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.

30 Seconds or Less

So, due to a purchase of an air filtration unit (I'm sick of my place smelling like weed) and Evan absolutely crushing a burrito for supper, we got to the movie theatre a bit earlier than we planned, for a movie that was very unpopulated. We could have strolled in five minutes before the show and got good seats, but schedules are like that. Anyway, we saw the same pre-show show that we've seen before, but that's because we see a lot of movies. Kudos to Cineplex for changing them up every month or so. For people who only go to movies once a month, or a few times every year, they probably see something different every time. But the ads get monotonous for people that go every week, particularly if they also air on TV (damn Scotiabank SCENE ads. And the credit card is five times more efficient at piling up points than the debit card. Anyone who just gets the debit is really missing out).

Anyway, I pitched a shutout at the preview game. The Sitter: Jonah Hill trying to take care of kids. Tower Heist: Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick and some others trying to rob a ponzi-scheming Alan Alda. Bucky Larson Born to be a Star: An unbelievably atrocious movie about the naive son of two porn stars who goes to Hollywood to make movies of his own, and winner of my "I wouldn't touch that movie with a ten foot pole, and no, pole is not a euphemism, so quit giggling!" award (on a side note, they say that Hollywood is running out of ideas. But if the choice is between Bucky Larson and a remake of Blade Runner? Frankly, I’m choosing a wall. Against which I can bang my head. How the hell did a movie like this get greenlit?) And finally, Moneyball: Based on a true story of how Billy Beane introduced sabermetrics into baseball. If push came to shove, I'd go to see Moneyball in theatres, and maybe (maybe) Tower Heist.

Anyway, the movie itself opens with a car (possibly the alleged car) racing through streets, breaking rules, running red lights, speeding, and basically being a menace to society while a clock on the dashboard counts down thirty minutes. It hits zero before the delivery driver gets to his destination. Bummer.

Anyway, Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) gives the now free pizza over, and congratulates the two teens who ordered it for outsmarting the system (they order from that particular pizza place because it's impossible to get to their house in less than 30 minutes). Nick tells them they remind him so much of himself (scare tactics?), and promises to buy them beer if they'll give him the pizza money to pay for it. Hey, if the customers cheat the system, cheat the customers, right?

Next thing you know, Nick's drinking beer on his front steps and inviting his best friend Chet (Aziz Ansari) in to play CoD. The next day, he talks to his sort-of-maybe girlfriend (Chet's sister) where she tells him she'll be moving to Atlanta to take the Four Seasons management course. He's bummed, but tries to be happy for her. Back at his place with Chet, it comes out that they've each screwed each other over. Nick slept with Chet's sister a number of years ago, and told Chet all about it by using a different girl's name. And Chet slept with Nick's ex a week after she dumped him, as well as contributing to Nick's parent's divorce by spreading the (true) story about how his mother slept with a lifeguard. In Chet's defence, he admits he thought it was pretty cool Nick's mom slept with the lifeguard.

Meanwhile, Dwayne (Danny McBride) and Travis (Nick Swardson) are wasting their lives under the disgusted eye of Dwayne's father, The Major. The Major was in the marines, then won the lottery when he got out. Dwayne's worried there won't be any money left for him the way his father runs through it, so a stripper suggests to him that he hire a hitman to off his father. The hitman will cost $100,000, so all he needs to do is come up with that money, and he can get his hands on the million or so his dad has left to open a tanning salon. Which will be a front for a brothel (wait, why do brothels keep showing up in movies I watch?)

The two decide to rob a bank to get the money to pay the hitman. But they don't want to rob the bank themselves - they need a patsy. So they call the pizza place and get a delivery. When Nick shows up, they chloroform him, then put a bomb vest on him. It's basically a vest made of explosives (Travis is a bit of an explosives savant). If he tries to take it off - Boom. If he goes for help - Boom. If Dwayne or Travis get in a bad mood - Boom. He wakes up and is understandably freaked out, terrified, and panicked. He agrees to rob the bank in exchange for a code that'll open the vest, and off he goes.

The rest of the movie is about how he (and Chet) deal with the situation, and everything that goes wrong. It's not a great movie. It takes a bit too long to get started. To pick nits, Chet and Nick's conversations are more stand up comics trading jokes from their routines instead of actual conversations. And Aziz Ansari's hyper-chipmunk on crack delivery starts annoying and gets worse from there. But Evan has a huge man-crush on him, so I'll cut him some slack.

Jesse Eisenberg is pretty good. I doubt Michael Cera could do life-threatening panic as well (Cera can do terrified of boobs, but not terrified of bombs). Nick seemed to get more capable as the movie went on, though. Kind of a bit odd for a slacker.

Danny McBride was himself. He's got his shtick - douchebag white-trash cussing machine - and kept to it. Nick Swardson was similar, although not quite as douchy. He actually seemed like a good guy, only caught up in Dwayne's schemes.

The music wasn't anything special, but it's not a big priority in a movie like this. It was appropriately action-y when it was supposed to be, and there was a good joke about Matchbox 20 in there (whatever happened to those guys, and why aren't they the official band of hipsters everywhere?)

All in all, it's probably at the low end of my Blu-ray scale. Maybe a high DVD. It's definitely not a theatre movie. Takes too long to get going, not enough action for an action movie, almost enough humour for a humour movie. If you're a fan of Danny McBride (they exist?) or Aziz Ansari (Evan assures me they exist) then you should at least rent it.

Sucker Punch

Evan and I have an irrational dislike for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Maybe it's because of the first trailer and we couldn't get over first impressions. Maybe it's because of the math – a discussion last night estimated the number of combat-capable simians at roughly 5 million. They would be theoretically armed with stone-age weapons. Currently, the United States has a bit less than 3 million people on active and reserve status in their armed forces. They are armed with the best weapons money can by, missiles that can be precisely targeted from a continent away, and whatever latest killing gadget that DARPA has invented. Basically, the humans would kick ass, and the movie would be very short.

Anyway, it was the only big movie opening this week that would have qualified for our list. So pride intact (or hubris intact), we decided to skip it and watch Sucker Punch instead. It's been on our list ever since I saw a trailer for it that had a Samurai wielding a chaingun.

The movie starts with the death of a mother. Babydoll (Emily Browning) rushes into the room that the doctor came out of. Her younger sister comes into, and both of them collapse in tears. Their step-father doesn't seem too broken up about his wife dying, until he reads the will and finds out she bequeathed her estate to her kids. He locks Babydoll in her room and (possibly) kills the younger sister. Babydoll breaks out and finds a gun, threatening her step-father. But she drops it and runs when she sees her sister's body. The step-father calls the police, who drug her, and then he drives her to an institution for the insane. Oh yes, one more thing. It's all shot in slow motion, with a remix of 'Sweet Dreams' playing overtop of muted sounds.

Anyway, the administrator of the facility extorts the step-father for more money in return for a promise to lobotomize Babydoll (with her sister dead, she can't inherit her mother's estate if she's mentally incapacitated ... or something like that). Then we get a few short scenes of various objects that take place over five days. They end right before the critical portion of the lobotomy procedure.

Then we cut to the main fantasy, which most other fantasies are based in. It's a bordello/brothel/burlesque house. The girls dance on stage, and if a patron is impressed enough, he will pay for the girl for the night. Babydoll is new and hasn't danced before, but she's soon called upon at practice. The teacher puts the music on, and after one false start, she closes her eyes and a deeper fantasy sets in.

She opens her eyes to a snow swept scene, just outside a temple. Inside, she meets a wise man (seriously, he's credited as 'wise man') who asks her what she wants. She wants freedom, so he gives her a list of four known objects to retrieve (at this point, Evan and I were blatantly comparing it to video games), and one unknown one she'll have to discover for herself. "Oh yes, one more thing," he adds. "Defend yourself."

As she exits the temple, 3 giant, faceless samurai appear. The first one sends her flying back into the temple with a well placed foot to the face. He lays the smack down with a polearm for a while before Babydoll gets her bearings and opens a can of whoop-ass of her own with a katana the wise man gave her. She ends up decapitating him (he doesn't bleed, so there's no gore, just a bright light shining from his neck that winks out). The next enemy is the samurai with the chaingun that I have looked forward to since March. Dodging streams of hot lead and hiding behind temple columns, Babydoll advances on her opponent before leaping atop him (she may have spun as well. There was a lot of jump-spins) and giving him two shots to the face with her pistol (the other weapon the wise man gave her). The third samurai is dispatched quickly, and Babydoll closes here eyes, opening them again to the dance studio.

It's obvious that her battle fantasy has been her dance. Everyone was enraptured by it, except for Sweet Pea, who thought it was too erotic (you work in a whorehouse - you don't have a leg to stand on).

Babydoll shares her plan to escape with the other girls there (Sweet Pea, Rocket, Blondie, and Amber). They have four objects to steal, which they can do while the owner of that object is distracted by Babydoll’s dancing. All are on board, even a reluctant Sweet Pea.

When Babydoll dances for each of these thefts, her fantasy slips into a military setting, with a squad made up of her and the other dancers. The item is the mission objective, given in a briefing by the wise man. None of the opponents that they face are fully human (reanimated dead, orcs, and robots), which is pretty interesting, because it hints that Babydoll has issues with death. Well, that should be obvious given her mother and sister, but it also casts doubt on her presumed innocence. Maybe she feels responsible for the deaths of her family, and can’t cope with the thought of taking another life.

There are a lot of stray thoughts like these that come up during and after the movie. I don’t think critics were really expecting any thinking moments from this, and then panned it because they didn’t give it a deeper analysis. Which is really to their detriment, but my beef with critics will wait for a later post.

Music is a really big part of this movie. Each particular fantasy setting has its own particular song, although there are some orchestral cues thrown in if the song isn’t long enough, or if they need to shift the tone temporarily.

The settings are amazing. The main fantasy is kind of dreary, but the combat realms are awesome. There’s a steam-punk second world war, then an orc-filled castle straight out of Mordor (only our heroines are armed with assault rifles) and then a robot filled train on one of the moons of Saturn.

The movie was less exploitive than I thought. It’s still exploitive, though – it’s still mainly set in a burlesque house. Even the combat uniforms manage to show a lot of navels. But most of the stuff shows far less than what we’d see on a beach these days. It’s more reminiscent of 60’s bathing suits, which is pretty obvious since its set in the 60’s (maybe).

The main conceit of this movie is that were never really sure if what we think is reality is actually real or only exists in someone’s imagination, and whose imagination it exists in. It’s like Inception that way, but didn’t get the buzz because Emily Browning is not Leo DiCaprio and Zach Snyder is not Christopher Nolan.

Anyway, I liked this movie. It’s a theatre movie for me, because of its mix of awesome action (and I now realize I haven’t said much about the action – it’s super-awesome) and reality bending ideas. I usually don’t like those (I just want to enjoy the action), but somehow Snyder slipped past my defences, and now I’m waking up in the middle of the night and wondering “Wait a minutes, what if she imagined the whole thing?”

Cowboys & Aliens

I was all set to write about the 'Riders game this past Saturday, win or lose (they lost). I could even have included a movie connection, since we watched a Japanese movie called Returner that had a lot of potential but not much realization. I watched the game with Evan (a former football player) and James (a current football player), and so I could have included all sorts of insights I wouldn't have had watching it by myself.

But then I got to playing Fallout 3, and that was that.

So instead, I'll just write about Cowboys & Aliens. We took Nadia along with us, because she's apparently the only one who's noticed that Evan and I go to see movie every week, and have been doing so for about the past year (way to clue in, guys). Anyway, Evan won the preview game 2-1 for Ghost Protocol and one more I can't remember. I got Moneyball, and there was a horror preview (the ironically named Don't be Afraid of the Dark) that neither of us got.

Then the movie took my lead and started playing Fallout 3. No wait, sorry. It just looked incredibly similar to Fallout 3. Daniel Craig (Jake) wakes up with no memories at all, just like a player in most video games. He's immediately beset by some thugs, whom he quickly kills, just like in a lot of games. And then he loots their bodies, just like a good RPG player. He even has a nifty gadget on his wrist. In the Fallout universe they're called Pip-Boys, and they're basically the in-game menu for equipping items, eating food, keeping track of quests and what-not. Daniel Craig's has a holographic heads up display, and a pretty awesome energy weapon. Also, similar to the Fallout universe, he spends a good bit of time wandering around a desert wasteland. Right now I’m in the middle of Fallout: New Vegas, doing exactly the same thing. The characters even talk the same way, and some had the same drawl.

Anyway, Jake moseys on over to the nearby town of Absolution. He can't remember anything ("What do you remember?" he's asked at one point. "English."), but gets fixed up for a mysterious abdominal wound anyway and then goes outside. There, a young man named Percy is shooting random stuff. His dad's the most powerful man in the region, so Percy can do pretty much whatever he wants. Jake steps in, though, because Daniel Craig's a tough guy who doesn't take any guff from anyone, and both he Percy end up in jail.

At night, Harrison Ford (Dollarhyde - Percy's pa) comes to free his son, while the sheriff gets ready to ship both Percy and Jake off to the Federal Marshals. The aliens choose that moment to show up, and everything goes to hell. A lot of people get lassoed by the flying alien ships, and they tend to strafe a lot of building (just for poops and giggles, I guess). Jake's new wrist accessory lights up and does its thing, and an alien ship crashes to the ground. He and Dollarhyde investigate the wreckage together, and discover tracks leading out of town after an alien is hurt.

The next morning, a posse forms of pretty much every character we've met so far, and they ride out in the direction the tracks take. Jake goes to visit a house he's having glimpses of memories of, then rejoins the posse. The tracks get washed away by a rainstorm, so they take refuge in an overturned ferry. It's miles away from any river that would carry it, and it's upside-down to boot.

That night, the alien shows up and kills one of the supporting cast. The posse disintegrates. All the extras flee, while speaking characters stick around (well, all those that haven't been captured by aliens, at least). They continue on.

They come across a band of outlaws, and Jake's past is partially explained. Then the aliens attack, and Olivia Wilde's past is partially explained. Then they go after the aliens, and Dollarhyde's past is partially explained. There's a lot of character backstories explained either before or after the action scenes.

Anyway, I can't really tell more of the plot or characters without a bunch of spoilers, so I'll just tell you some other things instead. A few people die, and they all seems to have those dying words moments ("Master Yoda, You can't Die.”) conversations, where they say good-bye, or charge someone with some task they must complete, or tell their relative to be strong, or whatever. It happened at least three times, and I bet I'm forgetting some.

The music's adequate, but I expected more out of Harry Gregson-Williams. To be honest, the speakers were a little fuzzy for half the movie, but that's more of the theatre's fault than the movie's.

The drawl was iffy at best. And some of the language sounded off. But those are probably because I really liked the lines in Firefly more. They just had a sense of authenticity, which I know is weird from a show set far in the future in a different solar system. Whatever. There just weren’t enough “Iffins” or “Reckons” in here for me, like “Iffin you got sumthin’ to say, I reckon I won’ like it.”

I saw a lot of Indiana Jones and Han Solo in Dollarhyde. It's also nice that he can still run like the Harrison Ford of old. Or at least they got a convincing body double. Sylvester Stallone looked like a tangled marionette in The Expendables, so it's nice to see older people still looking like people.

I'm not convinced this is a theatre movie. There are a few jokes, but it's more serious than a movie called Cowboys & Aliens should be. There are only three real action set pieces, although it is fun to see Daniel Craig get to punch people out all the time. Still, I think it's only a Blu-Ray movie. Nadia says there should be more shirtless scenes. Maybe that would have pushed it up a level.