Movies of 2013, Action, pt1

Action

GI Joe Retaliation, or "Why is the destruction of London and the murder of millions taken so in stride?"

Overall: 5/10

Also, all of the posters are awful.  They look like the covers to a generic shooter video game, this is the best one and it looks like it is advertising a discotheque.

            This movie is about as good a film as we could have possibly expected considering how shit the first one was.  And since it ties up all but one loose thread it will serve as a decent end to this current era of GI Joe on the big screen... Probably.  They might make another one.  I don't really want them to.

            The first one suffered(?) from throwing in a lot of goofy stuff that I guess would have been cool if the movie had not been about GI Joe and instead had just been about super soldiers fighting some massive corporate-terrorism scam... Even though the plot was stupid, the universe needlessly small, and the bad guys were badly executed... Come to think of it this series shares a lot of issues with the new "Star Trek" franchise but consistently has poorer direction (though better than the first one).

            Actually there are plenty of fun things in the movie, there is a massive cliff side ninja battle that is a lot of fun, if the Ninja Turtles had shown up to lend a hand and this had all been a giant set up for a shared universe between GI Joe and their future movies it would have all but redeemed the thing.  The Rock is fun, though the movie somewhat contradicts itself with his skill level and unloads (rather than fires) Chekhov's gun, the movie shows his ability with a massive firearm at the start of the film and during the climax his skill fails to hit a much larger target, I actually watched a review online that said they should have just had the Rock play himself in the tradition of real life pro-wrestlers and fictional athletes being GI Joe's (like Sgt. Slaughter and Rocky).

            But there is so much needless crap in this movie, they have Cobra Commander in it and he does nothing, they kill Destro without having ever had him standing outside of a cage.  They have Storm Shadow, who was run through in the last movie back alive without any explanation.  The climax of the film has the entire city of London totally annihilated by a space based weapon... Millions are dead... Beautiful to look at... Totally unnecessary, and actually really pissed me off because it marks the second time a major city outside the United States has suffered either near or total obliteration and it is not treated with the gravity it should.

            The film cheapens itself, cheapens its characters, and makes less and less sense in its own universe, mostly because it is just starting from a really bad place, the first movie which knee capped any chance this thing of really functioning.  Let's just let this series quietly expire in the corner, and do something else with it later, cause it isn't working.

The Lone Ranger, or "This is a really uneven movie... Which averages out in my opinion."

Overall: 6/10

There is maybe too much going on.

            Wasn't all that bad.  This movie is making a lot of, "WORST MOVIE EVAR!" lists because it has a white man playing an Indian, the titular character won't stop sucking, it is overly cynical, and the tone is all over the map.  Yeah... Can't really argue with any of that, but I am reminded of something from Shakespeare (yes I am mentioning the bard in a review of "The Lone Ranger").

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream, -Puck

 If you're wondering how he eats and breathes

And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show,
I should really just relax
For Mystery Science Theater 3000. -MST3K

             This entire movie is told from the perspective of an aging, doddering, traumatized old man... Tonto.  The framing device of the movie is Tonto telling the story of his first adventure with his friend the Lone Ranger to a young kid in a Wild West show attraction.  And you know what happens in stories told by old or silly people?  They have a hard time keeping things on track.

            Tonto throughout the story talks about things that are clearly too dark to be talking to children about, (in one scene his entire race is slaughtered in a suicide charge against the villain, and Tonto gets away, only to watch as bits of feathers and native regalia wash down a river, his society is being washed away.  Then they make a joke about how the Lone Ranger's horse acts funny... He does this because the old man Tonto is telling this story and if he dwells too long on the sad parts either he or the kid he is telling the story to is going to cry, so he breaks the tension with a joke).

            There is also the issue of the "main character".  The Lone Ranger is a naive overly optimistic fool.  At numerous opportunities he is confronted with the man who killed his brother (a man also responsible for killing a lot of Tonto's people), and rather than letting Tonto kill the guy, he fights Tonto and takes the guy in to face trial... While knowing that the system is corrupt and there is someone helping the outlaw from the inside.  Of course the Ranger gets betrayed and nearly killed.  Actually, it could be said that this movie's message is teaching one young attorney to chose the path of violence and revenge because justice is a lie constructed by the rich so as to more easily exploit those who are different from us... I can kind of get behind that message... but then they frame it as, "I used to think that you were the Wendigo (cannibal) but now I see you are just a white man."  Really, Tonto?  I know the movie could be saying that you no longer believe that some supernatural evil is to blame that regular old greed is to blame, but it makes it sound like white people are the problem rather than say... That guy who did the crime...  That kind of pissed me off, we are supposed to be past that level of liberal guilt.

I also liked the bird hat and the mystic weirdness.  It was certainly memorable.
Rather than ANOTHER iteration of these characters, they had their own iteration of these characters.

            There is also another scene in which a military commander who was tricked into killing a lot of innocent people refuses to believe that he was tricked, and just up and decides to be a bad guy (metaphor for American military?)  I guess they could be saying that rather than admit that killing Indians is wrong we all just bought into the idea that they had it coming?  This movie throws a lot of stuff out there with themes and ideas, but it does so in the context of some old guy talking about how shit people were/are.

            Could have cut some stuff to make it work better, it was too long, really the whole framing device of old Tanto was stupid and overly cynical, and the bad guys make lots of bad decisions. But, there were a lot of fun gags, a lot of good action, the costuming was good, and the dialogue never felt forced or unrealistic. The movie was okay. Solidly okay... So long as you take it on its own terms.  It certainly was not one of the worst films of the year. Nor was it nearly as bad as people led me to believe.

            Basically, whenever the theme kicks in, I felt myself getting caught up in the action and excitement.

Movies 2013, Crime, pt4

Crime

Pain and Gain, or "Did Michael Bay just do something kind of awesome?"

Overall: 7/10

This was the first poster and nobody knew what the hell this movie was going to be about.
Fitness?  Body Building competitions?  You don't look at this and think Dark Comedy Crime Drama.

            I think Michael Bay has been unfairly demonized by an ungrateful movie audience.  He has a distinct visual style, knows what to imitate from other directors, and tends to have really strong casts for the movies he is making.  I find people bitching about "Transformers" to mostly be simpletons.  "Transformers" was always garbage, and I say that as a huge fan on the original series, and I would go so far as to say "Beast Wars" is one of my favorite cartoons ever in spite of the aged computer animation from the 90's.  Michael Bay took a toy commercial, and made a schlocky, immature, alien invasion disaster movie and it became one of the most commercially successful franchises of all time.  That being said the man has the sense of humor of a 6 year old who just discovered adults laugh when he says the word, "Poop."  He is not really an artist, he makes movies that are 'effective,' easy to market, easy to consume, he is the $200 Million McDonald's trip for 100 Million people.  Very tasty garbage.

            "Pain and Gain" is exactly the kind of movie Bay should be making, it is about psychopathic emotionally retarded meat heads committing violent crimes.  It in no way glorifies what they are doing, but you definitely understand their motivations.  It moves at a good clip.  It is funny.  It has a lot of color and action that keeps each scene visually interesting.  In different hands this movie could have been totally different, I can easily imagine the Coen Bros doing this sort of thing in the style of "Fargo" or "Burn After Reading".  It also has stuff taken right from the "Inglourious Basterds" style guide, as quick asides through the story inform you of what is happening and why, or text appears on the screen to clarify something.  The best moment of the film happens when the most outrageous aspects of this whole criminal enterprise have hit new levels and text pops up reminding the audience, "This actually happened".

            Dwayne Johnson is a head case that is slow to violence and needs to be pushed the whole way, which considering he looks like a gorilla covered in tattoos adds a level to his character.  Marky Mark is surprisingly good in this, far better than his turn in "2 Guns" using his charisma to nefarious (or as nefarious as a thug can be) ends, rather than being the character getting taken for a ride for nearly the whole movie.  Not as many tits as I would have expected.  Especially compared to "The Wolf of Wall Street", but I am guessing that Scorsese has a lot more clout to get such things put on screen without an NC-17 rating getting slapped on, Bay would probably get burned at the stake by the MPAA.

            This movie is definitely worth seeing.  It is retarded fun.

The Wolf of Wall Street, or "I think they went a little far in some places."

Overall: 8/10

Lot of microphone felatio in this movie too.

            This movie and "Pain and Gain" have a lot in common.  Based on actual events, happens in roughly the same era (the early 90's), and the protagonists are drug addled psychos.  The difference here being these monsters are not low class violent thugs taking what they want through force, instead they are slick conmen getting rich to the point of godhood via exploiting the painfully broken game that is the American financial sector.

            Let me be clear, if I were a murderer, these are the people I would kill.  I had, unironically, a serious conversation 4 months ago about how capitalism is great at producing TV, media, and lots and lots of cultural flotsam, but is plagued by middlemen and money managers that do not in anyway produce, build, or create anything but have huge sums of money from moving columns of hypothetical numbers.  This movie starts with the flipside of that conversation, with the mentor of evil telling the main character that stock brokers get rich and contribute nothing.  The movie explicitly tells you these people are evil.

            Leonardo DiCaprio continues to be my favorite actor, able to yell, laugh, narrate, and be on drugs convincingly.  And Jonah Hill, while getting way too much time to adlib, is really good in his role.  The supporting cast all gets good scenes, and there are too many very quotable lines to mention, though my favorite is, "I AM NOT GOING TO DIE SOBER!"

            Actually this movie could have been a 10/10 but there are a lot of scenes that had me going, "cut... cut... CUT".  There are scenes with powerful speeches that go on past the point of them being powerful.  Scenes of slapstick that are hilarious, but could have been cut in half.  There is one Jonah Hill scene in particular that I could tell was a metric shit ton of improv and needed to be cut down, it went on and on with increasingly annoying bullshit... Like an Aristocrats joke.  The movie is really long and scenes that are too long make you feel the length of the movie.  Should also make note of the truly herculean amounts of nudity in this film, full frontal of multiple women, the most notable of which is Margot Robbie... Maybe the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in a movie (she is also 5 years younger than me, so I feel incredibly old).

            Also totally worth seeing.  Might have worked better if I had watched it in two parts, or if it had been an HBO series, like an amped up "Mad Men".