Philip Michael Thomas Stars In "Hot Tubbs Time Machine"

"Hot Tub Time Machine" is a movie. I can't believe that it exists.

When I read online that a film called "Hot Tub Time Machine" had been greenlit, and that John Cusack was attached to star, it sounded like some kind of joke.

The premise is simple: It's a hot tub, and a time machine. Four dudes go back in time. Hilarity ensues.

The movie is real. I have seen it. And it's not bad.

How the fuck is that possible? It's called "Hot Tub Time Machine"! And it isn't an abomination!

That just blows my mind.

The plot? Here it goes...

Adam (John Cusack) has just been dumped by his latest girlfriend, and his nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) lives in his basement, obsessively playing "Second Life" with all of his copious spare time.

Nick (Craig Robinson) works as a dog groomer and secretly knows that his controlling wife has been sleeping around.

Lou (Rob Corddry) is a complete fucking mess. He drinks waaaay too damn much, is a complete asshole, and hates everything except shitty 1980's hair metal bands.

Adam, Nick, and Lou are all friends, but over time they have fallen out of touch. This all changes when Lou tries to kill himself in his garage, gunning the engine in tune to "Home Sweet Home" by Motley Crue, quickly filling his lungs with carbone monoxide.

Adam and Nick visit Lou in the hospital, and to keep their friend Lou from attempting suicide again (although he swears he was just drunk and rocking out at the time), decide to take him to the place where the boys had the best times of their lives in the 1980's, the Kodiak Valley Ski Resort. Adam drags Jacob along, despite the fact that Lou fucking hates him.

When the boys arrive at Kodiak, they discover the magical land they remember has become a run-down, dilapidated shithole.

Their bellhop, played by Crispin Glover, has one arm and clearly doesn't give a shit, anymore. He just throws their bags around, looking sullen, and then has the temerity to ask for a tip.

This sets off a funny recurring gag in the film, where Lou keeps watching the bellhop in the past, waiting for the moment when he finally loses his arm.

Every time the bellhop comes close, whether he's juggling a chainsaw or getting his arm caught in an elevator door, Lou is disappointed. Back to the story...

Even the hot tub is broken, a dead raccoon decomposing in its murky water.

Not to worry! A helpful, yet irritatingly vague repairman played by Chevy Chase fixes it up, and now the hot tub glows from within like a freshly poured beer. Our heroes hop in and commence drinking obscene amounts of alcohol and illegal Russian energy drinks.

When they wake up, Lou projectile vomits on a squirrel. Our heroes slowly realize that they're back in 1986, during the Kodiak Lodge's big "Winterfest" celebration, with hair metal heroes Poison performing later that night.

This particular night is a very important one for all of our time travelers:

Adam broke up with his first girlfriend that night, a gorgeous young lady he refers to as the "great white buffalo" in hushed tones. She was so hurt by Adam, she stabbed him in the eye with a fork.

Lou got his ass handed to him twice that night by a ski partol asshole named Blaine, and the experience pretty much ruined the rest of his life.

Nick and his band performed that night, and the crowd just hated them, making Nick abandon his passion in favor of whatever his future wife wanted him to do.

And Jacob was conceived that night at Winterfest, although he has no idea who his father is.

So the story is in motion.

The hot tub is broken, and Repairman Chase drops vague hints that if it isn't fixed by dawn, then something bad will happen. Curiously, this seems to concern young Jacob more than the others.

The guys make an agreement to live through the events of Winterfest just as they occurred in 1986, so as not to fuck up the space-time continuum. But this plan quickly goes out the window as they decide that maybe they should try to fix a few things here and there.

Jacob starts to flicker, like a TV show with a bad signal, and worries that their meddling will cause him to not be conceived. But nobody else seems to give a shit.

Lou and Jacob nearly get into a three-way with some random chick. Lou is totally into it, despite his hatred for Jacob, who pulls up his pants and runs away.

Later, Lou and Nick are hanging out at a bar, talking about potential ways to take advantage of their future knowledge. Lou notices a football game on TV, and he remembers it beat for beat. So he begins making bets with the other patrons over what will happen next.

Near the end of the game, Lou makes a huge bet with a particularly sleazy patron played by William Zabka. Now you may not recognize the name, but you've seen this guy, before. He is well known for playing "that asshole" from such films as "The Karate Kid", "Back To School", "Just One Of The Guys", and "National Lampoon's European Vacation".

He had the douchebag role on lockdown in the '80's. And in "Hot Tub Time Machine", his character bets that if the quarterback doesn't throw a touchdown pass in the last 40 seconds of the game, Lous must give Nick a blowjob.

Lou agrees, of course. He's already seen the game, and knows how it's going to end. Nick is displeased. Nick is more displeased when the touchdown pass is interrupted by a squirrel covered in vomit.

What transpires is one of the funniest things I'll probably see this year. Lou on his knees in the bathroom, readying himself to suck Nick's dick, calling his manhood "impossibly black". Absolutely hilarious.

Nick passes out after this, and wakes up to find Lou standing over him, his face covered in what looks suspiciously like semen. It turns out that after Nick passed out, Lou had a conversation with Zabka, and he turned out to be a pretty nice guy.

So Lou didn't give Nick a blowjob, and the "semen" on Lou's face is simply handsoap. Funny.

Adam runs off with his girlfriend Jennie, and when he fails to break up with her, she breaks up with him. He says some unkind things to her, and she stabs him in the eye with a fork, anyway. He holes up in the hotel room, writing break-up poetry and taking a lot of drugs.

He eventually leaves the room, and runs into a music journalist named April, played by Lizzie Caplan, who popped like an overboiled sausage in "Cloverfield". They break into some gay couple's home and drink their wine and make out. Then they decide to go see if Nick's going to perform with his band, after all.

Nick does decide to perform with his band, singing "Jessie's Girl" and then "Let's Get It Started" by the Black Eyed Peas, about 17 years too soon. Apparently people in 1986 are just as stupid as people in 2003, because the crowd loves that awful, awful song. So Nick feels good about himself.

While this is happening, Lou is waiting for his friends to show up and prevent him from getting his ass kicked by Blaine and his ski patrol cronies. Being busy at Nick's show-stopping performance, his friends do not show up, and Lou gets beaten so badly that one of his shoes is knocked off.

It remains in the coutryard, lonely and blood-streaked.

Jacob runs into the mysterious repairman again, who informs him that the hot tub is fixed, and that a spilled Russian energy drink caused the breakdown in the first place. Before Jacob can ask the repairman any further questions, he disappears.

With this knowledge, Jacob sets off to find the other guys and return to the future.

Our heroes find Lou on a rooftop, singing shitty '80's hair metal and drinking. He has his sad bastard moment where he reveals that he was trying to kill himself in the garage, and he admits that he is completely miserable and hates his friends for not being there for him when he needed them the most.

Lou trips and begins to slide off the roof, and his friends form a chain to catch him. At the top, Nick is losing his grip on the rooftop, and just as all is lost, the bellhop catches Nick's arm and pulls everyone away from the brink.

This pisses off Lou, because he thought the combined weight of four men would yank his arm clean off. He does, however, commend the bellhop for his seemingly supernatural strength.

The bellhop gives them all a ride to the lodge to search for Lou's last can of the Russian energy drink, now in the hands of eeeevil ski patrol douche Blaine. Lou runs into Adam's sister Kelly, and they begin to have speedy, drunken sex. Jacob catches them and tries to jump on Lou, but he blinks out of existence.

Adam realizes that Lou is Jacob's father, and urges Lou to continue screwing his sister, despite his rather mixed feelings about the whole endeavor. After Lou plants his seed, Jacob re-emerges, and he is not very pleased with the news that Lou is his father, forcing Adam and Nick to drag him away as he thrashes and screams "You're a fucking dead man!"

Our heroes confront Blaine, who is holding the Russian energy drink. Adam attempts to get Lou pumped for his big fight, and Lou lunges into battle, Enrique Iglesias' "Hero" blaring in his head. He gets pummeled again.

Eventually, Lou does get the Russian energy drink from Blaine, and the boys get the fuck out of there. The bellhop gets his arms sliced off by a snow plow, and Lou celebrates. Adam, Nick, and Jacob pile into the hot tub, pouring the energy drink all over the energy panel.

A massive vortex opens up, and Lou decides to stay behind and be a better father to Jacob, as well as taking advantage of his knowledge of the future to better his life.

In the present, our heroes find that the Kodiak Valley Lodge is just as popular as it ever was, and the bellhop still has both of his arms.

The bellhop tells them this is because Blaine and his ski patrol buddies, chasing after Lou, came across the bellhop and rushed him to the hospital. Doctors managed to reattach his severed arm, and the bellhop is a well-adjusted, happy guy.

Other things have changed, as well. It seems that Lou created a giant internet search engine called "Lougle" (get it?), and in the late '80's founded a huge hair metal band named "Motley Lue". He also married Kelly and became a devoted father to Jacob.

Nick, fresh off his musical success at Winterfest '86, became a big-time music producer, and his wife is not giving other guys blowjobs (thanks to a profanity-laden phone call he made to his then 9-year-old wife in 1986).

Adam discovers that he is happily married to music journalist April, and is not a miserable middle-aged bastard.

And so our film ends with the guys together in the backyard of one of Lou's many mansions, toasting their new good fortune.

Never mind the fact that despite our heroes changing their lives for the better in the past, they remember none of their re-written lives when they return to the present.

Adam may be happily married to April, but he doesn't remember any of that happiness, despite their few fleeting hours together in 1986.

Nick may be a wealthy music producer with a fulfilling marriage to his wife, but he still remembers her infidelity from his past, and he has no idea how to be a music producer in the present-day.

Sure, Jacob's mom is happy (and not a slut), and Lou is an insanely rich and present father, but Jacob only remembers 20 odd years of misery. Lou may feel better about himself, but Jacob has a lot of catching up to do.

But you're not supposed to let this bother you when the credits roll to "Home Sweet Home" by Motley Lue. Because if you do let this bother you, it will slowly eat away at you, day by day, until you finally lose your mind and shoot up your local McDonald's franchise.

Don't let the many, many plotholes destroy your fragile psyche, just enjoy the ride.

All the leads do a fine job. John Cusack basically plays the straight man, but is given a few opportunities to unwind, most notably in the aforementioned "break-up poetry" scene.

Taking bong hits and eating mushrooms, the right half of his face stained with blood, he mumbles his way through the scene and weirds Jacob out.

Speaking of Jacob, Clark Duke brings a lot to the table. Great in the underrated "Sex Drive", his Jacob is not a sexually frustrated, foul-mouthed prick, but a socially retarded young man who doesn't quite know how to talk to real people.

He's the guy trying to keep the others on track, because he doesn't want to fuck with the past.

Craig Robinson's Nick is a housebroken sad sack, and he's not really given much to do. His two real funny moments in the film are the phone call to his pre-teen wife, and a scene where he attempts to have sex with a groupie because he already did in 1986, and is trying not to screw up the past.

He's good, but he should have been utilized better.

"Hot Tub Time Machine" is the Rob Corddry show. His Lou is the fuel in the film's engine, and all the big moments belong to him. He's a complete alcoholic prick, and by all accounts he should be utterly despised.

But by the end of the film, he's our alcoholic prick, and the funniest alcoholic prick since Bluto Blutarsky. Or maybe Shakes the Clown.

Either way, Corddry is the reason to see the film. His role is similar to Zach Galifianakis in "The Hangover", although neither Corddry nor "Hot Tub Time Machine" ever quite reach that film's comedic heights.

This should be his break-out role, although I always worry about overexposure.

But I saw this film for Crispin Glover. Just like I saw "Alice In Wonderland" for Crispin Glover. I am a Crispin Glover fan. His bellhop is the source of much amusement in this film, and I am happy to say that he's not wasted. His presence in "Hot Tub Time Machine" is also a nice callback to his George McFly in "Back To The Future", and I appreciated it. The bottom line: put Crispin Glover in more movies. Crispin Glover!

"Hot Tub Time Machine" is a funny movie. It's not a classic comedy, but it's never boring, and Rob Corddry makes it memorable. I had a very good time at the cinema on Friday night, despite being stuck in a room full of loud, obnoxious drunks.

But Jesus, did the '80's suck.

What's It All About, Repo Man?

Spring has sprung, I suppose. Life is returning to the desloate landscape, the birds are returning to the fields, and blah blah blah...

I don't give a shit about Spring.

But I do love wasting time at my local cinema.

And what lucky motion picture did I choose to help pass the time of the first lazy Sunday afternoon of Spring? Why, "Repo Men", of course!

I sure as shit wasn't going to watch Jennifer Aniston's latest attempt at comedy. I just feel for Gerard Butler. Pick your scripts more carefully, man. "Gamer 2"? Think about it.

Moving on, what exactly is "Repo Men" about? Is it just a shameless clone of that 2008 masterpiece, "Repo! The Genetic Opera", you ask?

First of all, shame on you. "Repo!" is garbage. I like the premise, I like Anthony Stewart Head, and a few of the songs are okay. But the movie itself is terrible. That girl from "Spy Kids" should never sing again. And the WTF Joan Jett cameo was just weird.

Both films do feature large corporations selling organs to the masses on credit, and if people can't make their payments, a repo man is dispatched to reclaim the corporation's property.

I don't know where "Repo!"'s GeneCo got their organs from. Were they genetically engineered? Black Market wholesale organs from impoverished African villages? They never explain it.

In "Repo Men", the organs are artificial, designed and distributed by The Union. What union? Just "The Union". It's the future, so maybe there's just one Union left.

"Repo! The Genetic Opera" is... well... more operatic, I suppose. Despite it's dystopian sci-fi trappings, the film is essentially a Greek tragedy that doesn't really give a damn about the world its characters inhabit. Nothing outside of the main plot is really explored, and I still have no idea how a powerful narcotic can be distilled from the brain of a corpse.

"Repo Men", on the other hand, at least tries to sell the world it creates. It's the future, and apparently Obama's health care reform doesn't work, because private enterprise doesn't just have a stranglehold on health care, it owns the industry lock, stock, and barrel, in the form of The Union.

These Union guys are selling artificial organs, or "artif-orgs", as they call them, to poor saps at insane prices. An artificial heart costs nearly a million bucks! In the future! Shouldn't the fact that these things are being mass produced drive the cost down just a little?

They obviously have the science behind these artif-orgs worked out, because millions of people have at least one of these things installed somewhere in their body. No mention of any adverse side-effects is made at any point in the film.

The Union is pumping artf-orgs out on an assembly line, for fuck's sake! That they still cost so goddamn much is just a giant "fuck you" to the consumer. Not to mention the mafia-esque interest rates. 20%? Jesus...

But I suppose that's the point, isn't it? You'll probably die on the waiting list for a heart transplant, so the Union is your only option. But if you're 96 days overdue on your payments, the nefarious Union will send their dreaded repo men after your negligent ass.

These Union repo guys zap you with a FUTURE TASER and cut their property right out of you.

Sure, they're obligated to ask if you want an ambulance standing by during their "operation", but usually the consumer is too busy either running or trying to kill the repo man to answer that question.

Remy (played by Jude Law) and Jake (played by Forest Whitaker) are two of the Union's best repo men. They've known each other since elementary school, when Jake used to kick Remy's ass on a regular basis. As they grew up, they became friends, joining the Union after a stint in the Army, where they had a lot of fun blowing up people in a tank.

They also really enjoy being repo men. Jake especially loves his work. In a seemingly random monologue while driving around with his best pal Remy, Jake goes on about how they're performing an important service in their repo work, enforcing the rules of their society.

You really get the feeling in this sequence that Jake really lucked out in his repo job. If the Union had not accepted his application, he'd probably be joyfully carving people up with his abundant spare time. Jake's got some issues.

Not to say that Remy is much better. Neither of these guys really give two shits about human life. Early on, Jake and Remy find a "nest" of people with defaulted artif-orgs hiding out on a cargo ship, and they hold a little competition to see who can repossess more Union property.

Kinda like the friendly competition between Gimli and Legolas in the "Lord of the Rings". But bloodier. And more sociopathic.

Afterward, Jake starts randomly babbling about some brand new Union brain implant for the comatose that can insert the patient into a paradise, where they can live for the rest of their natural lives. Now why would Jake just randomly say something like that? His little one-sided conversation comes completely out of nowhere, and feels shoehorned into the film.

Gee, I wonder if that will have any significance later on?

Carice Van Houten, who was brilliant in Paul Verhoven's "Black Book", plays Remy's wife. I believe her character's name is "One Note Bitch". She has one expression in the film: disgust.

She wants Remy to stop the repo work and become a salesman, like his friend Frank (Liev Schreiber). Not because she objects to his current job, but because a good salesman makes more money.

Remy finally relents, deciding to take one last job, because he's a big fan of the "client". So Remy goes to meet RZA, who might as well be playing himself in the film. I could see wanting to meet RZA, because he's awesome.

If I were tasked with repossessing RZA's artificial heart, I'd probably chicken out and just ask him to autograph my "Bobby Digital In Stereo" album.

Off topic, but RZA was also really good in "American Gangster". Although his Wu Tang tattoo took me right out of the movie at one point. I mean, it wasn't period-appropriate! Somebody could have airbrushed that ink off his arm for the scene. I guess anyone involved with the production recognizing the Wu Tang logo was too much to ask for.

Back to "Repo Men"! In Stereo!

Remy hangs out with RZA, tells him how much he loves the guy's work, and RZA even lets him help mix a new song in his home studio before resigning himself to a grisly death. Remy pulls out his portable defibrulator kit to stop RZA's artif-org, and ZAP! It backfires, laying Remy out.

He wakes up in the hospital, attached to a temporary blood pump. His pal Frank tells him that his heart's fucked, and he needs a new Union-certified artif-org ASAP! Remy reacts poorly to this news. Then Franks tells Remy that his bitch wife decided to leave him while he was in his coma! Remy is crestfallen.

Remy decides to leave, detaching the blood pump and trying to walk out of the hospital, blood pouring out of the gnarly holes in his chest. He doesn't get far before his ruined heart stops, and he collapses.

So the Union heart is jammed in Remy's chest, and Jake invites his best friend in the world to come live with him while he convalesces. It seems pretty obvious to me at this point that Jake is just in love with Remy.

That's why he beat the crap out of the guy in grade school. Those were love taps! He just doesn't know how to tell Remy that he wants to move to Massachusetts and get married.

Remy tries to get back on the repo job, but he finds that his heart just isn't in his work, anymore. Heh, heh. Get it? He had to lose his heart to have a heart! GET IT?! It's so fucking deep!!!

Remy can't work, anymore. Jake drags his friend out on the hunt, tasering some unfortunate soul, and tells Remy to stay as long as it takes to get his mojo back and cut out that Union artif-org! He acts like a pissed-off mother trying to force their dickhead child to eat their peas. It's hilarious.

Remy can't bring himself to commit murder, anymore. He misses his payments, and the Union wants their organ back. So Remy goes on the run. He runs into some hobo singer named Beth (played by Alice Braga, whose face haunts my dreams), and decides that he loves her.

Why? Because the plot demands it!

I personally can't see it. Her face looks like beef jerky gone wrong, and she's not a very versatile actress. She can convincingly play "ow that hurts", but that's it. Her character also has something like 10 artif-orgs, including lungs, a voice box, eyes, and ears with volume knobs and headphone jacks.

Let me repeat that: she has artificial ears with volume knobs and headphone jacks.

Wow.

And for having an enhanced voice box, her singing voice is appalling.

So Remy and Beth hide out in a dilapidated apartment building, making love by candlelight. Remy spends his days writing out his manifesto on an antique typewriter, and they live happily ever after. The End.

Until the Union repo men find them. Remy drops his trusty typewriter on one unlucky repo man's head, which splatters like a watermelon on a busy highway at 3 AM.

Jake shows up and they get into a big fight. Remy gets his ass handed to him by Jake, and nearly gets his head broken by a hook, or something... it was kinda hard to tell. But Beth zaps Jake with a FUTURE TASER, and Remy and his jerky girl get the fuck out of there.

Beth's artificial knee is busted open, and she's bleeding like crazy, so our heroes head to a local underground surgeon for a little maintenance. Beth's knee is fixed by a little 9 year-old girl who is just as cute as a button. And she proves to be a better actress in her limited screen time than Alice Braga.

Remy tells Beth that the only way to erase their debts from the system is to go to the Union HQ and access the central computer, located behind the mysterious "Pink Door".

Inside Union HQ, Remy and Beth evade security agents in a clean assembly room filled with technicians working on brand-new artif-orgs. The security guards apparently aim for the poor technicians, because none of their bullets come close to hitting our heroes. It's quite funny, actually.

They get to the Pink Door, but standing between them and their destination are six very angry sharply dressed Union employees armed with knives and hammers. Why are they armed with knives and hammers? Who the fuck cares? The whole scene is just a loving homage to the brilliant side-scrolling fight sequence in "Old Boy". There need be no logic, here.

So Remy takes off his shirt, and goes to town on these clowns with two very sharp knives and a hacksaw. It's a lot of fun, and it needed to be longer.

In order to get into the central computer, one needs to scan an artif-org at the Pink Door, so Beth scans her fake eyes. Remy and Beth enter the Pink Door just in the nick of time, as Jake and Frank are right behind them.

While Remy and Beth do whatever it is they're doing behind the Pink Door, Jake wanders around the corridor, cutting up the dead Union employees, looking for an artif-org.

Inside the central computer, Remy realizes that there is no interface, no way to write them out of the system. The only way to free themselves from this nightmare is to repossess their organs with the provided scanner.

Now this is not going to be so easy, because with the exception of Beth's eyes and ears, all of their artif-orgs are located behind a lot of pesky flesh. Thus begins perhaps my favorite part of the film.

Remy pulls out his knife and cuts a big hole in his abdomen, and Beth shoves the scanner up into his chest cavity to scan his artificial heart. Job done, he seals up the gaping, bloody wound with a handy-dandy medical sealant.

Remy got off easy. Beth has a lot of Union equipment jammed in her torso, and it's gonna take some time to scan all of her artf-orgs. He gets her high with some red cocaine, and gets to cutting.

What commences, with the cutting, and the blood, and the shoving of a scanner into brand new gory holes (looks a lot like "glory holes". hmmm...), is essentially a love scene. It's all played in a very romantic way, with Remy kissing Beth's neck and ears, coupled with the camera angles and musical choices.

It's like David Cronenberg walked on set the day this scene was filmed and just started directing. Very, very weird, and almost hypnotic.

As Remy finishes raping his girlfriend's torso with a scanner, Jake and Frank walk in. It's like Jeffrey Dahmer being caught masturbating by his mom.

Frank tells Jake to cut them both up and take back all of their Union parts, but Jake has a change of heart and stabs Frank in the brain via his jaw with a knife. Hooray! But the trio can't exit through the Pink Door until the reclaimed artif-orgs have been placed in the nearby receptacle. Quite a pickle.

No worries, though. Jake pulls out a few grenades and shoves them in the receptacle, blowing up the central Union database and wiping out the debts of millions of people! Happy ending!

But we're not through, yet. We rejoin our heroes on a picturesque, sandy beach. They're all drinking cute little mixed drinks with umbrellas in them. Jake and Remy are talking about his recently published manifesto, called "The Repossession Mambo". That's a not-so-clever inside joke.

It's not all perfect, though, because Beth and her odd face are also there. But it's a happy enough ending, I suppose.

Too bad it's all in his head!!!!!

Yes, apparently Jake did manage to brain his friend Remy with that hook, because he's laid out on a stretcher with a bunch of metal thingies jammed in his ruined skull. Remy's just been implanted with that brand new brain enhancement Jake mentioned seemingly for no reason near the beginning of the film.

It seems that Jake still cares for his friend, and demanded that the Union give Remy the brain implant. He's also apparently paying for the implant himself, which makes him a really good friend. Jake just wants his friend to be happy, one way or another.

So we end with Remy on his digital beach, with his digital friends and their digital drinks, having a digital good time.

This ending is a direct homage to "Brazil", and director Miguel Sapochnik has even admitted this. The original scripted ending was essentially just the beach wrap-up, without the twist, and Sapochnik didn't think that was good enough.

So instead, we're treated to the ending that many people swear is the real, between-the-lines ending to Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report".

Does it work? I guess that depends on the individual. If you have half a brain, you can see it coming a mile away, as soon as Jake starts rambling about the brain implant ten minutes into the film.

I was hoping that I was wrong about the ending throughout the movie, then my head began to ache when I realized that I was sadly right.

Would the original ending have been better? Not really, because then it's all wrapped up with a nice, shiny bow. The "dream" ending works very well in "Brazil", but here it bothers me a little. It just feels like a lesser movie cribbing from a greater movie.

I did like the implication that Jake still wanted to help his friend, despite his loyalty to the Union.

Mostly, the twist ending just illustrates that Remy's mind is really fucked up, considering the things he does in LaLa Land.

Is "Repo Men" a good movie? Overall, yes. The chemistry between Jude Law and Forest Whitaker is believable. They really do seem like old friends. Although the fact that Forest Whitaker is 11 years older than Jude Law makes it a little hard to believe that these two characters went to school together.

Liev Schrieber is good as Frank. He seems to be having a good time playing the ultra-smarmy variation of a used car salesman.

Sadly, Carice Van Houten and Alice Braga are awful in the film. There is absolutely no chemistry between Jude Law and either of his love interests. But a lot of those problems are with the screenwriters, who have no idea how to right a believable female character.

The gore effects are top-notch. The action sequences are, for the most part, highly entertaining. The film has a very good, very dark sense of humor. And I was able to buy the dystopian, corporate world the film created.

And fucking RZA is in this movie.

I just wish a better writer had come along to work on that ending.

Miguel Sapochnik did a decent job with his first film. He's got some talent, and I hope his next film, an adaptation of "The Contortionist's Handbook", showcases his talent a little better.

Just don't cast Alice Braga. She is the antithesis of good.

"Repo Men" > "Repo! The Genetic Opera"

A Good Movie? I Don't Believe It!

A non-fiction book called "Imperial Life In The Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone", written by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, was published in 2006.

The book showcases the 13 month tenure of presidential viceroy Paul Bremer as the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority after the US invasion of Iraq in from May, 2003 to June, 2004.

In short, Bremer led an occupational administration in Iraq that remained stubbornly oblivious to the degenerating situation outside of the secure "green zone" in the center of Baghdad, filling vital reconstruction positions with Bush loyalists who really had no idea how to do their jobs.

The Iraqi army was disbanded, and millions of people were without electricity or water, so the CPA decided that the people of Iraq needed a revised tax code, the elimination of import tariffs and a smoking ban.

While life outside grew more desperate for millions of Iraqis, life inside the "green zone" seemed like an errie oasis for members of the CPA. It became a locked-down borough, a "Little America" inside of Baghdad, where the cafeteria served pork regularly. Most CPA staffers remained exclusively within the "green zone", ignorant of the nightmare unfolding outside.

Obviously, things didn't work out terribly well.

A few years ago, I heard Paul Greengrass was working on a film version of "Imperial Life In The Emerald City". It seemed like a perfect fit.

Most folks know Greengrass as the director of the latter two thirds of Matt Damon's Jason Bourne trilogy, and he did a fantastic job with those movies. They're tense, action-packed films with a brain behind them, and "The Bourne Ulitmatum" ended so perfectly, I'm glad neither Greengrass or Damon have decided to pass on future "Bourne" films.

But he also directed "United 93", a dramatized account of the passenger uprising of United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. It's a powerful, heartbreaking film that can be difficult to watch.

Greengrass's break-out film was "Bloody Sunday" in 2002, which tells the true story of the tragic Northern Ireland Civil Rights March of 1972.The film is made in the pseudo-documentary style that has since become Greengrass's trademark.

Although made for British television, the producers were so proud of the film, they premiered it at the Sundance Film Festival, and it had a limited theatrical run in British cinemas after it premiered on television.

"Bloody Sunday" truly is a remarkable film. If you haven't seen it, do so.

So Paul Greengrass directing a film about the complete clusterfuck that was the CPA running the show in post-invasion Iraq sounded like a home run.

But Paul Greengrass didn't make "Imperial Life In The Emerald City".

Paul Greengrass made "Green Zone". Here's the spoiler-filled story:

"Green Zone" is a fictionalized account of Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (played by Matt Damon), charged with finding WMD in the early days of the 2003 Iraq invasion.

We meet Miller as his squad is on-site, attempting to lock down a suspected WMD site overrun with looters. The squad finds only long-abandoned mechanical equipment at the site, and Miller is quickly growing frustrated with the lack of results.

Miller questions the veracity of the US State Department's mysterious source, code-named "Magellan", who has been providing the suspected WMD locations that Miller's squad has been searching. He brings this up at a debriefing, but is silenced by his superiors who claim that the intelligence is sound.

Government douchebag Clark Poundstone (played by Greg Kinnear) shows up at an airport and looks smug, welcoming an exiled Iraqi politician back to the country of his birth. His plan is to place the politician, Ahmed Zubadi, in a position of power within the forming Iraqi interim government, essentially as a stooge for the United States government.

Journalist Lawrie Dane (played by Amy Ryan, who was fantastic in "Gone Baby Gone"), who wrote many articles in the Wall Street Journal leading up to the US invasion citing the mysterious "Magellan"'s WMD intel as a reason for going to war, confronts Poundstone at the airport, asking to interview "Magellan". Poundstone shrugs her off, saying that "Magellan" is under lock and key for his own protection.

After being shot down at the debriefing, Miller runs into CIA Guy Martin Brown (played by Brendan Gleeson, who is awesome in everything), who tells him that Miller's next "Magellan" approved site is a waste of time, telling him that the intelligence is complete bullshit.

Meanwhile, Iraqi General Al-Rawi, the "Jack of Clubs" in the US deck of Iraq's Most Wanted playing cards, is meeting with some of his peers, and they argue about what their next move. Al-Rawi advocates a "wait and see" approach, hoping that the US government will approach them with an offer to assist in the security of Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion.

Later, as Miller and his team are digging holes in an abandoned playground, fruitlessly searching for chemical weapons, they are approached by an Iraqi gentleman (played by Khalid Abdalla) they call "Freddie" who tells them that he saw General Al-Rawi meeting with others at a nearby residence.

Miller's squad packs up and tears ass to the residence, and a short firefight ensues. Al-Rawi escapes, but they manage to snag one of his henchmen, who is carrying a conspicuous little black book.

Before Miller can interrogate Al-Rawi's goon, Jason Isaacs shows up on a helicopter and shoves a hood on the prisoner's head, dragging him to his chopper. He asks Miller to give him the man's notebook, but Miller slips in Freddie's pocket and tells Isaacs to go fuck himself.

Isaacs is a Special Forces asshole, and beats Miller up, pinning him to the ground and groping him for the damned notebook. After his sexual harassment turns up nothing, Isaacs and his awesome handlebar moustache board the chopper, flying off and being an asshole.

Miller heads back to the "green zone" to show Brown the notebook, which contains the adresses of Al-Rawi's safehouses throughout Baghdad. Brown gives Miller a million dollars from his safe, telling him to visit Al-Rawi's captured henchman at the detention facility, and offer him the money in exchange for his co-operation.

It must be nice just to have a safe full of money.

Before leaving, Miller meets Lawrie Dane, and she slips him her card. Heh, heh.

Miller drags Freddie with him to the detention facility as his interpreter, but when they find Al-Rawi's stooge, he's already been worked over by the mighty fists of Isaacs, and is badly in need of medical attention.

By now, Miller is thinking that Al-Rawi might just be this shady "Magellan" character, and asks the quivering mass of Iraqi meat where Al-Rawi was before the US invasion. The meat manages to squeak out the word "Jordan".

Miller meets with Brown, telling him that Al-Rawi must be a big fan of Katie Price. Brown slaps him upside the head, then tells Miller that the goon must have been referring to Jordan, the Middle Eastern nation. Duh!

What can Brown do for you? He can tell you that Poundstone met with Al-Rawi in Jordan several months before the invasion, and that Al-Rawi is, in all likelihood, the legendary "Magellan", the asshat who has been providing the government with all the faulty WMD intelligence.

Miller decides it's time to have a face-to-face with Al-Rawi, and takes off. He gets kidnapped by Al-Rawi's men, rather quickly, I thought. Freddie, left alone, produces a pistol from his car and wanders off, up to no good.

Al-Rawi tells Miller that he did, in fact, meet with Poundstone in Jordan, and at the meeting he stated that Iraq's WMD program was disbanded after the first Gulf War. So Poundstone lied, creating the "Magellan" source to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Someone in our government lied? Say it ain't so!

Meanwhile, the CPA holds a press conference, stating their intentions to officially disband the Iraqi Army. Al-Rawi hears this news, and realizes that the US has abandoned him. He orders his men to kill Miller, then tries to get the fuck out of Dodge.

Miller gets into a brawl with his captors, shooting them a lot, then sets off after Al-Rawi. Special Forces Isaacs is also on the case, being guided to Al-Rawi's position via Helicopter.

Isaacs intends to shoot Al-Rawi's head clean off his shoulders, to keep him quiet. Miller intends to bring Al-Rawi in, to blow the lid off the whole "Magellan" conspiracy. It's a fucking race!

Miller hops into a car, and Isaacs is on foot, and the two converge in a brief sequence during the chase which made me laugh out loud, with Isaacs running like the T-1000 in "Terminator 2", looking over at Miller in his shitty automobile.

It's a short sequence, lasting maybe 10 seconds, but it's so bizarre that I had to laugh.

Isaacs and Miller catch up to Al-Rawi, and Isaacs gets his back blasted apart by the General's little buddy. Miller quickly ventilates the shooter, before confronting Al-Rawi, telling the General that he's taking the man with him back to the "green zone", to expose Poundstone.

Freddie shows up, emptying his gun into General Al-Rawi, telling Miller that what happens in Iraq is not Miller's choice. Instead of shooting Freddie, Miller tells him to run the fuck away before Miller's military buddies show up and lock down the area.

The next day, Poundstone is on his way to a meeting of Iraqi factions to present Ahmed Zubadi. Miller confronts Poundstone, but, smug government douche that he is, Poundstone completely denies all of Miller's allegations.

Miller gets pissed and tries to throw down, but security breaks it up before Poundstone can get his smug face destroyed.

Feeling pretty cocky, Poundstone walks into the meeting only to see it degenerating into a shouting match, with many delegates voicing their displeasure with the "American puppet" Zubadi. A hollow victory, indeed.

Despite the loss of Al-Rawi, Miller writes up his report and sends it to Lawrie Dayne, as well as many other journalists, still hoping to expose the "Magellan" scandal to the world.

Miller then sets out with his squad, driving through the streets of Baghdad, feeling good about himself. The screen goes dark, "Extreme Ways" starts playing-- wait, this isn't a "Bourne" movie. Never mind.

Long story short, "Green Zone" is great.

Perhaps I'm looking back with awesome-colored glasses, but after seeing so much mediocrity over the past few months, this movie stands out like a sore thumb. It's an entertaining, thrilling, intelligent motion picture.

The final twenty minutes of the film are essentially one big chase sequence, and Greengrass is at the top his game, here. His steadycam becomes a big part of the action, bobbing and weaving like a participant in the conflict.

A lot of people complain about Greengrass's "shaking camera" style, saying that it gives them motion sickness, or that it simply confuses them. I don't know what these people are talking about. Maybe it's because I just don't get motion sickness, but it never bothers me. And I was never confused during the action.

The camera always shows us exactly what we need to see, and the kinetic cinematography, coupled with Chris Rouse's amazing editing, combine to create incredibly visceral action sequences that go above and beyond what is portrayed in trash like "Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen".

It's really cool stuff, and I would love to peek behind the scenes and see how Rouse puts these sequences together.

I've also read that some people find the fictionalized portrayal of real events in "Green Zone" to be offensive, considering is a disservice to all the soldiers who are sacrificing their lives in Iraq.

These people act like "Green Zone" sets some kind of precedent, like fictionalized films about real wars have never been made during the actual wars they portray.

These people are fucking stupid. Hundreds of World War II films were made during World War II! For Christ's sake, Universal Pictures even had Sherlock fucking Holmes fighting the Nazis during World War II! This is nothing new. But the politically correct attitude toward this trend is.

Of course "Green Zone" isn't number one at the box office, this weekend. "Alice in Wonderland" is still raking in the money, because people are stupid.

When ugly computer generated garbage jumps out at their beady eyes in 3D, they shovel popcorn into their greasy mouths and ask for seconds. But when a well-made and thought-provoking movie opens, they decide to pass. It's depressing.

Anyway, "Green Zone" is deserving of your time and money, Dear Imaginary Reader. You'll enjoy yourself, and you won't feel like you've lost IQ points when you leave the theatre.

Greengrass's film is not "Imperial Life In The Emerald City", and I firmly believe that a very good movie can still come from Rajiv Chandasekaran's book. But "Green Zone" is a damn good movie. And it made my weekend.

Also, Peter Graves is dead. I'm going to watch a gladiator movie in his honor.

"Dream A Little Dream 2" Co-Star Corey Haim Has Died

I wish he'd been able to put his life back together and get cleaned up. Too bad.

I loved him in "The 'Burbs".

Wait, that was Feldman.

Vaya Con Dios, Corey.

Tron: Legacy Looks Good! Oh, And Alice in Wonderland...

The 82nd Academy Awards were on earlier.

I watched them. They were boring.

Jeff Bridges won Best Actor. That was nice.

"Avatar" didn't win Best Picture. That was also nice.

The Academy decided to put together a tribute to horror movies.

Sounds good in theory, right?

Not when the clip presentation is introduced by Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner, of "The Twilight Saga" fame. What a fucking travesty.

They even added a clip from one of the fucking "Twilight" films to the fucking tribute.

Oh well. I suppose there is nothing more terrifying than sparkling vampires.

I also saw the trailer for "Tron: Legacy" in 3D Saturday night.

I am such a whore for "Tron". I saw that movie when I was a young and impressionable child, and it became a rather large part of my youth. My mother must have rented the videotape from Video Unlimited 50 times over the course of 4 years, or so.

Damn, I used to love Video Unlimited. It was this really spacious video store that we used to visit nearly every weekend from 1984 until 1995. The folks who worked there were always very pleasant and knowledgable, and they were always around to answer your questions.

As a boy, I remember entering the store every week, marveling at all the interesting and obscure movie posters that were haphazardly pasted all over the walls. Cool artwork, catchy taglines... good stuff.

That's how I was introduced to stuff like "Eraserhead", Frank Henenlotter's "Frankenhooker" and "Basket Case", "Blue Sunshine", "Escape From New York", "Def-Con 4" and "Fright Night". Really cool posters that made my imagination work overtime. What were these movies about? What kind of cool stuff was happening in these flicks? I had to know.

Luckily for me, my mother had no qualms with renting R-rated movies, as long as she watched them with me. So I got to see the films behind these amazing posters (except for "Frankenhooker". Even my laid-back mother wouldn't rent a film called "Frankenhooker" for her young son. I had to wait until 2008 to see that one), and they warped my fragile little mind.

"Basket Case" and "Blue Sunshine" were bizarre and bloody and right up my alley. But "Escape From New York" and "Fright Night" became essential parts of my childhood.

The sheer amount of badassery on display in the person of Snake Plissken made me want to be a criminal. I later changed my mind, thankfully. And EFNY, as I used to call it in elementary school, introduced me to the... talents... of Adrienne Barbeau.

And when I watched "Swamp Thing" uncut six months later, I became a man at age 8.

"Fright Night" seemed like a movie that was made just for me. The story was so cool, and in my head, quite plausible. I mean, I thought vampires were real. And if one lived next door to me, I wouldn't have been surprised.

At least after watching "Fright Night", I felt confident enough that when I inevitably came across a surly undead bloodsucker, I would have the tools and the knowledge to dispatch the unholy bastard in stylish fashion. Thank you, Peter Vincent.

And Amanda Bearse made me think bad thoughts. When I realized that Amy Peterson was played by Marcy Rhodes (later Marcy D'Arcy) on my favorite television program, "Married With Children", it blew my fucking mind. Where did her breasts go?! Did Al Bundy calling her a chicken for so many years make her become a chicken?

Interesting times, those were.

Now "Eraserhead" just confused me and gave me nightmares when I was small, but as I grew up I realized that it was an amazing motion picture, and a work of art. At the time, I knew it from the guy who directed "Dune", which my 6 year-old self loved to death, so I was really psyched to see what else this David Lynch fella had up his sleeve.

Note to any potential parents out there: most of David Lynch's oeuvre should not be viewed by small children. It will either piss them off, confuse them, or fuck them up.

Wait until puberty, then make them watch "Wild At Heart". Twice. They'll thank you for it later.

And "Def-Con 4"? That poster was just a lie. The movie does not even remotely live up to the sheer awesomeness of that poster. 88 minutes of boredom. Live and learn, my friends.

Odd tangent, there. I mean, I was trying to talk about "Tron", and I got side-tracked by nostalgia.

Wait...

I understand that most people don't think that "Tron" is a particularly great movie. It has earned a place in cinematic history for its groundbreaking use of early digital effects, and beyond that, there's not much love for "Tron".

I will quickly admit that much of my love for the original is pure nostalgia. I can't watch "Tron" without becoming that little kid again, huddling in front of the 19-inch TV in the living room, in utter awe of what I'm seeing. Obviously, I'm biased.

Even 25 years after seeing it for the first time, I still love it. The story and characters are a part of my life. I cried the first time I saw Clu die. It just broke my little heart. And when Tron defeated the Master Control Program, I cheered.

When the 20th Anniversary DVD was released in 2002, I snatched it up like a junkie in need of a fix. On the fantastic documentary, when Jeff Bridges pulled out his helmet from the film, having kept it for all these years, I squealed like a pre-teen girl at a Jonas Brothers concert.

I'm not ashamed to admit that, even though I probably should be.

When I heard that Disney was developing a sequel to "Tron", after all these years, I had no idea what to think. A sequel? Really? I was just incredibly surprised that the suits went with a sequel, and not a re-make.

I've always wanted to see a "Tron" sequel, but I always thought that I was in a very small minority of fandom in that regard. Who else was clamoring for a sequel to "Tron"?

Still, I was excited. That I saw the bootleg development teaser on the internet. Despite the atrocious quality of the video, it still hooked me. Jeff Bridges was back! And so was Clu! At least a Clu was back. And Flynn seemed to have some kind of Col. Kurtz thing going on in the computer world.

Several months later, I saw the official teaser online. Very similar to the bootlegged teaser, but all spiffy and cleaned-up. It still looked good to me. No real clues to the actual story of the sequel, but at least I knew it was opening in December, 2010. And it was going to be in 3D, which seemed like a natural fit for the material.

A kind of "chocolate 'n' peanut butter" thing, really.

When I saw the latest trailer for "Tron: Legacy" on the big screen Saturday night, I felt like that chubby little kid again, hanging out with friends in my backyard, throwing frisbees at the old cottonwood tree, pretending to slay the MCP.

Basically, I've already given "Tron: Legacy" 11 out of 10 stars. As I have previously mentioned, I can't even attempt to be objective regarding this movie. Even if it ends up being one of the worst movies I will ever see, I will still force myself to love it.

Because it's fucking "Tron". I am truly lost.

And at least it puts Bruce Boxleitner in a theatrical motion picture, again.

Oh yeah, I also saw Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland".

I will now attempt to re-cap the plot for this... movie... in one extremely long run-on sentence:

Alice is a little kid who has nightmares about white rabbits and shit, and her Daddy loves her but he goes on some pointless expedition and dies, then Alice grows up and is being forced into marrying some boring douchebag with bad guts, she gets distracted by a rabbit, falls down a hole, meets the Mad Hatter, March Hare, a talking dog, a bitchy mouse, a caterpillar that likes to get high, and Nightcrawler-Cat, they all insist that she's been to "Underland" before, comes across some angry lady with a huge head, she thinks it's all a dream, then realizes it's not a dream, fights the Jabberwocky, drinks its blood (like a filthy vampire), goes back home and decides not to marry the ulcerated blueblood, gets on a boat and hopefully dies at sea.

*gasp*

In short, it's awful.

Johnny Depp decided to play the Mad Hatter with the voice of Miranda Richardson's Queen Elizabeth from "Black Adder II", except for occassional head-shaking lapses into a gruff Scottish accent when he slips into "Death Wish 3" mode.

The film also tries to explain why the Mad Hatter is mad. Apparently when the Red Queen sicced the Jabberwocky on his village, Hatter lost his mind when he saw everybody get murdered.

He just... went MAD. Seriously. An explanation for the Mad Hatter's fucking madness?!

That's just fucking dumb.

Depp, an actor I used to say I could watch in just about anything, frankly embarasses himself, here. The shitty make-up, his cringe-worthy dialogue, and his inexplicable characterization were disturbingly bad.

I think maybe the next time Tim Burton gives him a call, Depp should just let it go to voicemail.

Helena Bonham Carter-Burton(?) plays the Red Queen, who should really be called the Queen of Hearts, with a massive head, and an annoying shouty lisp. That's all there is to her character.

She rests her feet on pigs and makes little monkeys dressed up like bellhops carry around her cushions and suitcases. She screams "Off with their heads!" and wants to bone Crispin Glover.

Carter's performance is not as embarassing as Depp's, but it's close.

Speaking of Crispin Glover, a quick question:

Why, in the name of all that's holy, is he an all-digital creation from the neck down?!

There is absolutely no reason for this, whatsoever. His Knave of Hearts is actually my favorite character in the movie. He plays the Knave as odd and creepy, which is how Glover plays every role he has ever played since "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter".

"Where's the corkscrew?" That line makes me laugh every time, without fail.

I guess Glover's schtick just works for me. He made the "Charlie's Angels" movies tolerable. Plus, his "Willard" remake is classic.

He is responsible for my two my favorite moments in this terrible movie.

#1: Confronting Alice in the Red Queen's castle, he pins her against a wall, creepy grin spreading across his face. In an excited, throaty whisper, he says "I like large-ness." He's basically initiating a rape encounter, here.

It's weird, and uncomfortable. And I laughed.

#2: After the Jabberwocky is slain, the White Queen sentences her wicked sister the Red Queen and her accomplice the Knave to exile. A guard shackles the Knave to the Red Queen, like Larry Fishburne and Stephen Baldwin in "Fled".

The Knave, who can't stand the Red Queen, despite her affection for him, pulls out a knife and tries to kill her. He is thwarted. As guards drag the two lovebirds away, he pleads for the White Queen to execute him, screaming "Kill me! Kill Meeeee!!!"

I laughed more than I should have. It's just very funny to me. And it's all thanks to Crispin Glover's performance. I love the guy.

But why is he essentially a digital creation? The visual effects artists do nothing interesting with this concept, simply making his arms and legs a tad longer than normal. It's completely fucking pointless. And it's distracting.

I want to meet the person who decided this was a good idea and punch him in the face.

Mia Wasikowska was very good playing damaged teenaged gymnast Sophie on HBO's "In Treatment". Really very good. That show was very hit-and-miss, but every Sophie episode was aces. She brought a genuine vulnerability to her character.

When I heard she had been cast as the titular "Alice" in Tim Burton's film, I was all for it.

Unfortunately, Mia Wasikowska didn't show up in this film. Instead, we're stuck with a pretty young woman who can't seem to do anything but look bored throughout the film.

Alice runs into a white rabbit in a waistcoat? Meh.

She has a conversation with a talking caterpillar? Meh.

Alice slays the terrifying Jabberwocky? Meh.

She couldn't even force an ounce of genuine emotion out of her role. She doesn't sell anything. But I think that has a lot to do with the material. There's nothing on the page for her to work with.

Alice thinks her entire Wonderland-- excuse me, Underland adventure is just a fucking dream, so Wasikowska never bothers to invest herself in the goings-on. And why would she? It's all bullshit, anyway.

Anne Hathaway's White Queen is nothing more than a series of foppish poses and a pompous accent. She spends her entire role talking about finding "a champion", sounding like Julie Andrews, and posing like a mannequin in a Von Maur store display.

I know she's a good actress. I've seen "Brokeback Mountain". But I don't know what she was doing in this movie. It certainly wasn't called acting.

The voice actors all do decent work. Although Alan Rickman sounds pretty damned bored playing the hookah-smoking caterpillar. Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall don't get much to do as the White Rabbit and Bayard, the Bloohdound, respectively. They're really just plot devices, and not real characters.

The only reason why the White Rabbit is in this film is because he has to be in this film. Who's gonna make an "Alice in Wonderland" movie without the White Rabbit? He's not really necessary, but Michael Sheen does a fine job with nothing.

Stephen Fry's Cheshire Cat is the best of the digital animals. His voice has a natural playful quality that really lends itself to a mischievious character like the Cheshire Cat. Really good casting, there.

Although, in a scene late in the film, the Red Queen presides over the execution of the Mad Hatter, and as the axe man swings his blade, the Mad Hatter disappears, his hat floating in the air. The Cheshire Cat materializes, holding the hat, and the Mad Hatter appears behind the Red Queen, saying something stupid.

Since when can the Mad Hatter mimic the appearances of others? I don't recall this from any adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland". It's just fucking lazy. He's not like a man-sized cat. He's about the size of Garfield. So how the hell does he do this?! He's got Nightcrawler's powers and Mystique's powers, as well?

Eh... Stupid.

And Count Dooku plays the Jabberwocky. He's voiced by Christopher Lee, and he shoots Force Lightning from his fucking mouth. And he only has one line. The Jabberwocky sees Alice holding the Vorpal Sword, and he says something like "at last we meet again, my old enemy". That's it. The easiest job Christopher Lee has ever taken.

Well, maybe the second easiest. He just kinda walked through "The Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf". Man, what a movie that was. It has the best end credits ever made. Just lame music playing over a montage of Sybil Danning tearing her clothes off, over, and over, and over...

So "Alice In Wonderland", directed by Tim Burton's Hot Topic Ghost, is terrible.

It's been needlessly reworked into a piss-poor sequel, with the plot of "The Chronicles Of Narnia" massaged into it, just for fun. When I left the theatre, I was depressed.

As bad as movie like "The Tooth Fairy" and "The Crazies" were, there was at least something for me to enjoy in them. This is just a waste of time.

Easily the worst movie I've seen thus far this year.

Now bring on "Green Zone"!

Gentlemen Bullshit

I like "Napoleon Dynamite".

I don't think it's a great movie, by any means, and thinking of the hipster movement that it spawned, personified in an army of morons wearing "Vote For Pedro" t-shirts wandering aimlessly throughout the cities of America, gives me a migraine.

But I thought it was funny. Sure, when I saw it in theaters, I saw it for free, so maybe that colors my perception of the film.

I also saw "Alien Vs. Predator" for free, and I fucking hated that movie.

Ultimately, I see "Napoleon Dynamite" as a rather odd, harmless comedy.

I like "Nacho Libre", too.

"Esqueleto" always makes me laugh. The scene where he shanks a thug in the eye with a corn cob still cracks me up. And Peter Stormare in a random cameo is always good for a few giggles, in my book.

I firmly believe that his best work is his stellar portrayal of the Cinco Boy Pitchman in "Tim & Eric: Awesome Show Great Job!". Brilliance, right there.

In the end, "Nacho Libre", was much like "Napoleon Dynamite" in my eyes: odd and harmless comedy.

I don't know if I would have considered myself "a fan" of Jared Hess, but I was certainly willing to see his next movie, whatever it turned out to be.

Then I saw the trailer for "Gentlemen Broncos".

I admit, it intrigued me. It seemed like the "odd" quality of Hess's previous work was turned up to 11, and Jemaine Clement and Sam Rockwell were in it! Obviously, I wanted to see the film.

But it never opened in my neck of the woods, this armpit of the Midwest.

So I bided my time until the inevitable DVD release.

March 2nd, that day finally came, and my opportunity to see "Gentlemen Broncos" had come at last.

Now I wish Lacuna, Inc. were a real corporation, because I desperately want to erase my memory of viewing this miserable motion picture.

For those who aren't in the know, "Gentlemen Broncos" tells the story of Benjamin Purvis, a young home-schooled man who lives with his mother in a fucking dome and writes stories about incredibly dumb shit.

He goes to some disturbing young writer's camp called "Cletus Fest", and meets his own personal saviour, Sci-fi/Fantasy writer extraordinaire Ronald Chevalier, a man who became a literary superstar at the age of 15 with a trilogy of novels about robot harpies that shoot laser beams from their breasts.

Chevalier announces that he will, among others, be judging the stories submitted by the kids at the festival. The young writer who turns in the best book at "Cletus Fest" will have their work published in limited numbers, available in bookstores nationwide. Benjamin decides to turn in his latest story, a science fiction epic called "Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years".

"Yeast Lords" tells the tale of Bronco, the last of the fabled Yeast Lords, a badass soldier of fortune modeled after Benjamin's own father, a hairy game warden who died a long time ago. Bronco is hunting Lord Daysius, the evil bastard who stole Bronco's left gonad in an effort to populate his army with thousands of unstoppable clones to conquer the galaxy.

The story is filled with yeast, projectile vomiting, battle-stags, cyclops henchmen, sexy bald yeast factory slaves, flesh pockets and testicles suspended in glass jars.

Young mister Purvis is clearly his generation's Harlan Ellison.

Chevalier is having problems with his publisher, and needs to submit a manuscript ASAP, otherwise he's screwed.

When he reads "Yeast Lords", he is blinded by the brilliant prose, and quickly rewrites the story, changing a few character names and such, turning manly Bronco into prissy Brutus . He submits Purvis's book, re-titled "Brutus & Balzac" to his publisher, and they love it, pushing for immediate publication.

Meanwhile, a truly bizarre human being named Lonnie Donaho, a local amatuer filmmaker, wants to make a movie out of "Yeast Lords", and pays Benjamin 500 dollars for the screen rights.

Lonnie is played by Hector Jimenez, who also played Esqueleto in "Nacho Libre". I'm not sure what kind of direction Jimenez was given by Jared Hess regarding his character in this film. The Lonnie character is nothing more than a a shitty haircut, a turtleneck, and a skeleton grin.

Midway through the movie, I stopped seeing a person whenever Lonnie appeared onscreen. I was seeing one of Stephen King's "Langoliers", or one of the Madballs, perhaps. Or maybe that weird nightmare mouth that pops up in Joe R. Lansdale's "The Drive-In".

How the fuck can Hector Jimenez grin so widely? It's obscene!

When Lonnie starts making the "Yeast Lords" movie, he casts himself as Bronco's love-interest, wearing a bald cap and a tight white jumpsuit with fake breasts. Why? I have no fucking idea.

Lonnie is practically joined at the hip with Tabatha, a freaky redhead who writes mystery novels about a French stableboy. We're first introduced to these two on the bus ride to "Cletus Fest", sitting next to Benjamin after they spend all of his money on snacks for themselves.

Lonnie hands Tabatha a bottle of lotion, and she smears it all over her hands. Tabatha then asks Benjamin, who she just met, to give her a hand massage. He sheepishly agrees, rubbing the lotion into her left hand while looking supremely uncomfortable.

Lonnie exacerbates the situation by leaning into Tabatha's ear, seductively moaning for absolutely no fucking reason.

This scene felt like it went on for twenty minutes. It wouldn't fucking end. It's like the retarded random humor of "Family Guy". There's no purpose for it, and it's not funny. I felt like I was going insane. Like there was something wrong with my DVD player. It had to be broken.

The scene just wouldn't stop.

Benjamin's mother signs her son up for the Guardian Angels program, pairing him with some inbred creature named Dusty, played by Mike White. You remember Mike White? He wrote and co-starred in "Chuck & Buck" and "The School of Rock".

He also got murdered in a bathroom in "Zombieland". That's his best moment, as far as I'm concerned. When he dies, that short clip needs to play during the "In Memorium" segment of the Academy Awards. That's all he really needs to be remembered for.

He's got a lot in common with Eli Roth, really. The best thing these guys ever did was get murdered on the toilet in terrible movies.

Wait, Roth played the Bear Jew in "Inglourious Basterds". Eli Roth 1, Mike White 0.

Dusty shows up, trying to catch flies in his gaping mouth, a python draped across his shoulder. The snake shits all over Dusty. All over him. Why? Is this supposed to be funny? It's not. It's fucking insulting.

Cut to: Benjamin outside, watching Dusty fire darts from his blowgun at a wall. He dips one of the darts into a prescription bottle filled with his own shit, loads the blowgun, and hands it to Benjamin, urging him to fire at a stray cat wandering through the yard.

Ben misses, hitting his mom in her left tit, and she screams like Faye Wray after seeing King Kong's monster schlong for the first time. She's fine, though, because the dart just got lodged in her bra insert.

I ask again: Why? A teenaged boy trying to shoot a stray cat with a shit-tipped blowgun dart is supposed to be funny? There is absolutely nothing funny about this scene. It's borderline disturbing.

Lonnie casts Dusty as "Bronco" in his "Yeast Lords" adaptation, and he obviously wants to fuck Dusty. Whenever these two are onscreen, Lonnie just stares longingly at Dusty's long, frizzy hair, his rictus-grin gleaming in the dull afternoon sun.

Once again, I get the feeling that this odd little pairing is supposed to be funny, at least to the director. But it fails conclusively. It's astonishing how much of the film's "humor" simply doesn't work.

After Lonnie's epic "Yeast Lords" movie is completed, a premiere screening is held at a local cinema. Banjamin walks out and vomits in a trash can. Tabatha follows him out and inexplicably kisses him.

Never mind the fact that she showed no romantic interest in him prior to this moment. His fucking face is covered in vomit, and she clearly sees this, and kisses him, anyway.

Remember the scene in "Observe and Report", where Seth Rogen kisses Anna Faris after she vomits? It made some kind of sense in that movie, because Rogen's character had been obsessed with her for a long time before that night, and he was also mentally unbalanced.

Plus, it was funny. Kinda gross, but funny!

In "Gentlemen Broncos", it's not fucking funny! It makes no sense, and it's fucking disgusting! Sweet Jesus Christ, it defies comprehension!

Fuck. Anyway, Ben and Tabatha decide to blow the premiere, heading to a local bookstore for some reason. Ben sees a copy of Ronald Chevalier's latest book, "Brutus & Balzac" on display, and leafing through it, quickly realizes that the man he idolized clearly plagarized his work.

Luckily, Mr. Chevalier is holding a book signing in town the next day, so Benjamin won't have to wait long for his big confrontation.

But first, it's time for a pointless interlude!

Benjamin's mother is clearly retarded. She also fancies herself a fashion designer, and takes her son with her to see some douchebag named Don Carlos, a very rich and influential man who could get her designs in JC Penny stores nationwide. Yeah...

She steps inside his house, finding him hunched over his piano, wearing a bathrobe. He smiles seductively, telling her to go to his bedroom and get undressed. She runs out of the house, screaming and crying, and Benjamin nuts up and decides he's going to defend his mother's honor.

He throws a statue through one of the windows in Don Carlos's home, telling him to come outside and fight like a man.

Don Carlos does what any rational man would do, and pulls out his gun, shooting randomly out the broken window, trying to kill Benjamin and his mother. He really does this.

Benjamin tells his mother to pop the car's trunk, then run away as fast as she can. She immediately does so, running down the driveway, waving her arms in the air and screaming bloody murder.

Benjamin retrieves Dusty's blowgun from the trunk, dipping two darts in some conveniently close dog shit. He distracts Don Carlos with a mannequin from the car, and when Carlos empties his gun into the dummy, Ben nails the lunatic with the two darts, imbedding them in his manly chest.

Leaving Don Carlos in screaming agony in his spacious home, Benjamin jacks his mother's car, headed to his date with destiny at the book store.

Benjamin arrives, privately confronting Chevalier with a copy of his "Yeast Lords" manuscript. Chevalier address the crowd, telling them that young Mr Purvis has created a delightful "Brutus & Balzac"-inspired homage with "Yeast Lords", and that he is being rewarded for his hard work with: an all-expenses paid trip to any of the lower 48 states, a "Brutus" head-shaped pillow, Chevalier's very own jacket, and a trip to Space Camp.

Benjamin assaults Chevalier with the pillow, telling the assembled masses that the man is a fraud. Chevalier summons security, and they arrest Benjamin. As the young man is being led away, he pleads with the security guards to show leniency.

"Always Leniency."

This scene is actually funny. It surprised the living shit out of me.

In jail, Benjamin's mom laments that her son will have to spend his birthday in a prison cell. She tries to shove a popcorn car between the bars, and it isn't funny.

She then reveals that she has been registering all of his stories with some kid writer's guild since he was a small child.

Hooray! Now Benjamin has proof that Chevalier stole his story!

Chevalier is ruined. His "Brutus & Balzac" is pulled from shelves, and Benjamin Purvis's "Yeast Lords" replaces it. He is a success, and the film ends with a fashion show, showcasing his brain-dead mother's hideous designs.

Let me mention the things that I liked about this movie.

Sam Rockwell and Jemaine Clement.

Rockwell is clearly having fun with his dual role as the imaginary protagonist of "Yeast Lords" and "Brutus & Balzac".

His Bronco is all hair and swagger, vaguely reminiscent of his portrayal of Zaphod Beeblebrox in the big-screen "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" adaptation. His Brutus is essentially Edgar Winter with the voice and mannerisms of Paul Lynde.

Jemaine Clement plays Ronald Chevalier with a pompous accent and matching attitude, and he manages to sell most of the atrocious dialogue that Jared and Jerusha Hess saddle him with.

A "Cletus Fest" lecture dealing with fantasy genre character names is a highlight:

When a young lady tells Chevalier that she named a troll character in her story "Teacup", he berates her, going on about different sub-species of troll, picturing himself as a proud troll mother, breastfeeding her litter of troll children, like he's some kind of expert on this fictional creature.

He finally tells the girl that "Teacup" is the kind of name a little girl would give a troll, and that she should change the troll's name to "Tragina", because it's more authentic.

I laughed.

Also, the cyclops effects were quite good.

Everything else in this movie is balls. As the credits rolled, I could not believe that this movie was actually made. How could anyone read the script that Jared and Jerusha Hess wrote and decide to give them money? Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?!

The whole thing feels like a joke. This movie is not supposed to exist. It shouldn't exist.

None of the characters are relatable, or even remotely approaching anything close to "human".

Lonnie, Tabatha, Dusty, Don Fucking Carlos, and Benjamin's Mother are nothing more than collections of bizarre and grotesque mannerisms stuffed into a wardrobe pulled from a clearance shelf at a Goodwill store in a bad neighborhood.

There's nothing to like about these "people". They all seemed to exist to either test my patience or just piss me off.

And Benjamin himself is supposed to be the low-key grounding element of the movie, but actor Michael Angarano, who also sucked in "The Forbidden Kingdom", brings absolutely nothing to the role. The role of Benjamin might as well have been played by a photograph of Michael Cera on a stick, with the genius director reading his lines off-camera.

Not to mention the fact that I'm supposed to sympathize with a character who wrote something as inspid as "Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years".

Rockwell and Clement at least bring something to the film beyond what the brain-damaged screenplay presents them with. It's called HUMOR!

"Gentlemen Broncos" is the kind of story Charlie from "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" would write on a roll of toilet paper with a magic marker whilst high on model airplane glue, then burn in a trash can behind Paddy's Pub because he sobered up and thought it was dangerous.

Fuck this movie. And fuck Jared Hess and his wife Jerusha for birthing this nightmare from their Mormon loins.

In other news, I got an email!

In a previous post, entitled "The Post That Never Ends", I lamented the fact that a motion picture based on the life of famous Old West lawman Bass Reeves was in production, helmed by "War Dawgz" creator Brett Mauser.

Yesterday, Mr. Mauser sent me an email, with a link to the trailer for his "Bass Reeves" film.

In short, it looks okay. It also looks cheap, but I doubt the filmmakers had a huge budget to play with. The story seems to be quite faithful to the true-life story, and the actors in the trailer don't embarass themselves.

Maybe I'm a Western whore, but I now want to see this movie. In the end, it might be awful, but I am keeping an open mind.

That's more than I can say about any future Jared Hess movies.

So thanks for the email, Mr. Mauser!

"You took my gonads, Dennis!"

Breck Eisner Re-Makes Tom Arnold Classic "The Stupids"!

So the Winter Olympics ended last night, with their tasteful closing ceremonies.

With painful memories of the opening ceremonies still causing me migraines, I decided to opt out of the festivites.

No, I chose to watch "The Crazies", instead. Woe is me.

Let me speak, if I may, about George A. Romero's original, classic "The Crazies".

Five years after Romero directed the first, the best, the definitive zombie masterpiece in "Night of the Living Dead", the young and gifted director took a rough screenplay by Paul McCollough called "The Mad People", and reworked it into an amazing, micro-budget cult classic called "The Crazies".

Romero's film followed a small band of survivors trying to survive in the aftermath of the accidental release of a government bioweapon code-named "Trixie", which causes people to... well, act fucking crazy.

And not "I'm gonna pull my dick out in front of a group of 2nd Graders visiting the Natural History Museum" crazy. I'm talking "I'm gonna pull my dick out in front of a group of 2nd Graders visiting the Natural History Museum, after I decapitate them with a rusty shovel and smear their blood all over my sweating, expectant flesh" crazy.

"Gary Busey" crazy.

These survivors consist of a fire fighter named David, his pregnant wife, his firefighter friend named Clank, and a sweaty douchebag father named Artie with his kooky daughter. This motley crew unites in an attempt to get the fuck out of Dodge- I mean Evans City, Pennsylvania, before either the military or the depraved infected motherfuckers kill them.

While this is going on, we also follow the efforts of the U.S. government to contain the virus, led by Colonel Peckam, and military scientist Watts's attempts to develop a cure for "Trixie", before the situation spirals completely out of control.

At one point, our five survivors hide out in an abandoned house. Sweaty daddy Artie, practically dripping "Trixie" from his oily pores, decides now is a fantastic time to have sex with his sexy jailbait daughter.

This is hardly a surprise, because Artie has wanted to bang his daughter for a while now. He wouldn't let her date. he wanted her all to himself. "Trixie" just made this sleazy prick drop his inhibitions.

Oddly enough, his daughter doesn't seem terribly offended by the idea, at least at first, but she was out of her fucking gourd before the world started falling apart, and she's obviously infected at this point, as well. So who knows? Maybe this is what these two lovebirds always wanted.

Either way, this scene is a little hard to watch.

Clank bursts in, beating seven shades of shit out of Captain Incest, and his lovely daughter wanders outside, only to get ventilated by some heavily armed soldiers.

Artie hangs himself, I guess because he felt guilty for boning his only child.

Clank goes out in a hail of bullets, and it sucks because you like Clank. But it is a George A. Romero movie, so you don't expect things to end well.

David's wife, showing signs of infection, gets blasted all to Hell. David has just lost everything. His beloved wife and unborn child have just been destroyed before his eyes, and it's a pretty painful thing to see.

Actor Will MacMillan, who plays David, while not being the most attractive leading man, really sells the moments in this film. And when he loses his family, you can see the pain in his eyes. I just wanted to give the guy a hug.

By now, David has realized that while everyone around him has succumbed to "the crazies", he has remained healthy. He seems to be immune to "Trixie", but doesn't bother to tell this to the soliders when he surrenders to them.

Why the fuck should he? His sole reason for surviving has been obliterated by these trigger happy assholes. Let it all burn. David's checking out.

Meanwhile, Dr. Watts has discovered a cure. This super genius has come up with a cure for "Trixie" in less than 48 hours, with the bare minimum of resources provided by his government, in the middle of a hot zone filled with armed lunatics.

His superiors treat him like dogshit throughout the film, at one point even threatening to kill the poor bastard for doing his fucking job. And still, Watts pulls a miracle out of his flabby ass, ready to spread the good news and save the god damned day.

Seriously, give this man a medal. No, give this man a thousand medals, his own island, and a harem populated with actresses from Russ Meyer's bouyant ouvre. He's earned it.

When Dr. Watts rushes out with his cure, trying to find his superiors, he's mistaken for one of the infected by the utterly retarded soldiers, and shuttled off to the quarantined local high school with the rest of "the crazies".

His cure gets smashed to bits, along with the good doctor himself, when he's pushed down a flight of stairs at the school by the infected. So this poor, poor son of a bitch dies, and with him perhaps mankind's only hope of containing "Trixie", because soldiers are fucking assholes.

This is a recurring theme in Romero's films, authority figures as clueless and/or dangerous figures. Just look at the hillbilly posse in "Night of the Living Dead", Cousin Cuda in "Martin", Captain 'Greek Salad' Rhodes in "Day of the Dead", or any cop in "Knightriders".

Maybe a 4-Star general fondled George when he was a school boy.

The film ends with Colonel Peckam boarding a chopper and leaving Evans City under orders, en route to another city showing signs of "Trixie" infection. The situation has officially spiraled out of government control.

I love this movie. With a passion. I first watched this film when Blue Underground released it on DVD in 2003. I was already a huge Romero fan, so this purchase was a no-brainer. But I was floored with just how much I enjoyed it. I watched it on three consecutive nights, and just loved it more and more.

I can't recommend this movie enough to people. It's oozing with apocalyptic dread. There are a few unforgettable kills, and some disturbingly realistic violence.

It features truly memorable performances by Richard Liberty (who later went on to play the immortal Dr. Logan in "Day of the Dead") as sleazy daddy "Artie", Lynn Lowry (who later appeared in David Cronenberg's "Shivers" as the naughty Nurse Forsythe) as loony daughter Kathy, and Lloyd Hollar (who later appeared on "One Life To Live") as the conflicted Colonel Peckam.

Watch George A. Romero's "The Crazies". You will not regret it.

Do not watch Breck Eisner's remake of "The Crazies". Don't you fucking dare.

There's a fella named David. He has a pregnant wife. He has a friend named Clank. A bioweapon is introduced into a small town's water supply after a government aircraft crashes in the area. And the government invades in an effort to contain the infection.

That is where the similarities end.

Welcome to Ogden Marsh, Iowa. It's a pleasant place, populated with friendly faces. And that all goes tits up after folks start drinking the water and acting... kinda like zombies, actually.

Some of them, anyway. They get all veiny, and their eyes turn yellow, and they screech like the rage-infected bastards in "28 Days Later". Most of them just act like this, screaming and clawing and drooling and being annoying.

Every now and then, they'll act a little like the infected from Romero's movie, making a trap, or tying somebody up, or singing a stupid song while they ride a fancy bicycle around the deserted streets of Ogden Marsh, Iowa (A nice cameo by Lyyn Lowry, riding directly out of Romero's superior original. Her version of "crazy" has no place in this movie.)

Honestly, the name of this town is shoved down my throat 20 times in the first 20 minutes of the film. It's on banners, on signs, on stationery, on t-shirts...

I fucking get it! The town's name is Ogden Marsh! It's a Lovecraft reference! You're not that fucking clever!

Some infected douche burns down his farm house, killing his wife and child who are trapped in a closet. You can tell he's infected because he stands around, empty-eyed, acting like he's downed a fistfull of Valium.

Another medicated prick wanders out onto a high school baseball diamond, interrupting the game, holding a shotgun and just standing around. Our hero, Sheriff David Dutton, is forced to shoot the staring wonder in front of all the poor kiddies.

The dead man's wife and teenage son blame the Sherrif for the man's death, while the Sherrif blames the booze, because this fella was a notorious drunk back in the day.

But wait! the post-mortem toxicology report comes back negative! He was sober when the Sheriff shot him in the face. The plot thickens!

No, it doesn't. We all know the dead fuck had "the bug". So there's no tension. We're just waiting for the movie to catch up to us, at this point. This wouldn't be a problem if the movie were particularly entertaining or suspenseful. But it isn't. Unless Breck Eisner thinks that needless jump scares build tension and suspense.

He probably does, because he's an idiot.

Some rednecks, out doing some illegal off-season hunting, find the corpse of a pilot in a swamp, and report it to the Sherrif. Our intrepid hero and his trusty sidekick, Deputy Clank, go out into the swamp, and discover a submerged plane in the nearby river.

I don't know how a military plane goes down near any populated area in this country without any locals seeing or hearing anything, but there it is.

Eventually, Sherrif Dutton figures out that something in that plane is in the drinking water, and it's making people sick. So he goes to tell the mayor, arguing that the town's water system needs to be shut down to save the citizens.

The mayor, played by "ER"'s John Aylward in a pointless cameo, is introduced swimming in his pool, bloated and pissed off. He tells the Sheriff that turning off the water means no water for the crops. That means that the town's economy will collapse! Disaster!

So no, dumbass, nobody's turning off the water! Dr. Anspaugh has spoken!

So obviously, the next scene shows Sherrif Dutton breaking into the water tower, shutting off the system and saving the day. Right?

WRONG!

It's far too late to save Ogden Marsh, Iowa. Half the population is infected, acting craaaazy, and the other half is being ferried away by armed government soldiers, evacuating the uninfected to a nearby truckstop, where they will presumably be removed from the area altogether.

The Sherrif's pregnant doctor wife, who was already running a fever before this business started, is removed from her husband's arms and taken to the high school to be quarantined with the infected.

You can see where things are going from here.

While Sheriff Dutton and Deputy Clank are on their way to the high school, pregnant Judy Dutton is tied to a gurney in a room filled with infected boys and girls also tied to theirgurnies. Enter Prinicpal Sandborn, played by Larry Cedar, infected as shit and dragging a pitchfork.

I will always remember Larry Cedar as nerdy agent-in-training Howard Butz in "Feds". He's the poor fella who got stationed in Duluth at the end of the film, while Rebecca De Mornay and Mary Gross were stationed in Los Angeles.

How the fuck did Mary Gross have a career? She's not particularly funny, which I would consider a rather important matter for a so-called "comedic actress". Her face looks like a collapsed soufflé. And her voice is like nails on an ugly chalkboard.

I remember her nightmarish portrayal of Alfalfa opposite Eddie Murphy's brilliant Buckwheat on "Saturday Night Live" back in 1984. I was a young child, and her freakish performance scarred me for life.

I would cower in fear under my sheets, terrified that Alfalfa might be under my bed, ready to drag me into the Dead Lights. Thanks, Mary Gross!

Where was I?

The Sheriff saves his wife, along with some random young lady played by Danielle Panabaker. blasting Principal Duluth into the Infinite. Infected people try to kill them. Soldiers try to kill them. They get trapped in a carwash fleeing from an attack helicopter, and are immediately besieged by the infected. Panabaker gets dragged out of the Sheriff's car, dangling by her throat from a cable.

The Sheriff and Deputy Clank get Panabaker down from the cable in maybe 30 seconds, but the young lady who was screaming and flailing about literally five seconds before, is now very dead.

You can tell because Doctor Judy Dutton does not even attempt to perform CPR on the young lady. This makes perfect sense, of course. Doctors never attempt to save lives, after all. That way lies madness.

Our quartet now reduced to a Power Trio, they make their way back to the Sheriff's house to retrieve his old police cruiser, their previous ride having been destroyed by the previously mentioned attack helicopter.

I may be misremembering some of the details, here. Perhaps the car that was destroyed was the old cruiser, and this scene happened after the sequence at the Sheriff's house...

No, that can't be right. Shit, it doesn't matter, anyway. Moving on!

Judy fiddles with the laundry drying on the clothesline, saying something stupid, then she wanders into the house to gaze longingly at the baby crib in the nursery that they never got to use.

The Sheriff follows her into the nursery, maybe one minute later, to find his wife tied up in a fucking chair, flanked by the now clearly infected wife and son of the town drunk he murdered during the opening minutes of the film.

How these two infected fucks managed to professionally tie Judy up in less than a minute boggles my mind. But that's neither here nor there.

The son tackles Sheriff Dutton, holding a rope around his throat. He reaches for his gun, but his hand is nailed to the floor by a knife, courtesy of Big Bad Momma.

The Sheriff says some bad words to get Momma's attention, before removing his hand from the floor, with the knife still jutting out of his bleeding palm, planting the blade in her throat.

Did I mention that the blade is still in his hand? So he's got his hand wrapped around her neck, the knife blade embedded in her throat. There's all kinds of bodily fluid exchange going on, here.

So he's gotta be infected, right? Right?

It doesn't matter. The virus follows no conventional rules. People get infected when it's convenient to the plot, and that's it. It's fucking insulting.

Now maybe Sheriff Dutton was supposed to be immune, like in the original, but nobody ever mentions this possibility at any point in the film, so I discount it, outright.

After Dutton throat-shanks the Vengeance Mother, Deputy Clank manages to shoot her son, the Angry Young Man from outside the house, through the second-floor window, saving his friends. Lucky shot? Nope. Clank's just good.

The Sheriff, Judy and Deputy Clank get the old cruiser running, and they head out on the open road, shortly after the Sheriff makes a point to tell his wife that the military is watching every road, implying that travel on the roads is unsafe. Whatever.

Also, for some reason, these people are still heading for the truck stop where the military is supposedly evacuating folks.

Why? You can go ANYWHERE ELSE!!! Anywhere away from the high military presence!

You are officially the stupidest people I have seen in a movie since the entire cast of "Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen"! Congratu-fucking-lations!

Clank loses his shit, because the plot demands he become infected, and he runs on a military roadblack, sacrificing his life to provide a diversion, allowing Sheriff Dutton and Judy to get past, on their way to the fucking truck stop.

Clank is played by Joe Anderson, by the way. Anderson played Mathias, the poor German guy who got his legs amputated in "The Ruins". His character in this movie is really the best part. He manages to be funny on occassion, he's handy with a rifle, and he sports an awesome moustache.

So of course he has to die. Leave us alone with bland Timothy "I loved you in that big battle at the end of 'Return of the King'" Olyphant, and Radha "Scream incoherently all the time" Mitchell.

Good work, Breck Eisner.

Anyway, these two goons get to the truck stop and discover that the military killed everyone they evacuated from Ogden Marsh, Iowa, in an attempt to contain the infection. Obviously, these government guys aren't taking any chances.

They decide to steal a truck and promptly get attacked by the rednecks from earlier in the film, now all "crazies" with the yellow eyes and pronounced veins. The rednecks are dispatched, our heroes outrun a NUCLEAR FUCKING EXPLOSION, which unfortunately wrecks the truck.

So the Sheriff, showing no signs of infection, I might add, and his pregnant wife, are walking on foot, approaching Cedar Rapids, Iowa, finally safe.

Not so fast, suckaz! A spy satellite is tracking you two! And the military is already initiating containment protocols in Cedar Rapids, all thanks to you!

How many people must suffer because you stubbornly refuse to die?!

Fuck this movie, man.

And fuck Breck Eisner, too!

This devil spawn of Michael Eisner, A.K.A. "The Man Who Ruined Disney For A Generation", directed a piss-poor excuse for a horror movie. No genuine tension in your script? No problem! Just fill the movie with pointless jump scares! Nothing original in your story? Don't worry! Just rip off other, better horror movies!

I mean, Zack Snyder opened his entertaining remake of "Dawn of the Dead" with a Johnny Cash song, right? So let's open our remake of "The Crazies" with a Johnny Cash song, too! And we'll up the ante by closing our remake with another Johnny Cash song! That's fucking brilliant!

But what else can you expect from Breck Eisner? After all, the man directed "Sahara", the most boring adventure movie you will ever see.

Don't see this movie, Dear Imaginary Reader. Don't watch it in theatres, don't rent it through Netflix, don't watch it on cable. Just watch Romero's original film, and enrich yourself.

Hell, go rent "Feds". As lame as it may be, you will enjoy it more than this garbage. At least Rebecca De Mornay was hot back in 1988.

Ah, screw it. Rent "And God Created Woman", Roger Vadim's 1988 remake of his own 1956 film, because De Mornay gets naked in it.

Or just rent the original, because Brigitte Bardot is sexier.

Hey, I got another comment!

"Stephanie" left a lovely comment concerning a previous entry, "Darkon Island". Thanks for the feedback, "Stephanie", and I apologize to you for stumbling across my deranged little corner of the internet.

I also apologize for the length of this blog entry. Things got out of hand.