Just the Ticket #70: Sequel-itis 4, The White House Overdose
Before I get into the reviews today, I'd like to do as the President does, and give a long overdue State of the Ticketverse address. My combined posts to date have racked up over 17,100 pageviews, with REM, Slither, and A Little Bit of Heaven maintaining the top spots with over 500 pageviews each. I am geeking out at the small-scale success of this online enterprise. Thank you, whoever you may be, for reading what I put forth. So look, here's the deal: before the end of this fiscal year, I plan to pass 20,000 pageviews. With your help, and a little hope, we...can...make...it...happen. As you read this, ask yourselves can we cross the 20,000 pageview milestone? YES...WE...CAN! YES...WE...CAN! YES...WE...CAN! Iiiiiii'm sooo in looove with youuuuu. Whatever you want to do is alright with meeeeeeeee!
Ahem. Sorry about that. I got drunk on all that fake presidential power I gave myself. Time to get that dirt off my shoulder and get down to brass tax (tacks? taxis? I never understood that one, either) and make the buck stop here with some reviews on the most recent three times Hollywood has made the White House explode. Welcome to Earth!
We begin with the entirely Gerard Butler-driven Olympus Has Fallen, in which a White House insider teams up with a terrorist group to desecrate the American Flag, shoot an ungodly amount of people to death, and blow sizable chunks off of the once-dubbed Presidential Palace. And that's just the first fifteen minutes. The remainder is a formulaic Die Hard kill-'em-one-at-a-time-with-shallowly-written-witty-banter-in-between action flick that lasts an hour and a half too long (the movie's approximate running time crosses the two hour mark), comes to the brink of a nuclear holocaust, and has only one decent line throughout: "Let's play a game of 'Fuck Off.' You go first." Butler does a decent job, as always, of dragging whatever wounded soldier of a movie he's placed in to a level just above tolerable, but by the end I was still deeply offended by the blatant counter-patriotic violence that began the whole affair.
Just above tolerable but just below passing.
D+
If one movie like this wasn't enough for you, here's Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich's White House Down, in which a White House insider teams up with a terrorist group to cause cool explosions, shoot a less-than-ungodly amount of people to death, and get shot themselves by heroic father-turned-Secret-Service-Agent-to-be-or-not-to-be, Channing Tatum, who still needs to trade some of his spare good looks for a first name. He has good chemistry with Jamie Foxx's Obama stand-in (who turns out to be an action movie badass in his own right) as they paint by the Die Hard numbers and rescue Tatum's daughter from some markedly more charismatic bad guys, who are also attempting to initiate a nuclear holocaust. In typical Bay/Emmerich fashion, White House Down is packed to the gills with humor and tastefully over-the-top action. But like so many films these days, the run-and-gun runs and guns too long, climaxing in an unnecessary and impersonal final showdown with a mediocre big-bad. But at least this treatment of "the building they blew up in Independence Day" had a decent story--a re-imagining (that entered theaters a mere week after Olympus fell into our laps) with a shred of imagination to its credit.
C
Where actually blowing up the White House and trying too hard (or Dying too Hard) to be cool has twice failed, a metaphorical explosion of our government has succeeded. In Parkland (named after the infamous hospital where the 1970's favorite president ultimately had his time of death called), Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, Zac Effron, Tom Welling, Marcia Gay Harden, Colin Hanks, and a host of character actors (with Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton producing) give us an enlightening (and for my parents, nostalgic and gut-wrenching) account of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the events of the three days that followed. As always, Giamatti stands out, giving a well-dimensioned performance as Abraham Zapruder, the amateur videographer who was forever changed by the assassination he caught on tape. Billy Bob Thornton is given less screen time than Giamatti, but he fills his time on par with Giamatti's leading man, delivering an impactful performance as no-nonsense Secret Service Agent Forrest Sorrels. Silver Linings Playbook actress Jacki Weaver makes an impression of a different, so strange it's good, sort, as assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's highly delusional mother, bringing the production to the precipice of camp without tumbling into absurdity. Others stand out less so, or not at all, but the general feel is one of a documentarian's clinical reverence for historical fact. It keeps to the record, forestalling any attempts at conspiracy theory (such as the Enquirer's recent claims to new evidence supporting the Grassy Knoll hypothesis). We've had enough silliness regarding the White House--and in the White House--to last our country a lifetime. Parkland is a tragic, but welcome break from what claims to be reality.
B-
What I do next depends on what I see next, so stay tuned, and keep those pageviews coming, America!
Ahem. Sorry about that. I got drunk on all that fake presidential power I gave myself. Time to get that dirt off my shoulder and get down to brass tax (tacks? taxis? I never understood that one, either) and make the buck stop here with some reviews on the most recent three times Hollywood has made the White House explode. Welcome to Earth!
We begin with the entirely Gerard Butler-driven Olympus Has Fallen, in which a White House insider teams up with a terrorist group to desecrate the American Flag, shoot an ungodly amount of people to death, and blow sizable chunks off of the once-dubbed Presidential Palace. And that's just the first fifteen minutes. The remainder is a formulaic Die Hard kill-'em-one-at-a-time-with-shallowly-written-witty-banter-in-between action flick that lasts an hour and a half too long (the movie's approximate running time crosses the two hour mark), comes to the brink of a nuclear holocaust, and has only one decent line throughout: "Let's play a game of 'Fuck Off.' You go first." Butler does a decent job, as always, of dragging whatever wounded soldier of a movie he's placed in to a level just above tolerable, but by the end I was still deeply offended by the blatant counter-patriotic violence that began the whole affair.
Just above tolerable but just below passing.
D+
If one movie like this wasn't enough for you, here's Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich's White House Down, in which a White House insider teams up with a terrorist group to cause cool explosions, shoot a less-than-ungodly amount of people to death, and get shot themselves by heroic father-turned-Secret-Service-Agent-to-be-or-not-to-be, Channing Tatum, who still needs to trade some of his spare good looks for a first name. He has good chemistry with Jamie Foxx's Obama stand-in (who turns out to be an action movie badass in his own right) as they paint by the Die Hard numbers and rescue Tatum's daughter from some markedly more charismatic bad guys, who are also attempting to initiate a nuclear holocaust. In typical Bay/Emmerich fashion, White House Down is packed to the gills with humor and tastefully over-the-top action. But like so many films these days, the run-and-gun runs and guns too long, climaxing in an unnecessary and impersonal final showdown with a mediocre big-bad. But at least this treatment of "the building they blew up in Independence Day" had a decent story--a re-imagining (that entered theaters a mere week after Olympus fell into our laps) with a shred of imagination to its credit.
C
Where actually blowing up the White House and trying too hard (or Dying too Hard) to be cool has twice failed, a metaphorical explosion of our government has succeeded. In Parkland (named after the infamous hospital where the 1970's favorite president ultimately had his time of death called), Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, Zac Effron, Tom Welling, Marcia Gay Harden, Colin Hanks, and a host of character actors (with Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton producing) give us an enlightening (and for my parents, nostalgic and gut-wrenching) account of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the events of the three days that followed. As always, Giamatti stands out, giving a well-dimensioned performance as Abraham Zapruder, the amateur videographer who was forever changed by the assassination he caught on tape. Billy Bob Thornton is given less screen time than Giamatti, but he fills his time on par with Giamatti's leading man, delivering an impactful performance as no-nonsense Secret Service Agent Forrest Sorrels. Silver Linings Playbook actress Jacki Weaver makes an impression of a different, so strange it's good, sort, as assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's highly delusional mother, bringing the production to the precipice of camp without tumbling into absurdity. Others stand out less so, or not at all, but the general feel is one of a documentarian's clinical reverence for historical fact. It keeps to the record, forestalling any attempts at conspiracy theory (such as the Enquirer's recent claims to new evidence supporting the Grassy Knoll hypothesis). We've had enough silliness regarding the White House--and in the White House--to last our country a lifetime. Parkland is a tragic, but welcome break from what claims to be reality.
B-
What I do next depends on what I see next, so stay tuned, and keep those pageviews coming, America!
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