Ha Ha Ha Ha Hackers

Let’s go back in time, to a year called 1995. The DVD was announced, eBay and Yahoo were founded, Toy Story, the first feature-length computer-animated film was released and a Hollywood movie about cyber culture hits theatres. The title: Hackers. The tagline: “Boot up or shut up.” The concept: “United Artists welcomes you to the new world.” The dialogue: “Hack the planet,” “It’s too much machine for you” and “You wanna be an elite? You gotta do a seriously righteous hack!” This was Hollywood taking a subculture and sexing it up while reducing it to a series of catchphrases. And a decade-and-a-half later, it’s utterly hilarious. After all, nothing dates a film worse than technology, so a film about new technology is going to retain all the hipness of pogs, Crystal Pepsi or Hypercolor T-shirts.

Johnny Lee Miller – still best known as Sick Boy in Trainspotting – stars as Dade Murphey, a hacker whose handle is “Crash Override” (which sounds a little too much like the Playstation game Crash Bandicoot, released the next year). We meet Dade when he’s an eleven-year-old on trial for – what else?!? – hacking, under the pseudonym “Zero Cool.”

We now know that this kid is a serious hotshot – awesome!

Flash forward and eighteen-year-old Dade is up to his old tricks, hacking into a television station and changing its programming for kicks. He’s also moved to New York City, where he meets a bunch of other hackers at his school who also like to rollerblade, play videogames (at a sort-of cyber café that looks like a cross between a video arcade, a funhouse and a Tron-themed flea market), pose with various Coke products and dress like they were kicked out of Oingo Boingo because they couldn’t “tone it down.” Among them is Kate (a.k.a. “Acid Burn”) a pouty girl hacker in a boy’s world played by a very fresh-faced Angelina Jolie, and Emmanual Goldstein (a.k.a. “Cereal Killer”), played by Mathew Lillard as one of the most irritating comic relief characters ever laid to film. He looks like a guy who’d get beat up at Burning Man Festival for drinking glow sticks, and he rattles off one liners such as, “This is a wake-up call to the Nintendo Generation!”)

When one of the hackers with something to prove because “I don’t have an identity because I don’t have a handle” breaks into a corporate computer and steals a “garbage” file that actually contains an incriminating virus meant to siphon money from the company, the entire group is pursued by “The Plague.” He’s the Jolt Cola drinkin’, skateboard ridin’, trenchcoat wearin’ bad guy, the hacker responsible for the malicious software – which will also cause oil tankers to spill, creating an ecological disaster. But, he’s also the company’s computer security guy and will stop at nothing to protect his secret, even sending the Feds after the group. Now the raver nerd Scooby gang must go on the run and unite other hackers in order to launch a group hack in order to clear their names. Group hack – yeah!

The movie was trying so, so very hard to be cool and cutting edge, including having characters drool over a 28bps modem, dig through reams of dot matrix printer paper while looking for evidence, and receive instructions such as, “Turn on your laptop; set it to receive a file.” But of all the hilariously dated cyber shenanigans cluttering this film’s desktop, the funniest is the way in which director Iain Softley (K-Pax, Inkheart) decided to visualize all this rogue computing. He actually shows flying numbers and spinning equations flying around in monitors, and even the past characters’ heads. While the current cliché is to show a scroll of green 1’s and 0’s, this was before The Matrix, so “hacking” in Hackers still consists of the good old spinning and flying digital digits. So nostalgic… . Makes you wonder what the future of cinematic “computing” will look like – personally, I’m hoping that abacus holograms catch on and become de rigeur.

Of course, in another fifteen years someone will be writing a similar article about a cyber culture movie that hilariously has characters using Blackberries and listening to “Mp3s” on – ha ha ha! – iPods. Therefore, it’s our job to laugh if up as much as possible in the meantime, while we still can.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to find a way to make my laptop computer interface with a phone line so I can hack into a bank machine and prove to everyone on the Information Superhighway who’s really elite.

 

-Dave Alexander

A Different Sorta Dude

Scraggly hair and beard: check. Smokes pot: check. Often seen with tumbler of favourite alcoholic beverage in hand: check. Has a nickname: check. Walks into a bowling alley and saddles up to the bar: check. Rocks a pair of aviator sunglasses: check. Sleeps around: check. Drives a beat up ‘70s-era vehicle: check. Dresses slovenly: check. Knows a Latino named Jesus: check. Is played by Jeff Bridges: check and check.

All of the above apply to both Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski and Bad Blake, the main character in Crazy Heart – though the latter is a Dude of different feather. When we meet Blake, he’s a 57-year-old, four time divorced, faded country star riding the remains of his own coattails. He drives himself across the U.S. in a ’78 Suburban, barely making ends meet by playing one small club (or in one case a bowling alley!) show after another. A disheveled mess of humanity, he’s drunk pretty much all the time on his signature bourbon, smokes almost as much as he breathes and beds the odd aging groupie. Although he’s rarely lugging around much more than a bottle and his guitar, he’s saddled with plenty of baggage to make him bitter and defeated (he hasn’t written a song in years and his former protégé is a big, wealthy country star), except for those couple hours a night when he’s onstage.

According to Wikipedia, writer-director Scott Cooper originally wanted to do a biopic of Merle Haggard but the rights to his life story were too hard to get, so instead he adapted Thomas Cobb’s 1988 novel, with a main character based on Haggard, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson – some of the baddest boys to ever pick up an acoustic guitar.

Blake finds salvation in the form a journalist named Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a much younger single mother who falls in love with him. Things star looking up for Blake – he gets along famously with Jean’s young son, accepts a stadium-sized opening gig with the aforementioned protégé (played with surprising authenticity by Irishman Colin Farrell – he even sings!) and decides to track down the son he hasn’t seen for 25 years (noticing a theme here?). But things aren’t that easy when you’re a self-sabotaging alcoholic and screw-ups loom on the horizon.

Critics have decried a few questionable plot choices in Crazy Heart, and many of the secondary characters feel underdeveloped (e.g. Blake’s best – and maybe only – friend, played by Robert Duvall). But it’s way easy to overlook in light of Bridges’ stellar empathetic performance. In a lot of ways Blake is like a real version of the Dude, a man whose lax lifestyle defines him, but it’s caught up to this cowboy and he wants to change. (Also, there’s nary a soiled carpet, kidnapped trophy wife or lingonberry pancake-eating nihilist in sight.) Bridges owns the screen, making the character completely absorbing and adding amazing details, right down to the way he familiarly pushes on the power window of his Suburban to get it to close properly – a common problem with vehicles of that vintage.

But the movie is almost as equally held together with music. Bridges – who previously sang a version of “Ring of Fire” for the soundtrack of the 2000 movie The Contender – is absolutely natural as a bar-hardened country outlaw, and performs his own songs like a natural. Great goddamn songs, too. Not surprisingly, the man behind the soundtrack is writer-producer-singer T-Bone Burnett (Oh Brother, Where Art, Thou?, Cold Mountain, Walk the Line and, yes, he even worked on The Big Lebowski).

If you like old time country and roots music, the soundtrack is a must. There’s a sixteen-track and extended 23-track version, with plenty of classics, multiple versions of some songs, the Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated Burnett-penned track “The Weary Kind (Theme From Crazy Heart),” and several tracks performed by Bridges, as well as two by Farrell and one by Duvall. If you don’t want to listen to decades-old country in a rundown tavern over some cheap beers, then, well, this just isn’t your kinda movie – go watch Avatar again.

This year’s Oscars sees Gyllenhaal nominated for Supporting Actress and Bridges nominated for Actor in a Leading Role, and bet your beard he deserves that semi-meaningful little trophy. If this dude don’t win, it’ll be a f**kin travesty, maaan.

 

-Dave Alexander

Beyond the Thin Blue Line

I’ll take a bad cop over a good cop any day. At least in the movies, where morally ambiguous lawmen make for some of the most memorable characters. There are plenty of films where bad cops are the villains, such as Gary Oldman’s baddie in The Professional, Orson Welles as the heavy (literally) in A Touch of Evil, and Hal Holbrook’s foil to Dirty Harry in Magnum Force. And there are the films where the good cop swims upstream against corruption, notably Cop Land, Serpico and The Departed. But I prefer the films that give you a lawman that’s difficult to both love and loathe. Usually these movies offer up a complex character that requires a very strong performance in order to work.

This weekend, on the recommendation of a friend, I watched a great example in the under-the-radar cop/crime drama Cement. The 1999 film features the late Chris Penn as Bill Holt, a cop who’s up to his eyeballs in graft money and kick-backs. The story starts with him at a construction site, where he’s slowly encasing a guy in a cement column. Told from the viewpoint of his drug-addled, equally dirty, but still more morally sound partner (played by Jeffrey Wright, who appeared in Casino Royale as Felix), the narrative unfolds in a series of flashbacks. We learn that Holt’s longstanding arrangement with local gangsters is in trouble because $75 000 has gone missing. We also find out that his wife (played by Sherilyn Fenn) is sleeping with one of the gangsters. A series of events, initiated by Holt, leads to bloody revenge all around.

The beefy Penn is frightening as a loose-cannon-with-a-hair-trigger, who drinks too much and jokes around  a lot but can turn on a dime – that unpredictable violence that characterizes Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas. He’s a sweaty, trigger-happy hulk full of self-loathing, and all it takes is him finding out the truth about his wife to push him over the edge.

It’s not a perfect film by any means – some of the gangster characters are overwrought, for example – but Penn’s performance anchors it. It’s well worth seeking out, if for no other reason than to see him rage across the screen.

If you’re looking for additional bad movie cops, here are my five fave movies in the same vein, with links to the trailers.

 

Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Harvey Keitel plays the baddest of bad cops in Abel Ferra’s bleak character study of what the tagline efficiently describes as a “Gambler. Thief. Junkie. Killer. Cop.” Plus, if you’ve always wanted to see some full frontal Keitel (and, gee, who hasn’t?), this film’s most notorious scene (after the one where he pleasures himself in front of a girl he’s pulled over) has him suffering a mental breakdown in the buff. The movie ultimately questions whether or not he’s beyond redemption.

 

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

The Werner Herzog in-name-only sequel again centres around a train-wreck of a detective, but Nicholas Cage plays this less despicable cop for both pathos and laughs, making his downward spiral a lot more entertaining. Plus, Herzog’s wonderfully weird touches (random iguanas, break dancer hallucinations, etc.) make for a bad lieutenant who’s strange man in an even stranger land.

 

Insomnia (1997)

No, not the remake with Al Pacino – the original Norwegian crime thriller has Stellan Skarsgård playing a cop who’s way more morally compromised than his Hollywood counterpart. As his character investigates a murder in a small town way up north (during 24-hour daylight, making this a reverse film noir), he not only covers up his accidental killing of his partner, he gets creepy with an underage girl and fights against the guilt-ridden insomnia that’s wearing down his judgment as he pursues the killer. He’s the most complex dirty cop of the bunch here.

 

Narc (2002)

Henry Oak is the greatest name ever for a thick, violent snapcase like the one played by Ray Liotta in Narc. The guy is anger incarnate as he relentlessly pursues a cop killer, while his new partner – played by Jason Patric – discovers that he’s hiding a terrible secret. Patric is the star, but Liotta’s red-faced, vein-popping performance is goddamned scary.

 

Training Day (2001)

Similarly, although Ethan Hawke stars here, Denzel Washington steals the show as a veteran narcotics officer showing Hawke’s character the ropes on the frontline of the drug war. Washington’s Oscar-winning performance as the bombastic, narcissistic, line-crossing Alonzo is nearly Shakespearian (and, admittedly, close to self-parody). While the other dirty cops on this list are close to the edge or over it, Alonzo is frightening and fascinating because he cruises around like he’s invincible, and you kinda hope that he is.

 

-Dave Alexander

Intolerable Cruelty

I’ve had testicles on the brain this week. Y’see, I live with a little dwarf bunny named Rex, who arrived with my girlfriend when she moved in, and a week ago he was neutered (so we can get him a little friend that won’t get humped into oblivion). This has meant multiple trips to the vet, checking the area where his two peas in a pod used to hang out, keeping his cage extra clean and spending more money on the whole procedure and follow-ups than I’d care to admit.

The whole ongoing thing got me thinking about groin injuries, and how that act of testicular violence exists simultaneously at very opposite ends of the fun spectrum. The movies illustrate this perfectly. Lo and behold, the IMDb has multiple crotch injury listings. For example, there are 286 titles under “hit-in-crotch,”156 entries for “kicked-in-the-crotch,” 50 titles in the “shot-in-the-crotch” category and seventeen “punched-in-the-crotch.” (And for the record, none of them seem to involve rabbits in any way.)

There are countless films that use and overuse getting hit in the groin as a cheap, but often effective, gag.

It really takes some effort to put a new twist on the ole ball gag. My personal favourite is from Monster Squad, when Horace dispatches the Wolf Man with a swift punt to the hairy Christmas ornaments, after which he proclaims in astonishment, “Wolf Man’s got nards!”

(Note: an excellent variation on the theme comes from The Jerk, in the scene where Steve Martin’s character injures his foot by booting “Iron Balls McGinty.”)

Then there’s the absolutely horrific use of crotch injuries in film. I’m thinking of the penis severing in Hostel II or I Spit on Your Grave, the shotgun blasts to the babymaker in Pulp Fiction and True Romance and, well, pretty much any of the other ones listed here. But at least these are generally perpetrated against bad guys. Some of the most sickening uses of groin mutilation are against innocents, and merely talked about secondhand, as they’re so awful. I’m thinking of the boys in both Candyman and The Exorcist III, who we get descriptions of as having their genitals violently hacked off. Just the very idea is horrifying. (And you though castration anxiety caused angst… .)

That said, the ultimate undercarriage disaster scene in my books isn’t from a horror film, but from an action movie. In action films, the lower torso trauma is sometimes played for laughs, and sometimes played for pain to either show someone who fights dirty or a hero who’s evening the odds (check out this Chuck Norris maneuver).

Or there’s the one that makes me wear an armoured-plated cup and never leave the house: the whack-a-nut torture sequence in Casino Royale. In case it isn’t already seared into your brain as one of the most horrendous examples of man’s cruelty towards man, it’s the sequence in which a naked James Bond is tied to a chair that has had the seat cut out of it; then the vaguely-European-bad-guy-with-a-scar proceeds to smash his underside with a heavy length of knotted rope. Just typing that out makes me queasy. Here’s a link to the sequence, but I’ve chosen a version where someone has inserted comical nut-cracking sound effects – just to take the edge off a bit. Still hurts to watch, though. Unlike the other examples, this one is all too real, probably used in actual torture and much to easy to imagine in aching detail.

Of course, tough guy Bond takes the massive egg-cracking wallops and even manages to squeeze out a couple one-liners through the pain. But there is no way anyone could really endure that. (Well, maybe eunuchs, castrados and my rabbit, for obvious reasons.) Not even Double 0’s double 0’s are that resilient, If you were taking that much punishment in the nether regions, you’d scream so loud and hard, your ancestors would fly out of your mouth.

And you certainly wouldn’t go back to your loverboy spy shenanigans. Without that movie magic, Bond would’ve spend the rest of the film icing himself with a pack of frozen veggies the size of a beanbag chair and trying to breath without crying.

Well, unless, of course, he was actually Iron Balls McGuinty.

[photo sourced from here]

 

-Dave Alexander

Late Night's Alright for a Fight

Blame Haiti. I don’t think this whole late night television feud with Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno and NBC would’ve gotten so much play if the media didn’t latch onto it as a diversion from the constant misery inherent in the humanitarian disaster in the country.

Or perhaps it would’ve gotten even more attention – I don’t have cable and I haven’t followed the late night talk shows, aside from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, for a while. The whole thing is irrelevant to this movie blog, of course, except that reading about O’Brien’s acrimonious exit from NBC got me interested enough to watch the made-for-HBO movie The Late Shift, the story behind Jay Leno beating out David Letterman to become Johnny Carson’s successor as The Tonight Show host in 1992.

The movie is based on the book of the same name by Bill Carter, a New York Times media reporter. I vaguely recalled this film and was pleasantly surprised to see John Michael Higgins playing Letterman. You probably don’t know Higgins by name, but if you’ve seen any Christopher Guest films, you’d recognize him immediately; in Best in Show, for example, he’s part of the silk bathrobe-wearing gay couple, along with Michael McKean. In The Late Shift, he nails Letterman’s mannerisms and speech, even if he is about fifteen years younger.

Leno is played by Daniel Roebuck, who you probably wouldn’t recognize, especially because he’s wearing a prosthetic chin. According to the film, which begins with the message “Believe it or not, the following is based on the truth,” both Letterman and Leno love the Tonight Show deeply, both are insecure and intimidated by Carson’s legacy, but Leno needs to grow a backbone – particularly when it comes to his manager. Kathy Bates won a Golden Globe Award for her portrayal of Helen Kushnick, a woman whose repertoire of negotiating tactics ranged from strong-arm to steamroller. She’s seen as being the cause of Leno winning the Tonight Show and Letterman jumping ship from NBC to CBS.

Some background. Before Carson retired, Letterman had followed him for a decade on The Late Show, his dream since he was a boy, apparently, that he would one day host it. Due to Carson’s health issues, Leno was a frequent guest host on The Tonight Show and proved popular. At the same time, CBS’ late night talk show run had failed miserably with the The Pat Sajack Show, and they were looking for someone. Knowing that that CBS would be eager to give Leno a show in the coveted time slot, Kushnick used this as leverage (some would say a threat) to get Leno in The Tonight Show chair and herself on as executive producer. As Letterman grapples with his disappointment and gets himself a powerful agent for a new show in a competing slot on another network, Kushnick bullies her way right to the top of everybody’s shit list. (On a side note, the real Kushnick sued Carter and was given a settlement; she died of cancer at age 50, the year the film was released.)

A bunch of recognizable faces play the various agents, executives and other suits in the flick, including Treat Williams as Hollywood Michael Ovitz, who becomes Letterman’s agent; Rich Little, doing his spot-on impersonation of Carson; plus other Chris Guest collaborators Bob Balaban, as NBC bigwig Warren Littlefield, and Ed Begley, Jr., as a CBC exec.

The Late Show is rife with studio politics, dirty backdoor dealing, power struggles, head games and the-secret-lives-of-stars-type stuff yet comes off as only slightly more dramatized than reality. In one sequence, Leno is even depicted as listening in on NBC executives through the wall, and apparently this really happened. Although he comes off as a nicer guy than he is in the press right now (which is downright dickish), there’s a weasel-y quality underneath the version of him in the film. (That irritating high-pitched voice doesn’t help matters, either.) The movie definitely sides with Letterman, and he’s shown to be a deserving guy who got a raw deal because he didn’t have a ruthless agent.

Although it’s a decent TV movie that offers a good background to the pre-Conan era, I was surprised to read that The Late Shift was nominated for seven Emmys. It’s decent but definitely has that TV movie staginess to it.

Regardless, after seeing it, you get a better idea of why O’Brien was quick to tell NBC to leave his Tonight Show alone or he’d leave altogether. It was a win-win for him – he either keeps his show, or he gets a fat payout and another show on a different network, and both the network and his competition look bad. Worse for NBC, they get stuck with Leno, who’s obvious brand of punch line humour is about as funny as an episode of Corner Gas – the edgiest thing the guy’s got going for him is his chin fer chrissakes.

See – that’s a total Leno-style gag. His A-game wouldn’t even make Conan’s playbook. Well, at least to the best of the knowledge of a guy without cable.

 

-Dave Alexander

Aaaaaannnd Rounding Out 2009…

To put a cap on 2009, here are some picks Best/Worst picks for last year in movies, to go with my previous top fifteen of last year list. Voila!

 

The Five Worst Films of 2009

 

Friday the 13th

This is a Michael Bay production, which is really all the warning you need to stay away. A typical example of how studios obnoxiously approach horror remakes, I cringed at the unnecessarily fast editing, slick “dirty” production design, a pro-wrestler-sized killer, dialogue that suggests anyone under the age of 23 is horny, self-obsessed moron, and a cast members that look like they’re auditioning for a porno version of The Hills. Not even the kills were inspired. It’s a paint-by-numbers film – using mostly the boring colours, and not enough red.

 

Halloween II

It’s astounding that, A) Rob Zombie has been allowed to continue making such awful movies. B) He seems to be getting worse as a filmmaker. (Seriously, how does he do that?) Across the board, this horny, juvenile, ham-fisted nonsense will make you scratch your head. The laugh out loud white horse dream sequences, the teen girl dialogue (“Hey world, guess what? I'm Michael Myers' sister! I'm f**ked!”), a hobo Michael Myers eating a dog… raw – this is easily the worst film of the year. That said, while a bunch of people left the theatre during the screening, I was dying just to see what our generation’s Ed Wood would cook up next.

 

Ninja Assassin

Dammit, I was hoping this one would spark a ninja movie revival, but alas, all it did was waste a lot of CGI trying recast ninjas as some kind of a cross between unstoppable slasher movie killers, ghosts, superheroes and Rocky. I get, it’s a ninja movie, it’s supposed to be pretty dumb, but there was no reason to turn it into a cartoon with a video game plot. Director James McTeigue really Bruckheimered the hell out this one by cranking everything up to eleven so you’re forced to tune it out. Like a blow-dart of suck to the neck.

 

Terminator Salvation

I didn’t have to wait until the CGI Schwarzenegger to get the point that this just wasn’t the Terminator prequel it could’ve been. Over-plotted and overwrought, it felt like a Frankenstein of poorly stitched together ideas. (According to this Wikipedia entry, it was.)  All they had to do was make a kick-ass action-sci-fi film showing how it all went down, but instead a bunch of shallow subtext and lame drama about the humanity of a machine ruined everything. The ending, where John Connor receives the heart of a cyborg to save his life, is so asinine that I started cheering for Skynet.

 

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I’m fairly certain this embarrassing X-Men spin-off was actually written by one of Hugh Jackman’s sideburns – there’s that much effort on display. Given the decades of story material available out there in comic book bins, there’s no excuse to turn the Wolverine story into a series of special effects set pieces and action movie clichés populated by characters that you don’t know well enough to really care about. And the effects seemed only half-complete sometimes – seriously, what was with the creepy computer-animated Professor X at the end? Or worse, what about the real-life Ryan Reynolds as annoying jack-ass Wade Reynolds/Deadpool? X-fail.

 

Five Films from 2009 That I Hope to Never Ever See

 

Angels and Demons

The sequel to the conspiracy movie that boring people think is mindblowing – no thanks.

 

G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra

Stephen Sommers, you’ve never made a good film, so I’m not going to let you ruin my childhood with this one.

 

Old Dogs

May anyone involved creatively with this project be reincarnated as a herpes sore.

 

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Same answer as G.I. Joe, but with Michael Bay.

 

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

This could ruin both vampire and werewolf movies for me; can’t take that chance. Also, I’m not a fourteen-year-old girl.

 

Three Under-the-Radar Films Worth Checking Out

 

Dead Snow

Nazi zombies in a snowy Evil Dead-style gorefest – sold!

 

Les doigts croches

Great little Quebecois period comedy about failed gangsters finally getting their big payoff, if they can become changed men through an epic pilgrimage.

 

Adventureland

This was blip on the theatrical release radar but nevertheless a solid retro coming of age film, set before cell phones and online social networking. Jesse Eisenberg headlines a great cast, the late-‘80s soundtrack sets the tone and there are plenty of character-driven laughs, courtesy writer/director Greg Mottola (Superbad).

 

Most Overrated

 

Avatar

Yes, it made my fifteen best films of the year list, purely for its technical achievements, but it also just won the top prize at the Golden Globe Awards? Smurf Cats best film of the year? Ah ha ha ha ha! Hardly. Look past the eye candy, people – it’s a remake of Pocahontas and Dances With Wolves crammed with clichés and riddled with awful dialogue.

 

Guiltiest Pleasure

 

2012

Big, dumb and cliché in every expected Hollywood way that it can be, but damn if it isn’t fun to see all that stuff get wrecked.

 

 

Better Than it Should’ve Been

 

Funny People

Not that this necessarily should be bad (Adam Sandler proved he can do dramatic in Punch Drunk Love), but considering it’s basically two different films, in which the protagonist changes part way through the story, it works surprisingly well.

 

Not as Good as it Should Have Been

 

Where the Wild Things Are

One of the greatest kids books, adapted by of the most exciting directors out there (Spike Jones), should’ve transported us to a fantastic world, but the realm of the Wild Things was kinda drab and Max’s journey seemed to drag. Not bad by any means, but not the re-watchable classic I wanted it to be.

 

Film That I Most Felt Like a Chore While Watching

 

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

It didn’t help that I watched it on a tiny airplane screen, but by this point the magic has kinda worn off, so to speak. Plus there’s so much backstory to remember that I felt like an old man with dementia trying to recall all the grandkids’ names. “Harold? Harrison? Harry? Is it Harry, son?”

 

Worst Title

 

Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeakquel

There is a Pun Hell and the jackhole who thought up the awful title for this awful movie will surely go there to be burned and tortured for an eternity by, like, Luci-fur.

 

Best Title

 

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Damn – I’m laughing, I’m curious, I’m kinda hungry…

 

Best Performance

 

Inglourious Basterds

It’s a tie between Christoph Waltz, as the Nazi heavy Col. Hans Landa, and Denis Menochet, as French farmer Perrier LaPadite for the tenser-than-tense scene in the farmhouse at the beginning of the film. These guys own the screen.

 

Most Insane Performance

 

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Nicholas Cage goes completely over the top as the cranked up, cracked out, smoked silly, pill pooped Terence McDonagh. Bug-eyed with a back problem and enough drugs in him to kill all of Detroit, the character is a classic. Cage put his usually stilted cartoonishness to good work here and the results and hilarious.

 

Most Enjoyable Ass-Kickings

 

Taken

Can’t help but love me a simple, bloody revenge film, and this one delivers a bounty of brutality throughout. Liam Neeson makes a fantastic ruthless tough guy.

-Dave Alexander

I Love it When a Trailer Comes Together

When I was but a wee lad, I prayed to the Gods of Prime Time Network Television for the most awesome show an eight-year-old could fathom; what they sent me was The A-Team. Over the course of 98 episodes, from 1983 to 1987, Hannibal, Faceman, Murdock and B.A. Baracus drove around in an awesome van, wore disguises, welded together all kinds of cool machines from random junk and blew up so much stuff that dynamite almost went extinct.

I loved this show so much that each week I would put on my camouflage pants and hat, grab one of my toy guns and tune in completely wide-eyed, imagining that I was actually along for the adventure. I had the action figures, comic books, stickers; I borrowed the book adaptations from the library; and I proudly wore an A-Team sweatshirt that my mom got at Zellers. I even recall recording the theme song off of the T.V. with a cassette recorder. Now that’s devotion! (Or possibly pre-teen mental illness – hard to say, really…)

A twinge of that excitement returned this week when the trailer for the movie adaptation went online. I’ve watched it a half-dozen times so far, done a little research and concluded that, although it’s looking a little too Jerry Bruckheimer in the cheesy action department (that parachuting tank bit at the end is lame and poorly animated), there are good reasons to be excited about it if you’re an old school A-Team fan like myself. In fact, here are five reasons I’m looking forward to the A-Team movie.

 

1. The Casting

On paper Liam Neeson stepping into the shoes of George Peppard to play Hannibal is hard to get your head around, but it seems to work. He’s not the Hannibal we know (he’s more, um, Irish) but don’t want to see a carbon copy of the original. After seeing The Hangover, I’m onboard with Bradley Cooper as Faceman, and I loved Sharlto Copely in District 9. These are inspired choices, as is picking former UFC fighter Quinton Jackson as B.A. Not the obvious choices, granted, but that’s half the fun – unexpected casting that works. There were all kinds of different actors rumoured for the roles, including Bruce Willis and Hannibal and Ice Cube as B.A., and even the fans had their own picks – just check out this trailer featuring George Clooney as Hannibal, Brad Pitt as Faceman, Jim Carrey as Murdock and Terry Crews as B.A. Baracus.

 

2. The Director

I’ve been a Joe Carnahan since seeing his gritty cop drama Narc. He’s got a knack for action sequences and tough guy characters, which appears to translate well here. I like the shots from the prison van escape sequence in particular. If there’s one thing an A-Team movie needs, it’s action. Lots and lots of car-flipping, gun-firing, you-name-it-exploding action.

 

3. The Look of the Characters

Though it takes some getting used to seeing Neeson done up as Hannibal, I’ve warmed up to him, especially the way he chaws on that cigar. The toughest one to update, I imagine, is B.A., as the original look of sleeveless denim jackets, a fuzzy mohawk and so many gold chains that it looks like a pimp exploded on his neck is way too ‘80s and wouldn’t translate well. I like Jackson’s close-cropped ‘hawk and more sensible duds. The character’s all about the attitude and this helps sell it.

 

4. Nostalgia

The filmmakers know that, at least on some level, we want to be transported back to our childhood, and they pay plenty of lip service to the original A-Team, with the shot-up logo, the familiar military-style music, the voiceover narration, the van and classic lines such as “I love it when a plan comes together.” I may just have to go out and buy a whole new camouflage pants ‘n’ hat combo before opening weekend.

 

5. The Van

Everyone knows that, although it wasn’t the best choice if you’re trying to keep a low profile as fugitives on the run, the signature black and red, GMC boogie van will always be the A-bomb. I’m overjoyed that it’s back for the movie. Hello there, old friend, are you ready to kick some serious ass with the A-Team? I sure am.

 

-Dave Alexander

Vampire Weekend

You gotta see Daybreakers, it's a blast. Click here to read my interview with the Aussie twins, Peter and Michael Spierig, who wrote and directed (and did a whack of the special effects on their home computers) the ambitious horror-sci-fi-action film. It earned $15 million this weekend, which is pretty solid for a $20 million movie. It's good to see vampires being vampires again. Daybreakers is strictly in the no-sparkle zone.

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski

"Our ringer was a ringer for the same
In odious Lebowski’s rotten game."

If Shakespeare wrote The Big Lebowski.

The Dude doth not protest...

My 15 Fave Films of 2009 (11-15)

Annnnnnnd we're back for the final third of my favourite movies of 2009 (in alphabetical order). Cue horns, disco ball and confetti cannon...

Monsters vs Aliens

Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon

A lot of critics picked Up ss their animated fave of the year, but Monsters vs. Aliens is more fun in my book, mains because it features monsters… and aliens… versus each other. No brainer – like chocolate and peanut butter. Of course, an awesome premise is only a starting point; Monsters vs Aliens also has a load of great gags, the lion’s share coming from B.O.B. (voiced by Seth Rogen), the cycloptic, blue blob simpleton whose enjoys a game of handball with his own eye, is not above falling in love with a jelly salad and occasionally forgets how to breathe. A stellar voice actor line-up, including Reese Witherspoon as Ginormica, Hugh Laurie as Dr. Cockroach Ph.D., Will Arnett as The Missing Link and Steven Colbert as the President of the United States, breathes much personality into these secret government “monsters.” And watching them battle against the forces of scheming extraterrestrial Gallaxhar (Raine Wilson) – especially in colourful 3D – made me feel like a kid. Although there’s plenty of clever dialogue here for adults (Missing Link: “It feels warmer than I remember. Did the Earth get warmer? It would be great to know that... that would be a very convenient truth.”), the focus is the important kid’s messages about difference, acceptance and friendship, which are rolled nicely into a narrative where the “scary” guys get to be the heroes for a change.

 

 

Red Cliff

John Woo

This is an oddity, as it’s one of the best films of the year, but you’d be a fool to go see it in the theatres. Unless of course you were in a country that showed it in its intended two parts – totaling over four hours – and not the cobbled together singular version that opened in North America. Taking full advantage of cheap labour and other production costs in Asia, director and co-writer John Woo made the most sweeping epic since the Lord of the Rings trilogy extended director’s cuts. After wasting fifteen years in Hollywood making garbage action films such as Hard Target, Face/Off and Paycheck, he returned to the Chinese film industry to make a movie based on the historical Battle of Red Cliff, in which a massive land and water battle involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers took place hundreds of years ago. Set at the end of the Han Dynasty, way before guns, it sees the powerful 800 000 Han army attempt to roll right over a coalition of two warlords that it outnumbers more than ten-to-one. The coalition, with the help of military strategist Zhou Yu (Tony Leung), must outsmart its seemingly unstoppable opponent by using creative warfare tactics, anticipating the enemy’s moves and relying on nature to aid them. The battles are beyond epic, the performances classically very dramatic, the action unparalleled and the militaristic visuals pretty damn mindblowing (horizons filled with soldiers, for example). It’s more than enough to forgive Woo for Windtalkers.

 

 

Star Trek

J.J. Abrams

A lot of sci-fi fans – and not just Trekkers/Trekkies – groaned when it was announced that the Star Trek franchise was getting a reboot by the guy who created Lost. Thing is, though, the sacred cow needed to be put out to pasture even before the last two movies and the lacklustre Enterprise TV series. Still, I didn’t think it could’ve been this great. For starters, J.J. Abrams managed to set up a new timeline without ignoring the old one, and he include the original Spock without it seeming forced. There’s intergalactic eye candy in almost every frame here, too, from the ballsy destruction of the entire Planet Vulcan to the harrowing spaceship battles. However, none of that would matter much if the characters and the casting weren’t so great. Chris Pine as a cocky, reckless young Kirk, Zachary Quinto as the human-Vulcan hybrid coming to terms with his dual nature, Karl Urban as the comfortably jaded Bones, and even comedy actors Simon Pegg, as Scotty, and John Cho, as Sulu, slid into their roles effortlessly. I paid extra to see this at the pimped-out AMC theatre in downtown Toronto and it was completely worth it, as the booming bass and fast-paced action sequences made the audience feel like we were on the bridge of the Enterprise. (I probably even checked to make sure I wasn’t wearing a red shirt at one point.) This is how to restart a time-honoured franchise the right way.

 

 

Trick ‘R Treat

Michael Dougherty

If you’re wondering why you can’t recall seeing ads for this coming to theatres, it’s because it didn’t play on the big screen (aside from at festivals and a few other one-offs), and that’s an injustice. Mike Dougherty, who previously contributed to the scripts of the Superman remake and the X-Men franchise, took his childhood fascination with Halloween and turned it into a Creepshow-style film with intertwining spooky tales set in the same Rockwellian town on Halloween night. The insta-classic has the undead, monsters, killers and other ghouls doing their thing to great effect, and in the more human category there are top-notch, appropriately cartoon-like performances from a cast that includes Anna Paquin, Brian Cox and Dylan Baker. The colourful, nostalgic atmosphere, sharp direction and funhouse plot twists makes Trick ‘r Treat highly re-watchable (saw it four times this year, in fact). Almost everyone I’ve shown this underdog film to has fallen in love with it, while the horror fans have been scratching their heads at how Warner Brothers would deny this the theatrical release it so desperately deserved. Apparently there are various political reasons behind it (to learn more, check out my interview with Dougherty here and here), but regardless, it’s something you should be popping in the DVD or Blu-ray player for years to come around October 31st, along with Disney’s Headless Horseman, Halloween or The Great Pumpkin. It’s timeless.

 

 

Up in the Air

Jason Reitman

George Clooney is front and centre again in another one of the year’s best, but Up in the Air is a lot less upbeat and fancy free than Fantastic Mister Fox. (These two titles, plus the well-reviewed The Men Who Stare at Goats – the guy can do no wrong.) In Jason Reitman’s often subtle character study of a guy who flies all across America as a hired gun to fire people, Clooney is a free spirit whose commitment to a no-strings, no settling down lifestyle comes into question when he meets a young female go-getter determined to change the way things are done at his company, and a woman who he thinks is his female equivalent. It’s poignant stuff for sure, with plenty of memorable scenes where Reitman proves he’s very talented at character development (e.g. Clooney’s character uses his people skills to convince his sister’s husband-to-be to not get cold feet on the wedding day). But what adds a punch in the gut is that the narrative takes place against the backdrop of the recession, where we see people from all walks of white collar life coming to terms with the news no one wants to hear about his or her job. It’s pretty heartwrenching at times without being hyperbolic or sentimental. Up in the Air is simply well executed all around and achingly timely.

-Dave Alexander