First off, fuck your bitch and the clique you claim …I mean, have you noticed the new trailers from the sure-to-suck new Dane Cook movie, Good Luck Chuck? They completely ignore what, from the other trailers, appeared to be the main premise, which was that everyone Dane Cook slept with found their true love (hence he is afraid to bang Jessica Alba, which proves conclusively that Dane Cook is gay). The trailers basically make it look like it’s about how Alba is a klutz, this is weird. There was another trailer that I saw this weekend that did the same thing, but I can’t remember it for the life of me…ok, now it just came on TV (for serious)…The Heartbreak Kid, in the original trailer the focus was on the fact that Ben Stiller marries a she-beast and then on his honeymoon meets his true love, hilarity ensues. The trailer makes it into, Ben Stiller marries crazy and then…? It’s weird when who ever is releasing the film does this, like when they promoted Stranger than Fiction as a comedy.
Anyway, 3:10 to Yuma and Shoot ‘Em Up.
3:10 to Yuma - This was a good movie, with the potential to be a great one. Unfortunately, it never fulfills this potential. Christian Bale and Russel Crowe are great (as always) and it’s there relationship (down and out family man rancher and cold hearted, yet charming, criminal, respectively) that really drives the movie. Plus, the Crowe’s bad-ass second in command is pretty awesome in the cold-hearted angel of death type dude. Finally, Alan Turdyk! although he’s criminally underused. I like Alan Turdyk. Even the father-son drama with Bale and his movie-kid isn’t poorly done. The kid shows up and for once, in movie history, isn’t a complete and utter hindrance/tool (see War of the Worlds).
Quick Digression – Have you ever noticed this? I’m talking about stupid kid syndrome. Why do so many bad ass, or merely super competent, movie heroes have such lame ass kids? 99.99% of these times the kid ruins everything, and, even if it’s a world-saving mission, the hero ditches everything to save the fucking kid. Sort of related example, (spoiler for 28 Weeks Later) in 28 Weeks Later the US Army actually managed to contain the zombies. Then the stupid doctor helps the (fucking infected!) kids escape the quarantine. Yeah, the army had to kill a bunch of innocents to get the zombies, but isn’t ALL OF HUMANITY worth a couple hundred deaths? This isn’t a wireless wiretapping is ok because of the vague threat of terrorism situation, this is an EVERYONE will be turned into mindless zombies and DIE situation. Let the fucking kids die…In a related note (Danny Boyle connection) Sunshine did this correctly (plus it’s a sweet movie). I mentioned this before. Anyway back to Yuma.
So with all these positives why wasn’t it great? I dunno, it just feels like something is missing. The fact that I can’t quantify it explains why I’m neither a super-rich filmmaker or an actual film critic. The end wasn’t great…but I was dissatisfied before that. Final note: Ignore the negative stuff I’ve said, I may have been expecting too much or mayhaps I am in a secret bad mood. Go see the movie, westerns are cool.
Shoot ‘Em Up - 10 seconds into this movie, Clive Owen stabs a dude in the throat with a carrot. One would think it only get more awesome from there, it doesn’t. What we get instead is a less fun version of Crank (which is almost Chronicles of Riddick-level awesome. Crank that is, not this movie, keep reading). Here’s the good stuff: Monica Bellucci is insanely hot (as always, although she is not nearly naked enough), Clive Owen is bad ass, Paul Giamatti is an awesome villain (this is the best part of the movie. he should be a psycho more often, all funny actors should.), the action scenes are ridiculously over the top, and a lot of people die. The bad: the dialogue verges on utterly ridiculous, especially in the Bellucci-Owen scenes, the action scenes are just too over the top to the point where I was just like “come on”, the plot was too big (for the lack of a better word). While Crank was just like dude-getting-revenge, Shoot ‘Em Up has this complicated presidential-candidate -gun-control-baby-harvesting thing going on…it was just too much. Plus, the end ripped off Django (non-Sergio Leone spaghetti western starring Frank Nero, how’s that for film geek cred motherfucker?) All in all, it wasn’t terrible and, if you go see it, I recommend getting tanked up and going with some rowdy people. Of course, this makes all movies better.
New York City tomorrow to see Theo, Rabbit, Duck, and Anna (perhaps others). Maybe drunken debauchery? Je ne sais pas.
