See PEEPLES Now, Or Forever Hold Your Think-Piece!

  

Much as I’d like to keep this apolitical and just talk about the movie, the way it deserves, I don’t think I can resist it this time.  Here is a statement I’m going to underline:  I paid to see PEEPLES opening weekend.  I am lucky to have a lot of chances to see movies for free, and quite frankly I need to take those chances whenever I can, because I don’t get paid much from writing yet, and my time-consuming day job pays me a barely-survivable wage.  To say I don’t have a lot of money (or time) right now is an understatement.  But I paid to see PEEPLES.

The main reason I did that is because I really love the main trio of lead actors, Kerry Washington, Craig Robinson, and David Alan Grier. They are actors who constantly make every scene they’re in a scene worth watching. In my opinion, Kerry Washington is an uncommonly passionate screen actor, with an unfakeable decency, whereas Robinson and Grier are two of the most consistent scene-dominators in all of comedy. These are guys who have shared screens with some of the most famous comedians in modern history and have stood out against them every single time. I would watch almost anything any of these three were in, and the three of them together is an irresistible prospect to me personally.  Happily, that instinct paid off for me, and their movie brightened up a gloomy, drizzly Saturday morning.

Craig Robinson, who you probably know from NBC’s The Office or PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, plays Wade Walker, a musician who plays very Craig-Robinson-style songs to school-children as a way to give them life advice.  He doesn’t make a lot of money but for the past year he has been dating a woman who does, glamorous lawyer Grace Peeples — Kerry Washington, most recently from ABC’s Scandal and DJANGO UNCHAINED.  Maybe you’re the type who’d look at the two of them and see a mismatch, but they have a sweet, eminently believable relationship in the opening scenes.  I’m not a romantic comedy kind of guy, but that’s not really because of my love of Clint Eastwood Westerns, monster movies, and ninja flicks.  It’s because most modern romantic comedies feature lead actors who go with their worst instincts and writers who can’t write relatable dialogue or scenarios.  I find either one, or both, of the romantic leads in most of these movies to be people in whose company I don’t want to spend an entire movie.

PEEPLES eradicates that reservation quite simply, with the power of good casting.  Every single actor in PEEPLES comes off well, even when they’re disagreeing with each other within the story.

Grace comes from a high-achieving family.  Her father Virgil (David Alan Grier) is a prominent judge.  Her mother Daphne (S. Epatha Merkerson) released a successful R&B album in the 1970s.  Her sister Gloria (Kali Hawk) is an on-camera newswoman.  Her little brother Simon (Tyler James Williams) is a brilliant inventor and an aspiring musician himself.  Her grandmother is Diahann Carroll and her grandfather is Melvin Van Peebles!

Wade has heard a whole lot about “The Chocolate Kennedys”, as he calls them, but he hasn’t met them yet, in a whole year of dating Grace.  This is weighing on his mind because he wants to marry Grace.  (Who wouldn’t?)  He has a romantic weekend planned, where he hopes to give her his grandmother’s ring, but she tells him she has to head home to Sag Harbor to celebrate her father’s beloved Moby Dick weekend.  (Yes, David Alan Grier dresses up like Ahab and reads from Moby Dick, yet another reason for me to feel warmly about this movie.)  When Grace heads off without him, Wade decides to crash the celebration and shows up uninvited, which immediately earns him Virgil’s disapproval, especially since Grace has never once mentioned Wade to them!

The rest of the film is a series of comic shenanigans and hijinks, as Wade struggles to endear himself to Virgil and continues to make things worse.  All of the main characters have secrets:  Wade is hiding his intentions, Grace is hiding her relationship and most of her history, Gloria is hiding the fact that she’s in a committed relationship with a woman (Kimrie Lewis-Davis), Simon is hiding his kleptomania, Daphne is hiding some recreational habits, and even Virgil is hiding… well, you’ll have to see.

This is Tina Gordon Chism’s first movie as both writer and director.  (She previously wrote the screenplays to ATL and DRUMLINE.)  If I had to be critical, I’d say her facility for staging scenes of farce is promising but not fully formed — some of the gags are hilarious, others could be more sharply carried off.  And to be honest, this is more of a showcase for Craig Robinson than for Kerry Washington, who gets less screentime and slightly less comprehensible motives.  But what quibbles I could come up with are overshadowed by my appreciation of this movie’s warmth and affable watchability.  That comes from a script which treats every character as a full human being, and direction that encourages every last actor to shine.  There are no villains here.  Every character is his or her only real enemy, but all of them have the ability to improve, and we get to see most of them do so before the movie’s done.  It doesn’t feel forced or unearned. That’s an increasingly rare experience at the movies. I laughed out loud several times throughout the running time, uncommon for me, and that happened because I enjoyed the characters and the performances.

Right this moment, PEEPLES is flopping at the box office.  That’s why I need to write this piece.  It’s not a perfect movie, but it does not deserve to flop.  It’s a generous movie about likable characters any audience would be happy to know.  For PEEPLES to flop, that means two things are happening:  People who like Tyler Perry are avoiding it, and people who don’t like Tyler Perry are avoiding it.  If you don’t like Tyler Perry, you are seeing his name on the poster and staying away.  Guess what?  I don’t much like Tyler Perry.  I’m the guy who wrote this, after all.

But Tyler Perry didn’t write or direct PEEPLES – Tina Gordon Chism did – and he sure doesn’t appear during it — an amazingly talented ensemble cast does — and very genuinely, I give Tyler Perry a ton of credit for trying to get this movie out in front of people.  To Tyler Perry’s diehard audience, I give no credit at all, since they have demonstrated with their dollar that they prefer exaggerated caricatures over believable characters and judgmental homilies over the loving themes of acceptance and honesty that PEEPLES encourages.

To me, those are themes worth supporting with my hard-won cash.  To me, it is worth supporting with my cash a film that gives Craig Robinson a long-deserved leading role.  (Judd Apatow didn’t give me that!)  To me, it is worth supporting with my cash a movie that maybe doesn’t represent my face specifically, but does represent faces resembling people in my life, dear friends of mine: teenage characters that aren’t sex-crazed morons, gay characters who aren’t mincing stereotypes, black characters who act like witty, successful, loving human beings rather than total fools.  To me, it is worth supporting with my cash the very rare case of a woman, and a black woman no less, writing and directing a feature comedy, especially a comedy that promises a career full of more to come, if only she gets another chance.

See, this is where I have to get political.  In the age of Facebook and Twitter, in the age where everyone has a blog or writes for one, in an age where we get to see and hear everyone’s opinions twenty-four-hours a freaking day, I’m not seeing a lot of put-up-or-shut-up.  In the last day alone, this Jezebel article excoriating misogyny in comedy has been in front of my eyes about a hundred times.  I happen to generally agree with what is being said in that article, and in most of the articles like it.  I’m not sure all of them apply to me specifically, but that’s not for me to decide.  I tend to think that a man who is willing to read an entire article like that in the first place is one who is friendly to the cause and interested in ways he can change if need be.  I love movies and I am trying hard to be a good person and I believe sometimes that means putting my money where my mouth is.  That last part is an important distinction, I think.

Maybe I’m overstepping a bit by suggesting it, but I’m going to do it anyway:  If you are so committed to the principle of furthering women’s roles in comedy, then will you not get out of the house and vote with your own dollar?  Will you not go pay for a movie written and directed by a woman?  Especially because I, someone who normally loves “guy’s” movies and who normally does not love movies with Tyler Perry’s name on them, is insisting that it’s a movie worth your time?  Maybe my opinion doesn’t, won’t, shouldn’t matter.  It’s true: I’m a very heterosexual male and my skin is pretty pale.   But still, the fact that a woman broke through and managed to get a comedy made and nobody’s going to see it is something that doesn’t feel right to me.  I want to do what I can about it.  Here’s one indisputable truth, feminists and fellow feminism-friendly men:  It’s not your blogs or your re-Tweets that are going to encourage studios to make this kind of movie.  It’s your hard-earned dollars.

@jonnyabomb

From The Archives: BILL HICKS, SANE MAN (1989).

If one were to step back and truly consider the unceasing patchwork of entertainment news clobbering our eyes, ears and minds twenty-four-hours-a-day, it would serve as a disturbing reminder of how little has changed since Bill Hicks prowled comedy stages, serving as a lonely voice of sanity out amongst the wilderness of institutionalized idiocy.

I’ve written about Bill Hicks once before. I was impressed by David Letterman’s 2009 tribute to Hicks, where he brought on Bill’s mother and personally apologized to her for the infamous incident where Hicks was kept off The Late Show due to Hicks’s propensity for inflammatory material. I thought it was a classy move on Letterman’s part – if belated, since Hicks died in 1994 of pancreatic cancer. I then went on to describe why I believe that Hicks’ brand of inflammatory material would have been necessary to broadcast, as it still is, because I think Hicks’ perspective, and those like his, demand to be heard.

Television, today more than ever, is absolutely flooded with mediocrity and moronity. Since television is only ever a reflection of what the American people are most concerned with at the time, that is a disturbing statement. It’s not a crime to enjoy turn-your-brain-off entertainment – but it IS a crime when the balances are off so badly. Mediocrity is rewarded and morons are everywhere, and even though we’re in the future, nothing’s changed. Some of the same exact same morons are still prominent, in fact!

It’s almost eerie that so many of Bill Hicks’ favorite targets back in the late 1980s and early 1980s are either still lingering, or have made their moronic return. The Bush family and the Iraq War are in sequels. Billy Ray Cyrus has returned with an even more ridiculous haircut, in a new role as world’s creepiest stage dad, pimping out his daughter to the world. The most recent Doritos ad, which was a huge hit at the SuperBowl, was the most-watched ad of all time. The New Kids On The Block are back on tour, clearly not recognizing the obvious irony in their name (or the obvious double-entendre in the name of their tour). And creepy Jay Leno and his gargantuan head are still clogging up the late-night comedy world, an unkillable milquetoast cockroach with a face the size of a parade float and a frame of reference the size of a peanut.

Watching the Bill Hicks concert film Sane Man, I was filled with growing irritation.

That’s not true. Watching Sane Man, I was laughing constantly.

It’s only afterward that the irritation struck, when I realized that all of the aforementioned morons are happily moving into advanced age with ever-thickening wallets, while Bill Hicks was struck down in his prime by an insidious disease. So many people have nothing useful or interesting to say; meanwhile, Bill Hicks was only getting started on expanding our brains and enlightening our perspectives. It’s just plain not fair.

But no one wise ever said the universe was fair. All we can do is keep Hicks’ work fresh in our memory, and luckily, there’s plenty of it available.

Sane Man is a concert film from 1989. It’s basically a rudimentary VHS recording of a typical Hicks performance, live, in front of a typical nightclub audience (with some amazing mullets), for a truly impressive length of time. I generally listen to Hicks’ CDs on repeat, so what struck me about watching him on screen for nearly two hours straight was his amazing confidence in front of a crowd. Hicks owned that stage. He clearly had absolute conviction that his words were worth hearing. (If he felt any personal reservations, it sure didn’t show.) His words were worth hearing, as always, but it’s nice to see that he seemed to know that too. If you like neurotic comedians, this ain’t your guy.

Sane Man probably isn’t my favorite Bill Hicks performance I’ve ever seen – for one thing the dated video elements and imperfect recording make it tiring to watch after a while. Also, a lot of the material Hicks performs here will be very familiar to diehard fans — a lot of it appeared in slightly different form on his albums – although it is a treat to see him act out his Jimi Hendrix routine. And this isn’t one for mixed company – Hicks gets particularly vulgar at a couple moments (understandable considering the fact that he’s playing to a drunken audience.) Personally, I never get tired of hearing any of Hicks’ bits and I’m not offended by his bluer material, so predictably, I loved Sane Man. I just wouldn’t recommend it as someone’s first exposure to Hicks’ brilliance. Start with any of the albums instead – they’re all still in print and available in most any music store that has a comedy section. Look for them (and more information) at the official website.

What I love about Bill Hicks is that, while his anger and disappointment were palpable, it was always clear that he was an optimist at heart. He wasn’t bitter about how things were; he just wanted things to be better. Bill Hicks left this earth too soon, but he left plenty of peerless comedy and immortal inspiration behind. He is as alive as ever, on his albums and videos.

Hear them.

And if you want to read more about Bill Hicks, I recommend tracking down Cynthia True’s terrific biography, American Scream, or this collection of Bill’s writings.

From June 23rd, 2010.

@jonnyabomb

This Person Looks Like That Person #14: The TAYLOR SWIFT Edition.

Gather round kids, because I’m here to predict a possible future for your hero Taylor Swift.

This Person Looks Like That Person, for lack of a better name, is a column I did sporadically in other corners of the internet.  Haven’t done it in a long time but I had no choice but to resurrect it, because this kid is everywhere and every time I see her, I think the same damn thing…

Taylor Swift = Christine Baranski minus a few years, also minus acting lessons.

By way of introduction:

Taylor Swift is one of the most lucrative names in popular music right now, for whatever reason.

Christine Baranski is a huge name in the theater world, and she’s currently starring on the TV show The Good Wife on CBS. She has been in TV and movies for a couple decades now, appearing in movies like THE REF, THE BIRDCAGE, BULWORTH, BOWFINGER, and CHICAGO, among many others.  She is a character actress who often plays urbane and over-privileged.  Her characters can be a pain in the ass, but she plays them with knowingness and a wry sense of humor.  We can only hope Taylor Swift adds the latter to her act one day.  Either way, they look pretty much the same.

I know it can be frustrating, but sometimes there’s nothing to do except agree with me.

Here are the previous installments of This Person Looks Like That Person:

#1-5

#6-13

And I do this kind of crap all the time on Twitter:

@jonnyabomb

Screenings in NYC: BEVERLY HILLS COP III (1994).

BEVERLY HILLS COP III is not as bad as anyone says it is.  That’s not to say it’s particularly great.  And maybe you shouldn’t listen to me anyway, because I saw it more than once in the theaters, and I can promise you that at the time I was as excited to see a new BEVERLY HILLS COP movie as most people my age would have been to see a new STAR WARS movie.  Most guys my age grew up wanting to be Han Solo.  I grew up wanting to be Axel Foley.  And a movie where Axel Foley investigates a murder at an amusement park?  Directed by John Landis (ANIMAL HOUSE, THE BLUES BROTHERS, SPIES LIKE US)?  Yeah, that’s a movie a sixteen-year-old Jon Abrams wants to see very much, thank you.

The first BEVERLY HILLS COP (1984, d. Martin Brest) is a pretty-much perfect Hollywood movie, a fish-out-of-water story with genuinely hysterical one-liners, an earworm of a main theme, a terrific supporting cast that includes Ronny Cox, John Ashton, Judge Reinhold, and the super-cute Lisa Eilbacher, at least two enjoyably-hissable villains (Steven Berkoff and BREAKING BAD‘s Jonathan Banks), and a comedic supernova of a leading man in Eddie Murphy, on a streak that went from Saturday Night Live to 48 HRS. to TRADING PLACES to his concert film DELIRIOUS and then here, to the biggest box-office hit of 1984.

The second BEVERLY HILLS COP II recently got a bump in its critical esteem with the too-belated outpouring of respect for the work of its director, Tony Scott.  I’m a big Tony Scott fan, but not as much a fan of BEVERLY HILLS COP II.  It’s a few notes too aggressive for my tastes, with villains that aren’t as much fun to hate (Jürgen Prochnow, Brigitte Nielsen, Dean Stockwell, and Gilbert Gottfried) and a dark and depressing overcast that sees Ronny Cox’s Capt. Bogomil sidelined throughout the entire movie.  The first film had moments of real darkness and danger that made it work for me, but somehow it was upsetting to have a character I liked so much shot down and left by the side of the road like that.  It must be how nerds of a different variety feel about Hicks and Newt in ALIEN 3.

Of course, Ronny Cox didn’t even show up for BEVERLY HILLS COP III.  As he told the great Will Harris over at the Onion’s A.V. Club, the script (allegedly) wasn’t so hot.  John Ashton (Sgt. Taggart) didn’t show up either, reportedly unavailable due to scheduling.  Those two characters, Bogomil and Taggart, were the strongest foils to Eddie Murphy’s  Axel Foley character, and their grudgingly warming up to him is what gave the franchise almost all of its heart and soul.  Without them, something’s missing.  In BEVERLY HILLS COP III, Bogomil goes unmentioned and we’re told that Taggart retired and moved out of state.  Even the puppyish Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold’s character) is trying to act more serious and mature.  Rosewood has a new, gruff, mustachioed partner, Jon Flint, played by Hector Elizondo, but let’s face it, the only one happy about that replacement is Garry Marshall.   The third movie, even more than the second, feels like its genesis was motivated out of less than artistic reasons.

BAM Cinematek is playing BEVERLY HILLS COP III as part of their terrific “American Gagsters: Great Comedy Teams” film series.  I’m torn between applauding the left-field choice and wondering why they didn’t go with the more popular and frankly more successful pairings of Eddie Murphy and director John Landis – TRADING PLACES and COMING TO AMERICA.  Those two films were much bigger creative and critical successes, and along with 48 HRS. and the first BEVERLY HILLS COP, are the foundation of Eddie Murphy’s onscreen comedic persona.  Apparently, John Landis and Eddie Murphy had a serious falling-out after COMING TO AMERICA (my heart hurts just typing that), and BEVERLY HILLS COP III was their reunion.  It came at a time (1994) when Eddie’s fortunes were shifting a little — his movies continued to make money but among many of his fans, they weren’t nearly as universally beloved.  Maybe Eddie was trying to recapture some of the old magic by bringing Landis back.  It could have worked.

I’ve always wondered what the tipping point was with Eddie Murphy.  For a time, he could do no wrong.  Then I started hearing people bagging on his movies, and what a disappointment he’d become.  No one thinks he still isn’t, somewhere inside himself, the most incendiary and fucking funniest comedian on the planet, but plenty of people seem to think he’s given up.  I don’t see it that way, but venture off my page and look elsewhere on the internet — it gets scary out there.  I think I can argue my point with the clear evidence that there are plenty of bright spots in Eddie’s post-1980s output:  THE NUTTY PROFESSOR (obviously), DOCTOR DOOLITTLE (fuck you, I laughed), LIFE (hugely underrated), BOWFINGER (a little underrated, definitely underseen), DREAMGIRLS (all-the-awards-worthy), TOWER HEIST (his performance, not the movie, which is otherwise pretty lame).

But there was a definite shift in Eddie’s persona that happened between COMING TO AMERICA and BEVERLY HILLS COP III.  The wisecracking, authority-demolishing, devil-may-care Eddie started to get romantic.  In my opinion, this really kicked into gear with BOOMERANG, a movie some people still love a lot, though you’ll see early traces of it in COMING TO AMERICA and then in Eddie’s own directorial debut, HARLEM NIGHTS.  I don’t have a problem with that — why shouldn’t Eddie get some onscreen, same as any other movie hero? — and in fact film historian Donald Bogle raised a similar point about BEVERLY HILLS COP — exactly why isn’t Lisa Eilbacher a romantic interest for Eddie in that movie?  (Of course we all know the old bad answer to that one.)  But when a comedy icon becomes a romantic lead, that requires some changes to his onscreen persona.  BOOMERANG Eddie Murphy is going to have to be a different guy in a lot of ways than 48 HRS. Eddie Murphy, or even GOLDEN CHILD Eddie Murphy.

In keeping with this line of thought, here’s one element of BEVERLY HILLS COP III that is actually underrated, and even better than the previous two installments:  Axel Foley gets a love interest, and she’s actually worthwhile, at least by 1990s big-budget comedy romantic interest standards.  Theresa Randle is an actress we don’t see much anymore, but she worked with Spike Lee and Abel Ferrara and had a role in both BAD BOYS movies.  She has a rather thankless role in BEVERLY HILLS COP III, as a park employee who helps Axel Foley out, and the romance doesn’t go too far, but at least it’s played by a capable actress who can suggest some subtext.

Maybe I’m easy on BEVERLY HILLS COP III because of that reason, or because on BAM’s page they have a John Landis quote which makes it sound more promising than it ended up:  “I was attracted by the marvelous premise of a murder in Disneyland, a subversive idea. And I couldn’t resist the thought of creating a world of wonders, immersed in illusion.”  The second half of that quote is Landis overselling it a little, but the first half is a genuinely good reason to make a movie, especially for a gleeful cinematic anarchist like him.  There are a few factors why the final edit of the movie feels more toothless than it should — budgetary cuts, rumblings of creative differences — but there’s still stuff to enjoy. The director cameos.  The name of the main villain (“Ellis DeWald.” Say it! It’s fun!)  The orchestral reworking of the “Axel F” theme, by Chic’s Nile Rodgers.  The fact that so far, fingers crossed maybe, it’s the last time we’ve seen Eddie Murphy’s most iconic character  a movie screen.  You guys go hang out with Han Solo all you want.  I’d still rather hang out with this guy.

BEVERLY HILLS COP III plays tonight at BAM Rose Cinemas.

@jonnyabomb

See This Movie Now!: BERNIE (2012).

Bernie is a friendly little film about friendship, truth, and murder, and what’s more, it has the feel of something new: I’ve been playing around with the term “documockumentary.” The restlessly creative director, Richard Linklater, wrote the movie with Skip Hollandsworth, the journalist who wrote the article in Texas Monthly upon which this fictionalized true-life account was based. The story is a whopper; its telling is even better.

In small-town Texas, (Carthage to be exact), Miss Marjorie Nugent, an elderly, church-going woman whose departed husband left behind a sizable wealth, was murdered by the town’s assistant mortician, Bernie Tiede. Marjorie wasn’t a beloved figure in town but she and Bernie were best of friends, to the point where she rewrote her will to leave her money to him. After killing Marjorie, Bernie hid the body and carried on for nine whole months as if it hadn’t happened. Once he was finally caught, Bernie immediately confessed to the crime, yet there are plenty in Carthage who still refuse to believe that he did it. Marjorie may not have been beloved, but Bernie was, and it’s an old story that perception counts for plenty in the court of public opinion.

It’s a pleasing irony that Bernie the movie feels so much like a documentary, considering that Bernie and Marjorie are played by Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine, two of the most outsized film actors on the planet. Jack Black is known as a pop-comic barely equalled in modern comedy for his energy and anarchic enthusiasm, whereas Shirley MacLaine has, over the course of a film career that has seen her go charisma for charisma against massive stars the likes of Clint Eastwood, Dolly Parton, Jack Nicholson, and Frank Sinatra, built up an on-screen and off-screen persona as a formidable battle-axe of a lady. For what Linklater is up to with Bernie, he couldn’t have cast it any more perfectly. Is it possible that Bernie was quite as boundlessly spry as Jack Black is? Is it possible that Marjorie was nearly as intimidating as Shirley MacLaine is? Maybe so and maybe not, but that’s definitely the way their friends and neighbors seemed to perceive them.

What makes the movie feel so fresh and so enjoyable is that Linklater, in a narrative masterstroke, has stocked the movie with a mixture of local Texas-area actors and actual Carthage townspeople, many of whom actually knew Bernie and Marjorie. The movie is structured like a documentary, where the peripheral characters are interviewed about their experiences with Bernie and Marjorie and their knowledge and opinions of the crime, while the actors “recreate” the dramatic scenes in between.

This gives the movie an uncommon sense of local atmosphere and believability (the older fella who describes Texas geography is worth admission all by his own self), but also a hugely comical friction, considering that we’re watching real people interact with real-deal Hollywood movie stars. While Shirley MacLaine either doesn’t, can’t, or chooses not to disappear fully into character (which isn’t a huge deal since, let’s be honest, she ain’t in the movie for as long), Jack Black gives one of his very greatest performances as the sprightly Bernie Tiede.

Jack Black is a guy who it’s somehow become easy to take for granted. He started out doing brief roles in baroque movies like Mars Attacks! and Demolition Man, started gaining steam in the alt-comedy scene with Mr. Show and Tenacious D, and then broke huge with his revelatory supporting role in High Fidelity and with his over-charged lead role in Linklater’s own School Of Rock. Like any major comedy star, he’s ended up in as many bad movies as good ones, which has seemed to put him in the Robin Williams category in too many minds. I hope that enough people see Bernie to be reminded of what a phenomenal talent Jack Black is.

For one thing, he’s really playing a character here, not doing a riff on what has come to be recognizable as the hyperactive “Jack Black” persona. He’s actually using that expectation against you, as he plays a very different person so very well. It helps that Bernie isn’t exactly a low-energy role — Jack gets to channel that contagious energy into another direction. There is a key scene where Bernie plays the lead in a community-theater version of The Music Man where Black gets to unleash the full force of his remarkable performing ability, and it’s actually one of the best musical moments we’re likely to see on screen all year. But it’s not Tenacious D and it’s not Kung Fu Panda. It’s something very unlike any role Black has played before, which makes it all the more rewarding.

If you, as many people, see Jack as “the indie-rock Belushi”, it’s another layer of humor to see him play a guy who sings along with gospel music in the car, sings like an angel at church, acts with the most proper Southernly table manners, and, if he isn’t gay, sure doesn’t take much interest in the ladies other than in the most sisterly way. That last point is one of the most fascinating parts of the story — Linklater and Black play Bernie’s sexuality as kind of an artful dodge. By all reasonable appearances, Bernie is a gay man, but while the question is raised, it never seems to ultimately matter that much. It’s especially rewarding to see how the very Southern town of Carthage loves and embraces Bernie despite every sign of him being outwardly homosexual besides the -sexual. As Northerners, we probably don’t expect that kind of tolerance. And maybe there isn’t even that much tolerance — maybe people just loved Bernie THAT much.

This is where the third central performance of the movie comes in. Matthew McConaughey plays Danny Buck Davidson, Carthage’s District Attorney (another real person), who is determined to prosecute Bernie for the murder of an old widow despite the overwhelming pro-Bernie sentiment in town. McConaughey, who made such a strong comedic impression all the way back in Linklater’s Dazed And Confused and always seems to be at his best as an eccentric character actor rather than a straight-ahead leading man, not only seems at home in the world in this movie but also does something somewhat extraordinary when he’s the odd man out: He’s both the movie’s straight man and a satirical figure at the same time. McConaughey’s reactions as the townsfolk harangue him to let that poor Bernie go are hysterical, but so too are his brag-heavy pronouncements to every camera in a five-mile radius. Danny Buck comes off as the voice of reason (sure Bernie is a nice guy, but he also did kill somebody) and as totally silly at the same time. It’s just another aspect of the warm, inclusive anima of the movie, which has fun with its characters even while recognizing that everyone is a human being with thoughts and feelings and all are worth hearing out, whether they’re on the right track or otherwise.

I have so much affection for this movie. It’s modest, in that it’s not filled with space robots, farting cartoons, or punching people in latex suits, but narratively speaking it’s a high-wire act that I think is pulled off with wit and charm. Again, it’s one of Jack Black’s best performances, and it’s one of Richard Linklater’s most successful and accessible experiments. Most incredibly, unlike so many movies, there isn’t a single dull moment in Bernie. It’s thoroughly entertaining and engaging, and if I see many more movies I enjoyed as much this year, I’ll be feeling pretty good about life.

Find me on Twitter!: @jonnyabomb

Screening in NYC: 48 HRS. (1982).

48 Hrs. is the midnight movie this weekend at IFC Center in New York City.  This movie is important for what it represents in the continuum of American action movies, and surprising as a viewing experience if that first point is all you know about it. Directed by essential action auteur Walter Hill and starring Nick Nolte, 48 Hrs. is most famous for introducing film audiences to the comedic A-bomb that was Eddie Murphy, and as a result revolutionizing the politics of action-comedies.

There were buddy-comedies before 48 Hrs. (for example: Freebie And The Bean), and there were black & white crime-fighting duos before 48 Hrs. (for example: the Hill-scripted Hickey & Boggs), but the violent electricity generated by Nolte and Murphy in 48 Hrs. is what made the genre an American institution.  It’s impossible to imagine now, but in the years before 48 Hrs., Nick Nolte was a leading man, a pretty-boy, reportedly considered for the role of Superman, and Eddie Murphy was absolutely no one.  What you have in this movie is Nolte, cresting forty and heading towards the grizzled character-actor persona that he’s occupied ever since, and Murphy, barely out of his teens, furious, with everything in the world to prove and ready and willing to conquer.  The blond, blue-eyed, middle-American shitkicker and the quick-talking black kid from Brooklyn — the conflict is coded directly into the casting.

Nolte’s Jack Cates is an embattled detective who is chasing down a pair of cop-killers (James Remar and Sonny Landham).  Needing a lead, he goes to see an imprisoned colleague of one of the criminals, Murphy’s Reggie Hammond.  Jack borrows Reggie away from the penal system for the titular amount of time, and the search begins.  What’s amazing about this plot, and what everyone who hasn’t seen the movie in some time seems to forget, is that this isn’t a comedy plot.  48 Hrs. isn’t a comedy, hardly at all.  It’s a prime-era Walter Hill movie.  It’s a low-down, gritty, ruthless action movie.  The supporting cast includes awesome and fearsome career tough guys, including James Remar (The Warriors), David Patrick Kelly (also The Warriors), Brion James (Blade Runner), Sonny Landham (Predator), and Jonathan Banks (Beverly Hills Cop, more recently Breaking Bad).  Make no mistake, 48 Hrs. is an action movie before and after anything else.  It just happens to feature Eddie Murphy.

Eddie Murphy was — and still is, somewhere within him — one of the most incendiary comic talents this country has ever seen.  It’s little coincidence that he did such a killer James Brown impression, because he really is the James Brown of comedy.  Just a thorough, unforgettable, timeless talent, and a peerless entertainer right out of the gate.  I mean, I think Eddie only recently turned fifty.  It’s insane to contemplate how young he was when he tore right into the role of Reggie Hammond, singing “Roxanne” by The Police in a jail cell in a hilarious falsetto — one of the more indelible cinematic debuts I could ever name.  Eddie’s every scene lifts the movie into vivid comedy, just by proximity to the supernova of his talent.  In hindsight, that’s why 48 Hrs. is remembered as more of a comedy than it actually is in practice.  Eddie is an absolute firecracker in this movie, completely unintimidated by Nolte’s lurching and barking, giving as good as he gets.  And neither of these guys pulled a single punch — they portrayed two guys who HATE each other.  The dialogue between Jack and Reggie is as vicious as it is funny, and usually more of the former than the latter.  And to this day, their speech is uncompromisingly uncomfortable.  Among plenty of other awful epithets, Jack calls Reggie “nigger”.  To my ear, that’s not enjoyable banter, but it is scarily honest.

That was probably one of Eddie Murphy’s most significant artistic contributions:  As the first comedic superstar of the hip-hop age, he scorched the earth, loudly and with style, and boldly went after the racism that still existed then (and still does today, although just a little bit less as a result of the accomplishments of himself and others).  In 48 Hrs., Eddie Murphy gets the blond, blue-eyed action hero to shout that awful, awful word  — but somehow that’s a weird kind of progress.  Okay, we all heard it, now we know what’s under the blond, blue-eyed surface.  Now it’s out in the open.  Now we can deal with it.  If we don’t acknowledge the sick American shit under the polite veneers, there’ll be no solving it.  Meanwhile, if you’re a little kid watching Eddie in movies, you’re not thinking about any of this specifically.  If you’re a little kid, you just fucking love him.  I know growing up I personally never wanted to be Captain Kirk or Captain America or Luke Skywalker or Han Solo — I wanted to be Axel Foley.  Eddie Murphy brought this rare energy and charismatic anarchy to movies that for all its cultural significance, was also just plain cool.  He was Bugs Bunny come to life.

With all that charm, there’s no way that Jack Cates and Reggie Hammond wouldn’t ultimately come to an understanding, a partnership even.  And there’s no way that his performance in 48 Hrs. wouldn’t have made Eddie Murphy a star.

 

Find me on Twitter: @jonnyabomb

 

 

March 2012′s Most Unfortunate Movie Posters.

And now it’s time again for that time, again.  Or something.

This is the part where I ponder the no-doubt-expensive advertising campaigns of major motion pictures, mercilessly critiquing them from my cozy perch in my twenty-acre mansion.  Or my mom’s basement.  Or wherever you’d prefer to imagine I do these pieces.

Movie posters can be an art unto themselves, but so often they end up being the opposite.  Things can go wrong for all sorts of reasons.  Some posters have great designs, but are undone by ridiculous taglines. Some are shameless imitations of other, better work. Some are good posters advertising shitty product, like using The Lorax to shill for SUVs. Some are shitty posters advertising a good product. And some are just Photoshop nightmares.  It’s like this every month, but this batch today was culled from the month of March.  When it comes to unfortunate movie posters, March comes in like a lion and goes out like poo-poo from a lion’s behind.  I don’t know what that means but it made me laugh so I’m leaving it in.

Check out the most recent columns from January and February to get caught up, or just read on….

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I’ve only seen this guy in good movies.  Her, I’ve only seen in bad ones.*  When their careers collide, whose track record will win out?  Before you answer, let me also inform you that Whoopi Goldberg is in this movie playing a character named “God” and I do not believe that to be a reference to the Charlie Sheen film Navy SEALS.

* I know you guys are going to bring up Almost Famous but A) That was a decade ago, and what has she done for us lately? and B) Not a whole lot of rewatchability there.  If you can hear those hippies coo “It’s all happening” another hundred times and still not want to stomp on an adorable woodland creature just to make a point, you’re doing better at coping with life than I am.

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This is either an advertisement for the worst David Cronenberg movie of all time, or the greatest Olsen Twins movie of all time.

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“The first real ghost story” looks a whole lot like seven thousand other ghost stories we’ve seen in the past year or so.

Emergo!

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My Week With Marilyn.

Lindsay Lohan’s Playboy cover.

NBC’s Smash.

This song by Nicki Minaj.

This Twitter account.

The poster above.

And so on.

Can we take a break from the Marilyn Monroe thing for a while, or what?

You’d think motherfuckers never heard of Raquel Welch.

Ahhh…  That’s more like it.

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If you don’t want people to come see your movie, you may just as well skip paying for a poster entirely.  You don’t have to go to the trouble of painting a gigantic diseased-looking penis-looking thing on it.  That’s just nasty, dude.

Anybody else ever experience déjà vu?

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Anybody else ever experience déjà vu?

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Anybody else ever experience déjà vu?

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Because if there’s one things Germans know best, it’s “feel-better” comedies.

Also notice how the Golden Globes imprimatur is considered such a drawing point over there.

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Looks like somebody dosed Chris Ware with something awful and he is just screaming out for help.

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And after the psychedelic trip there follows the come-down, and the vomitus.

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Aw man, they cracked open the time capsule from 1995 a little too early.

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My only concern with this poster is if you asked a dumb person to pronounce that title, it would sound very racist.

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Looks like the poster for a Wes Anderson movie.

You mean it is one?

You don’t fucking say.  I’ve long been a fan, but these things are getting progressively cutesier.  My man’s movies are slowly and literally morphing into Rupert comic strips, and I’m not sure how much longer I can hold on.

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Stupid-Person Focus Group: The Movie.  But maybe this film can emphasize that Transformers connection a little stronger and transform into something I’d rather see, like a grizzly bear slamming Michael Bay and Peter Berg’s heads together.

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Cool poster, if this is the dude’s face mid-face-smash by an undisclosed assailant.  Less cool if he’s just got a jacked-up arm and is just awkwardly pushing his own face.  (It’s fun if you imagine a mime re-enacting a Three Stooges routine.)

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Look out, Stephen Hawking, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Richard Dawkins!  Seth McFarlane continues to do his part to add substance to the national conversation.

I heard when Seth McFarlane finally runs out of 1980s TV shows to reference, then and only then will he finally take leave of our planet and ascend to the heavens.  With this poster, we’ve covered Teddy Ruxpin.  We’re just a Small Wonder and a Rubik’s Cube away from Rapture!

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When did Adam Sandler decide to turn on humanity with this level of viciousness?  Seriously, what did I specifically ever do to this guy to deserve what he does?

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Only the second Waiting For Godot reference of the column.

I like to think of Meeting Evil as the first.

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Oooooof.  Shades of Salvation Boulevard.  This is not even acceptable as a first draft.

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Cusack is veering dangerously towards Cage territory with this one.  That’s all I’m saying.  Not saying it’s a bad thing either.  Only that it IS a thing.

 

Exhibit A: Side-by-side contrast of posters for The Raven and Seeking Justice.

Exhibit B: Is not needed.

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Guess they’re banking heavily on the fact that we won’t remember another movie called The Road from three years ago.  You know, the one based on a book that was on Oprah’s book list and EVERYBODY HAS READ.

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I’ve seen more damn trailers for this re-release than for any new movie in the past five years.  Fuck it, man.  You know how she’s always saying in those trailers, “I’lll never let go?”  Spoiler: She lets go.  Saved you the trouble of paying to see this thing.  I’m not going through the pain of seing Leo turn into an icicle again, I don’t care how deep into the sea James Cameron goes.

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Which one’s Tilda Swinton?

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This one bothers me so much for so many reasons, it’s hard to even joke about.  I feel like wanting to see a movie like this or not is a good barometer of what kind of asshole one probably is.  I like to think I’m the right kind of asshole.

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Is this a Creed album cover?  Look at that silly, silly face.  This is not a person whose wrath I’d like to feel.  Sofia Vergara’s wrath, maybe.

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OK that’s it for now.  I need a nap.

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Find me on Twitter: @jonnyabomb

Go See: 21 JUMP STREET (2012).

“Nobody knows anything.” — William Goldman.

21 Jump Street, as you probably know by now, is a movie which gives a comedic treatment to the late-1980s Fox television series, which starred a pre-Tim-Burton Johnny Depp, about young police detectives who go undercover as high school students.  The movie was directed by Phil Lord & Chris Miller (who last directed the kids’ movie Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs) , stars Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as an odd-couple pair of under-achieving cops, and comes with a well-earned R-rating.

The fact that I went to see this movie at all is a triumph of social media.  I had written 21 Jump Street off.  As a kid I’d seen the Fox TV show the movie was based on, and I liked the idea of seeing it flipped as a comedy premise, but I saw all those trailers way too many times, and wasn’t impressed.  Like those posters above, the trailers focused on the easy, tired jokes.  Like this exchange:

“You have the right to remain… an attorney…” 

“Did you just say “You have the right to remain an attorney?”

I’m so tired of that modern trend, in movie trailers and on all CBS comedies, where one character says something and another character repeats it in disbelief, as if that automatically makes it funnier.  The trailers also make heavy use of the bit where one character is stabbed and calls it “Awesome!” which isn’t all that funny on its own.  Overall, the whole movie had a kind of unappealing washed-out look which made it look visually stale — and even on the other side of it now, I’d still say that the cinematography by Barry Peterson is hardly the most inspired element of the movie. 

But going online in the last two weeks, and seeing a steady trickle of positivity towards the movie turn into a full-on stream, I decided to give 21 Jump Street the courtesy of my ten bucks. 

Something weird happened.  All the stuff I didn’t like in the trailers (besides the photography) totally works in the context of the full movie.  That aforementioned exchange of dialogue comes from a scene where police captain Nick Offerman dresses down Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum’s characters, and. rather than the trailer ruining the scene’s best joke as so often happens, that scene has many more (and much better) jokes than the trailer implies.  The best is the one where Nick Offerman, in his brilliant deadpan, familiar to fans of Parks & Recreation, directly addresses all of your potential misgivings about a comedic re-interpretation of a nearly-forgotten Fox TV show.  It’s so blatantly and boldly self-referential that it somehow addresses the issue head-on and manages to be charming in a way that most self-referential jokes aren’t.

That scene from the trailer where Jonah Hill turns around to find a knife embedded in his back and decides it’s “awesome?”  By the time that happens in the movie, you have gotten to know the character, a  sad sack in high school who, when given the chance to go back as an undercover cop, gets to re-live his high school years with some more confidence.  So the knife beat is a character moment, where realizing how much tougher he’s become and bragging about it tells you something about what this guy is thinking, instead of a throw-away gag using violence as a punchline and having no physical consequence. 

That’s why this movie is better than so many more in its over-populated genre:  It starts with the characters.  It’s not as if these are the most detailed characters ever written – Jonah Hill, as a high school nerd who gets the chance to hang with the popular kids, and Channing Tatum, as the high school cool guy whose inattention to study made him an underachiever but adequately suited for police work — they’re comedic archetypes, but they’re recognizable.  And they’re given more dimension as the movie goes on.  Their friendship is interesting and believable, the emotional center of the story, and it makes the movie more involving than most studio comedies as a result of it.

I’ve liked Jonah Hill since I first wondered “Who was that weird kid in that scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin?”, but as much as he’s been a deft comic performer right from the get-go, he’s also clearly a smart shepherd of material which suit his talents, having shaped this project with screenwriter Michael Bacall (Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World).  It’s pretty stupid that I saw how good Hill was in Moneyball and still underestimated him to the extent that I allowed a couple bum trailers to make me consider skipping this movie.  I would have missed out. 

The script for 21 Jump Street is fun, surprising, and full of jokes — don’t like one? another is right around the corner — and it’s also quite literally a gift to Channing Tatum.  People underestimate Channing Tatum, because he’s man-pretty and comes off as a bit of a meatball, but I’ve never had a problem with the guy.  He’s been good and likable in movies like A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints and Haywire, and if G.I. Joe was terrible, it can’t be blamed on him.  If you click through to that G.I. Joe review you’ll see that I suggested Mark Wahlberg needs to watch his back with this Channing Tatum guy around:  I still think it’s a good comparison — if anything, Channing Tatum seems to have more self-awareness.  As much as I loved The Other Guys, it’s still hard to tell if Wahlberg is fully aware of why he’s so funny.  Channing Tatum, as his recent SNL hosting appearance also shows, has a willingness to play, and when Hill and Bacall’s script to 21 Jump Street serves him up great comedic lobs, he crushes them every time. 

Pretty much everybody’s good in the movie:  Ice Cube, erasing a decade of crap to come back just as funny as he was in the first Friday, Three Kings, and Torque; Rob Riggle in a truly weird supporting performance that initially seems to have little point; all the kids in the high school scenes, particularly the very cute Brie Larson (the aforementioned Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World) and the very funny Dave Franco (Fright Night, James’s family reunions) as a shifty drug dealer; right down to the still-surprising-even-if-you-know-he’s-going-to-do-the-cameo superstar actor.  But with all the enjoyable, game performances in the movie, the best part remains the Hill-Tatum double-team (and what the fuck is with me and the tennis metaphors today?) — these two guys have a brainy/brash chemistry that for some reason reminds me of Chase & Aykroyd in Spies Like Us. 

Maybe that’s a good analogy:  Spies Like Us is a comparatively lesser John Landis comedy, but not everything can be Animal House or Trading Places.   Most comedies aren’t.  Most comedies can’t touch Spies Like Us, let alone Trading Places.  For me to invoke any of these movies at all means I’m paying 21 Jump Street a big compliment, but in the end it comes down to this:  I laughed plenty. 

Go see this movie.  If enough people do, we’ll get a sequel, and once you see it, you’ll agree that, unlike most movies that get sequels these days, this movie has a pair of characters you’d actually like to see again. 

Just feel free to skip the trailers.

P.S.  Couldn’t figure out how to fit this comment in the main review, but seriously, the end credits are fucking amazing.  I don’t know who to compliment — Lord & Miller, the editorial department, Michael Bacall who clearly is a fellow admirer of the gang at Cinefamily — but really, what a great last blast of energy and absurdity you get hit with, just as you’re getting up to leave.  There’s no Academy Award for Best Opening Or Closing Credits, but that only bolsters my suspicion that the Academy Awards aren’t run by anyone who knows half as much about cinema as whoever put the closing credits sequence of 21 Jump Street.

Follow me on Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

February 2012′s Most Unfortunate Movie Posters.

We only get a February 29th once every four years, but we get a ton of movie posters every single month.  Hope everyone had a fine Leap Day yesterday.  Mine was great, because I had a whole extra day to collect all the questionable movie posters I’m about to share with you.  Decided to go with a Van Halen theme for this month’s column, mainly because they’re playing the Garden this week, and also due to the very tenuous Leap Day/”Jump” connection.  And as long as we’re mixing movie talk with Van Halen, I might as well say that there’s always been something Raimi-esque about the Van Halen brothers to me.

Let’s do a quick little This Person Looks Like That Person to see if that statement has any merit.

 

Whaddya say?

Anyway, whether we can all agree on that or not, hopefully we can all share a chuckle over the misguided attempts of studio marketing departments to sell their product.  So sit back, relax, cue up this well-known tune, and let the madness begin.

Disclaimer:  This column is all in fun and is generally not meant to reflect on the quality of the films themselves.  Generally.

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If “He only has 1000 words left to discover what matters most”, then why is he spending them on Clark Duke (upper left corner)?  I mean really.  Sweet Kerry Washington and the great Ruby Dee are in your life, and you’re starting with Clark Duke.  John Witherspoon has apparently gone blind, but Clark Duke is the first stop on your karma tour.  I get why you’re not beginning with Cliff Curtis in his underpants, but seriously Ed, get some priorities.

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This movie features real-life Navy SEALS and as a result I will not be making fun of it one bit.  You go right ahead if you want to.  Not me!

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There are three things about this poster I need to call your attention to:

1)  While an airplane shoots up Manhattan landmarks behind them, the Avengers are coolly striking poses.

2)  Sam Jackson is apparently doing the Dougie back there.

3)  Thor continues to resemble Chelsea Handler.

You tell me: Am I wrong?
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Everybody knows what “kitsch” is, right?  Basically it’s a phenomenally appropriate word to describe a pandering jingo-istic Transformers-inspired (!) four-quadrant movie appropriating the name of a board game with nothing to do with Transformers upon which was spent the gross national product of an actual country.  “Kitsch.”  That’s so on the nose, from where I’m standing I can see boogers.

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Now that we’ve squeezed as much out of teenage girls as we’re ever likely to get, can we get a Twilight aimed at older broads?  We’ll keep the pasty pouty dude and his smoldering glance from the Twilight posters, but let’s have him bewitch a thirty-something, a forty-something, and a fifty-something instead of that pasty pouty twenty-something.  Sound good? 

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And now it’s time for an audience participation segment.  Help me out here…

Which is the more punchable face?  You have thirty seconds to decide.  Go!

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The great Sigourney Weaver, heroically sacrificing coolness points in order to demonstrate for all poster designers of the future why YOU NEVER SHOW AN ACTOR WALKING IN MID-STRIDE.   Compare this to the badassness of the guys on the Act Of Valor poster, boots rooted to the ground in action poses that warn all comers that they’re unable to be knocked over easily… (Yup, still trying to get on those dudes’ good side.)

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But… that’s kind of exactly all it takes to make a baby…

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Bad news kids, if you were trying to show us your best “crazy eyes” face, you missed the mark.  But chin up: Lukas Haas, you have been selected as a front-runner in the competition for America’s Saddest Facial Hair.

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Can’t shake the feeling there’s some kind of sexual innuendo going on in the Bermuda Triangle area there.

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So on one thumb he’s got this blond bombshell and on the other he’s got the super-cool actress from Trainspotting and Boardwalk Empire.  What exactly is this motherfucker’s problem?

P.S.  Rhetorical; not asking because this image in any way inspires me to find out.

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This poster is a case where the tagline is so distracting I can’t even judge the artwork.  The movie is called Delicacy and the tagline goes, “A new romantic comedy about Love, Fate, and other Delicacies.”  That’s like saying “Inception: An action movie about Dreams, Memory, and other Inceptions.”  Or “Drive: A badass art film about Violence, Loyalty, and other Drives.”  Or “The Big Lebowski: A comedy about Jeff, Jeffrey, and other Lebowskis.” 

Incidentally, have you ever read my review of Amelie?  It’s short so I’ll reprint it here in its entirety:

“It’s got whimsy coming out the ass. B/B+“

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While I’m inclined to make as much fun of this particular movie as possible, I’m normally loath to mock an entire language.  But I just can’t help myself — “Extreem luid en ongelooflijk dichtbij”?  Did the Swedish Chef take a white-out pen to this poster or what? 

And it’s in BIOSCOOP!

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I’m the one with the dirty mind; that I’ll grant you.  But still, there’s something vaguely sexual about that tombstone, in a specifically H.R. Giger kind of way.

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Every single piece of press for this movie relentlessly mentions how all these stars are friends behind the scenes, which is nice to know, but it also becomes ironic when you consider that no two of them sat in the same room together for this utter symphony of Photoshop.

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Pardon me, but did you just put a steampunk sex-toy on your poster and entirely neglect to explain it?

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Awesome, a spiritual descendant of Sucker Punch, The Spirit, and Sky Captain & The World Of Tomorrow. Just what everyone always wanted.

However, I’ll award them points for the following:

A) TV’s Blossom in the role of Sarah Palin;

B) Udo Kier; and

C) Someone on the crew is named Bliss McGillicuddy.

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All this does is remind me that since I’ve already seen that Gears Of War commercial, there’s not a great reason to see this movie.

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Every single time I look at this poster, the beginning of ”Your Song” by Elton John starts playing in my head.  “It’s a little bit zombie… this feeling inside…”  First sign of insanity?  Naw. We passed by that sign years ago. 

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Margin Call was one of the smartest, most-overlooked movies of 2011.  How can we get more people to check it out?  Maybe release a poster that makes it look like a cruddy mid-to-late-90s Steven Seagal thriller, right down to the tagline.  Sure that’s everything it isn’t, but hell, whatever gets butts in seats.

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You always knew it could potentially happen one day: Welcome to Nathan Lane’s Dame Edna period. 

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Real human beings with feelings and memories are still starving to death on American streets every day.  It’s a good thing to keep in mind while raising the bare minimum of a million dollars it takes to make a feature film.  If you really think the good can do with your movie, the happiness you can bring to the world with it, is the equivalent to clothing and feeding those who need the charity, well then go ahead.  Otherwise, you know, make something called Osombie, I guess.  Good luck explaining that one on Sunday.

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This is as French as fuck.  You people brought this on yourselves, by making such a big deal over The Artist.

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Anybody else getting a Huey Lewis & The News vibe all of the sudden?

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It’s one thing to make a useless sequel.  It’s another thing to make a sequel to a useless poster.

Remember kids, Battle: Los Angeles is not a thing to emulate.

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Oh hey, remember how good District 9 was?

Anybody interested in a re-envisioning not of that movie, but of the poster to District 9?

Don’t mind me, I’m just some dude messing around on the internet.  Pretend I’m not here.

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Far be it from me to expect any common sense or obedience to the laws of physics from a Piranha poster, but this one bugs me out for a few different reasons:

A)  Unless the girl is looking straight down at the water, which we can fairly assume she isn’t (because where would the camera be), then there’s no way she could have all those fish reflected in the lenses of her sunglasses.  I may be the only person who vocalizes these things, but I think anyone notices screwy perspective, at least subconsciously.

B)  One of the lenses is cracked. But why?  Is it an involuntary physical response to the vision of oncoming destruction, as was the tear shed by Grima Wormtongue in The Two Towers when he witnessed the armies of Saruman? 

C)  This poster needs more tits.  I suggest this not because I am a pig, but because if you call a movie Piranha 3DD and promise “Double The Ds”, then you might as well go ahead and use it as a selling point.  When you’re Larry The Cable Guy, you can’t just mention Wal-Mart and drop it, you have to go all the way and talk about your grandma getting her hair done there, or else your target audience won’t get the joke.

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Guess I’m missing the point if I suggest that the Starlet in question is an actress no one’s ever heard of ever.

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Chris Rock looks more startled to be on this poster than I am to see him on it.

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I like this one because the kid is farting out his dream of a party.

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And with that parting fart joke, I will take my leave of this column for now.  See y’all in the spring!

@jonnyabomb

The First Most Unfortunate Movie Posters Of 2012.

Lest anyone think that we’re in the clear in 2012 and all the movie posters everywhere would be excellent from now on, this column continues to exist to bring your hopes down to earth, while also bringing you back up with the strength of laughter.  Forgot how this works?  Here’s how we did it at the end of 2011. 

Now take my hand and let’s descend together into the dark underworld of disastrous film art…

Wow.  Okay.  Somehow that got through, huh?  So:  In case you want to avoid that awkward conversation with your parents, what that tagline means is that these two guys are huge nerds and so at no point during this motion picture will you see them receive blow jobs.  Unless they decide to give EACH OTHER blow jobs, but that would be crazy and unnatural even though no doubt this movie could have many hilarious jokes to that effect.

28 Hotel Rooms Later… The inevitable story of sex zombies. 

This poster indicates that this movie actually exists, which I am continuing to have a difficult time believing.  Help me out if you’ve read the book:  Do they address the vampire slavery issue?

“Still, he makes movies… with terrible titles… about which literally no one gives a shit…”

All three lead actors’ names on this poster are completely mixed up, and all three of these people are EXTREMELY unhappy about it.

High Concept:  What if they remade Buried almost immediately, with an actor you like about a tenth as much as you like Ryan Reynolds?  It can’t lose!

Cate Blanchett looks unwell.

An awesome premise would be that it’s the end of the world, after the nuclear apocalypse, it’s Las Vegas, and all the Elvis impersonators are dead except for one (played by George Wendt, as seems to be the case on this poster).  Like Denzel bearing the holy bible in The Book Of Eli, this man is the last to bear the holy word of Elvis Presley, i.e. the lyrics to “Suspicious Minds.”  And then he goes to Frogtown. 

Be honest, wouldn’t you rather watch my movie?

Listen, I just have a dirty mind.

“Justice has a price.  And he is seeking it.  The price, not the justice.  He’s seeking the price of justice.  You know, to ask around before he commits to buying.  He’s headed to the flea market… of justice!” 

Maybe it’s just me, but the indecision of this movie and its many titles is vaguely humorous.  It started out as The Hungry Rabbit Jumps.  Then it was Justice.  Now it’s become Seeking Justice.  That’s so much less definitive. It’s kind of a pussy move for an action movie to add that gerund.  It’s like the Finding Forrester of badass revenge flicks.

Finally, a poster for this movie that’s as unappealing to me as the movie itself is.  Too many of the posters for The Iron Lady look like too much fun.  Like this:

I bet I know what she’s thinking.  How randy!

The monster on the right looks like a butt.  So my ticket’s already bought and paid for.

I also love the tagline, “Dos Mundos, Un Heroe.”  I just know they did that to appeal to the same audience who for so many years loved the wildly popular series of telenovelas, “Dos Mujeres, Un Camino.”

Attn: Marketing Dept.

Loved the John Carter poster for the Latin market!  But can we see some mock-ups to send further east?

Thanks in advance,

xoxoxo

P.S.  Same request for Man On A Ledge. 

I don’t mean to say that all it takes to make a Korean poster for an American film is to load it up with extra writing and throw a random hologram on a skyscraper, but well, I guess maybe subconsciously I do mean to say it.

This is depressing for much deeper reasons than what is certainly one of the most abysmal movie titles we’ll see in all of 2012.  This is actually a dispiriting Hollywood trend captured in a single image:  At 20-something, you’re America’s sweetheart, everybody loving your smile and your laugh.  At 30-something, you do your prestige run so people give you credit for being a serious actress.  At 40-something, you’re stuck playing the wicked witch.   What’s truly creepy is how it can accelerate:  You don’t even have to crack forty anymore to play the evil queen to the lovely young ingenue.

Marilyn Monroe: From American icon to J-pop sensation — all it takes is just a re-tinted color scheme.

Public Service Announcement:  Stay away, probably.

It’s easy to pull the hot Nicole Kidman older lady who lives down the street: All you need is a pink Cadillac with a painting of John Cusack on the side.

Price check?  That’ll be $3.99 in the Wal-Mart bargain bin.

(No, I don’t sleep well. Why do you ask?)

The more I learn about this movie, the more I’m leaning towards despising it.  Does that make me “old”?

Congratulations to Todd Phillips, though – after this poster he’s sure to make PETA’s must-watch list.

Personally, I’d play down the whole Cuba Gooding Jr. aspect.  Last time he was in a World War 2 movie, it was Pearl Harbor.  

Jason Statham makes a severely lousy Julianne Moore.

The Sith announce their most perverted threat to date.

There’s a shit-ton going on in that lava lamp.

I don’t know what this movie is about yet, but I have to believe there’s another way to sell it.

Like this, for example:  This poster is a great way to get me intrigued about a movie which I probably don’t want to see.

I saw the trailer for this movie the other day.  It’s about all these old British people who take a trip to India and start hooking up with each other.  Basically, it’s the imperialist version of Cocoon.  The kid from Slumdog Millionaire plays the Steve Guttenberg role.  Either way, you’re gonna get jokes about limp boners.  Choose the form of the destructor.  Choose, and perish.

Looks like they shot this poster with the same 45-degree-angle camera they shot half of Thor with. 

So psyched they finally made a new Matrix movie.

When certain movies are received less than warmly in the United States, they often change their titles and escape to another country.  In some countries, We Bought A Zoo goes by the name A Place To Dream.  If you happen to encounter it, do not be a hero.  Back away and alert the local authorities at the soonest opportunity.

 

Am I seeing double?  Uh, I mean – am I seeing quadruple?

______________________________________________________

And now, as a grand finale of atrociousness, let’s meet the five-headed dark prince of this horrific netherworld, and by that I mean the new posters for some movie I hope to never be dragged to see (probably will be) called What To Expect When You’re Expecting.  [SHUDDER.]

Good luck with that, Jenny.  There’s at least a 50% chance your baby will look like THIS!

DaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Apologies for this column are filedonce a month, on the morning after it’s posted.

 

@jonnyabomb