Full Disclosure: ALL THE MOVIES RELEASED IN 2012, AS SEEN BY ME.

I made a list like this in 2011, but I realized I hadn’t made one for 2012.  So here it is.

First:  The 2011 Movies.  And here are My Top Ten of 2011.

And now, all the movies from 2012 that I managed to see, by order of their theatrical release.  (If you want to see how I whittled all of these down to ten for 2012, here’s my Top 10.)  I put links in the titles if I wrote about the movies.

HAYWIRE.

Somehow controversial to say so, but I dug it.

THE GREY.

My #1 movie of the year, all year.

CHRONICLE.

Clever.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK.

Spooky.

SAFE HOUSE.

Over-directed.

RAMPART.

Kind of a drag.

WANDERLUST.

Funny.

THE LORAX.

Hurt my eyes and brain.

PROJECT X.

Needed monkeys.

TIM & ERIC’S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE.

Robert Loggia!

JOHN CARTER.

Neither as bad nor as good as you may have heard. Love that butt-alien though.

FOOTNOTE.

Sly and cerebral.  No one saw it because no one is dumb.

JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI.

Better Hugh Jackman cameo than the X-MEN movie. Also, an octopus gets a massage.

21 JUMP STREET.

Almost shockingly good.

CASA DE MI PADRE.

It’s as if they made it just for me.

THE HUNGER GAMES.

Fine. Book was better.

THE RAID: REDEMPTION.

Saw it for free; loved it so much I paid to take people back with me.

GOON.

Really funny. Really re-watchable.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS.

Ginsu-sharp. I’m with Brad Whitford: Loved the merman.

LOCKOUT.

As Funkadelic sang, “Super Stupid!” (A compliment.)

BERNIE.

Maybe the most delightful movie about a vicious murder ever made.

SAFE.

Burly and bad-ass. And James Hong! First Jason Statham movie I really, really liked.

HEADHUNTERS.

Really dark, really funny. Check it out.

THE AVENGERS.

All of the good adjectives.

THE DICTATOR.

Disappointing.

MEN IN BLACK 3.

Inessential, but surprisingly decent.

MOONRISE KINGDOM.

Great. Handily defeats all incoming cynicism.

PIRANHA 3DD.

Ends after an hour in favor of twenty minutes of bloopers. Haven’t seen that shit since MASTER OF DISGUISE. And at least that movie had Jennifer Esposito.

MADAGASCAR 3.

My niece and I love the Chris Rock zebra. The rest, not so much.

PROMETHEUS.

Beautiful to look at, with almost all the wrong ideas. It’s the Jennifer Lopez of sci-fi prequels.

SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED.

Fun discovery. Not tremendous, but very diverting.

BRAVE.

No one told us there’d be bears.

SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD.

I like those two.  For this movie, that’s enough.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD.

Best giant-pig movie since South Korea’s CHAW.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

I liked it. Not as nearly much as I did the Sam Raimi ones, but this was as close to “Spider-Man vs. Godzilla” I’m likely to ever get.

SAVAGES.

Didn’t like the trio of protagonists, but Salma and Benicio ran away with the movie and made it worthwhile all on their own.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

Ponderous.

THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES.

Fascinating documentary about a shithead and his trophy wife, who seems like a shithead but isn’t really so much.

IRON SKY.

The movie can’t touch its poster.

STEP UP REVOLUTION.

Everybody you see on that poster is a sell-out.

KILLER JOE.

Brilliant from every angle.

CELESTE & JESSE FOREVER.

I loved Rashida Jones before I knew she was a great writer. This movie proves she’s a great writer. Now it’s officially hopeless.

THE EXPENDABLES 2.

Mostly dull. But every moment Chuck Norris is onscreen, it’s the worst movie of the year.

COMPLIANCE.

Terrifically disturbing.

COSMOPOLIS.

Absolutely the most Canadian film about New York ever made. I still dug it though!

PREMIUM RUSH.

Probably the single most underrated movie of 2012. Lots of fun.

LAWLESS.

Not everyone agreed, but I thought it was great. Soundtrack of the year.

FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL…

It’s GIRL 6 but way Jewier.

THE MASTER.

Fascinating. Not what I expected, but that’s a tremendous compliment.

BAIT.

Sharks in a shopping mall. Now you kind of have to read my review, huh?

DREDD 3D.

I thought it rocked. Seems like other people are slowly starting to agree. My opinions are from the future!

END OF WATCH.

Flawed but valuable.

LOOPER.

Excellent and inventive. This was a good month for movies.

PITCH PERFECT.

Really fun, and I did not expect to say that at all.

ARGO.

A fine movie. A B-plus. Not the best movie of the year by any stretch, and I’ve been rooting for Affleck for longer than almost anybody so I’m not being nasty.

SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS.

IN BRUGES was my favorite movie of 2008. This is Martin McDonagh’s follow-up. This is the kind of movie a brilliant writer makes when he doesn’t have much to say at the moment he makes it.

SMASHED.

I truly love this movie. It has honesty in it.  Wonderful performances. See it.

HOLY MOTORS.

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ALEX CROSS.

Atrocious and ugly.

THE SESSIONS.

Beautiful and genuinely sweet.

CLOUD ATLAS.

Brave. Beautiful. Wacked-out, in a great way. I was a skeptic and it made me a believer.

SILENT HILL: REVELATION 3D.

Waste of my time.

SKYFALL.

I’m not a James Bond fan, but Roger Deakins on the camera tip and Naomie Harris on the pretty-lady tip made this the best Bond movie for me by far.

THE BAY.

Excellent science-inspired horror flick, one of the very few that justifies the found-footage craze.

FLIGHT.

The music supervisor should be fired. Otherwise, this was an excellent studio movie, the kind of which there used to be many more.  Denzel CRUSHED it.

 

 

WRECK-IT RALPH.

Terrific. At twenty minutes shorter, it’d be a straight-up classic.

 

 

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS.

Wish I loved it. It was worth a try.

LINCOLN.

Stately and spirited.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK.

Land of the blue-eyed Italians! I had a weird reaction to this movie. It felt inauthentic to me, but by every account its makers were sincere. The weirdest part is the way it turns into a STEP UP movie at the end.  Got nothing against the movie. I’m just not on the bandwagon. Nice to see Chris Tucker in a flick like this though.

LIFE OF PI.

This movie has “Peter Jackson’s KING KONG disease.” It’s dull as shit for about an hour, before it turns awesome. But it’s a long hour. Still, the effects alone on the boat-sinking sequence make it a must-see.

KILLING THEM SOFTLY.

Fine, the political subtext was pretty overt. You gonna let that stop you? One of the best crime movies of the year, the past couple even.

DEADFALL.

Great cast, solidly put together — a little over-directed for my tastes, but worth a look.

THE HOBBIT.

Maybe it was from diminished expectations, but for whatever reasons, I had a blast.

MONSTERS INC. 3D

This is the only way we should have to experience Billy Crystal anymore.

ZERO DARK THIRTY.

May have seen the trailers way too many times (it was advertised for about six months before I finally got to see it), because I thought it was excellent but I responded to it more intellectually than viscerally. Maybe a rewatch would help.

THIS IS 40.

This is not a movie. I love Judd Apatow’s work normally, but seriously dude, this is pushing it.

DJANGO UNCHAINED.

A moral and technical tightrope, one which everyone involved totally fucking nailed. Immediate classic. Quite possibly Quentin’s best movie. I’ll watch it a few dozen more times and let you know.

@jonnyabomb.

My Ballot for the Top 10 Coolest Characters In Popular Culture.

This quick list was born out of an email conversation I’ve been having today.  If someone had me at gunpoint and I had to name the characters who I think are the all-time coolest, this is what would happen.  I’m not sure why anyone would need to pull a gun on me to get such a list, since I’d obviously provide it for free… but the point is:  This list might have been a little different with more time to reflect on it, but I kind of like the immediacy of such a thing.  There’s an honesty to it.  When I’m asked what I think is cool, this is what’s at the tip of the tongue of my brain.

In other words, don’t waste your time arguing with it.  Let’s be friends.  But I WOULD love to hear your own favorites, so feel free to shoot me your own top 10!

#1.

#2.

#3.

#4.

#5.

#6.

#7.

#8.

#9.

#10.

 

I already wish I made it twenty.

Hit me below, or on Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

50 Best Movies Of The 1990s That @TheAVClub Didn’t Have Room For.

Don’t let the title above get me wrong: The A.V. Club’s recently-completed list of the 50 Best Films Of The ’90s is as close to a definitive consensus as anyone could ever hope for.  It’s a terrific list.  Barring the inclusion of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (I understand why they felt they needed to include it, but it’s a bad movie), there isn’t anything I could even begin to object to — in fact, most of their choices would have been mine.  But since the 1990s are the decade in which I [sort of] came of age, I thought up 50 more that could have been included.  In my opinion.  There.  Disclaimed.

Here are some of my favorite 1990s movies, any of which I could make a strong case for as the decade’s best, grouped by year NOT by numerical rank:

Incredible imagery from a true master of cinema.

Read my dissertation at Daily Grindhouse!

All three leads are brilliant in this con-man crime film written by Donald Westlake and directed by the hugely-underrated-by-film-geeks Stephen Frears.

Look at the upper left side of that poster.  There’s no better vote of confidence on the planet.

This is one of the best of the decade based on the music alone.

Known to true Bill Murray fans as the most underrated Bill Murray movie, this one was actually co-directed by our hero, and it’s an expert farce and one of the better New York movies ever.

A radio shock jock (Jeff Bridges) and a homeless man (Robin Williams) cross paths in another underrated New York movie, this one from the genius visual wizard Terry Gilliam.

This choice comes down to whichever definition of “best” you’re personally using at the time in regards to movies.  Are there more culturally resonant and artistically sophisticated movies than this one?  Sure.  Am I more likely to put one of those on at the end of a long day over this one?  Nope.

What does “best” mean?  Maybe I equivocate too much.  I’m an action guy, and this fits the term “best” under any definition.  John Woo is an artisan of cinematic mayhem and this is arguably the pinnacle of his career.

Because nobody else ever before or since made a movie like this one.

One of the few movies that genuinely emotionally moves me every time I see it.  A high point for Jeff Bridges, who has had a ton of high points.

It’s not exactly that Robert De Niro and Bill Murray trade personas here.  This movie isn’t a stunt.  It’s something way more sensitive and thoughtful than that.  But De Niro does play the meek, mild-mannered police photographer and Murray the unpredicably-violent gangster who dreams of being a stand-up.  And it was written by the great Richard Price and directed by the man who made HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER.

Enthusiasm for this movie seems to have dimmed, as has much appreciation for director Jonathan Demme (people are a little too much “What have you done for me lately?”, but this movie represents a key moment in the cultural mainstreaming of things that needed to be made mainstream at the time.  Honestly it’s been a while so I don’t know how much it all holds up, but to my memory, it was a thoughtful, character-based film about the big issues.  Terrific soundtrack also.

Well I said a bunch here and here.  This movie is a switchblade-arsenal of terrific actors, showcased with bombastic direction from Tony Scott working in concert with the unconquerably individualistic Quentin Tarantino script.  It’s kind of a nexus of everything that became important and trendy in 1990s crime and action films.

This wouldn’t make a personal top 50 or 100 or maybe not even a top 200, but it’s impeccable Disney entertaining for the widest possible audience and believe me, it still works as hugely as it did nearly twenty years ago.  (You’re old.)

C0-written by David Peoples (UNFORGIVEN), which makes it important right there.  But again, Terry Gilliam, this time challenging Bruce Willis into another great performance (Bruce always seems to do best with the most individualistic filmmakers).  Madeline Stowe is great.  And character-actor Brad Pitt beats leading-man Brad Pitt six out of seven days a week.

Super-serious great movies are easy.  Great comedies are hard.  This is one of the funniest of the decade.

Yeah, I get it.  Some of you think it’s too much.  I think it’s opera.  I think Michael Mann is criminally underappreciated by the listmakers and the award-givers.  I think it’s one of the few movies more than two hours that I can watch over and over without getting bored.  This movie got in my soul the first time I saw it, and it’s still there.

This came toward the end of John Carpenter’s remarkable run of horror and action classics, but it still has moments of colossal inspiration, and a truly memorable lead performance by the great Sam Neill.

I’ll admit it’s probably a stretch to call this one of the best movies of the 1990s, but it’s one of my favorite filmmakers, Sam Raimi, taking on one of my favorite genres, the “spaghetti” Western, and supercharging it with his anarchic cartoony innovations.  There’s more energy in this movie than in most of the Best Picture winners of the decade.

All I’m saying is, I’ve seen this one more times than I’ve seen RUSHMORE and THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS combined.

Some people maintain that this remains Paul Thomas Anderson’s best movie.  Some days I can see what they mean.  It’s certainly his tightest, most controlled, most focus, most conventional.  And it’s the Rosetta Stone where many of his later musical cues, character names, themes, and company players were first established.  For me, it’s a treat to see Robert Elswit’s camera roam around Nevada — Elswit is the (until-recently) unsung hero of Anderson’s oevre (until recently.  I also like this movie because it makes me feel like an asshole.  It was released when Anderson was 26.  You should have seen what I was doing at 26.  Feeling like an asshole is good, though – it motivates me.

This is a black, black comedy.  You gotta give these guys credit — they did not take the easy road after DUMB & DUMBER kick-started their careers.  Even THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY goes to some daring places (it’s a romantic comedy about stalking, after all), but it’s nowhere near as nasty as this one.  And once again, Bill Murray, comedy’s supreme ninja master, comes in for a few scenes and completely destroys throughout every single moment he appears.

Chris Rock’s favorite Tim Burton movie.  I don’t have a favorite Tim Burton movie — impossible for me to choose — but this one is up there.  It’s pure anarchy on film.  Somebody gave the creepy kid down the street complete access to fireworks and all the best toys — expensive sets, costumes, huge movie stars — and he went to work blowing them all up with demented glee.  (Demented Glee is my favorite Fox TV show, by the way.)  It was a stroke of inspiration to reframe the alien invasion movie as a 1970s-style disaster movie, and to make the whole thing a comedy.  This weirded out a country more interested in the more straightforward INDEPENDENCE DAY, but I’m with the weird kid.

Because as much credit as Eddie Murphy and Rick Baker get for their brilliance, it still isn’t enough.

A case could be made for THE TRUMAN SHOW as the best Jim Carrey movie of the 1990s (maybe ever, barring ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND), but I’m a fan of the big weird risk and the sudden detour and the critical and popular underdog.  THE CABLE GUY is even weirder than you may remember, and in retrospect it paved the way for enduring cult comedies to follow like ZOOLANDER and ANCHORMAN.

Best-of lists always go heavy on lauding the director and the actors, but how about the screenwriters?  You know, the guys and gals without whom the entire movie would not exist in the first place?  Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski are the kings of the gonzo biopics of the 1990s, with ED WOOD, MAN ON THE MOON, and this, the story of Hustler founder Larry Flynt.  Woody Harrelson is incredible in the role, and the whole thing, under the stewardship of the mighty Milos Forman, is a raunchy, raucous, searing, and sad affair.

Leon Gast’s film is one of THE essential sports documentaries ever made.  It’s the story of Muhammad Ali’s match against George Foreman for the title of heavyweight champion of the world.  The ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ took place in Africa in 1974, and the movie is supercharged with electric history.

In my local paper at the time, the shoddy film critic referred to this movie with a cheap shot: “Lifeless, Ordinary.”  It’s anything but.  It’s everything but.  The follow-up to TRAINSPOTTING from the team of Danny Boyle, John Hodge, and Andrew McDonald is a deranged, delirious trip through America.  It’s colorful and kinetic and enthusiastically acted and it sounds like a million bucks.  (Why not?)  It’s boistrous and unruly and maybe a little too self-indulgent, but it’s my kind of self-indulgent — the boldly original kind – so the complainers can go screw.

In 1997, Kevin Smith was still a filmmaker who led with his heart and inspired an entire generation of creatively-inclined young’uns to write with honesty and candor.  Smith’s first four movies were sloppily-made but felt incredibly personal, and CHASING AMY was maybe the rawest of them all.  I’m not sure I could revisit it now any more than I’d like to look at a high school yearbook, but I’m grateful for that long-ago validation the success of CHASING AMY gave me and a ton of more-famous, more influential up-and-comers. As for Smith, he made an encouraging return to form with the flawed but fiery RED STATE. Unfortunately, he seems to be more interested in everything BUT filmmaking nowadays. Too bad.

There’s over-the-top pulp, and then there’s JOHN WOO over-the-top pulp.  This is the most gloriously operatic and unrestrained of any of John Woo’s Hollywood movies, and both of its stars seem to have been stuck in that mode ever since.

The first BABE is pure sweetness and you should definitely see it too, but this is the one directed by George Miller, of MAD MAX fame.  It’s wilder, sadder, scarier, and even more bizarre.  It’s great.  George Miller doesn’t work nearly enough.

Michael Mann again.  This is his most high-minded movie, and there’s no reason it should be remotely as watchable and rewatchable as it is.  It’s about network TV, journalism, and big tobacco, and yet it’s suspenseful, moving, and entertaining as all hell.  So much of that comes from the dynamic, unusual directing choices of Mann, working with his DP from HEAT, Dante Spinotti.  The musical selection, both of score and soundtrack, is impeccable and distinctive as it ever is with Mann, and the editing style is somewhat hypnotic.  Of course the script by Mann and Eric Roth is impeccable, and then you have a roster of some of the world’s greatest actors, led by Al Pacino in maybe his last truly excellent role, and Russell Crowe, who was so ridiculously incredible in his transformative role that the Oscars realized they fucked up by not giving him Best Actor for this movie and corrected it the next year. 

Still the best Superman movie since Richard Donner was making ‘em.

Look, I’ve had it up to here with M. Night Shyamalan too, but no one, not even Shyamalan himself, can strike this one from the win column.  It’s a very solid script accompanied by thoughftul direction, with an unusually soft-spoken and gentle performance from Bruce.

This movie came on like a revelation from director David O. Russell, who had made two small movies at that point and no one could have expected him to make an action-comedy/war movie with an eclectic ensemble cast (including director Spike Jonze!) with raucous energy and actual formal innovations (with bleached-out cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel).  It’s like KELLY’S HEROES but with more of a social conscience.  This is one of the reasons people think of 1999 as a banner year for American film.

A bizarre and beautiful chimera that is a perfectly-modulated melding of the sensibilities of Jim Jarmusch and The RZA.  Contains what is probably the last of the great wackadoo Henry Silva performances.

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Find me on Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

My Favorite Music Right Now: DROKK by Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury.

Drokk is not the soundtrack to the new DREDD movie.  Well, it could’ve been.

As you can surmise from the subtitle, Music Inspired By Mega-City One, this collection of music is very much Dredd-affiliated.  Geoff Barrow, instrumentalist for the English trip-hop band Portishead, collaborated with composer Ben Salisbury on this collection of orchestral music that at one point was intended to be the score for the new DREDD movie.  For whatever reasons, that didn’t pan out, and the score to DREDD was provided by Paul Leonard-Morgan.  The actual DREDD score is still very good, the general difference being that it’s heavier on the tangible instruments, such as guitar and drums.

Barrow and Salisbury primarily used 1975-model Oberheim 2 Voice Synthesizers for their compositions, the result of which being that Drokk has less in common with the bombastic Zimmer-influenced action soundtracks of today, and falls more in line with the more measured, eerier likes of Fabio Frizzi and Goblin, and also with the pseudo-futuristic shimmer of Vangelis (BLADE RUNNER).  Oh, and John Carpenter.  Very much John Carpenter.  Listen to Track #4, “301-305” — sound familiar?  It will if you’ve seen ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13.

Drokk is the most fun kind of homage.  It’s all the action movies and sci-fi movies you grew up on, but the only place it’s happening is inside your head when you listen to it.  Maybe it’s ultimately not a huge tragedy that it was separated from DREDD — I like the idea of this rogue soundcloud travelling adrift from the context within which it may or may not have originally been created.  It doesn’t have to accompany a story made up by someone else — you can have it soundtrack the story you imagine yourself.

If you’re into that kind of thing, that is.  (I am!)

You can listen to the entire thing here, but it’s well worth a buy:  http://drokk.bandcamp.com/

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Me more here always:  @jonnyabomb

A Tribute: HAL NEEDHAM.

On March 16th of this past year, I attended a screening at the 92Y Tribeca of BODY SLAM (1986), attended by its director, the literally legendary Hal Needham.  BODY SLAM was the last theatrical feature he directed, and probably not his best, although it was still a whole mess of fun, like pretty much everything else he’s ever done.  Now, Hal Needham is arguably best known to the mainstream as the director of THE CANNONBALL RUN, but that really is only a small part of what makes him a Hollywood legend.

Honestly, I sat in awe through most of the Q&A after the movie, since I know more than most people do about Hal Needham’s career, and still I knew only a little.  Hal Needham doesn’t have a household-auteur name like Spielberg or Scorsese, but rest assured that his is an essential career in American movies.  If you look over his list of credits, you will see that he worked on over a hundred films in the stunt department, whether as a coordinator, actor, or stunt performer, or some combination henceforth.  Here is a partial list of movies with his vital contributions (I’m sticking to the ones I personally have seen or else we’ll literally be here all day):

THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, DONOVAN’S REEF, 4 FOR TEXAS, MAJOR DUNDEE, OUR MAN FLINT, BANDOLERO!, 100 RIFLES, LITTLE BIG MAN, RIO LOBO, THE NIGHT STALKER, THE CULPEPPER CATTLE CO., WHITE LIGHTNING, BLAZING SADDLES, CHINATOWN, 3 THE HARD WAY, THE LONGEST YARD, and THE END.

Before getting into directing, Hal Needham was Hollywood’s number-one go-to stunt man. He made over 300 movies and broke over 50 bones.

Here are some other facts about Hal Needham, which I excitedly sent out on Twitter after meeting the man in person:

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Hal Needham worked on THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, and was in the bar fight in DONOVAN’S REEF.  Both alongside John Wayne & Lee Marvin.

(Here’s a pair of Hal Needham bar-fight scenes:)

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Hal Needham jumped from one airplane to another, mid-flight.

Not Hal Needham. But it could be.

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Hal Needham drank with Billy Wilder.

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Hal Needham was best pals with Burt Reynolds and lived for fourteen years in his guest house, “rent-free.”  This was during the time when Burt Reynolds was the biggest box-office draw in the country.  Reportedly, it was exactly the party it sounds like.

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Hal Needham got paid $25,000 to drive a car straight into a concrete wall.  ”It was easy,” he told us.

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Hal Needham escaped a Russian invasion and lost his hearing in an explosion in Czechoslavakia.

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When Hal Needham talks about the Rat Pack, he refers to Sinatra, Martin, and Davis as “Frank, Dean, and Sammy.”  BECAUSE HE KNEW THEM PERSONALLY.

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Hal Needham broke the sound barrier in a car.

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Remember the blonde who drives the car with Adrienne Barbeau in THE CANNONBALL RUN?

Hal Needham did that too.

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Hal Needham gave Jackie Chan and everybody else who does it the idea to run the blooper reel over the end credits.  I asked him if he ever saw ANCHORMAN, specifically the end credits, which hilariously just rerun the blooper reel of THE CANNONBALL RUN.  (Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, along with their protegee Danny McBride, are obviously familiar with the Needham catalogue.  EASTBOUND & DOWN is a reference to the theme song of SMOKEY & THE BANDIT.)  Hal Needham told me he hasn’t seen ANCHORMAN, but would check it out.

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Many of the above stories are written about at length in Hal Needham’s autobiography, STUNT MAN!

That’s Hal Needham on the cover, by the way.  You’ll recognize him because he’s on fire.  (He said it didn’t hurt.)

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When writing about Hal Needham’s accomplishments, it starts to feel like making up Chuck Norris Facts.  The difference?  Hal Needham is a badass for real.

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At the screening and Q&A, Hal Needham was a great sport, and a great, great storyteller.   The crowd was cool and asked about almost everything I would have asked.  So most of my questions were about THE VILLAIN.  (Hal Needham started Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career!)  THE VILLAIN is a little-remembered comedy-Western which Needham treated as a live-action Tex Avery cartoon.  Arnold plays the well-intentioned but dopey hero, Handsome Stranger, Ann-Margret is at her all-time most luscious as Charming Jones, and Kirk Douglas plays the Wile E. Coyote styled black-hatted title character, Cactus Jack (which is sometimes the title of the movie in some markets).  Paul Lynde has a very funny cameo as Indian chief Nervous Elk, and Western-movie veteran Strother Martin plays the excellently-named Parody Jones.  Look guys, I’m not gonna argue that this is a great movie in the classical sense, but goddamn did it make me laugh.  And I really shouldn’t have glossed over just how attractive Ann-Margaret is in the movie.  It’s about as good as a lady can, possibly.

BODY SLAM is equally silly — like THE VILLAIN, probably second-tier Needham — but it has plenty of moments.  This was at the peak of pro-wrestling’s popularity in the 1980s, and it’s easy to see why a stuntman like Needham would feel an affinity for pro-wrestlers, who are also under-appreciated athletes.  Like John Carpenter, he also saw the star power of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, who was famous in the wrestling as a ‘heel’ but in movies like BODY SLAM, THEY LIVE, and HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN* — *the greatest movie title of all time — made a thoroughly likable, blue-collar, and naturally funny (also very, very Canadian) protagonist.  Most of BODY SLAM is concerned with the antics of Dirk Benedict’s character, as the fast-talking, somewhat shady promoter who takes on Piper’s character as a client.  It’s also concerned with ogling Tanya Roberts, as the love interest prone to wearing very, very, very small bikinis.  I was way into all of that as a kid — Dirk Benedict was on The A-Team, of course, and I knew Tanya Roberts from Charlie’s Angels and SHEENA: QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE.  Throw in Billy Barty, Sydney Lassick, and Captain Lou Albano, and there you go, another [very strange and occasionally awkward] party.  The wrestling scenes are great, though.  I’m also a big fan of the Latin-freestyle theme song, though a saner person might not be.

Can’t find a trailer, but here are some clips from BODY SLAM:

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That’s Hal Needham, man.  He likes to make movies with pretty girls and silly gags, some amiable shit-talking and braggadocio, and a couple big crazy stunts.  If he wasn’t so busy jumping from planes and trains, he could have been a big hit as a staffer at MAD.  He’s not one who’s out to change the world with his art.  He just wants to brighten up your day.  Sometimes that’s a noble cause.  I know I’m someone who believes it to be.

In the end, there was little I could say to the man besides “It’s an honor. Your movies have given me and my friends a lot of happy times.”  I don’t tend to get overly excited about meeting famous people.  I had a fun run-in with Stan Lee once, and meeting Clint Eastwood was a highlight, but yeah I will admit this was a really cool experience.  For a Yankee born and bred, I’m a huge fan of the work of this man who is quite possibly the most successful Southern filmmaker of his era.

I’m finally posting this tribute officially because I read some good news for once:  It was announced today that Hal Needham is getting an honorary Academy Award for his decades of pioneering stunt work.  (Read about it here and here!)  It’s well-deserved, especially considering how the ‘major’ awards show so little appreciation of the value that stunt performers bring to action cinema.  We wouldn’t have most of our favorite movies without them.  They literally risk their necks for our entertainment.  (To be fair, they do usually pull the babes also.  It’s a trade-off!)

Hal Needham is one of the most prolific stuntmen ever to work in American movies, and as a director he created some endlessly enjoyable party movies.  Obviously I’m willing to praise his work all day, but it’s great to see that he’s finally getting his due from his peers, his industry, and other fancy people in tuxedos.

Me on Twitter:  @jonnyabomb

Raquel Welch Birthday Beauty Photobomb.

It’s her birthday today. I recommend you read my appreciation of Raquel Welch written for my pals at Daily Grindhouse, in which I argue fairly strongly my case that Raquel is even better than Marilyn Monroe, among other things, but ultimately, there may be only one way to celebrate properly.

BOMB!

 

Recommended after viewing the preceding: Take two cold showers and punch yourself in the crotch. Quickest way to return to reality.

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Special Report: What Is INSEPARABLE?

While I was compiling my most recent Unfortunate Movie Posters column, I spotted something intriguingly weird.  Let’s take a look at the posters for a movie called Inseparable.  This movie was made in China and released there on May 4th.  There is as yet no American release date.  That’s not the odd part.

Okay, so it’s a superhero movie — apparently a lighthearted one at that.  Aside from the cameo from the fish from the Faith No More “Epic” video, there’s nothing particularly unusual about a comical costumed-hero movie from the Asian film industry. 

It happens.

But not usually like this.  Watch as this guy is joined by a partner-in-crimefighting…   

Does the profile of the caped gentleman on the left look familiar?  Squint. 

Still hard to tell?  Here, let’s open it up…

Well there’s the name and a closer look, but can we get a picture without the mask?

BAM!  Kevin Spacey!

Wait — what?

That is indeed esteemed actor Kevin Spacey, American star of  movies as uniquely American as The Ref, Seven, The Usual Suspects, L.A. Confidential, American Beauty, Horrible Bosses, Casino Jack, and Margin Call, and he is indeed up there wearing a cape in a Chinese-only movie. 

And he will be joined by Peter Stormare, man of a thousand accents.  You know Peter Stormare from his villainous roles in movies such as Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Constantine, and Lockout, and I can pretty much guarantee you sight-unseen that he plays a villain here too.

What else do we know about the story of Inseparable?  Well, according to the internet, the official site is coming soon, but the placeholder does offer us this image:

So it looks like Kevin Spacey makes some friends while he’s over there!

And, instead of having to battle one, he gets the chance to be a superhero:

This article at The Playlist sheds a little more light, explaining that Inseparable is about a suicidal young businessman who is saved and befriended by a mysterious American (who favors 1980s LL Cool J tracksuits) — they find purpose in life by making costumes and heading out to the streets together to fight crime.  The girl pictured above, it turns out, is the young man’s wife, a reporter who apparently gets her own costume eventually.  The Playlist links to another article that explains how the film was financed and made in China but shot partly in English, which is slightly reminiscent of how most of the ”spaghetti” Westerns of the 1960s and 1970s were produced.    

I think it’s great, by the way.  I’m all for it.

It’s now a  badly-kept secret that American movie stars often collect major paychecks for appearing in commercials in the Asian marketplace, far away from the judgment of American audiences.  (It’s famously a running joke in Lost In Translation.)  That’s not what this is.  At a reported budget of $4-6 million, this is a relatively modest production, but it’s a notable development.  The foreign market is exceedingly and ever-increasingly important to Hollywood.  Have you noticed that the huge Hollywood summer movies have been premiering overseas even before we get them here?  The Avengers is a colossal hit here in America, but would you believe that the rest of the world actually got to see it a week before we did?!?  It’s a noticeable development.

We can interpret this mounting trend in two different ways.   One, it’s an alarming portent of how Hollywood, in a pursuit of foreign audiences (and revenue) will continue to forgo character and nuance for spectacle and costumes, since action scenes, giant robots, and explosions are always the easiest story elements to translate. 

All that’s true, but I prefer the more optimistic interpretation, which is that dropping American stars into Chinese films (to take the example on the table) is a fun and fresh way to create a multicultural mash-up.  We’ve already seen Kevin Spacey interact onscreen with just about every name actor we could possibly think of — maybe pairing up such a recognizable and reliable talent with some foreign faces will produce some refreshing results.

At the very least, maybe all this multinational branding experimentation will one day bring us an actually awesome new Godzilla movie.

More mysteries of life solved daily on Twitter: @jonnyabomb

COMBO PACK! April/May 2012′s Most Unfortunate Movie Posters.

Due to some major real-world complications I couldn’t get this column (or much else) together in April, but that’s the bad news.  The good news is that, as always, I’ve been steadily amassing grist for the mill, which means I now have twice as many dumb posters as usual to share with you this time.

If you’re new to this feature, the game is simple.  It’s just me riffing off movie posters.  If anything bothers you, try to relax.  It’s all in fun.  There’s no real malice intended (except for a couple cases, but they’re asking for it.)

This is done out of my love of movies and movie artwork.  No other reason.  Oh, and to entertain you, the reader, but that ought to go without saying.

Let’s see what kind of trouble I can get up to this time…

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It was a dark day for humanity, when the giant floating celebrity heads appeared off the Malibu coast.

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“Danny got some bad ass, and now he’ll not stop until he gets a better piece.”

The poster is great. That’s not what I’m saying.  All I’m saying is this:  Our national usage of the word “ass” — sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s a bad thing, sometimes it’s so bad it’s good, sometimes it’s good and bad at once — is confusing sometimes.

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Danny Trejo is usually well-served by posters.  But some stars aren’t as fortunate (or as intimidating).  Poor Jason Ritter, for example, has a knack for getting stuck on the most eye-wrecking posters.  This month it happens to be this one…

…But you might remember this one from back in March.

It’s officially a trend.  Sorry, Jason Ritter.

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I like the girl on her cell phone, like “I think that lady next to me was in Borat!”

More than that, I like the kid’s shrugging-it-off expression in the foreground, that typical pose you see on posters for comedies that aren’t all that funny: “You got me!  I’m on a poster for a weed movie wearing a weed T-shirt.  What can I say?  Shit’s crazy, right?”

I also wish Faizon Love was on the Piranha 3DD poster (see below) rather than this one.

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For a dose of class and sophistication, you can always rely on monster-talent Oren Peli.  When dealing cinematically with the matter of a historic nuclear tragedy that afflicted thousands with cancer and death, the artistic mastermind to turn to is definitely the one who made Paranormal Activity so he can turn the whole scene into the setting for another one of his poorly-shot found-footage movies where absolutely nothing happens.  Coming in 2013: The Dachau Notebooks.

Where’s my damn sarcasm hashtag when I need it?

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This poster only officially qualifies as unfortunate when you realize how long and how hard they’ve been working on it.

(A veteran of this column, Cold Light Of Day has also appeared in the February installment.)

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“Dreams Come True”?  I’ll say!  You know how long I’ve been hoping and praying for a James Cromwell Western?

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Here Simon Pegg experiments with the boundaries of how far his devoted nerdy fanbase will follow him.

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First Position: Ballet in the middle of a city street in the blinding sun.

Second Position:  [SPLAT.]

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No snark or criticisms.  This poster is good for the world.  Put it up everywhere.

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Do not promise me something you are not willing to provide.  I’m expecting robots and you’re giving me romantic comedy?  Don’t say the word Godzilla and give me nothing more than Kate Hudson.  It’s a dangerous game you play.

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“Huh. Wouldja look at that? Somebody set The Rock’s pants on fire. The Rock can smell what The Rock is cooking.  It smells like burnt pubes.  The Rock want retaliation!”

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Orlando Bloom is your Elijah Wood now.

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I must be way out of step with the zeitgeist, because America seems to love movies about Meryl Streep’s sex life and I… do not count that among my interests.

Which is the more bizarre love triangle: Meryl Streep/ Alec Baldwin/ Steve Martin, or Meryl Streep/ Tommy Lee Jones/ Steve Carell?

You guys come up with an answer, I’ll be over here with my head in a garbage can.

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Knowing what I know about this movie, in that it’s a “romantic comedy” about the invention of the vibrator, I now shudder to think about what’s going on with Lady Bracknell there on the bottom area.

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As someone who appreciates the music of Hank Williams, I’ve got no problem with the premise, the title, or even the poster.  I’ve only got to take issue with the names on the poster.  Henry Thomas (ET and Gangs Of New York), Jesse James (not the one you may be thinking of), Fred Dalton Thompson of politics and Die Hard 2, and Kaley Cuoco of The Big Bang Theory:  None of these strike me as ideal casting for the country-music legend.

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A sad day for the great Eugene Levy, a glad one for his accountant.

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Well, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see this movie before, but now I am totally absolutely sure.

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They remade Armageddon using nerds.

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We’re going to have to push past the weirdo-tandem of Udo Kier and Norman Reedus in the bottom squares, and to especially push past the guy in the upper left square (kind of a Cameron-Diaz-meets-Sonny-Landham type), in order to talk about the fact that David Carradine is still appearing in new movies despite his death in 2009.  David Carradine is like the Tupac of movies.  Although Tupac was in movies, so maybe we should consider Tupac to be the David Carradine of rap.

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Look beyond all those colors and check out the cast list:   Toni Braxton, Chloris Leachman, Christopher Lloyd, Chazz Palminteri, Cary Elwes, AND Jaime Pressly.  Those are six people who wouldn’t make sense living in the same zip code, let alone being grouped together in one movie.  That’s one thing that makes me want to see this, and the other thing is the fact that it’s a horror movie.

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In a foot race?  Just because I don’t know the other two and I don’t think Bob Hoskins is as quick as he used to be, I’m betting on the horse.

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Good news, movies:  The new Mena Suvari you didn’t order has arrived.

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Yes.  You’re Elizabeth Banks and Chris Pine.  You’re extremely talented and attractive.  People like you.  I like you.  Just try not to rub it in, okay?

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It must be nice, to live without shame.

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There are many people out there who believe in exorcisms, so I don’t want to step on any theological toes.  Still, science would suggest that no exorcism has ever begun or ended with a ghost hand reaching out of a person’s stomach and grabbing their face.  A couple cases of tapeworm ended that way, maybe, but that’s it.  (Has there ever been a tapeworm-exorcism movie?  Shouldn’t there be one?)

Alternate observation:  Ever notice how the more “serious” exorcism movies rely on gross-out imagery which wouldn’t be out of place in an Evil Dead movie?

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As atrocious as this may look, keep in mind:  Bon Jovi think they’re too good for this.

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Neat idea:  A political dance movie.  Imagine how many more hearts the Occupy Wall Street movie could turn if the protestors were to bust out some sexy club dancing in the streets.  Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo had its political overtones, but its scope was limited.  Turbo and Ozone were only concerned with saving Miracles.  Step Up Revolution is looking to save the world!

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There’s an inevitability to this poster.  I’m not sure I can explain it.  It has something to do with the pairing of mainstream comedian and indie sweetheart in an artier movie than usually — it’s not far from Adam Sandler & Emily Watson or Jim Carrey & Kate Winslet to get to Seth Rogen and Michelle Williams.  It also has something to do with the young-people-sitting-on-the-front-stoop-surrounded by autumnal-colors movement in romantic-comedy poster design.  What is more promising about this poster campaign is A) “written & directed by Sarah Polley” who is smart and talented and B) the second poster.

More indie-movie posters should be interrupted by Sarah Silverman.  There aren’t many that couldn’t be improved that way.

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Hey, forty doesn’t seem so bad if you appear younger than ever and are allowed to actively shit while appearing on a movie poster.  The only thing that should bother anybody is the blatant product placement (“Honey, when you’re done brushing your teeth and I’m done dropping this hedgehog, do you want to stop by the Genius bar for an upgrade?”)

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You’re right, the poster isn’t particularly laughable.

But the teaser trailer is.

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I actually got a screening invite to this movie.  Should I go?

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Either the worst or the best sequel to The Crow.

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I don’t particularly want to travel to Rome with any of these people.  You guys have fun on your trip.  (I like the idea of a road movie where Benigni torments Woody Allen, but you know this is going to be just another thing full of pretentious literary references and old guys hooking up with young women.  Don’t ask me why I’m not a big Woody Allen fan.)

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A lifeless young woman being abducted?  Charming.

You think I’m being sarcastic?  Then you just don’t know how many times I’ve seen a little movie called Mannequin, my friend.

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If you’re an easily-spooked Shia-Labeouf-looking guy, the last thing you want to have on the other side of your apartment door is an armed Dolph Lundgren.

Trust me, I should know.

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That’s my cue to get going.  Have a great month, everybody!

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Find me on Twitter: @jonnyabomb

The 9,133 Greatest Movies Of All Time.

How many movies are there in the world?  How many movies have been made since the invention of cinema, way back in those last years of the nineteenth century?  These questions are just about impossible to answer, so how about this one:  How many movies can one person see in a lifetime?  And if that person managed to list them, in what order would he organize them?

The answer lies with a man named Brad Bourland, a grocery store employee from Austin, Texas, who was profiled by the New York Times in April.  On April 15^th, 2010, Bourland posted to his website the most up-to-date version of his current project, a movie list which represents, in numeric ranking, the greatest films of the twentieth century.

That list can be found here.

The rankings are relatively predictable in places, highly questionable in others, and outright preposterous in others.  Bourland tells the New York Times that he hopes people don’t get too wrapped up in the rankings, and that’s the right move.  What Bourland is trying to do, if I understand it correctly, is rank the movies in order of esteem – in other words, Casablanca is number one on the list because critics and audiences almost universally deem it so, not necessarily because Bourland himself agrees (although in this case, one suspects that he does.)  He also wants to make sure that those great movies which may have been forgotten, or are in danger of being forgotten, remain in the national conversation alongside the more popular and the more recent great movies.  (This is an altruistic goal, even if it’s already being done well in many quarters, for example by the good folks at TCM and the Cinefamily in Los Angeles.)

Of course, ranking movies in order of appreciation is nearly as difficult to quantify as ranking them in order of quality.  The value of a list like this one is, in part, the fact that it demonstrates how silly list-making generally is.  For one thing, it can never really be comprehensive, even though Bourland has limited the list to the films of the twentieth century, even though he has put out the call to film fans everywhere to help him add in the entries he may have missed.  For another thing, documentaries, silent movies, and animated films have not been factored in, whether that is due to Bourland’s personal tastes or his [understandable] concerns about manageability.   However, the list is called  “The 9133 Best, Most Beloved and the Most Important English Language Films of the 20^th Century. In Order.”  By definition, that demands the inclusion of documentaries, silents, and cartoons – and that’s not even raising the argument for foreign films.

And really, if the list is anywhere labeled “Best,” then it really shouldn’t include – just to take a few examples off the bottom end – Leprechaun, Real Men, Q: The Winged Serpent, Alien From L.A., Silent Night Deadly Night, Cleopatra Jones, Basket Case, Night Of The Lepus, or Ratboy.  How could one reasonably compare Casablanca to those other films?  Their artistic goals are diametrically opposed.  There are only two qualities these works share: one is that they were all filmed with a movie camera, and the other is that I don’t think anyone has seen them all besides Brad Bourland and myself.

So sure, it’s just an absurd project, and one that’s conceptually flawed, even if I find it bizarrely admirable – maybe even because of how absurd it is.  People love lists – really, they do – but no one is so determined that they would list this many movies and then attempt to rank them.  Well, not until now.  Brad Bourland of Austin, Texas is that determined.

Since I’m crazy, I made a rough count of how many movies from this list I have seen.  The result is either shocking or reassuring, depending on whether you are a friend or relative, or whether you are me:  I have seen about 1,231 out of 9,133.  What is that, around eleven percent?  I found that reassuring because, as many movies as I’ve seen, it’s apparently not as many as I (or my friends and family) think – although when my thoughts venture towards the realm of movies I’ve seen that weren’t included on the list, it begins to disturb.  (Brad Bourland just plain hasn’t seen as much shoddy horror as I have, evidently.)

Doing that rough count made me see the value in this list:

1) It made me notice the gaps in my movie-watching that I’d like to rectify.  As many movies from the top 200 that I’ve seen, there are still many, many, many classics that I’ve missed.  How is it that I’ve never seen The Sting?

2) Going back and seeing the names of movies that I haven’t seen or even thought of in many years was in a way a trip through my personal memories.  Movies aren’t just entertainment, but also a road map of the memorable (or unmemorable) moments of our lives.  I remember the first movie I ever saw, and I remember the first movie I ever took a girl to.  I remember the movies that scared the hell out of me, and the movies that made me laugh so hard I couldn’t breathe.  I remember the movies I watched over and over with my best friends, and I remember the movies I might have seen only once, with people who never quite became best friends.  I remember which movies I saw at which theater in what state, and I remember some of the big dramas or small crazy moments that were going on at the time.  Seeing all of this in once place brought all of it back – it was exactly like my life flashing before my eyes.

Find me on Twitter: @jonnyabomb

This piece appeared elsewhere on the internet on May 4th, 2010 – I liked it enough to look at again and hopefully you will too.

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