10 Words or Less: Friends With Kids

Flimsy plot, funny moments, great cast. But it's no Bridesmaids. 

"Quibble Of The Titans" And Other Sequels That Never Made It To The Big Screen

Twilight 5: Ocean Tide 

Bella becomes the object of yet a third magical creature's affections: a merman named Poseidon. They have great kinky fish sex, but Poseidon can't persuade Bella to cut off her legs to become a mermaid and marry him. She goes back to Edward and settles for plain old vanilla vampire sex.

Twilight 6: Black Hole
Jacob and Edward finally kill each other; Bella finally succumbs to her crushing depression brought on by living in a climate with no exposure to vitamin D and her general emo-outlook on life, and kills herself. The Cullen clan and the Quileute tribe unite together to raise Bella's half-vampire baby, and rejoice that all that goddamn annoying-as-shit teenage angst and drama is finally over.
Twilight 7: Canis Major 
The werewolves finally come out of the closet. Seth, Jared, Embry, and Quil realize they can't ignore their pack's obvious homoerotic undertones any longer, and imprint on each other.  Their brotherly wolf love brings out some hidden prejudices in the wider werewolf community, but the tribe eventually decides to recognize gay wolf marriage and everybody's happy. The film culminates with a massive half-human, half-wolf orgy in the woods.



Shrek 5: Donkey Goes Far, Far, Away
Tired of being Shrek's sidekick and in need of money to raise his mutant donkey-dragon babies, Donkey begins his own adventure and tries to make it as an R&B singer in a Far, Far, Away nightclub. A seedy blond named Goldilocks talks him into becoming her client, but it turns out she's in cahoots with the infamous Three Bears Gang, a group of thugs who con people out of their not-to-small-not-too-big-just-right real estate properties. 3D shenanigans ensue.








Paranormal Activity 5: The Demon Possesses Another Member of the Same Family as Before
Paranormal Activity 6: The Demon Possesses Another Member of the Same Family as Before, but in 3D
Paranormal Activity 7: The Demon Possesses Another Member of the Same Family as Before, but 20 Years Ago
Paranormal Activity 8: The Demon Possesses Another Member of the Same Family as Before, but 20 Years Later
Paranormal Activity 9: The Demon Possesses Itself and Shits its Pants in Fear
Paranormal Activity 10: The Demon Accidentally Burns His Own Ouija Board and Cries
Paranormal Activity 11: The Demon Takes a Vacation and Learns to Scuba-Dive
Paranormal Activity 12: An Amateur Filmmaker Catches the Same Demon on Home Video for the Twelfth Fucking Time in a Row


Transformers 4: Shit Gets Blown Up
Transformers 5: More Shit Gets Blown Up
Transformers 6: Bolts, Bombs and Boobs
Transformers 7: Even More Shit Gets Blown Up
Transformers 8: Evil Transformers Emerge from Earth's Core, Blow Up All Remaining Shit on Earth
Transformers 9: Transformers Kill Michael Bay for Being a Summer Blockbuster Whore

Quibble of the Titans
Heated Discussion of the Titans
Lively Debate of the Titans
Harsh Words of the Titans
Bitch Slap of the Titans


'Nuff said.

10 Words or Less: The Hunger Games

Faithful but sanitized adaptation; Lawrence is pitch-perfect as Katniss. 

It's The Metaphor, Stupid! The "Mainstreamed Indie Film"

Welcome, class. Today we're going to talk about a very specific yet widely known type of movie: the "Mainstreamed Indie Film" (or MIF, if you will.)  



The formula goes something like this: A scruffy, ugly, socially awkward dude is having a mid-life or quarter-life crisis. He has no job or has a soul-sucking job, and doesn't know how to get one (or get a new one.) He has no girlfriend or has a bitchy, needy girlfriend, and doesn't know how to get one (or get a new one.)  He has an oddball best friend/brother that is an asshole but cares a lot about him. He is carrying some deep dark guilt and trauma inside him-- he was the neglected middle child, he beat up smaller kids in school, his father never spent time with him, he kicked a puppy once.  He is living a non-life. He is depressed. 



One day, he has a "meet-cute" with a girl. She is "different"-- she wears jeans with a skirt, has scraggly hair, is flighty and flaky in a way that appeals to his repressed sense of humor. Appearance-wise, she is light years out of his league, but through his socially-awkward-but-sweet-doofus routine, he wins her over and they have a series of quirky date-like outings, such prancing about in a fountain, riding a moped, playing crummy guitar or dancing stupidly, browsing through hipster clothing racks, rare bookstores, and vintage record shops. She makes him want to live again-- life is great! 


You know what I'm talking about-- movies that take the mundane shit of everyday loser life and make it seem deep and meaningful-- without requiring too much brain power from the viewer. Garden State is arguably the worst offender-- remember Zach Braff yelling into the "infinite abyss?" 

"When you're feeling pissed / Just scream into an abyss / You'll be free / From society"

Countless other films have followed the same pattern-- trying to be "different," "alternative," and "hip," they come off seeming shallow, obvious, and predictable. Movies like Greenberg, 50/50, Cyrus, Garden State, Cedar Rapids, Stranger Than Fiction, Larry Crane,  Dan In Real Life, Lars and the Real Girl, and Jeff Who Lives At Home (which is now playing at our theater and what spawned this rant in the first place.) 

We're sitting in the bathtub. Doesn't it makes us seem so endearingly quirky?

Mainstreamed Indie Film is something that might have once been an art film, but through the U.S.'s capitalist, consumer-driven culture, it has been watered down, softened, and sweetened into a story that appeals to general audiences-- it has been "mainstreamed." The MIF genre emerged in the late 1990s, mainly because that's when digital media started to become accessible and affordable to the general public. Thanks to the phenomenon of media-sharing websites like YouTube, any asshole with half a brain can make a movie and get it out there with little or no money. 



"Oh shit!" major studios like Twentieth Century Fox and Universal yelled. "If anybody can make a movie for free, we'll be out of business in a year!" So they immediately proceeded to create new "indie" divisions of their studios (Fox Searchlight and Focus Features, respectively.) "Look at us!" they bragged. "We're alternative and independent and niche-based, too! We'll pick up your weird offbeat flick and market it and distribute it so even people who don't normally watch indie films will go see it!" 


Who could say no to that, right?  And so the MIF was born. People who "don't normally watch those kinds of movies" were led to believe that they were watching a unique and unprecedented film-- mainly because it made them feel happy and justifies their self-satisfied  existence. "Oh, that guy's just like me! He's a pathetic, obese underachiever, but through a series of random encounters with quirky strangers, a cute, quirky girl, and a folksy soundtrack, he discovers that life can great!" 

"What an adorable, scruffy little hipster!"

I'm not saying ALL Mainstreamed Indie Films are bad. Some are really great-- Sideways, Up In The Air, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Before Sunrise... Who could resist the musical charms of Once?  And who could ever forget that feel-good "freaky" finale in Little Miss Sunshine?  But I think what made these movies so great was that they didn't TRY so hard to be "indie." They weren't overly self-important or arrogant in their presentation. They didn't hit us over the head with the point in every goddamn frame ("See? See?! We're doing big closeup of the main character's face as he's running! See, he's running toward his destiny! Get it, huh, get it? It's a metaphor! A METAPHOR, dumbshit!") 



Don't get me wrong-- sometimes I do want to watch a quirky flick about some guy who finds meaning through making connections with others.  Sometimes a little dose of sentimentality is good for the soul. But if that's all we watch, that's what we start to think LIFE is supposed to be like. Films also need to challenges us, to make us a little uncomfortable, a little unsettled, even a little angry or indignant. Film is like any other form of art-- a highly visual statement that has the power to change the way people see the world. Schindler's List, American History X, Citizen Kane, The Silence Of The Lambs, Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction, Fargo, The Sixth Sense, Brokeback Mountain... Think how much influence those films had on our imaginations, our understanding of the world. 


Art film doesn't care what people think of it. It is fearless and unapologetic, even if it's not entirely sure what it's doing. It is simultaneously beautiful and gritty, subtle and bold, restrained and passionate. Art film is to Mainstreamed Indie Film as Bob Dylan is to The Wallflowers-- they're related by blood, but they aren't of the same caliber. 

10 Words or Less: Carnage

Exactly like play it's based on (except for Winslet's vomit.)

When Good Frogs Go Mad

Admit it. Even if you're the least discerning movie watcher ever, you still occasionally see a truly horrific one that makes you wonder: "How the hell did someone convince a studio to make this piece of shit?" 


My brother and I are connoisseurs of these types of movies-- it's something of a tradition for us to find the campiest, shittiest, most God-awful horror film we can find at the library or thrift store and watch it late at night (after all the normal people have gone to bed.) Consequently I have been introduced to such cinematic gems as Eight Legged Freaks, The Wicker Man, and Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. But the worst of the worst, the bad movie that has rendered all other bad movies obsolete, has got to be Frogs. 

Okay, kids-- this is what we call "false advertising."

Made in 1972 on a budget of approximately $500 and a lot of psychedelic drugs, Frogs is a film so lame, so ridiculous, and so insulting to our intelligence that it makes Revenge Of The Killer Tomatoes look positively Oscar-worthy. The premise is that a rich, cantankerous old bastard owns an island in the middle of a giant swamp, and uses pesticides to control the copious numbers of reptiles and amphibians that inhabit it. A nature photographer, played by (believe it or not) Sam Elliot, before he was famous and the alternative was prostituting himself to buy food, is writing a piece on deforestation and pollution in the area. Mr. Rich Bastard invites him to stay at his mansion, where all the other rich and snooty relatives (who seem to share a fondness for dressing like English cricket players) are gathered to celebrate the old man's birthday. After exchanging a few smoldering glances with Mr. Rich Bastard's daughter, Elliot discovers that all the creepy crawly things in the forest are taking revenge by systematically murdering each family member in turn. 


Now, this plot, while silly, might have actually worked as a spoof and/or campy take on environmental devastation.  The trailer definitely spins it that way.  But it quickly becomes clear that the filmmakers were actually taking the film seriously-- further proof, if any is needed, that they were extremely high during production. If that weren't bad enough, though, the movie has no special effects whatsoever. None. I was all set to enjoy hilariously crude camera tricks that one often sees in low-budget films (think Killer Rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.)  But this film has nothing. NOTHING. There is no blood, no innards, no half-eaten limbs, not even one giant mutant frog to lead the rebellion. 

Don't fuck with my McRibbet, bitch.

There are only handheld camera shots of people wandering into the woods, falling down shrieking and thrashing around with obviously fake rubber snakes, lizards or alligators.  The frogs don't even make an appearance until almost the very end of the film, and then they are shown hopping onto Mr. Rich Bastard (clearly someone off-camera is throwing some of them into the shot) while he writhes in agony on the floor. It's the most anticlimactic ending you can imagine. Even lamer than the miniseries It, based on Stephen King's novel of the same name, where "It" turns out to be just a fucking giant spider that can be killed simply by stabbing its underbelly with a sharp implement. 


Don't misunderstand me-- I'm not an advocate for censorship. I support the first amendment 100 percent, even if it does protect neo-Nazis, Rush Limbaugh, and the Kardashians. But there are certain movies that people should just not be allowed to see-- nobody should ever be exposed to such stupidity. It's catching. 

10 Words or Less: The Artist

Captures authenticity, nostalgia of silent film, but not much else.  

10 Words or Less: The Descendants

Beautiful, honest drama about grief, forgiveness; outstanding performances all around.

10 Words or Less: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Subtle and suspenseful, gritty and restrained; Oldman's best role yet.