Podcast Episode 24: HERCULES and LUCY Raise The Bar For Stupid

If you like dumb action, then have I got a podcast for you.

This week Bart and I tackled not one, but TWO action movies that sound great on paper but ultimately fall short of their own massive potential.  I had very high hopes for each of these movies to clear a very low bar.  Instead they both managed to trip over it.

First you've got Lucy, the latest film from Luc Besson starring Scarlet Johansson as a party girl who gets accidentally dosed with a new synthetic drug that gives her superpowers.  In fact, the entire premise is built upon the patently untrue assertion that humans only use 10% of their brains, so as the drugs activate more and more of Lucy's mental capacity (illustrated by towering percentage title cards interspersed throughout the film) her ability to control matter, energy, time and space all increase exponentially.  Now that sounds pretty fucking stupid, but it's the kind of stupid that I kind of adore.  And Johansson's flat, emotionless persona (this makes her performance in Under The Skin look downright bubbly) only makes her delivery of such dialogue as "I can feel my brain" all the more entertaining.  Throw in scene after scene of Morgan Freeman either soliloquizing idiocy in the guise of hard science or staring at Johansson in abject befuddlement and we could have had an all-time classic on our hands.  If only Besson had used all that brain percentage nonsense as the starting point for any kind of compelling story or character trajectory.  Instead the movie wanders aimlessly while Lucy does and says non-specific cosmic shit and Korean gangsters, led by a criminally underutilized Choi Min-sik, shoot up French hospital seemingly just because.  That's what's most frustrating about Lucy: while there's plenty of entertaining action and slick special effects, it's all completely unmotivated by anything at all.  Shit just occurs.  It's exhausting.

On the other hand there's Hercules, starring The Rock wearing a lion for a hat.  Actually, it's more of a hoodie, since he literally flips the lion head back and forth depending on his particular mood.  At one point he tosses a horse across a battlefield.  Yes, that's right, HE THROWS A GODDAMN HORSE.  How is this not the best movie of all time?  Part of the fault lies in the script and part of it lies in the marketing.  None of it lies in The Rock.*

I'm honestly not sure if Paramount's marketing department was trying to do some kind of cute subversion-of-expectations thing or if they just didn't know how to sell the movie they had and settled on a deceptive bait & switch routine instead.  Seriously, just watch this trailer:

That looks like an epic tale of a Greek demi-god battling a host of weird creatures while defending an oppressed people from an army of demons sent from the underworld, right?  That is not the case.  In fact, not only is Hercules not that kind of movie, it actively mocks and berates those movies.  This Hercules is just a really strong dude with a mind for military tactics.  He's not even really a soldier, he's the leader of a band of mercenaries.  They play into Hercules' own mythology and even employ his nephew as a storyteller who bolsters his allies' confidence or weakens his enemies' resolve, depending on the situation.  Herc, along with his merry band of badasses, wanders the countryside from job to job, hoping to retire and live out his days in solitude after maybe causing the death of his wife and children.  And here's the thing: that doesn't sound bad!  A grizzled, guilt-ridden Hercules who outsmarts his enemies a travels with a group of hired guns?  Sign me up!

But you lied to me, Paramount.  You got me all hot and bothered to see The Rock fight mythological monsters and then five minutes into the movie you basically spat in my face.  All that business with the Hydra and Nimean Lion and Cerberus the three-headed dog?  It's all bullshit.  What's in that trailer is essentially the sum total of what's in the movie and none of it turns out to be real.  That cool fire whip that grabs Hercules by the neck?  In the actual movie that's a whip made of bones and those fire effects are nowhere to be seen.  All John Hurt's talk of "an army descended from Hades"?  I don't even think that line is ever spoken.  That's some trailer-only ADR right there.  It's such a shame.  When it comes right down to it, what I really want is to watch a Hercules movie where The Rock kills a guy with one punch to the face, not one where he sneakily hides arrowheads in his fist to make himself look cooler.  Still, I probably would've enjoyed this movie so much more if only I didn't feel like I had been tricked into seeing it.

Bart and I cover all this and plenty more in Episode 24 of the podcast before delving into some of the news that came out of San Diego Comic Con and then drooling over that Mad Max: Fury Road footage.  I'm happy to say that this is easily the best sounding episode of the podcast to date thanks to some newly  acquired microphones.  (Thanks, eBay!)  Also, there's a silly little easter egg for those of you who listen all the way to the end.

Next week we're talking Guardians Of The Motherfucking Galaxy.  I can't wait.


*How do you know when to refer to him as Dwayne Johnson and when to refer to him as The Rock?  I've chosen to employ Justice Potter Stewart's approach to pornography: I know it when I see it.

Podcast Episode 20: TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION Falls Down Like A Fat Ballerina

"Some things should never be invented."

Sunday morning I was cleaning up around the house and I found The Sting playing on TV.  It's one of my all time favorite movies and the best Newman/Redford pairing - Butch and Sundance are fine, but they're no Hooker and Gondorff.  It's also got one of the single greatest scripts in the history of movies, full of smart narrative twists and clever dialogue.  ("Relax kid, we had him ten years ago when decided to be somebody.")

So it was probably unfair to follow that up by going to see Transformers: Age Of Extinction, a movie that is aggressive in its lack of plot or character development.  It's almost three hours long and the overwhelming majority of it consists of car chases, fight scenes and action sequences that are completely untethered from any semblance of storytelling.  Characters both human and robotic all run around blowing stuff up with absolutely no motivation for any of their actions.  Shit just happens, and it keeps happening until it stops happening and then something else happens while the audience is completely overwhelmed by sensory overload.  You almost don't have time to realize that nothing you're seeing makes any damn sense and it isn't until the two hour mark, when Tiny Negro Transformer sits everybody down and describes the plot that's apparently been happening entirely off screen, that you full appreciate the full measure of insanity to which you've subjected yourself.

But Bay doesn't give a shit about things like "story" or "character development."  He cares only about awesome things being awesome and in that regard he does not disappoint.  Age Of Extinction brings new meaning to the phrase, "sit in the theater and turn off your brain."  This is three hours of pure, uncut id, outright pummeling the animalistic pleasure-centers of the human brain through spectacle and imagery devoid of any context or meaning.  The fact that this is (and continues to be) one of the most profitable franchises of all time only proves that Bay is satisfying some kind of carnal craving by theater-goers worldwide.  But from an intellectual standpoint the whole thing is endlessly fascinating and from a cinematic standpoint, doubly so.  You simply can't argue that Bay is incompetent.  He knows exactly what he's doing and what he's doing defies all logic and reason.  You need only look at the IMAX presentation, in which he constantly changes the aspect ratio not just from scene to scene, but from shot to shot.  A single exchange of dialogue will haphazardly swap from full frame to widescreen so many times it will make you dizzy.  But each individual shot is composed with such care and precision it's absolutely remarkable.

Is Transformers: Age Of Extinction a good movie?  No.  Not at all.  Not by any appreciable metric of filmmaking.  But is it an entertaining experience?  Weirdly, yes.  This isn't a case of "so bad it's good."  This is a case of "so wrong it's right."

The 20th (!) episode of the podcast goes into all this and a lot more.  This week we welcome certified film scholar Jason Michelitch to the show and we try to wrap our heads around just what sort of madness Bay hath wrought.  We also introduce our new Trailer Of The Week feature (because The Rock as a lion-hatted Hercules simply demanded it) and discuss the future fate of Predator, Pacific Rim 2 and Harrison Ford's legs.

Next week we'll be talking about Snowpiercer and I cannot wait.

PAIN & GAIN And The Redemption Of Michael Bay

"Every man needs to fight for his dignity."

Michael Bay has been making the wrong kinds of movies.

It's easy to take shots at the low-grade dogshit he's been churning out for the last few years.  The Transformers movies are an ongoing exercise in cinematic embarrassment, a tsunami of visual clutter, muddled tone and flat humor with just a pinch of racism and homophobia.  That shit is so overwhelming that it'd be easy to write Bay off entirely as a hollow shell of spectacle and overindulgence.  The man's entire career has become all about making stuff that looks cool and sounds badass with little regard for stuff like storytelling or character development.  Bay is all slick affectation with nothing below the surface.

Which is why Pain & Gain might be his best movie ever.

Based upon the Miami New Times articles by Pete Collins (a very lengthy but totally worth your time read) Pain & Gain tells the horrifying true story of three bodybuilders who (after a few hilariously failed attempts) kidnapped a wealthy gym member, held him hostage for weeks, tortured him and forced him to sign over all his money and assets.  They tried to kill him and unsurprisingly fucked that up, but that didn't stop them from living in their victim's home, pretending to be CIA agents, and eventually trying to pull the whole thing off again only to see it all blow up in their faces.

The ringleader of the gang was Daniel Lugo, played by Mark Wahlberg in a performance strongly reminiscent of his best work with David O. Russell.  (I Heart Huckabees 4-Eva!)  Lugo is a lovable sociopath, a guy who's seen way too many action movies and who possesses just enough knowledge about the business world to be truly dangerous.  He can charm octogenarians and muscleheads alike, with a winning smile and a flawless physique that instills in him a confidence that belies his limited intellect.  Lugo can make his (even dimmer) cohorts believe that he is the man with the plan, totally in control and able to handle any situation with ease, whether that be a home invasion or a complex business deal.  Of course it's all a smokescreen, but what makes Lugo utterly fascinating is that even he buys into his own bullshit.  The guy actually believes himself to be a competent businessman, military tactician and criminal mastermind, when in reality he's all sizzle and no steak.

In other words, he's Michael Bay.

It's impossible to watch Lugo blindly throw around tactical terminology while outlining his various kidnapping plans without thinking of Bay's own military hard-on so prominently displayed in the Transformers movies, to the point that I can help but wonder just how self-aware Bay really is about the whole thing.  This is easily his best looking film in years, eschewing the gritty, palid high-contrast of stuff like Bad Boys and The Island in favor of the bright, saturated neons and pastels of Miami.  I saw this theatrically in 4K and it was absolutely breathtaking.  The whole movie almost plays like a feature length music video, overstuffed with hero shots, extreme closeups and American flags galore.  Bay shoots the movie the way Lugo sees himself: fast, furious and foregoing logic in favor of sheer badassery.  The film is a jigsaw of narrative devices that have no business being in the same room together and yet Bay manages to weave it all into a tapestry of sublime crazy that somehow works in spite of itself, not unlike Lugo himself.  Not only is there a copious amount of voiceover, but the film has a bewildering SIX different narrators and more needle-drops than a Run DMC album.  It's a batshit crazy true story told with rock-star flair, to the point that eventually it becomes hard to say who the real hero of the film is, other than perhaps Bay himself.

What's not difficult is determining the film's breakout star.  While Wahlberg is superb, he is upstaged at every possible turn by Dwayne Johnson, who is nothing short of jaw-dropping.  In fact, he's so damn good that when I recently described the movie to a friend, I refused to refer to Johnson as The Rock because he has unquestionably transcended his pro-wrestling persona here.  Johnson has always been charismatic and entertaining, but his Paul Doyle is nothing short of fascinating on every level.  A recovering coke addict who found Jesus while serving time for home robbery, Paul is earnest and lovable until he's suddenly not and he quickly plummets down the rabbit hole into absolute lunacy.  It's an incredible character journey, the kind of performance that I didn't really know Johnson was capable of delivering.  Of course it helps that he gets all (Every.  Single.  One.) of the funniest lines in the film.  If you still think of Dwayne Johnson as just a wrestler who makes action flicks, this is the movie that will forever change your mind.

We're getting a fourth Transformers movie whether we like it or not.  The fact that Shia LaBeouf has been run out of town is certainly encouraging and Mark Wahlberg seems to be able to key into Bay's particular brand of madness, maybe even enough to elevate the film above the level of utterly dreadful.  If Wahlberg can't do it, maybe giant robot dinosaurs can.  Who knows?  What I can say is that I don't give a shit.  I'm no longer interested in Michael Bay's big-budget franchises.  If nothing else, Pain & Gain proves without a doubt that Michael Bay's biggest enemy is excess.  It may seem counter-intuitive, but Bay needs to navigate away from $200 million dollar tent-poles and instead focus on smaller, weirder character movies that allow his peculiar sense of style to really take focus.  Pain & Gain might be completely ridiculous, but it also feels incredibly personal to Bay.  For the first time in a decade, he actually seems to give a shit about the movie he's making as opposed to simply collecting a massive paycheck and it absolutely shows in the finished results.  Unlike every other film Bay's directed since Bad Boys II, this isn't a chore to sit through.  In fact, it's an absolute pleasure.

Stop playing to the lowest common denominator and let your freak flag fly, Mr Bay.  It's the best thing you've got going for you.

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Title: Pain & Gain
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shaloub, Ed Harris, Rob Corddry, Rebel Wilson, Ken Jeung, Michael Rispoli
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Theatrical 4K  - AMC Boston Common

Podcast Episode 3: The Power Of Family Compels You In FURIOUS 6

"You don't turn your back on family."

I am firmly on record as a big fan of the Fast & Furious franchise, but it wasn't always that way.  2 Fast 2 Furious is a flat out terrible film, and while I really enjoyed Tokyo Drift, its utter lack of original cast members (not including a cameo by Vin Diesel in the closing seconds) seemed to indicate that this was a franchise destined for the direct-to-DVD rack.  But three years later Universal was able to bring both Diesel and Paul Walker back into the fold and suddenly we were off to the races once more.  And even more surprisingly, each movie was astoundingly better than the last.  Furious 6 hit theaters in May and I'm not ashamed to admit that it emerged as one of my favorite movies from a crowded and fairly disappointing summer.  Moreover, the promise that the franchise was finally going to swing back and close the bizarrely awesome time loop in its own chronology while also adding a couple of big names to the roster propelled my excitement through the roof.

The Saturday night after Thanksgiving, Jamie and I were out at a bar watching USC choke against longstanding rival UCLA.  When halftime rolled around, I took out my phone to see what else was going on in the world and discovered an avalanche of tweets indicating that Paul Walker had just died and in a car accident of all things.  I was surprised at how immediately affecting I found his sudden and abrupt passing.  Walker is hardly my favorite actor of all time and he was involved in some pretty crap films over the years, but he was also in Pleasantville and the criminally underappreciated Running Scared, so I couldn't help but be fond of the guy.  The fact that he was still in the midst of filming Fast & Furious 7 when he died only added an extra level of tragedy to an already somber affair.

Bart and I had been itching to lay down another podcast, and with Walker's death fresh in our minds and the recent video release of Furious 6 (with some proceeds going to Walker's Reach Out Worldwide charity), this felt like the right moment to finally get around to covering the film while also speculating on the potential cinematic and automotive fallout from Walker's death as well as contemplating the future for what has become one of our favorite active franchises.  We also dive into the Fast & Furious-adjacent news of Gal Gadot being cast as Wonder Woman and what's going on with the larger DC universe, as well as my particularly awkward screening of Blue Is The Warmest Color.  Plus you can hear my dog barking in the background!  This is our longest episode yet, but it's also starting to hone in on something closer to where I'd like these podcasts to end up.  At the very least I think we've definitely found our theme song, courtesy of The Visitor, but I'm still experimenting with some formatting stuff, so I'm open to suggestions.

Enjoy!

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Title: Furious 6
Director: Justin Lin
Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Tyrese Gibson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Gina Carano, Ludacris, Gal Gadot, Sung Kang, Luke Evans
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Theatrical - AMC Boston Common

G.I. JOE: RETALIATION Is Entertaining Yet Forgettable

"You love my panties."

Lately I've been feeling like there hasn't been enough variation in my cinema diet.  I've watched a lot of movies from the last two or three years, mostly through Netflix Instant.  I have no doubt that once the summer movie season really gets into gear I'll be spending a lot more time in the theater, but there have certainly been a few new releases that have piqued my curiosity, even if my expectations aren't particularly high.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation falls squarely into that category.  Before venturing out, I re-watched Stephen Sommers's G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra just for comparison purposes.  My recollection was that the movie itself was essentially kind of fun in a cartoonish, over-the-top kind of way, somewhat appropriate considering the source material.  The biggest stumbling block was casting Channing Tatum in the lead role of Duke.  Putting it kindly, Tatum still hadn't really loosened up and shown any of his own real life charisma on screen.  Putting it unkindly, Tatum was a walking absence of personality and seemed incapable of walking and talking at the same time.  So, when the new creative team set about to make a sequel, they made the downright ballsy move to redefine the franchise by killing off Duke in the very beginning of the film.  At the time, it seemed like a great idea, a clever way to recognize the first film's mistakes and literally expunge them.

Then 21 Jump Street happened.  And Magic Mike.

Surprisingly, Tatum was not only watchable, he was entertaining.  Turns out the guy is really funny!  And on top of that, he's box office gold.  All of a sudden Tatum's early onscreen demise seemed like a terrible miscalculation.  So, at the last minute, the producers pushed the film's release back nine months, ostensibly for 3-D conversion but also to shoot extra scenes with Tatum to squeeze in before Duke's execution.

I'm certainly glad they did, as the first 15 minutes or so is mostly scenes with Duke and Roadblock (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) being hilarious.  This stuff engenders so much goodwill that it makes everything else feel like more fun than it really is.  In fact, I wish the whole rest of the movie was just the two of them shooting bad guys and making fun of each other.  (Seriously, someone put these two in a buddy cop movie STAT!)  Unfortunately, it's not meant to be, as Duke's death, along with the rest of the G.I. Joes, is unavoidable, the inciting incident that sets the rest of the scatter-brained story in motion.

I'm not gonna delve into the plot, as it's fairly simple: The three surviving Joes have to figure out who set them up and why in order to foil the plot of the evil Cobra Commander.  There are a few problems, the first one being that our heroes spend half the movie just catching up to what the audience knows before they walk into the theater, as the replacement of the U.S. President (Jonathan Pryce) by a Cobra agent is the only real thread picked up from the previous movie.  To make matters worse, our three surviving Joes are booooooring.  Roadblock is clearly upset about the slaughter of Duke and the other Joes, but there's no real exploration of his desire for revenge, which is an odd choice considering that the name of the movie is "Retaliation."  There are a few moments where we're reminded what's motivating Roadblock (including him dropping a huge pile of dogtags on a coffee table) but we never get a sense of real anger, righteous or otherwise, as if the producers were afraid of letting the film get too dark.  Once Tatum exits, so does Johnson's personality.  Adrienne Palicki is fine as Lady Jaye despite being given the bare minimum of dialogue that can be mistaken for character development.  Anyone who's familiar with her work from Friday Night Lights knows that Palicki's got chops and one of these days someone's gonna put her in a movie worthy of her talents.  This isn't it.  Last is Flint, played by D.J. Cotrona, who somehow manages to channel Tatum's anti-performance in the first film.  He is a non-entity, and he made me wish that Flint had died saving Duke instead of the other way around.

Oh yeah, there's also Snake Eyes, the faceless, black-clad ninja Joe.  His is the most clumsily handled story, but amazingly it ends up yielding my favorite two non-Tatum related things in the film.  Snake Eyes is MIA (but often referenced) for the first half hour or so of the movie.  While I'm sure it was meant to be mysterious, instead it just feels like they forgot about him, especially when it's revealed that he's really just training an inconsequential new apprentice named Jinx in the house of the Blind Master, played by RZA.  That's right, RZA plays a blind ninja master, complete with bleached out eyes and a complete lack of articulation.  It's fantastic, and you can tell he's just having gobs of fun with it.  Snake Eyes and Jinx eventually head up into the mountains to capture his nemesis Storm Shadow, leading to a really fun sequence that's been heavily featured in the trailers and TV spots, with the ninjas all fighting each other on zip lines, rappelling down the face of a cliff.  It's visually inventive while also being just plain cool.

Everything else is pretty uninspired.  Jonathan Pryce is clearly enjoying himself in dual roles as both the real and imposter President.  The scene in the bunker where he fucks with all the other world leaders is particularly great.  Casting Bruce Willis as the original G.I. Joe seemed like a great idea and he even wears the old school army greens of the early over-sized toys.  Unfortunately Willis looks beyond bored here, displaying little to no personality on screen.  This feels like the epitome of a paycheck performance.  The continuation of the Snakes Eyes/Storm Shadow storyline feels like a misfire, which is a shame as it was one of the more interesting aspects of the first film.  The villains are largely dull; there's a prison break sequence when they free Cobra Commander (captured in the last film), but abandon Destro, seemingly for no other reason than they couldn't get Christopher Eccleston back and they didn't want to animate his head for the whole movie.  Speaking of "not back for the sequel," Joseph Gordon-Levitt is understandably gone as Cobra Commander, replaced by up-and-comer Luke Bracey.  He's fine, spending all but seven seconds of the movie behind a much improved chrome mask.  He looks great, but I will admit that I miss the old screechy voice from the cartoon of my youth.  Despite some large scale destruction, the film's finale is practically paint-by-numbers.  What's worse, it feels cheap, with Roadblock driving around a very flimsy looking tank that's seemingly made out of PVC pipe, firing at unseen bad guys before finally engaging in the beyond-tired cliche fistfight for a remote control.

As much as I've shit on this movie, it's really not all that bad.  It's pretty inoffensive and fairly enjoyable while you're in it, there's just nothing really notable that stays with you after you've walked out of the theater.  The first movie is a mess, but it's a mess that really goes for something, with it's crazy accelerator suits, futuristic weapons and cool vehicles.  That's a perfectly reasonable approach when you're making a movie based on a line of toys, even if it ultimately doesn't pay off.  Instead, Retaliation just feels like a boilerplate military adventure flick that happens to be populated with familiar characters.  It's water off a duck's back, the kind of movie that you'll find playing on FX some Saturday afternoon 18 months from now and you'll leave it on in the background while you check your email and clean up around the house.  You'll look up for the mountain fight scene and anything with RZA, you'll be disappointed that you wandered in 40 minutes into the movie and missed all the Channing Tatum stuff, and then three hours later you'll go out to dinner and forget you were ever watching it in the first place.


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Title: G.I. Joe: Retaliation
Director: John M. Chu
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Adrienne Palicki, D.J. Cotrona, Channing Tatum, Jonathan Pryce, Luke Bracey, Bruce Willis
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Theater, Showcase Revere