Spiderman 4 (2011)

USA

Running Time: N/A

Director: Sam Raimi

Writer: Too many people, I don’t even feel like listing them.  It’s not like it actually matters.  A fucking chimpanzee could write one of these.

One of the things that I hate the most about Hollywood is their incessant compulsion to milk every last drop of life from anything successful.  Spiderman 4 is the perfect example.  Yes, I am fully aware that this film is 2 years away from being released, but through my amazingly accurate prognostic powers, I am able to tell you that Spiderman 4 is going to be  four times as bad as Spiderman 3, which incidentally, was, three times as bad as Spiderman 2.

Are we such a collective generation of fucking slobbering 6-year-olds that we need to continuously seek out and watch sequels to fucking comic book movies?  Don’t you find it remotely embarrassing that this is type of shit is actually what gets people up off their fat Frito Lay eating asses, into their cars and to the theatre where they lay down their hard earned cash?  Grow the fuck up, people.  Was it not enough for you when man-child Toby Maguire did that horrific dance number in Spiderman 3?  That was one of the most truly awful moments ever to embed itself on celluloid.  Seeing Toby-boy mouth the words “Now dig on this” made me want to drink poison.  100 years from now people are going to watch these sequels and laugh at us.  They are going to laugh at us and then they are going to drive around in their cauliflower powered cars and talk about how fucking pathetic we were because Spiderman movies were the most successful films we had.  It’s like now when you see photos of those hoops that kids used to chase around with a stick for fun.  You look at those and you think, That’s not fun.  That’s welfare.  And then you laugh because it was welfare that fun to those kids was chasing a fucking circle with a stick.  But I’ll tell you this much: given the choice, I’d rather chase a fucking circle with a stick any day of the week over seeing Spiderman 4.

When does it stop?  When is it enough for Hollywood?  Spiderman 20?  Are we going to need a Spiderman 20?  Never mind that all of these superhero movies are the same thing over and over again, but they’re boring as fuck.  I mean it.  You are an adult.  Read comic books in the privacy of your own lonely-ass apartment, chat about them on the computer with your World of Warcraft nerd-patrol, cyber-geek friends, but do us all a favour (and by all I mean those of us who can actually handle a storyline slightly more complex than good guy fights bad guy in a non stop CGI jizzfest): stop going to the theatre and creating a demand for this smegma.

How many fucking times do you need to see things blow up and fall apart, asshole?

A Perfect Getaway (2009)

USA

Running Time: N/A

Director: David Twohy

Writer: David Twohy

Can someone please explain to me why it is that Milla Jovovich consistently manages to star in over-the-top feces-fests like this one?  No kidding, she’s like the female version of The Rock (sorry “Dwayne”, you’re not living that one down so easy.  You’ll forever be “The Rock” as far as I’m concerned). 

I’d also like someone to explain to me why, based on what I’ve seen in the trailer for this sewage pipe clog, that a helicopter seems to get more screen-time than any of the other cast members.  I’m guessing that it has something to do with a flying apparatus being about a billion times more entertaining than anything else that this fucking smorgasbord of garbage could possibly have to offer.

And you know what?  I’m also wondering who green lit this thing and why the go to man for the coveted position of writer/director is none other than David Twohy, the same creative genius who wrote Critters fucking 2.  I guess the execs wanted someone who could really flesh out the elements that have been missing from the other thirty thousand times that this story has been rehashed throughout the years.  

No problem.  I’m super confident that Twohy can bring that certain je ne sais quoi to pivotal moments, like Steve Zahn knife fighting some other talentless cock-swami in a lagoon somewhere in Hawaii.

I’d rather drink a slurpee cup full of my own urine than pay 10 bucks to sit through this soulless masturbathon.

Wolf (1994)

USA

125 painful minutes

Director: Mike Nichols

Writer: Jim Harrison

               Wesley Strick

Terrible.  

If you happen to be in the mood for a film whose budget can only be described as totally welfare, look no further.  Wolf is it.  I’m unsure exactly why director Mike Nichols chose to spend money on welfare looking animatronic wolves, for example, when real wolves would have sufficed.  It wasn’t as though the wolves were required to perform overtly complicated manoeuvers like driving sports cars or jumping through flaming hoops.  No.  I think the most complex thing that I saw any of these shitty animatronic wolves do was raise their heads and look at the camera.

It doesn’t matter though.  It’s not like real wolves would have made the difference between this film eating a colossal wolf dick (which it did) and being lauded by critics everywhere as an astounding achievement in filmmaking (which it wasn’t).  Wolf had more problems than an unemployed, alcoholic single mother, namely that it was a two hour long, storyless exercise in fucking terribleness.

According to the trivia section on Wolf’s IMDB page, Jack Nicholson tried for 12 years to get this project off the ground.  He should have quit after about six minutes.  What exactly it was that made Jacky boy think that anyone would ever enjoy a film about a cuckold douche splash, who pokes a wolf with a stick until it bites him, and who subsequently turns into a werewolf that is more Robin Williams than evil nocturnal beast of the witching hour, is totally and completely beyond me.

It’s also completely beyond me as to why this movie had to have anything at all to do with the publishing company that Jack Nicholson’s character worked at.  Did we really need to see him repeatedly show up for work even after he’d been fired?  What the fuck was he doing there?  He didn’t even have a job and no one seemed to care.  They let him keep his office and everything.  

Oh man…

 It’s going to take me a while to recover from this one.

Jennifer’s Body (2009)

USA

Running Time: N/A

Director: Karyn Kusama

Writer: Diablo Cody (I heard that she used to be a stripper)

I’ve never liked Diablo Cody.  I never have and, unless she completely changes up her annoying-as-fuck writing style any time soon, I probably never will.  Incidentally, that’s your loss Diablo Cody, because  my opinions are always right.  I don’t make mistakes.  Anyway,  I’m still finding it unbelievable that she actually won an Academy Award for best original screenplay for the utterly overrated Juno. 

Now she’s back with the script for this thing – by the way, did you know that Diablo Cody used to be a stripper?  No, seriously, before she wrote the script for Juno, she used to be a stripper.  Really, she did – yeah, so anyway, she’s back with this film which even two years ago when I first heard about it, I knew would suck.  Here’s the basic concept behind the thing: it’s Juno, minus the sappy baby shit, with gore.  Megan Fox walks around at a high school sucking off boys and then biting off their dicks.  Wow, this is really Academy Award winning writer material, huh?

You see Diablo, (by the way, that name is so cool, is it your real name?  No?  Are you sure?  It sounds so natural and cool), people laughed at your little jokey style and your ever-so-witty dialogue because you were a novelty.  People whom it takes very little to intrigue were intrigued by this style because of your past.  They thought it was just so zany that you used to be a stripper (in case you didn’t know, Diablo Cody actually used to be a stripper) and that you say quirky little things like “I get up at the butt-crack of dawn”.  I personally find it so hilarious that in your scripts and in interviews you speak like an adult who still thinks that they are in high school, that kills me!

Anyway, this thing should take care of Diablo Cody once and for all. And that’s a very good thing.  I remember when you were on David Letterman during all the Juno bullshit and Dave told you that you should make a film about your stripping days (Diablo Cody used to be a stripper) and you were all snotty and 10th grade sarcastic and said something about how yeah, you’ve just been nominated for an Academy Award, so what better thing to do than to go ahead and make Juggs: The Movie.  You’re so right Diablo, because Jennifer’s Body is much more refined.  It’s a regular fucking Casablanca, isn’t it?

Your fifteen-minutes are just about expired, stripper girl with the loco Spanish name.  Thank you for making this movie so that we can all forget about you once and for all.

Kambakkht Ishq (2009)

India

Running Time: N/A (I’m guessing somewhere around four or five hours)

Director: Sabir Khan

Writer: Sabir Khan

               Ishita Moitra

               Anvita Dutt Guptan

This is definitely one of the worst looking trailers that I have ever seen for a movie.  Not only that, but somehow the filmmakers behind this managed to make Sylvester Stallone come off far more retarded than he typically does.  I love you Sly, but you and the other Hollywood stars who whored themselves out for this will now forever be among the first and last Hollywood stars to fall victim to the unbelievably false belief that Bollywood films are going to become popular anywhere else other than India.  Sorries all around.

Oh right, Slumdog Millionaire.  Yes, it’s true: Slumdog Millionaire is responsible for this trend and belief.  Bollywood and Bollywood style films have become somewhat trendy and fashionable in Hollywood at the moment as a result of Slumdog‘s Oscar collection.  I didn’t particularly like Slumdog (though I didn’t hate it), but I have liked some of Danny Boyle’s past work.  And this is where producers and studios have it all wrong: Danny Boyle was capable of making Bollywood imagery stylish and trendy because he is a good filmmaker.  Bollywood just isn’t.  

It isn’t going to be much longer (most likely somewhere around the release of this shit-stain) before the studios realize that hey – these Bollywood films really are terrible.  I mean, it’s not even in the same league of terribleness as Hollywood so often embraces.  This is a whole other terrible – a terrible that can only be matched by the barf-flavoured-burp storylines and acting that are typically only found in porno movies.  That sort of crappiness is acceptable in porno movies, because we know that we’ll actually get to see something worthwhile in return for our tolerance.  Not so with Bollywood.

I also love how both studios shown at the start of this trailer each ripped off something Hollywood.  Eros ripped off the Universal logo promo, while Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment PVT LTD chose to rip off the 20th Century Fox logo promo.  That’s always been my biggest complaint about Bollywood – it rips everything off, from films to storylines to distribution company logos.

So what’s the story in Kambakkht Ishq?  A tough, misogynist Hollwood stuntman meets a finicky model.  And they argue.  They also argue and then sometimes they will dance (but they won’t be happy with each other whilst they dance, they will be arguing with their bodies, don’t you know).  At the end they fall in love.

 I just saved you ten bucks.

Surrogates (2009)

USA

Running Time: N/A

Director: Jonathan Mostow

Writer: Michael Ferris (screenplay)               

              John D. Brancato (screenplay)

              Robert Venditti (graphic novel)

              Brett Weldele (graphic novel)

Wow.  This is truly something special: from the very first image in this trailer of a robot being fit with a human face, I knew that I was in for some serious shit.  Not serious shit in the Doc Brown, According to my calculations, when this baby hits 88mph we’re going to see some serious shit.  No.  More like the type of serious shit where somebody (most likely director Jonathan Mostow, who is also responsible for embarrassing both a franchise and himself with Terminator 3) got down to making a movie that is so seriously bad, it actually took concentration to pull off.  I mean like Mostow and his writers probably went to a meditation retreat somewhere deep in the mountains and meditated on everything that sucks until they finally came up with the idea for this corner dwelling dust-bunny.  Actually, the idea is from a graphic novel.  Aren’t graphic novels basically  just glorified comic books for people who don’t actually want to get caught reading comic books?  Is it somehow cooler to read graphic novels than comic books?  Oh well.

Anyway, this brings me to my next point of contention: the idea.  Isn’t this essentially the same movie as Mark Neveldine/Brian Taylor’s piece of fuck Gamer?  As far as I can tell, both movies use the exact same concepts and neither one of them does it well.  I guess that’s because you can’t do it well, seeing as both ideas suck my balls. This movie is so entrenched in trying to wow the audience with the terminally boring concept of a world where people control robots from the comfort of their own homes, that I don’t even have to see the fucker to know that the concept is where this movie lives and dies.  It isn’t hard to tell that the makers of this are hoping that you’re stupid enough not to notice that after the idea of a world where humans control robot clones is established within the first 2 minutes, you’ll forgive them for having nothing more to offer.

Incidentally, Bruce Willis: you’re old.  You can’t act.  You and the whole action genre is about as intriguing as a live feed of Wilford Brimley getting a sponge bath.  You should change your name to Bruce Wank-us, because that’s basically what you’re doing every time that you step in front of a camera.  Please stop making films.

2012 (2009)

USA/Canada

Running Time: N/A

Director: Roland Emmerich

Writer: Roland Emmerich

              Harald Kloser

It occurred to me while watching this trailer, that what’s actually a far more frightening concept than the end of the world is the end of the world during which everything is destroyed except for all the CGI equipment that Hollywood owns and director Roland Emmerich.  If that were to occur, the only hope for entertainment that survivors of the apocalypse could hope for would come in the form of  terrible films comprised solely of special effects, created by one of the single worst directors to ever make a lot of money. 

I know.  I just felt the collective shudder.

Not yet satisfied with being responsible for five previous shitty films that deal with the subject of the destruction of mankind, Herr Emmerich has decided that it’s time to return to the WC for yet another blast of cinematic diarrhea. 

Oh Roland, Roland, Roland…You know, this afternoon after watching the trailer for 2012, I began to ask myself why Emmerich doesn’t just give up on live action films and start doing animation, seeing as he loves to play with computer generated images so much.  The answer that I inevitably came up with was that Emmerich doing such a thing would most likely qualify as child abuse.  See, as adults we learn to stomach all sorts of terrible and nasty things.  We know that it’s just part of life.  But a child, a child is innocent and hasn’t yet come to realize that there are shit-lobbers like Mr Emmerich out there, all set to ruin everyone’s fun.  It’s really quite tragic.

Instead, I think that Emmerich would be better off making trailer-length films.  I think that everything that anyone has ever wanted to see in a Roland Emmerich film has been established in his trailers.  Things blowing up?  Check.  Large things falling over and crushing everything beneath?  Check.  The earth splitting open and swallowing people up?  Check.  The script doesn’t matter in these sorts of films, so what more do we need to see from this guy that can’t be established within the course of 2-3 minutes?

Nights in Rodanthe (2008)

USA

97mins

Director: George C. Wolfe

Writer: Nicholas Sparks (novel)

              Ann Peacock

             John Romano

Why not?  Why not give the last two posts of the month to Diane Lane?  She deserves them.

Oh, Nights in Rodanthe.  Such an elegant title isn’t it?  Once again I was forced to watch this on a flight on a shitty airline that still hasn’t caught on to the idea of having TV screens installed in the backs of every seat so that you can choose which films you watch as you fly.  (Incidentally, that airline was Lufthansa and I truly don’t recommend it.)  No, they do it the old fashioned way where they show you one film every six fucking hours, on a faded and blurry screen that you can barely see at the fucking front of the plane.  And what better film to drop on a flight full of bored, entertainment deprived travellers than fucking Nights in Rodanthe?  Awesome.

In this smoldering heap, Diane Lane surprised everyone by playing – you guessed it – a divorcee.  Richard Gere is in this fucker too and he plays a doctor who is tormented by the death of a patient.  They both end up meeting up at a sea front getaway.  Gere plays hard to get, but it isn’t long before they both get liquored up and Lane’s got her Kung-Fu grip going all over Gere’s sausage.  Then they struggle with their relationship for reasons that don’t matter and which do nothing more than extend the running time of the film.  There are also some wild horses that are supposed to run across the beach from time to time.  I didn’t care about these horses when Diane Lane’s character tells Richard Gere’s character about them at the beginning of the film, and I especially didn’t care about them when they actually materialize at the end of the film.

Come to think of it, I didn’t care about anything in this film.  It’s also pretty fucking depressing to consider that if my flight would have plunged into the Atlantic Ocean whilst I was watching this, it would have been the last film that I’d ever seen.  Now that’s a truly horrible thought.

 I think I just ruined my day.

Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

USA/Italy

113mins

Director: Audrey Wells

Writer: Frances Mayes (book)

              Audrey Wells (screen story and screenplay)

This movie would have been great if they could have gotten rid of the director, the cast, the screenwriter and pretty much everyone except the DP.  This is because the locations were the only thing that kept me interested in this thing past the 15 minute mark.  I would gladly have taken 113 minutes of silent footage of Southern Italy over 113 minutes of what I got, which was Diane Lane wandering around Italy, sad, then happy, then sad, then happy again.

The truth is, I don’t even know where to begin with this.  Through a series of incidents that I more or less glazed over in which Diane Lane’s character finds out that her husband is banging some hot young college slut, Diane Lane’s character is then faced with a life of poverty, which involves having to sell her house to her cheating husband or else she’ll have to pay alimony.  Why does she have to pay and give up her house if it was her husband who was the one that was cheating, you ask?  No idea.

Did I say that she faced a life of poverty?  Well yeah, technically it is a life of poverty.  That is, if you define poverty as the ability to purchase, remodel and live in a three-hundred year old Italian villa without ever having to work again. 

But hey, details, schmetails.  The rest of the film plays out like one big Massengill commercial set in Italy, complete with Diane Lane being showered in rose petals (in slow motion), snuggling in bed with a dark and handsome Italian and drinking wine amongst the flowers.

There are flaccid attempts at injecting metaphors and references to Italian film that would be completely lost on the middle American neglected housewife set whom this film is targeted at. 

There is also Sandra Oh, playing a pregnant lesbian who travels to Italy in order to have her baby there. The baby is born and who fucking cares.  This film has all the twists and turns, ups and downs and surprises of making a sandwich.  Not a lunch sandwich either – a drunken, home from the bar at 5am sandwich where you pile whatever is at hand on and soak it all down with bar-b-que sauce and mayonnaise.

No He Won't. He'll Just Blow.

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan (2008)

USA

113mins

Director: Dennis Dugan

Writer: Adam Sandler

               Robert Smigel

               Judd Apatow

Someone really does need to mess with the Zohan.  Someone needs to fuck his shit up good.  Maybe that way Zohan will learn that you don’t mess with the Audience.  I’m not kidding when I say that this film didn’t make me laugh once.  Not once.  No smile, no giggle.  Nothing.  If this is the best that Adam Sandler can do, he might as well pack it all in.  Just quit making movies because he obviously lacks the ability to get anything remotely resembling humor across to his audiences. 

The worst part about all this is that I’ve never disliked Adam Sandler.  I used to think that he was funny.  I liked Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore.  Hell, I even laughed a couple of times at Mr. Deeds.  But this?  The problem with Adam Sandler’s brand of humor is that it wallows in a type of immaturity that is only slightly over the heads of children.  This causes problems because kids don’t get the jokes and adults do get the jokes but don’t think they’re funny.  That’s because the jokes aren’t even close to being funny.

And did this bowel movement really need to be almost TWO FUCKING HOURS LONG?  Come on!  If you’re going to make a shitty movie (and the people behind this know that it’s a shitty movie, they just do), then at least make it short.  

This film did really well at the US/Canadian box office if memory serves me correctly.  Thankfully for Adam Sandler.  Still, just because something makes a lot of money most certainly does not mean that it’s good.  Prostitutes for example, make a lot of money.  Does that mean that they’re the best lays around?  

Oh well.