TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 2 Is Kind Of Winning Me Over

Like a sucker, I actually paid money to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  What's worse, I dragged others to the theater so that we could talk about it on the podcast.  This was all a terrible idea and I have paid for my crimes.  So why do I find myself oddly encouraged by recent developments on the currently filming sequel?

Because I'm an idiot, that's why.

Still, it's hard for me NOT to get excited about the idea of Tyler Perry playing brilliant-scientist-turned-giant-fly Baxter Stockman.  There were rumors that Stockman was appearing in the first film, but no such luck.  Now the idea that this movie will not only feature an evil flying insect man in a lab coat, but that he'll be played by fucking Madea has me over the moon.

But that's not all!  Stephen Amell, star of CW's excellent Arrow, has also joined the cast in the role of Casey Jones, a.k.a. my favorite.  Producer Michael Bay tweeted out the above image, which is our first look at Amell in costume.  Sadly he's missing the flowing locks of Elias Koteas from the original live action movie, but I suppose I'll make do.

Also, Laura Linney is in this movie, which means times must be tough for Laura Linney.

I was REALLY into the Ninja Turtles when I was a kid, and while the turtles themselves are great, it was the sprawling collection of truly odd supporting heroes and villains that really won me over.  The idea that we're starting to dip into those side characters is honestly exciting, if for no other reason it brings us closer to the possibility of someday seeing a six foot samurai rabbit and/or the motherfucking Technodrome.  If we can bypass Beebop and Rocksteady, all the better.

Look I haven't forgotten just how totally buck-buck the first movie was, but for what it's worth, we do have a new director this time out in the form of Dave Green, whose Earth To Echo supposedly had fun, E.T. vibe going for it.  That's promising!  Less promising is this set photo of Megan Fox doing her best Brittany Spears impression.

Yikes.  Maybe I'll wait to catch TMNT2 on Netflix after all.  Then again, if I find out that Krang is in this movie, all bets are off.

Podcast Episode 26: TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES Is Totally Buck-Buck

The newest reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a singular film experience in that it's the first time I've ever sat in the theater and felt like a movie was trolling me in real time.

To be fair, I am CLEARLY not this movie's intended audience despite having been a member of the original generation of young TMNT fanatics.  No, this horrorshow is custom built for today's nine year olds.  And not even the smart nine year olds but the dumb ones, the kids who need everything explained to them six times between a series of explosions and fart jokes lest they get distracted by something shiny and wander out into traffic.  This is a movie in which six-foot talking turtles who know karate aren't cool enough, so these turtles are also bulletproof and super strong, able to knock giant steel shipping containers 50 feet into the air with a single kick.  It's also got a faint whiff of racism - Splinter sports a fu manchu and wraps himself in Japanese affectations not because he comes from Japan, but because he finds a ninjitsu book lying in the sewer.  That's right, Splinter is essentially a rat doing yellow-face.

Character development?  Compelling relationships?  Coherent storytelling?

"FUCK THAT," this movie gleefully screams.  "We've got a car chase in the snow down a mountain with a close-up of Megan Fox's ass!"

The various incarnations of Ninja Turtles from my youth are hardly sacred, but this clusterfuck of blurry CG and leaden dialogue makes the first live-action film from 1990 look like Citizen Kane.  You can criticize the turtle suits all you want (and I actually think they hold up pretty well, all things considered) but at least that movie operated on a modicum of logic and it gave you 30 seconds to catch your breath between fight scenes.  The turtles in that movie are all distinct and multi-faceted.  Not only could you tell them apart, but you actually gave a shit about them individually.  The only difference between these version of the turtles is the color of their respective masks.  Oh yeah, and Michelangelo REALLY wants to bone Megan Fox, which is exactly as creepy as that sounds.  Oh yeah, and the actual ninja stuff is astoundingly unimpressive.

But here's the thing: I watched this movie in a theater full of kids and they went BONKERS for it.  Completely and utterly.  However, they were also whooping and cheering for the movie as soon as the lights dimmed.  These kids were obviously primed to love this thing before they every walked in the door and I suspect that has more to do with the movie's marketing than with the content of the film itself.  Apparently there is currently a Ninja Turtles cartoon airing on television, but I had to go look that up to be sure.  Before Michael Bay and director Jonathan Liebesman stepped in, the Turtles haven't felt like a real cultural touchstone in years.  Sadly, I expect that will all change as children are drawn into this hyper-kinetic bastardization like moths to a flame.  It's no surprise that the film massively outpaced industry estimates at the box office, nor that Paramount has already greenlit a sequel.

Episode 26 of the podcast features our longtime friend and Ninja Turtles fan Colin FX Garstka.  We marvel at the sheer idiocy of what we've witnessed, reminisce about the Turtles of days gone by and suggest which vintage characters we'd like to see introduced in the future.  Sadly, Krang feels pretty unlikely but giant insect/scientist Baxter Stockman doesn't seem totally outside the realm of possibility.  We also fancast the proposed all-female Ghostbusters and get psyched at the prospect of Bill Murray and Christopher Walken lending their voices to The Jungle Book.

For those of you who want to skip over the Teenage Mutant Ninja Nonsense and get right to Lady Ghostbusters, you can start it at 59:30.

Next Week: At the end of the episode we settle on Let's Be Cops, but it actually looks like we'll be talking about Expendables 3 instead.

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.

The Latest TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES Trailer Is Dubstep-tastic

Sweet Jeebus.

There are so many baffling choices in this new trailer for the Michael Bay-produced reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that my head is spinning.  I honestly can't tell if whoever cut this thing together is trying to make me laugh or not.  Like the moment when Splinter warns the turtles that they're about to face their most dangerous threat to date, and then it cuts to a shot of a dapper looking William Fichtner.  Hilarious!  I also can't tell if Shredder, with his giant Freddy-esque knife hands is actually supposed to be Fichtner inside some kind of Iron Man-style armored suit, or if he's actually just a nine foot tall robot.  Will Arnett definitely refers to robotic samurai, so is he talking about Shredder or the Foot Clan?  If we're gonna go back to the cartoon canon where all the Foot Soldiers were actually androids, well I'd be VERY okay with that.  Mostly because, in my head, it paves the way for Krang to show up in the sequel.  If we're really lucky, it'll turn out that Whoopi Goldberg was secretly Krang the whole time!

I do like the crack about the turtles not being aliens, but by the time the dubstep kicks in, it becomes clear that this movie simply isn't built for me and that's fine.  The original live-action movie is one of those things that I can still recite word for word with all the right inflection in place ("Regular?  Or menthol?") and I'm perfectly fine revisiting my DVD box set every few years and reveling in the nostalgia.  But I also can't begrudge today's youngsters from having the opportunity to enjoy the sublime pleasures of talking karate reptiles in a way that might be more accessible to their own sensibilities.

Somebody call me when Baxter Stockman turns into a giant talking fly.

Not Even Robot Dinosaurs Can Save The Latest Trailer For TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

I keep forgetting that there's a Transformers movie assaulting theaters this summer and every time I remember, I get very sad inside.  There was a decent chance that, after three increasingly unwatchable cinematic disasters and star Shia LaBeouf's slow descent into madness, Michael Bay's most financially successful and intellectually bankrupt franchise would finally go the way of the dinosaurs.  Instead it just added metallic dinosaurs.  And Mark Wahlberg.

Frankly, I'm all out of righteous anger when it comes to this franchise.  I can no longer carry the banner of Michael Bay spoiling my childhood memories, although his upcoming Ninja Turtles movie might test those limits.  I think it mostly has to do with the simple existence of Pacific Rim, which is likely to be the best live-action giant robot movie* for a generation.  Bay can make all the sub-par Transformers films he wants.  I'll take Gipsy Danger over his Optimus Prime any day.

I'd complain that these movies make far too much money in comparison to their piss-poor quality, but I guess I have no right to do so.  After all, I've paid good money to see all three of these films in the theater and I'll almost certainly do the same for Age Of Extinction.  I know it's going to be terrible in advance, but I guess I feel like I need to see it in order to take part in the larger conversation about summer movies and the industry in general.  Also, I am a huge sucker.

If Bay really wants to get me excited about a Transformers movie, bring back Unicron.  Then we'll talk.



*I know, I know, the Jaegers are technically mechs, not robots.  But they're still the best "giant mechanical men" I've ever seen realized on film.

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

Falling In Love With Channing Tatum Via MAGIC MIKE

"Does this look distressed?"

No, this was not a Wife's Choice.  In fact, Jamie hated the movie far more than I did.

For years the line on Channing Tatum was that he was one of those guys who "killed in the room," which is to say that when he sat down with casting directors or producers he was charming and funny and likable and (obviously) good looking.  Putting him in your movie seemed like a no brainer.  But once cameras started rolling it was Tatum himself who appeared to lack brain activity.  He came off stiff, boring and he had no chemistry with anyone.  The guy was pretty much unwatchable.

When I tell that story to my future kids, they're never going to believe me.

Just a few years later Tatum is not only watchable, he's magnetic.  He's got personality oozing out his perfect cheekbones and on top of all that he's fucking hilarious.  In fact, I find myself inordinately excited for movies like White House Down simply because of Tatum's presence.  There are two movies we can credit for suddenly propelling his career to the next level and they were both released in 2012.  The first is Phil Lord and Chris Miller's brilliant 21 Jump Street, one of the funniest movies released that year.  The second is Steven Soderbergh's stripper anthem Magic Mike.

In Jump Street Tatum is paired with Jonah Hill, playing a physically adept but intellectually stunted cop.  Hill does the real emotional heavy lifting in the film, leaving Tatum free to look cool in the action scenes and be generally hilarious.  That's not to minimize his comedic skills; before Jump Street you could not have convinced me that the man would be able to match humorous wits with Carrot Top, let alone Jonah Hill.  But you can tell that, as opposed to something like G.I. Joe: Rise Of Cobra, the pressure is largely off here.  Tatum is absolutely essential to the film's greatness but he doesn't have to carry the thing single-handedly.  Without that weight on his shoulders, he's able to really loosen up and be the guy who wins over producers so easily.

There's a similar factor at play in Magic Mike.  The script by Reid Carolin was largely influenced by Tatum's own experiences as a Florida stripper before he got into modeling and later acting.  The fact that he's in a familiar world here goes a long way towards elevating Tatum's comfort on camera, but so does the copious amount of dancing.  Just like we all go to Michael Bay movies to see shit explode, a big part of the draw here is seeing good looking, muscular dudes show off their assets on stage.  But this isn't just grinding and ass-shaking, this is legitimate dancing with impressive choreography and Tatum is more than equipped handle the challenge.  He and the other dancers really shine whenever they're up in front of the screaming ladies of Tampa, dressed in a variety of amusing costumes that range from Tarzan to cowboys to Tatum's shirtless paramilitary getup.

Again, it's as if knowing that he's got a handful of ace dance numbers up his sleeve gives Tatum the freedom to be himself throughout the scripted stuff.  He's got an easy, almost goofy charm as Magic Mike that makes you simply fall in love with the guy as he struggles to leave the stripping life behind in favor of his dream career of designing and building custom furniture.  He's got two love interests in the form of Olivia Munn as his frequent booty call and Cody Horn as the sister of his protege "The Kid" played by Alex Pettyfer.  Tatum has an easy rapport with both actresses and the relationship with the no-nonsense Horn (who's a dead ringer for Missy Peregrym) works precisely because it's kept to a minimum.  We don't get any of the cliched, expected story beats given the set-up (they fall for each other, her brother gets pissed and lashes out, etc) and it never feels like the story hinges on whether or not they get together.  All they have to do is make each other laugh and look hot walking on the beach.

Then again, the story doesn't really hinge on much of anything, which is precisely what drove Jamie up a wall.  The movie sort of meanders around a couple of half-hearted plotlines without ever focusing on any of them.  There's Mike's furniture-based aspirations, his constant hustling at a half dozen jobs, his mentorship-turned-rivalry with The Kid, his double edged relationship with Matthew McConaughey's Dallas* and his romance with The Kid's nurse sister.  Throw in a drug overdose and a violent shakedown with some dealers and you end up with a collection of vapor stories that never quite coalesce into a full-blown plot.  I enjoyed Tatum's performance and Soderbergh's sharp eye enough that I was willing to overlook it to a certain degree, but I can see why Jamie found it so frustrating to watch.  But in a way that seems like an even bigger test of an actor's ability.  Can they give a performance that elevates a mediocre script into a movie worth watching?**  That takes a special kind of something.

I think that Tatum has a lot of room to grow and I mean that in the best way possible. He can clearly handle both comedy and action.  Careers have been built on far less.  I'm actually curious to see Tatum really start to stretch himself dramatically in the future.  He recently did nice work in the high school reunion flick 10 Years, and perhaps he'd benefit by doing some more ensemble pictures where he can soak in the work of some talented veterans.  He was pushed into starring roles pretty quickly when he might have been better served by paying his dues and slowly working his way up the Hollywood ladder.  But I think that the driven aspect of Magic Mike, the guy who's always working and willing to go in any direction and seize any opportunity to achieve his goals is also true of Tatum himself.  He certainly doesn't seem interested in coasting on his success and the guy seems up for just about anything, as evidenced by his absurd appearance in one of this summer's biggest comedies.  Tatum's got the Wachowskis' sci-fi epic Jupiter Ascending coming next year and, after being totally floored by Cloud Atlas, I'm fascinated to see what kind of performance Andy and Lana are able to coax out of him.  No matter where Tatum goes from here, it's sure to be an interesting journey.

And I'm totally on board.




*Also not to be undersold is McConaughey's performance.  Dallas is one of those roles that simply couldn't be played by anyone else - for shit's sake, at one point he comes out on stage with bongos.  The guy is on a cinematic hot streak the likes of which I've never seen and right now I'm just enjoying the ride...

**To be clear, Tatum is only half the reason Magic Mike works as well as it does.  The other half is Soderbergh, whose direction and cinematography are frankly superb.  His adoption of the digital aesthetic really works here, with the dark sheen of the strip club standing in stark contrast to the hazy golden Florida exteriors.



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Title: Magic Mike
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Matthew McConaughey, Cody Horn, Olivia Munn, Matthew Bomer, Joe Manganiello
Year Of Release: 2012
Viewing Method: HBO HD