Why?
Why the fuck?
I find Jack Black funny. Very much so. I absolutely fucking loved Before the Sunset, and pretty much liked everything I've seen from director Richard Linklatter. I could write a love poem to the soundtrack.
So how could they have made such a piece of unwatchable trash? And how the hell did they hoodwink everyone, including several movie reviewers I normally agree with, into liking this disastrous underdogs-beat-all-odds rotten piece of excrement?
Well, I'll just assume you've already watched it and save myself the pain of recounting it. If you must have a synopsis, dreg up the cheapest, basest, most shopworn clichés and Hollywood formulae, and stitch them together. And add a fucking bucketload of (talented) obnoxious brats.
And it's fucking WRONG. This is the kind of movie that hedges its bets by making the main character be always right (not because he's, you know, right, but because the script bends backwards to prove him right), and the 'evil' characters are either bad! bad! bad! or such a fucking caricature that it's not even funny.
Let me illustrate. The always-great Joan Cusak plays the school principal. Not a bad guy per se, just an obstacle. So they make her nice enough, but comically uptight. By the way, she's the sole likeable character in the movie. Soooo...
At one point, it becomes clear that Jack Black must seduce her. He takes advantage of her in the most cynical of ways (not physically, because, she's old! and square!). He uses her, and throws her away just like that. I really expected something to come out of it, coming from the director that made the one romantic movie I wholeheartedly embrace. But no, we can assume she is out of a job and alone by the end of the movie.
I could so easily write out the outline of an 'anti-school of rock', leaving most of the plot intact, but showing Jack Black's actions under a different light, and I guarantee you most of the audience would be out to lynch him by the end. But thanks to a fascistically manipulative assfucker of a script, people embrace him... because he's following his dreams!
I hope said people's daughters have a professor like him, and end up as drugged out groupies at age 15 for a bad hair metal band (is there another kind?)
God, I feel soiled. It's been a week since I subscribed to Lovefilm, and I've already felt the need to kickstart my blog again. Shit.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Constantine
Note from future me: Well, I was kind of a dipshit twenty years ago. TLDR is I kind of liked the imagery but I hated the movie, which makes sense since this blog back then was all about tearing into movies I hated (often exaggerating the bile for comic effect, which...hasn't aged yet!). Except when I really liked them, I guess. All of these old reviews make me cringe when I look at them, but this one went a bit over the line.
I intend to revisit this one soon-ish, which is why I got curious to see what I'd said about it. Hooboy.
King Arthur
What can you say about a film that's supposed to be based on the 'real' man behind the King Arthur legend, but does not make the least effort to portray the medieval mindset?
I can buy it if it's a fantasy flick, but in films like this one or Braveheart, it fucking revolts me. The film borrows authority from a beginning quote that vaguely states that according to 'archeological evidence', the man named Arthur probably did exist. Then it introduces at least two characters that look like they stepped right out of a coiffeur. Turns out that the realism claims are, oh surprise, a gimmick, and that the film is yet another cynic attempt to cash in on the success of the Lord of the Rings franchise (joining the ranks of Timeline and Troy). Worse yet- The one motherfucker I would like to see eaten alive by baby rats, Mr Brucken-Shiteater-heimer, is lining his pockets with this crap.
In any case, the movie is about the titular Arthur, Official representative for the American Way of Life in the dark ages, and how he is forced by the snotty and colonialist legions of Rome into one last mission deep into the wilds beyond Hadrian's wall. Historic inaccuracies aside (I would normally ignore them, but hey- the movie started it by claiming to be validated by archeologists), the movie is a mess of uninspired performances, cliches, and just bad scripting.
It looks beautiful, though, and not just because of Keira Knightley; but that's something that's been bugging me since watching Hero and the Last Samurai. Namely, that cinematographic beauty (as in aesthetics, color schemes, etc) has come to be relied on as much as other bad movies rely on CGI; Hero in particular, wants to make you believe that the silly, stupid soap opera crap that passes for a plot is art because, well, it sure is pretty crap. So no, I'm not falling for it anymore, this movie takes itself far too seriously for individual scenes to make me ignore the essential crappiness at its core.
And what the hell is up with Clive Owen? forget that none of the cast can summon up one dreg of charisma, that asshole is all but channeling Nicholas Cage! It's a bit disturbing.
Just about the only thing in this movie worth the celluloid, except for some bloody scenes, is Stellan Skarsgard as the terrifically sociopathic Saxon leader. I was actually hoping for a standard hollywood tragic ending just to see him hacking that fucking zero-charisma Arthur into little pieces; that would have meant that I would have had to watch the other underdeveloped cypher, lancelot kill him in turn, but at least he had a two-dimensional character.
Finally, I'd like to say that this rant was fueled by the director's cut edition. Not that the original cut could conceivably be even halfway decent.
Oh, and please, someone please kill that fucker of a producer before I'm suckered into watching another one of his fucking excrements. And Antoine Fucqua: Training Day was overrated as hell.
I can buy it if it's a fantasy flick, but in films like this one or Braveheart, it fucking revolts me. The film borrows authority from a beginning quote that vaguely states that according to 'archeological evidence', the man named Arthur probably did exist. Then it introduces at least two characters that look like they stepped right out of a coiffeur. Turns out that the realism claims are, oh surprise, a gimmick, and that the film is yet another cynic attempt to cash in on the success of the Lord of the Rings franchise (joining the ranks of Timeline and Troy). Worse yet- The one motherfucker I would like to see eaten alive by baby rats, Mr Brucken-Shiteater-heimer, is lining his pockets with this crap.
In any case, the movie is about the titular Arthur, Official representative for the American Way of Life in the dark ages, and how he is forced by the snotty and colonialist legions of Rome into one last mission deep into the wilds beyond Hadrian's wall. Historic inaccuracies aside (I would normally ignore them, but hey- the movie started it by claiming to be validated by archeologists), the movie is a mess of uninspired performances, cliches, and just bad scripting.
It looks beautiful, though, and not just because of Keira Knightley; but that's something that's been bugging me since watching Hero and the Last Samurai. Namely, that cinematographic beauty (as in aesthetics, color schemes, etc) has come to be relied on as much as other bad movies rely on CGI; Hero in particular, wants to make you believe that the silly, stupid soap opera crap that passes for a plot is art because, well, it sure is pretty crap. So no, I'm not falling for it anymore, this movie takes itself far too seriously for individual scenes to make me ignore the essential crappiness at its core.
And what the hell is up with Clive Owen? forget that none of the cast can summon up one dreg of charisma, that asshole is all but channeling Nicholas Cage! It's a bit disturbing.
Just about the only thing in this movie worth the celluloid, except for some bloody scenes, is Stellan Skarsgard as the terrifically sociopathic Saxon leader. I was actually hoping for a standard hollywood tragic ending just to see him hacking that fucking zero-charisma Arthur into little pieces; that would have meant that I would have had to watch the other underdeveloped cypher, lancelot kill him in turn, but at least he had a two-dimensional character.
Finally, I'd like to say that this rant was fueled by the director's cut edition. Not that the original cut could conceivably be even halfway decent.
Oh, and please, someone please kill that fucker of a producer before I'm suckered into watching another one of his fucking excrements. And Antoine Fucqua: Training Day was overrated as hell.
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