Ticket Stubs #13: Back To the Usual Crap
In the issue that follows, I originally complained that the private community of GodsOfMelee had been unresponsive to my efforts to spark controversy in the land of cinema following eleven issues of my profanity-laden summarantings (that's portmanteau speak for summarized rantings; now shut up and slurp your Frappucinos, FInch-fuckers!), and that I "decided to put on a stupid-looking uniform and get a job bagging groceries at Ralphs' while you suck your thumbs with your @$$#013$." In present day, I have traded the stupid-looking uniform for a professional-looking monkey suit and Ralphs' for Safeway, and while I get little more than the occasional +1 from Google Plus, the readership is coming up on 4,000. So I can't complain (about movies? I can complain all I want. But about life? Nah. Life is good to me so far. Hope it's being kind to you, too). So fire up the TARDIS and let the cinematic complaining commence!
FROM July 29, 2004 (SW@ Ticket #11: Spider-Man's Future & The Usual Crap): Another week of crap went by for yours truly. I guess it comes with being a Spider-Man freak, but what I saw after SM2 deserves nothing more than the title of crap.
Digging back through the video vault of my years as a Blockbuster customer, I came across the much neglected Repo Man. Directed by one of the Monkees (that should say something of the film's quality right there), written by a retired repo man, and starring Emilio Sheen-stevez (Men @ Work) and Harry Dean Stanton (The Green Mile), Repo Man is yet another small film that tried (although precognitively) to incorporate the elements of much bigger and funnier flops.
Estevez is a good-for-nothing car thief hired on the fly to be an automotive reposession man by loud-mouthed mentor Stanton. The first hour of film is good, as it succeeds at being an odd couple action-comedy like Rush Hour, Bad Boys, Chill Factor, etc. But enter the pretty girl--by 80s standards anyway--working for a gov't agency in search of a radioactive Chevy Malibu with dead aliens in the trunk, and it becomes a pathetic attempt at Dude, Where's My Car? Estevez and Stanton dodge cults, secret agents, English punk gangs, fellow repo men, and other wierd characters in search of the mystery car only to lose the girl and end the film in a less than understandable way.
Film can mean a high-class movie, or it can mean the black crud you scrape out of the toilet bowl every week.
F
Next comes a slight improvement over Repo Man, mainly because it's a newer film (and more the high-class variety than the toilet crud variety). The Human Stain stars Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, and Gary Sinise (any film that needs big names like that can't possibly be any good) as four participants in a chance meeting that starts out dramatic and funny but winds up putting the viewer to sleep.
Hopkins is a black boxer--a stretch if ever there was one--turned college professor--more realistic--who is fired on the brink of retirement for referring to two black students as spooks because of their "spectral nature" to frequently skip class. He seeks out Gary Sinise, a nice guy writer--another stretch--to tell his story to the world. The book fails, leaving business for friendship between Hopkins and Sinise. Meanwhile, Hopkins falls for trailer trash Nicole Kidman, sparking a feud with crazy ex-husband Harris who later kills the two in a car accident.
The no-names paralleling the Hopkins-Kidman relationship in his flashbacks get props for mirroring their older counterparts so well in voice patterns and body language when many other movies rely on costume and catch phrases to make characters recognizable. Sinise's opening voice-over was a nice sparkler to top such a poorly iced cake: "In the era between Communism and Terrorism, America was captivated by a cocksucker."
But no direct ties were shown from the present romance to the youthful romance, and both were just a stray means to a tragic and boring end. I need more serendipity, dammit!!!!
D-
I finally found salvation in MTV's test-related crime caper The Perfect Score. Scarlett Johanssen (Lost In Translation, Girl w/ Pearl Earring) stars with several no-names as part of a team of screwed seniors looking to beat the Suck-Ass Test.
The usual comedy associated with assembling the team, dealing with the stoned Asian computer geek, handling flaws in the plan, and telling what happens to each character afterward, combined with common moral lessons about honesty, romance, and friendship, make this one a must-watch. True, you can see all the gimmicks coming, but that don't make it any less funny.
B
No funny copyright info today. I just hope Hellboy and The Whole Ten Yards are better than this crap.
Apologies for my week-long absence from the blogosphere. The Ticketmaster (yours truly) was once again subject to an internet connectivity fiasco, so I am just getting back to posting. For some reason, Google Plus still freezes when I try to post, so my readership numbers have been low for the past few issues. On the bright side, we have a new #1 on the readership board: my Dead Parade review of Slither is at 59 pageviews, beating out Burn Notice, Spider-Man, and (WHAT??!!!) A Little Bit Of Heaven as my blog's most popular subject. Thanks, Ticketholders!
Now, to recrap (I mean recap), this little step back in time involved a retardedly prolific use of the word "crap" on my part, a trio of movies that mostly lived up to the title, and a brilliantly stated double meaning for the word "film" (also a point of personal pride). Stay tuned, as the next issue will answer the question above with a resounding "No!"
FROM July 29, 2004 (SW@ Ticket #11: Spider-Man's Future & The Usual Crap): Another week of crap went by for yours truly. I guess it comes with being a Spider-Man freak, but what I saw after SM2 deserves nothing more than the title of crap.
Estevez is a good-for-nothing car thief hired on the fly to be an automotive reposession man by loud-mouthed mentor Stanton. The first hour of film is good, as it succeeds at being an odd couple action-comedy like Rush Hour, Bad Boys, Chill Factor, etc. But enter the pretty girl--by 80s standards anyway--working for a gov't agency in search of a radioactive Chevy Malibu with dead aliens in the trunk, and it becomes a pathetic attempt at Dude, Where's My Car? Estevez and Stanton dodge cults, secret agents, English punk gangs, fellow repo men, and other wierd characters in search of the mystery car only to lose the girl and end the film in a less than understandable way.
Film can mean a high-class movie, or it can mean the black crud you scrape out of the toilet bowl every week.
F
Hopkins is a black boxer--a stretch if ever there was one--turned college professor--more realistic--who is fired on the brink of retirement for referring to two black students as spooks because of their "spectral nature" to frequently skip class. He seeks out Gary Sinise, a nice guy writer--another stretch--to tell his story to the world. The book fails, leaving business for friendship between Hopkins and Sinise. Meanwhile, Hopkins falls for trailer trash Nicole Kidman, sparking a feud with crazy ex-husband Harris who later kills the two in a car accident.
The no-names paralleling the Hopkins-Kidman relationship in his flashbacks get props for mirroring their older counterparts so well in voice patterns and body language when many other movies rely on costume and catch phrases to make characters recognizable. Sinise's opening voice-over was a nice sparkler to top such a poorly iced cake: "In the era between Communism and Terrorism, America was captivated by a cocksucker."
But no direct ties were shown from the present romance to the youthful romance, and both were just a stray means to a tragic and boring end. I need more serendipity, dammit!!!!
D-
The usual comedy associated with assembling the team, dealing with the stoned Asian computer geek, handling flaws in the plan, and telling what happens to each character afterward, combined with common moral lessons about honesty, romance, and friendship, make this one a must-watch. True, you can see all the gimmicks coming, but that don't make it any less funny.
B
No funny copyright info today. I just hope Hellboy and The Whole Ten Yards are better than this crap.
Apologies for my week-long absence from the blogosphere. The Ticketmaster (yours truly) was once again subject to an internet connectivity fiasco, so I am just getting back to posting. For some reason, Google Plus still freezes when I try to post, so my readership numbers have been low for the past few issues. On the bright side, we have a new #1 on the readership board: my Dead Parade review of Slither is at 59 pageviews, beating out Burn Notice, Spider-Man, and (WHAT??!!!) A Little Bit Of Heaven as my blog's most popular subject. Thanks, Ticketholders!
Now, to recrap (I mean recap), this little step back in time involved a retardedly prolific use of the word "crap" on my part, a trio of movies that mostly lived up to the title, and a brilliantly stated double meaning for the word "film" (also a point of personal pride). Stay tuned, as the next issue will answer the question above with a resounding "No!"
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