Moneyball

This week, we went to see Moneyball. In case you didn't know, Moneyball is based on a book called Moneyball, and follows the Oakland Athletics during the 2002 season. It mainly deals with how they started using Sabermetrics to evaluate players, instead of relying on scouting (by the way, it's starting to spread into other sports as well. It's just that baseball is the one sport that can be most accurately be reflected by statistics besides wins and losses). "Finally" I thought to myself "A movie for me." I'm a math nerd, and a movie geek, putting Moneyball squarely in my dweeb wheelhouse.

Evan won the preview game (he's been beating me a lot lately) because he got Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Real Steel (terrible) and I only got The Rum Diary (hey look, it's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, redux). Anyway, after only one single, solitary company logo (Columbia Pictures), the movie starts with archival footage of the A's losing the decisive game of the 2001 American League Division Series (ALDS, which sounds more like some affliction I'd get when I'm older, as opposed to baseball playoffs). Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is the manager, listening to the game on his portable radio and turning it off during critical moments (he's a bit superstitious). After his team loses, he takes a couple of days to regroup and come to terms with his losses (two of his best players are leaving for free agency. As a warning, this movie - and thus review - will probably have a lot of sports terms. Sorry). He tries to re-sign Johnny Damon, but Damon's agent (Scott Boras. Ha!) leverages their interest to get a better deal from Boston. Oakland can't match the offer because they just don't have the money (Why buy a baseball team if you can't afford it?) so they have to watch him walk.

Beane goes to the Indians to trade some players. He walks into the GM's office and tries to make several trades, the last one being for a substandard player. Even that’s rebuffed, because the GM listened to this really young guy named Peter Brand (Jonah Hill. Peter Brand is a renamed Paul DePodesta). After the meeting, Beane seeks out Brand, who explains to him that baseball scouts have been going about it all wrong. Batting Average, RBI's, and other "traditional" stats don't correlate that well with winning. Other stats, like OBP (On-base percentage), do a better job. It doesn't matter how a player gets on base (Walks, hit by pitches, or hits) as long as they do.

Beane hires Brand, and together they go after players that other teams have deemed expendable based on traditional scouting (too old, weird looking pitching - that's what submariners do, folks). So they assemble "An island of misfit toys" that their scouting department hates, but Beane and Brand like.

The regular season gets off to a rocky start, because the manager won't play the players how Beane expected (Hatteberg is supposed to be on first base, not Peña). Fed up with constant arguing with his manager, Beane trades Peña (and Jeremy Giambi, for good measure) after a 20-26 start to force Hatteberg onto first.

Things pick up from there. The team starts to play better. They swing some deals and manipulate managers at the trade deadline to get who they want. It sparks a winning streak that provides a lot of the tension at the end of the movie, because they have a chance to break the record for the longest winning streak.

I liked this movie, but that might be because I'm a sucker for baseball movies with SPOILER happy endings END SPOILER. Brad Pitt's good, but he's always good. He does Brad Pitt things, but with an underbite and a trace of an accent.

His daughter is cute and worries about her father, and sings a sweet song to make the SPOILER happy ending END SPOILER. The song is totally real, and it's called The Show by Lenka. And yes, I have it stuck in my head. It's still a good song, and the rest of the music sounds remarkably like Explosions in the Sky (who did the music for Friday Night Lights), by which I mean it's pretty good.

Other than that, there's baseball in it, and players learning to hate losing and love winning (really? Players still need to learn that?) and dealing with not having a bunch of money in Oakland. I guess it's a Blue-Ray movie. Not quite enough to make it a theatre movie, mainly because there's no real end to the movie - it just stops. Good beginning and good middle, though. Plus, it has Bobby Kotick (he's the head of Activision Blizzard) playing the owner. And it's hilarious thinking he's that frugal, because I can totally imagine Bobby Kotick being that way in real life. Only a lot meaner. And stealing peoples' souls.

Killer Elite

About a week ago, I decided to find out who the official actor of the Mindless Movie Marathon is. To do that, I took the list of movies we’ve seen (in theatres, or together on Blu Ray or VoD. Movies I saw by myself don’t count) and made a list of the top billed actors in them. Usually I went down to major supporting characters, sometimes minor ones. And I found out the actor who’s appeared in the most mindless movies has only appeared in three. I was a bit surprised, because I thought it would be four or five. There are a lot of people at two. Jake Gyllenhall was in Source Code and Prince of Persia. Gemma Arterton was in Prince of Persia and Clash of the Titans. Sam Worthington was in Clash of the Titans and Avatar (although I’m not sure Avatar counts, what the all the CG making it almost a cartoon). Zoe Saldana was in Avatar and Colombiana.

Prior to this week, there were actually two actors who’ve appeared in three mindless movies each. Oscar Isaac has had minor roles in Drive, Robin Hood, and a supporting role in Sucker Punch. But the other one is … go on, guess … alright, it’s John Malkovich. He was the villain in Jonah Hex, had a major supporting role in RED, and a minor role in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

But that all changed this week with Killer Elite. Jason Statham stars in it, as well as The Mechanic and The Expendables, making him the Official Actor of the Mindless Movie Marathon (to the surprise of absolutely no one).

Evan won the preview game this week with Battleship and one other one. We pushed on the Ides of March, and I got Haywire. Haywire’s being pushed as the female Jason Bourne, but it gives me bad vibes. Maybe because it’s been pushed back several months even though it’s directed by Steven Soderbergh and has a host of good actors (Michael Douglas, Ewan Macgregor, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Fassbender). We’ll have to wait until next year to find out if I’m right.

Anyway, Killer Elite opens (after three studio logos) with an assassination of some official in a car. Statham does the actual kill, but is thrown off by the presence of a child in the car as well. He tells his mentor (Holy Frick! It’s Robert DeNiro!) that he’s out, and then retires to Australia.

A year later (1981, according to the timeline I have in my head), he gets the mail and discovers plane tickets and a picture of his kidnapped mentor. Well, there go his summer plans. Statham jumps on the plane and rendezvous with a middleman who takes him to the kidnapper. The kidnapper (a sheik) wants three SAS members killed, but not before confessing to killing his sons. Statham’s to get the confessions, then kill the men to make it look like an accident.

After a failed escape attempt, he gets right on that, flying to Paris to meet up with his team. This is pretty much two brothers, including a wonderfully mustached Dominic Purcell (seriously, that thing is glorious).

Anyway, the rest of the movie is spent finding these targets, then planning out ways to kill them to make it look like an accident. Their methods are pretty ingenious, actually. One, they hit in the back of the head with a hammer that’s been coated in bathroom tiles, so it looks like the target tripped in the bathroom and fatally hit their head. Some drugs fake hypothermia for another target. Carefully manipulated car accidents happen. Good times all around.

Unfortunately, trying to find the SAS people raises some suspicions, which are reported to Clive Owen’s character, an ex-SAS officer himself. (Is half of England ex-SAS?) He’s part of a little known club that exerts light control on events to help shape their country. He figures out who’s being targeted, but his club gets word that they need to die for certain conspiracies to take root, so he goes rogue because his people’s lives are more important than whatever goals his club has (usually money).

So there are confrontations between him and Statham, between him and his club, between his club and Statham, and between Statham and all of his targets. And his team, just for fun. It’s a good thing Statham has such a hot girlfriend (Yvonne Strahovski) to make it all worth it.

A lot of people complained that this movie didn’t have a lot of action, but I disagree. It might not have the most action, but there weren’t that many long breaks from chases or fights. 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, and most of that time is spent doing some useful detective work. Cool stuff.

Another thing I liked was the music. Not extraordinary, but exciting when it had to be. And it's always fun when a character from a favourite TV show (Chuck) gets a role in a movie, however small.

The movie is long. It feels like it has a tacked on extra climax, but I can understand why they did that, even if I don’t agree with it. I guess closure is a powerful motivator for some people. Anyway, I liked it. It’s not a theatre movie, but definitely a Blu-Ray. Good stuff all around. Plus, DeNiro has a scene near the end that he just OWNS. It’s one of the rare scenes in a movie where everything comes together perfectly. Actor doing awesome stuff, perfect camera work, great set up, fantastic execution. Just all around Bad Ass-ness.

Drive

Evan and I saw Drive last night, along with a couple of Evan’s labmates. Evan got two trailers (Sherlock Holmes and The Ides of March) and I got one ( I can’t remember which one), but Immortals didn’t count. You hear me Evan? IMMORTALS DIDN’T COUNT!

Anyway, Drive opens with a heist in which Ryan Gosling is the wheelman. He explains the rules on the phone (why do getaway driving movies have rules?) then waits while the robbery’s in progress. Once the thieves are in the car, he sets off. It’s more tense than action-y (especially with the simple soundtrack behind it. More like an electronic pulse than a beat), and more about avoiding detection from the cops than evading them in a high speed chase. So it was more of a low speed drive than anything, ending in the parking garage of the LA Forum (or suspiciously similar building), where a basketball game was letting out. The members of the car blend into the crowd and escape. Nifty.

From there we see Gosling go about his life. He doesn’t say much. He works as a stunt driver in the movies, under a nice guy played by Bryan Cranston (finally allowed some hair). He also works in Cranston’s garage as a mechanic. Apparently, Gosling is just super-awesome at everything cars.

He seems to be drifting through life, until he helps his neighbour (Carey Mulligan – adorably cute) with her car. He’s drawn quietly into her life, and the life of her young son. Mulligan and Gosling spend most of the first hour casting longing gazes or sheepish grins at each other.

The plot starts going when Mulligan’s husband gets released from jail. He gets beat up when he refuses to do a ‘job’ with the members of the gang he owes protection money to from jail. After the gang threatens Mulligan and her son, Gosling gets involved as the driver for the job.

Things go wrong when the husband is killed by the supposed victim of the robbery. Things also start to get brutally violent. We see heads getting shot with shotguns, chests getting stabbed, skulls being beaten into paste, arteries opened, forks in eyes, and jugulars bleeding out.

So you’d think this movie would be violent enough for me. I’m not sure. It’s certainly violent, but the violence is also done very quickly. I mean, after one shotgun round, it’s not necessary to have a fight. It’s pretty much over after the trigger is pulled.

So the violence is blatant, but quickly over. And with a movie called drive, I expected a car chase. Nope. Just the beginning. Certainly, there is a lot of driving. But it should’ve been called Drive in the same way the Pride and Prejudice could have been called “Fancy Houses.” Yes, a large portion of the film took place while driving. But most of the important stuff was done outside of the car.

When I complained about the lack of car chases to Evan, he reminded me it was an indie movie (thus the three company logos at the beginning of the movie) and had probably spent the entire budget on blood packs.

The soundtrack was good. Some of the electronic pulse stuff. Some ephemeral music for happy times and longing looks. I know the perfect band for music like that, but I doubt that the makers have ever heard of the Faunts.

It’s not quite as disappointing as Faster, because having Gosling in a movie kind of points to a certain respectability (and thus, less action), whereas The Rock implies action and lots of it. Still, they both promised car chases and lots of guns, and left us with nothing but fake blood. So I’m going to give it a rating of cheap DVD, if only for the Ryan Gosling fans. He’s a good actor (watch The Believer and be blown away), so kindly stick to acting movies, and let me have my mindless back.

Big Trouble in Little China

This week, Evan and I reached into the vault (No, not that vault. Not that one either. To be honest, according to Evan, it was more of a going-out-of-business Blockbuster than a vault) and saw Big Trouble in Little China.

I'd heard about this movie for years, but assumed it was some sort of 1950's movie starring John Wayne and set in turn-of-the-20th century China, back when every country and their little brother was getting in on the action and basically raping China on a federal level (seriously. The way we treated the Chinese - and other foreign people, for that matter - was disgusting. And it didn't stop in China, either. If you think slavery ended with the abolishment, read some history on Chinese immigrants. Even today, there are thousands of women and girls being sold into prostitution. You can watch a play about it called She Has a Name, or read about it here), but that's little too serious a subject to be discussing in a blog with Mindless in the Title.

Anyway, I think it was Roger Ebert who clued me into the actual setting of the movie. Last week, Evan and I didn't watch any movies, but we did watch the NFL opener and looked at possible movies for this week. I didn't watch much of the game, because Evan had an iPad and I was having too much fun trying to get trains into their proper stations. Anyway, while perusing movie lists I came across Big Trouble in Little China and remembered Roger Ebert's words on the subject, and so I unilaterally chose it for this week's movie.

The plot is as follows: Kurt Russell (Aw, yeah!) is a truck driver named Jack Burton. He delivers a shipment to Chinatown in San Fransisco and then spends the night gambling with the people there, inclduing his friend, Wang Chi (this was probably before 'wang' attained widespread use as slang for penis, but I wouldn't bet on it). Anyway, Jack wins a double or nothing bet against Wang, but he can't pay up until he picks up his fiancee Miao Yin (played by Suzee Pai) at the airport.

So they go to they go to the airport (Jack gives Wang a lift because he doesn't trust his friend to pay up). While they're there, Jack tries to hit on Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall, and if you think she looked good in Sex and the City, you should definitely see this movie), a lawyer based out of Chinatown.

Miao is kidnapped right in front of them, so Jack and Wang take off in their truck in pirsuit, but lose them. Wang tries to lead them to their hideout/club, but they stumble into a gang war in the middle of an alley. It's ended when the good guys seem to be winning, but the sudden appearance of some supernatural guys (named Lightning, Thunder, and Rain) in giant lampshade hats. The Lampshade Squad makes quick work of the good guys, and Jack and Wang are forced to abandon Jack's truck and flee to Wang's uncle. Gracie comes in to tell them that Miao's been taken to White Tiger, a woman who runs a whorehouse. Jack goes undercover to rescue her, but she's taken by Lightning, who can apparently shoot electricity and then use it like a grappling hook. Evan pointed out the similarity to Raiden, complete with giant hat.

Back at the base (Wang's uncle's restaurant), they figure out that Maio's most likely at the secret fortress of Lo Pan, a reclusive stocktrader by day, ancient cursed minion who needs to marry a green-eyed woman to become flesh and then sacrifice her to be immortal by night, who worships a demon who allows him to become incorporeal if need be, or else he's an incredibly old man stuck in a wheelchair.

Jack and Wang break into Lo Pan's stock exchange (or whatever it is), and sneak into the underground lair, but soon get captured. Gracie, Margo (her reporter friend) and Eddie (the Maitre'd at the restaurent) try to come in as well, but they get captured too. Jack and Wang manage to break out and rescue their friends, as well as a number of other girls being held there. But Gracie's taken (again) and they still haven't found Miao.

Lo Pan notices Gracie's eyes are also green, so he decides to marry both, sacrifice one, and sex up the other. Talk about having your cake and eating it too (which never made much sense. What's the point in having cake if you're not going to eat it? They need to come up with a better saying).

Jack and Wang hook up with Egg Shen, a sorcerer/bus driver on the side of good, and they go after Lo Pan once and for all (and rescue the girls, of course). So they sneak through the sewers of Chinatown, which also happen to be part of the underworld (I never knew San Fran was that mythological) and into the wedding room, which looks like a giant diabolical nightclub / archeological dig. A giant fight breaks out (of course it does), and people die, but not the main ones. Lo Pan marries both women, becoming flesh, and escapes back upstairs, being pursued by Jack, Wang, Egg, and Egg's compatriots.

Jack manages to kill Lo Pan. Thunder, upon seeing his master dead, inflates until he expodes (he needed a place to vent). Rain was killed by Wang in the massive brawl, in a sequence I'm guessing was mostly filmed on trampolines. Fun times! Lightning gives chase, but is finally stopped when Egg drops a giant rock on his head. Endings ensue, some happy, some not.

I liked this movie a lot. It's all kinds of silly. Lots of stuff just came out of nowhere and had Evan and I laughing our butts off. Jack Burton's a motormouth, and only somewhat competent, so there are times when the character is just hilarious. Like Indiana Jones, only if he wasn't as good as he thought he was. Kim Cattrall can match him (mostly), although she does get relegated to rescuee for the last half of the movie. Margo's supposed to be an intrepid reporter, but is mostly naive, and Eddie has a huge crush on her. The characters are simply good. They fit, and they may not be well written, but the funny makes up for it.

This should be the bar against which all other B-movies are measured. Sure, some will be better. Most will be worse. But it's exactly what I want in a movie. Action, comedy, witty dialogue, actors who don't take themselves too seriously. So I'd recommend it to everyone. And since Blockbuster is going out of business, I own it now, so I can loan it to you.

Special mention goes to John Carpenter. He's the director. He did the music. He also appears in a hilariously 80's music video in the special features.

Sports Break - New NFL Kickoff Rules

Yes, in honour of the start of the NFL, we're having a sports break. I figure this blog has branched out enough that it's not just movies, it's entertainment in general. And since sports are entertainment, I can cover sports and be safe. Or I can just repeat what's becoming the unofficial motto: it's my blog, and I'll do what I want to.

The NFL just went through a lockout, settling things in time to have an abbreviated free agent frenzy before training camps started. Among other issues in the agreement was a rule change to move kickoffs from the 30 yard line to the 35 yard line (on a 100 yard field remember. It's the NFL, not the infinitely-more-awesome CFL with its 110 yard field). The move was done for safety reasons, since the awareness of concussions has risen dramatically in the past few years (of course, it's possible that cumulative small blows to the head are more dangerous than one large one. Research is ongoing).

Anyway, a lot of football pundits have been decrying the rule change because it'll decrease the excitement of kickoffs (wait, do we really want serious injuries in exchange for more fun? Well, yes, since we watch football. Football is inherently violent, and injuries are a large risk attached to violence. My own caring for safety is hypocritically disproven by my fandom) by increasing the amount of touchbacks. Of course, it's being blown way out of proportion (Wait, pundits exaggerate? No Wai!) and it's being implied that all kickoffs will be touchbacks. To which I say: Ha! and Ha! again.

I think that decreasing the length to get a touchback by five yards will only have a minimal impact. 10% at most. After all, out of all the kickoffs, how many were between 65 and 70 yards? (The magic length that would necessitate a return before the rule change, and can be a touchback afterwards.) To get a clear idea, I had to look at some data, which is hard because it's not like any site has specific data for each kickoff ever. In fact, the most accurate picture would come from culling through all the play-by-plays. I found an awesome site that compiled all the play-by-plays for the past 11 years (2000 - 2010) called Armchair Analysis. Soon I was poring over data, because I just finished playing through Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the second time and need a new hobby before I dive back into World of Warcraft. I know what you're thinking. "What kind of guy does statistical analysis as a hobby?" This guy, that's who *points thumbs at self*. Because it plays nicely into my second hobby - proving many people are wrong, then loudly proclaiming it.

One thing became clear when I looked at some random games, and that is that players used to return kickoffs if they only went a yard or two into the endzone. But because the kicker, as well as the entire kickoff team, have been moved up five yards, the likelihood of a return from the endzone is fairly remote. So that was one impact I had overlooked. Maybe others had picked up on it as well, I don't know. Anyhow, we have to assume that any kick over 65 yards will wind up as a touchback. Onto the results.

The total number of kickoffs listed was 27543. I'm going to take out squib kicks, because we're looking at kicks that are supposed to go for distance, not kill time. Onside kicks are actually listed in the data as different than kickoffs, so that's nice. I figure any kick over 30 yards would be acceptable. So out of 27543 kickoffs, 27424 were over 30 yards. Out of those, 2952 produced touchbacks, for a rate of about 10.8%.

There were 12319 kicks less than 65 yards (44.9%).

There were 7713 kicks between 65 and 69 yards (28.1%)

There were 3335 kicks of 70 yards, including touchbacks (12.2%)

There were 4057 kicks of more than 70 yards, including touchbacks (14.8%)

All told, there were 15105 kickoffs of 65 yards or more that would now be touchbacks, or 55.1%. Now, subtracting the ones that actually were touchbacks, and we get 12153 kicks over the past 11 years that would have been affected by the new rule, or 44.3%. Which means that I was pretty wrong (why does that keep happening?) and everyone else was right.

Just for fun, I averaged the stats per game (there were 2921 games in those 11 years), and it turns out that there were about 9.4 meaningful kickoffs per game. Applying the 45% affected rate to those kickoffs means that we can expect about 4 kickoffs per game will now be touchbacks instead of returns. Add that to the 1 touchback per game that we already had, and we have 5 touchbacks per game. More kickoffs will be coming out to the 20 than will be returned. And while that makes me miss the excitement, it does bode well for the safety of football players.

So what does that mean in real life? Well, I only have a sample size of one (Evan and I watched the first game of this NFL season together). And a sample size of one is terrible for statistics. All the scientists say so, which means it’s a good thing I’m not a scientist (both for my credibility, and for the benefit of science. I would set us back 300 years. Easily. 400 years if I really went for it). Anyway, the first kick of the season (according to the play by play, since we missed the first minute of the game) went 3 yards into Green Bay’s endzone, but it was returned to the 24 yard line anyway. After that, a succession of touchbacks occurred. And a kick return touchdown. So honestly, I have no idea what to make of that data. It’s a really good thing I’m not a scientist.

Colombiana

Just so you know, the Mindless Movie Marathon is now on Twitter. You can follow it here, and I'll try to set up a widget so our latest posts appear on this very blog. Both Evan and I have access to post on it (see if you can tell our tweets apart), and we'll tweet when new columns come out, which movies we're going to see (and which ones we're definitely skipping), as well as whatever movie humour pops into our heads.

Anyway, this week we went to see Colombiana. We got there a bit late (cleverly skipping the ads while still getting great seats) and I got both the trailers. We came in during Ghost Rider, and Straw Dogs was next. A sequel and a remake. Although at least Straw Dogs has good source material. The original starred Dustin Hoffman.

Anyway, Colombiana opens with four company title screens (we keep track), and then quick shots over Columbian favelas as the credits play. The first actual scene has a mansion and plays Ave Maria, so I had high hopes that this movie would be good.

Two men are getting sentimental about what they mean to each other, so they bring out the alcohol to restore the level of testosterone. After they each have a glass, one of them leaves. It's pretty clear that they want to kill each other, and they both know the other wants to kill them. The one who leaves goes to his house to evacuate his family (his wife and nine-year-old daughter). He gives his daughter an SD card (in 1992?), a card for the American Embassy, an address in Chicago, and a golden necklace of an orchid native to Columbia called a Cataleya (hey, it's also the daughter's name! What a coincidence!) that's their family symbol, or something like that.

Before the family can leave, the bad guys show up, and the parents fight them in a hallway (and offscreen, to boot). The head bad guy tries to talk nicely to the daughter to get her to hand over the SD card, but she stabs him in the hand and leaps out the window. Parkour ensues.

Over and under the favelas they go, before she eventually slides into a sewer whose entrance is too small for the rest of them to follow. She emerges from a manhole and goes to the embassy, where she's shown inside after producing the card her father gave her. There, she vomits up the SD card (she swallowed it. Smart girl) and hands it over.

The Americans are kind enough to give her some money, a passport, and fly her to Miami under the watch of a caregiver, but she escapes from a bathroom and makes her way to Chicago. There, she meets up with her uncle (who seems to be a bit of a gangster) and asks to be trained as a killer. Yes, she's nine, and apparently cold-hearted enough to hold onto revenge. And by the way, what is it with children devoting their lives to killing their parents' murderers? This is two weeks in a row.

Anyway, we cut to 15 years later, where a drunk Zoe Saldana crashes into a cop car. I'm talking about in the movie, not the headlines. Although I wouldn't be surprised, given most celebrity behaviour. Anyway, at the police station, she's taken to a cell to sleep it off. Once the guard leaves, she takes off her dress and rolls her skin-tight black cat-suit down her legs and arms. Then, sneaking past cameras, crawling through air ducts (and under short-circuited fans - it's a good thing she's anorexically thin), and knocking out unsuspecting police officers, she manages to kill another prisoner who's there under the not-so-watchful eye of the US Marshals. The gunshots attract the attention of everyone in the station, so it's back to the air vents, onto the roof, fingertip hanging onto ledges, and then back into her cell and her dress and pretending to sleep before anyone thinks to check on her.

The next morning she's released just before the station is locked down. We meet the FBI agents looking into the murder (there's been 21 others with the same M.O.) but having no success. Meanwhile, Cataleya goes back to Chicago to get another assignment from her uncle, to hang out in her apartment, and to move the tacked-on love story forward.

Her next assignment is much like the first. Stealth, avoid detection, only fight when necessary. Maybe it was the fact that I just got finished playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution (great game!) but I found a lot of similarities. Avoid cameras. Duck under windows. Make as little sound as possible. Knock people out when they're not facing you. Crawl through improbably spacious air ducts to get around. Basically, alert as few people as possible to your presence. Evan assured me that the Splinter Cell games were similar. Colombiana is pretty much a video game, except much shorter and worse.

Anyway, the FBI finally puts the clues into the paper, alerting the bad guys from the beginning of the movie that someone's after them, and putting them on Cat's trail at the same time. Of course, Cat wants to draw them out, and so the rest of the movie deals with this as well avoiding the FBI (which is closing in).

The movie has problems. Some small ones, some large ones. There's more stealth and far less action that I would have preferred. There's a good fight at the end, finished with the deft disassembly of a gun. Other than that, a lot of it is left up to the imagination, or the action is implied using quick cuts, shaky cameras, and intense music. And there's a lot of Cataleya escaping a room just before someone else enters it. Narrow escapes are fine, but not 17 of them in a row. Just keep it plausible, please.

Speaking of music, it's wasn't great. Sure, they started with Ave Maria and finished with an excellent cover of Hurt by Johnny Cash, but in between was a lot of music more suited to a drama (like Field of Dreams or October Sky).

I can understand some of the ideas they're trying to get across, but I don't think they did a very good job. For instance, they tried to show Cat as a very strong woman, but then they had her gradually breaking down as her support is removed. And I had to wonder who she would be if she had her revenge. She would have no more purpose in life, so what would she do?

It's a DVD movie. Probably a bit worse than The Mechanic (that one had slightly more action) and better than Faster (that one was quite a let down). So if you want to watch Zoe Saldana slink around in a skin-tight suit (or another short scene in which she clearly has no bra), you should probably wait. And if you're not interested in that, you should probably just skip it entirely.

Conan the Barbarian

This past Tuesday, Evan and I saw Conan the Barbarian (I must confess, I haven't seen the original. I've seen bits and pieces, and particularly enjoyed the part where Ahnold punches out a camel, PETA be damned). Anyway, we got to the theatre fairly early for a movie that only made $10 million on its opening weekend, and settled in for the preview. Evan got two, and I got one, and neither of us got Immortals, since the trailer opened with the words Immortals. Kinda defeats the purpose of the preview game.

The movie itself opens with the logos of four different companies, which is probably not a good sign, but as the years past, more and more companies get involved in financing movies. In ten years, half the movie will just be company logos. Anyhow, after a brief narration explaining the animated backstory of a mask that bestows magical powers (and how it was shattered), we cut to live action, where Conan is born via improvised C-section during the middle of a battle. His mother names him and dies, and his father holds him up to the sky and roars his approval (as if to say “Gaze upon the fruit of my loins. That’s right. I got it on.” Or possibly "please Lion King, don't sue us.")

12 years later, Conan (and the ‘a’ is definitely emphasized, like the name Nancy. Basically, stretch your mouth as wide as you can whilst saying his name, and you’ll pronounce it correctly) and the other older boys in his tribe are trying to prove themselves men. During the trial, they’re set upon by barbarians (not Conan’s barbarians. Different barbarians, who apparently learned to communicate from elephants, because they tend to roar like Chewbacca instead of yell or shout). The other boys retreat, but Conan takes them all on himself, eventually bringing their heads to his astounded father after a vicious fight.

Soon, though, their entire village is set upon by more evil people, led by that evil general from Avatar (with the scars on the side of his head, and the irrational hatred of native Pandorans). He’s got a different haircut this time, and he’s after the last piece of the magic mask. His daughter, a witch (and when was the last time we saw a young witch outside of Harry Potter, hmmmm?) manages to find the part without needing to torture Conan’s father, or Conan himself. The village is slaughtered, Conan’s father is killed, and Conan is abandoned inside a burning blacksmith.

A number of years later, and we finally get to see grownup Conan (he’s 6 foot 5 with red hair and a late night talk show … no, wait). After attacking some slavers to free the slaves, he parties hard with his comrades at the local bar (you know, what everyone does after freeing slaves). While there, he sees one of the men who was with General Evil (not his real name) and learns he’s a prison warden. Starting a bar fight and then turning himself in, he’s able to infiltrate the prison, then question the warden. And off we go on the epic tale of revenge, with an accidental rescue thrown in for good measure. After all, what would a barbarian movie be without a little love interest, or the obligatory sex scene? Oh yeah – tasteful. And you just can’t have that.

This is almost the perfect mindless movie. Shut your brain off, and enjoy for two hours. There’s plenty of action. I think the longest time without any action at all was about 15 minutes, and that was broken up by the obligatory sex scene (“Hey, if we’re going to be rated R, we may as well deserve it). So if there’s not action for us, at least there’s some for Conan (snigger).

The acting is about what you’d expect. Jason Momoa borrows Christian Bale’s Batman voice a lot. General Evil is sometimes hammy, but most of the time alright. His daughter is uncomfortably evil, and possibly incestuous (I know. Ew). The rescuee (the second half of General Evil’s plan, the first half being the acquisition of the mask) is often just eye candy, but gets in a few licks of her own when she can pull herself together enough to swing a sword or wield a dagger. When she’s finally captured by a group, she kills one of them before the rest drag her away, which is so clichéd it’s perfect for this movie.

The fight scenes weren’t as well choreographed as some, but I might be too used to Martial Arts masters going at each other with direction from Yuen Woo-Ping, so there’s that. Plus, the lack of quality is made up for by the abundance of quantity.

The music is serviceable. I didn’t notice it at all until the credits, which means it did its job, but wasn’t spectacular. It didn’t take away anything from the movie, or change the tone of scenes to something worse, but I doubt I’ll buy a score if I didn’t notice it.

One thing I really liked was that I finally saw a fight between dual-wielding people. Two people, each with two swords. Never seen it before. Now I have. I would have liked to see it in Star Wars, but I’ll take it here. So well done on that. Especially with the plentiful use of reverse grip.

All in all, this is definitely a theatre movie. Quite a bit of action, enough humour, borders on campy a few times. A bit too much time for me spent in the Younger Conan time period, but they were smart about it and kept his lines to a minimum. And it also gave us time to appreciate Ron Perlman in a fantasy movie not butchered by Uwe Boll.

The one thing the tended to overdo (besides the action, but I think it's impossible to overdo that) is the holding things up to the sky and screaming. Babies, swords, whatever. Man, they're going to get sued.