“Another Earth” starts off with an interesting enough, if completely ridiculous premise. Scientists have found a heretofore-unnoticed planet, an exact replica of Earth to be exact, hiding behind the moon, and the movie attempts to explore the impact this discovery has on the people of “Earth One”. What it actually does is meander around for a while, trying to be moody, but succeeding only at boring the ever loving crap out of you. At times it is painfully indie, full of long, static shots of characters walking from one side of the frame to the other. Once in a while that device is okay to use, but it comprises roughly half of “Another Earth”. You just want something interesting to happen, but it never does.
“The Smurfs” is so smurfing sweet that you’ll want to smurfing puke all over the smurfing place. I’m not going to make excuses, I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when I made the conscious decision to go see “The Smurfs”. Somehow I deluded myself into thinking that it might be fun, and even kind of subversive if handled right. After all, I loved the Smurfs as a child. I watched the cartoon, I had this sing-a-long record that I absolutely adored called “The Smurfs All-Star Show”, and I’m pretty sure that I had a Smurfs pillowcase.
“Things” makes it feel like you’ve been magically transported back to your youth. It’s a crisp Friday night in fall, and you’re sleeping over at your buddy’s place. Your buddy who just so happens to have cable. The plan is to drink a two-liter of cherry soda, each, and stay up all night watching scary movies. There’ll be plenty of time to sleep all day Saturday, especially since your parents won’t let you play football like you wanted to. So you down your soda, much on some red vines, and hunker down on the couch, promising your pal’s mom that you, “won’t stay up too late.” Somewhere around two or three in the morning, later than your adolescent self has ever stayed awake before, “Things”, or a movie like it, would come on an obscure channel, and it was like Christmas morning for your sugar-addled, sleep-deprived little mind. Like it or not, that film was seared into your consciousness forever.
Watching “Sucker Punch” is like watching some creepy old dude’s rape fantasy masquerading as a female empowerment story for young women. Apparently all teenage-looking girls need to do to transcend sexual assault is to do a seductive (read awkward) dance to hypnotize their would-be attackers and flee into their imaginations. One of the five female leads is almost raped every few minutes. People are going to describe “Sucker Punch” with words like “hot”, “sexy”, and “sensual”, but more accurate words are gross and skeevy, not to mention painfully long and repetitious.
Here is all you really need to know about “Red Riding Hood”—Gary Oldman tortures a retarded boy in what is best described as a giant metal torture elephant. You may need a moment to digest this information, but rest assured, Gary Oldman does in fact torture a retarded boy in a giant metal torture elephant. Here’s how the device works. The intended torture victim, retarded or not, is locked inside a hollow metal elephant. A fire is then lit underneath to heat up the metal, and, in this case, broil the young, screaming boy inside. Perhaps this contraption has other applications, but this is the only one you see in the film.
There are certain stories that are told and retold on screen, generation after generation. “Cinderella” is one, and “Romeo and Juliet” is another. “Beauty and the Beast” also belongs to this club. My personal favorite version is the Ron Perlman/Linda Hamilton TV joint from the mid 80s, but much of my generation is enamored with the animated Disney rendition, and has a special place set aside in their collective hearts for that film. Now I have love for Angela Lansbury, and who can forget Jerry Orbach (RIP), and who am I to tell an entire generation that they’re wrong, so I’ll chalk this up to individual preferences. I firmly believe that time will prove me right.
“Tron: Legacy”, Joseph Kosinski’s sequel to the 1982 cult fave “Tron”, starts out promisingly enough. Okay, that’s not entirely true, it starts out idiotic, but idiotic in a way you can cope with. Sam Flynn (Garett Hedlund) is an orphan. His father, cyber-visionary/digital freedom fighter Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), disappeared in 1989 immediately after telling his young son about a “miracle” he experienced. In 2010, the elder Flynn’s videogame company, Encom, has transformed into a global technology juggernaut. While Sam has controlling interest in Encom, he prefers to the board of directors run the company, choosing instead to live the life of a bored, motorcycle riding twenty-something that has never worked a day in his life. And he plays yearly pranks his own company, like putting their new operating system on the internet for free, then base jumping off of the Encom Tower.I was bored. Really, really bored. Which is hard to do, because I’m entertained by pretty much anything you put in front of me. I’m easy. If it’s on TV, I’ll probably watch it.
So there I am, bored, on the couch, a little sick, a little groggy, and what do I stumble upon? Epic Movie, that’s what.
Now there are some great spoof movies. Airplane!, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, and Not Another Teen Movie (which is the last great spoof movie—if you don’t believe me, watch it, that shit is gold) spring readily to mind. Epic Movie does not belong in the same category with any of these other movies. Realistically I didn’t expect it to be good. I didn’t even expect to laugh much. But, especially in my semi-delirious state of mind, I thought I would laugh a little. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Instead I just got sad when I remembered that Crispin Glover is in this movie for some reason. That was a bummer.
After watching Epic Movie I felt bad about the choices I’ve made in my life that led me to the moment where I thought, “maybe I should watch Epic Movie.” Even by my extraordinarily low standards this movie is a waste of time. It isn’t funny, the jokes and references are forced and awkward, and that’s all the time I’m going to devote to thinking about it, otherwise I may start to cry.
In the future, when time travel is available to the general public, I fully intend to go back to the moment in my living room right before I pushed play, and stop myself from making this terrible mistake. I want to erase this ugly chapter from my memory. My life will be better for it.
