there based on them playing to these archetypes, but they are archetypes that the actors themselves originated in some cases.  With that said though, the movie felt a touch rote at times.  However, that is not to dismiss the performance of one cast member in particular: Jean Claude "Mother Fucking Van Damage" Van Damme.  In my opinion, he steals the thing in every way imaginable.  But, I'm wildly biased as a fan of Van Damme.  Wildly I say. 

Dredd 3D
  First, I would like to thank the marketing genius behind the synergistic cross promotion of Dredd 3D and Les Miserables.  I know, personally, that before I watch an hour and change of 3D rendered testosterone I want to hear about how singing live on set freed up Wolverine to really get into the character of Jean Valjean.  Also, when we're recasting the X-Men franchise can we get a Wolverine that does slightly less musical theater?  While I like Hugh Jackman as an actor, sometimes dammit I don't want to think that "I'm the best there is at what I do...which is high kicks and harmonizing." 

Anyway, go see Dredd 3D.  It's pretty much The Raid: Redemption with Judge Dredd.  Which if you haven't seen The Raid, um you should, is a compliment.  But yeah, it's true to the characters, visually interesting, other movie poster platitudes, violent as hell, enjoyable popcorn cinema.  Dude keeps his helmet on as well.  Also, there is no Rob Schneider as comic relief.  It is not a patently ridiculous affair.  It's just a Judge Dredd movie.  That's a good thing.  Also, Karl Urban brings the detached, robotic, wry fury.  Olivia Thrilby works as Judge Anderson and could get it.  So, that's good.  All in all worth your movie dollar.  The 3D was totally worth the extra 4 dollars for all of the flying blood, sparkles. 

So, I saw a bunch of movies of dramatically varrying quality- Here we go (in Mario voice) mid summer wrap up is what we'll call it.

As the above overly literal title, if we can call it that, suggests I have seen a metric fuck ton of summer movies.  This due in part to the fact that it's something to do on Saturday in the early afternoon, for the most part.  Aside form having my Saturday morning's free typically, I blame the wildly vacillating quality of cartoons...fuck that's sad; I do consider myself a bit of a cinephile with far more pedestrian leaning  tastes which seem to grow more prosaic as I spiral aimlessly through the miasma of malaise that is adulthood.   With that little bit of good old fashioned fanboy self loathing, which is what I should probably call the site, covered let's get on to the talkies (in an approximation of chronological viewing order)

The Amazing Spider- Man

I had rather low expectations for this film when.  It seemed, as gleaned from trailers, to be a joyless reboot of the Spider-Man franchise.  I did not have much faith in the dude from Social Network.  I was leery of the Lizard as a movie carrying villain.  I did not know if the tonal shift would really work as there was something fitting about the anachronistic aw shucks-ery that seemed to permeate the pop art cum action franchise of Raimi.  I was mostly wrong though.  As you've already made your decision to see this movie, you oh fictional, illusory reader, I feel that my purple opining may be more irrelevant than usual.  By that same token, irrelevance is the crux of the genre fare vanity blog... back to the movie

It by and large worked.  Yes, you're watching a fair approximation of the first film.  Yes, Garfield is actually likable in the film and brings the snippy prankster Spider-Man that Maguire's rendition did not embody.  And that is at the heart, so to speak, of this mandated reboot, due to issues of rights.  The film is not the same pop art pastiche that Raimi provided.  IT does embody the slightly grittier space of Super Hero film making of a post Nolan Batman summer super hero blockbuster.  And it works, by and large.

THe reason that it works, frankly, is that there is simply a stronger supporting cast in it, and a more likable, in my opinion, Spider-Man.  Martin Sheen steals every scene he is in, and Sally Field reminds me that Smokey and the Bandit movies existed.  Emma Stone is a better Mary Jane as Gwen Stacy, she's sassier, than Kirsten Dunst.  (In doing so, she adds a much needed level of personality to the sainted and sullied comic psuedo heroine...all she ever really did was die and be perfect/ have bastards with Jack disease/ powers in an oft maligned story arc, rightly so).  Anyway, the film is geared toward the slightly more modern film goer, as the last franchise closed up shop not that long ago.  It is not "total ass".  The Lizard looks less silly in the film after a while.  His motivations in this modern world, and world of suspended disbelief does make his motivations shoddier.  He never seems fully justified in his motivations, and his plans are scurrilous at best.  He is merely the needed villain... He's serviceable I guess you'd say.  So the review is that it was a decent reboot of the franchise, and that's about it really.

Savages

I went to see this at the behest of a female associate.  I am not trying to absolve myself of seeing this film, merely providing contest.  Needless to say though, we did have something to talk about after the film.  On the one hand, you have Oliver Stone's return to the realm of madcap violence/ escapism.  On the other hand, you have a patently ridiculous affair, not an insult, that does not go far enough, insult.  In our desensitized times, I wonder if the film went far enough really, as per ultra violence.  Yes, there are some grizzly things unfolding on screen, but for a movie that was touted to me as a return to Natural Born Killers form, I felt that it did not go far enough with its frenetic descent into the blood letting.  Also, the dialogue is a bit corny in spots #wargasms. And that's really the issue with the film.  It is again serviceable.  The cast fully inhabits their scene devouring archetypes.  Taylor Kitsch is not immediately repellent to my, the target demographic.  Everyone is okay.  There was a bit much as per dude ass in the film.  Bottom line: enjoy it on the television.  While there are moments of mad spectacle, there are not adult theater prices worth.

The Dark Knight Rises

It's really good.  Sure, the myriad twists and turns are predictable to fans of the Bat.  No, nobody is going to top Heath Ledger for captivating menace.  THe set pieces may not be as crazy as DKR, but they're still at the top for the summer.  Anne Hathaway steals scenes.  Bale's Batman voice is still goofy.  Tom Hardy's Bane voice is also kinda goofy, think Bronson.  But at the end of the day it fits into the pre established franchise, obviously.  It's a fitting conclusion to the trilogy.  If you don't see it, the terrorists win (back in my day we called white people terrorists).  Personally, I found it to be less thematically ham fisted than Batman Begins, yet not as engaging as The Dark Knight, although much of that is attributable to Ledger, obviously.  The movie works; I did not think the first hour dragged, and some of the plot holes in the film will bother me, um, forever is the word.  Overall though, it's winning summer entertainment really.  Hence the shortness of the review; your mind is made up on the issue of being entertained.  Seriously though, go to the movies and see it.  It's worth the adult admission for the sheer spectacle of it all.

The Watch

As a fan of "The IT Crowd", and amateur Richard Ayoade impersonator, I was willing to forgo my initial apprehensions about the quality of this film.  Then, I read the myriad negative reviews of the film and tempered my expectations, as I have done with many a thing in life.  Then, I saw the movie.  It is a movie.  It has a beginning and ending and actors and a soundtrack, and I'm sure at some point a script.  At the same time though, it's kinda shitty really.  IT seems like everyone is on board for the proceedings, but at the same time it's just that the film isn't really doing anything new.  IT has some good moments, and they are all more or less in the trailer.  To that end, it is predictable to a fault, and it squanders a good cast.  Everyone is operating form a comfort zone of sorts, and things don't gel as well as you would expect them to.  It's not utterly humorless, but it is nothing that you haven't seen everyone else do better in another film really.  And that's about it really.