Movie Review: Red

Gray-Haired Black Ops
Red shows the AARP can kiss kiss, bang bang

Wry sense-of-humor, sly sexuality, potent and visually stimulating violence? Oh, Ernest Borgnine, is there anything you can’t do?

Okay, fine, although the 93-year-old gap-toothed thespian pops up infrequently in Red, a film for which all those previous descriptors do actually apply, his inclusion is a metaphor for the inexplicably kinda-awesome ha-ha/bang-bang extravaganza as a whole. Populated with a cast familiar with a time when ensemble was king, oozing charisma from their aged pores, Red is the anti-Social Network: The script is meh, the concept is as haggard as the lead actor. This proves once more that although words are king, actors can be gods.

Let’s start at the top. Bruce Willis, fresh off not appearing to have aged in more than a decade, is Frank Moses, a retired C.I.A. black ops agent currently bored out of his gourd and obsessing over Sarah (Mary Louise Parker), the lady who answers his phone calls regarding his pension. Just as Frank is about to launch “Operation Get Me Some,” he is ambushed by a squad of assassins. Frank nabs Sarah both for her own protection and because he never abandons an operation and begins searching for answers.

Frank’s first stop is to a nursing home to talk with 84-year-old former-spy-turned-stage-4-liver-cancer-patient Joe (Morgan Freeman), who can still kill you with a Bic pen. Joe gives Frank a list of names that leads him to Marvin (John Malkovich), a retired operative whose drug-addled brain should be a wake-up call to current real-life starlets. Constantly pursued by good-guy-conned-into-doing-bad-things, Agent William Cooper (Karl Urban), Frank also enlists the aid of a wily Russian (Brian Cox) and a slinky silver-haired sniper (Helen Mirren) before embarking on a rather ambitious final gambit filed under “only in implausible movies.”

That implausibility is actually the best thing that screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber culled from the source material, a graphic novel (the politically correct term these days for a comic book) by Warren Ellis. Although we are all willing to believe Willis will be a physical marvel capable of death dealing throughout his Depends era, Red is one of those stupidly awesome flicks that also sees no need to capitulate to the laws of physics or reasonable decision making. It’s a “domino movie,” where each tiny plot point limply falls into the next one: it’s only fun when viewed as a whole.

Thankfully, Robert Schwentke was thinking big picture with his treatment of his uber-cast, with loosey-goosey directing that acknowledged the biggest weapon in the film was the collective nuclear bomb of charm. Try not to have fun while Willis and Malkovich are hamming it up, or when Mirren and Cox are gettin’ their dirty flirty on. Even Urban, by far the spring chicken in this out-to-pasture collective, delivers the goods, notably in a wicked fight scene with his elder, Willis.

With a dose of noninventive but still giddy-goofy-fun visual shoot-em-up and a heaping helping of old-school actor elbow grease, Red is a surprising nugget of entertainment. It will be quickly forgotten, but as the cast knows, memory isn’t everything…they just can’t remember what is.

Grade = B

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Loop, there she is

Happy Friday, you delicate blog flowers. Programming note: We're going to do that traditional Friday four-step: 2 regular posts, some box office haikus, and a late review (in this case, we're gonna poke The Social Network). I tell you this because it's always good to plan. It's also good to look at Emily Blunt.

And today, we have a good reason to do so, as the lovely Brit (who married Jim from "The Office"...so keep hope alive oversized, jug-eared grinners!) is going to star in Looper, which is not a pulse-pounding action adventure set in the world of knitting (much to the chagrin of the kind Miss Robyn). No, it's a sci-fi flick from Rian Johnson, who wrote and directed the brilliant Brick and the sort-of-brilliant (but deliciously Rachel Weisz-filled) Brother's Bloom. The film will reunite Johnson with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and unite him with Bruce Willis (perhaps in the bonds of holy matrimony). The film follows killers who dispose of people sent from the future in an attempt to hide the evidence of their murder. So we've got time travel, murder, and Emily Blunt. That's a recipe for awesome. Wait, sorry, that's a recipe for Apple Brown Betty. My bad. No, wait, I was right the first time.

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Fantastic four lies continue

The Fantastic Four rumor mill is spinning faster than Fox news. We heard rumors of Amber Heard and Adrien Brody being considered for The Invisible Woman and Mr. Fantastic already, but now comes news that Fox wants Bruce Willis to voice the entirely CGI Thing!
Now that is a great bit of vocal casting. Maybe this is the next stage of Willis's career? He's going to be too old to do the stunts himself, so he can just voice computer-generated versions of himself doing things. That's what Stallone is doing these days, right? I mean, that guy is 82 years old, so I know he's not ACTUALLY filming explosive stunt sequences.

Comic Book Movie also reports that they're close to naming a director for the do-over. It's down to Joe Carnahan (who somehow has potential even though he ate doody with The A-Team), James McTeigue (who somehow has potential even though he ate doody with Ninja Assassin), and David Yates (who did some good Harry Potter stuff). Obviously, Yates is the guy for the job, with the feel of Potter and The Fantastic Four sharing more overlap than ninjas or B.A. Baracus. So look for Carnahan to get it. My hopes aren't sky high for this, but I do love the characters, and they are currently being written so well in the comic that it makes me yearn for a good adaptation. Here's hoping.

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Dude, just make Unbreakable 2

Back in the halcyon days of 2002, a far simpler and gentler time, the name M. Night Shyamalan was associated with sheer badassery. Having followed up The Sixth Sense with Unbreakable and Signs, Shyamalan could have sold his used Kleenex to a studio that would develop it into a major motion picture (with Tom Cruise starring as the Kleenex). Then came The Village...(hey, anybody can make one bad movie)...which was followed by Lady in the Water (or two)...which was followed by The Happening (kill him...kill him with fire!). Now the name Shyamalan strikes "meh" into the hearts of men (and fear into the heart of a studio desperately needing The Last Airbender to start a franchise...despite opening the film opposite Twilight: Eclipse, which will be an astronomical hit because the only thing those fans are more than totally wrong is totally dedicated). Hoping to strike while his iron is lukewarm, Shyamalan is shopping around a new idea, complete with a cast committed to it that includes the following folks:



That's interesting, right, given that Willis is still somewhat high profile, Paltrow is riding off of the biggest two films of her career (both rhyme with Schmiron Schman), and Cooper is pretty in demand right now (although, quick side note, EW.com has begun describing him as a doucheboat, a hunky guy who seems like a total douche...I love this term). We don't know much about the plot (Shyamalan HAS to be secretive, it's like his OCD), but we do know a little: it's a dude on the hunt for his missing daughter. So it's like Taken. Only the dad has superpowers. Huhbuhwha?!

Sit back, folks, I'm about to get conflicted. Unbreakable may be one of the top superhero movies ever made. Still. It IS without question the best original superhero movie ever made. For the longest time, I held out hope that the trilogy Shyamalan spewed about early on would actually happen, seeing Willis' character move from newly found powers to full-on hero. I wanted it so bad, I really did. Then he started pooping out poopy poop and we're left with Mark Wahlberg running from trees and some mute Asian kid who can redirect his pee with his mind or something. I'm not saying I won't like The Last Airbender. I may indeed. I just wanted Unbreakable 2. There are some out there who are postulating, given Willis' involvement and the word superpowers, that this new project is somehow that very sequel.


I doubt it. I doubt it immensely. That said, if it is somehow the case OOOOOOOOH DOOGGGIIEEE does that make me happy. Also, they shouldn't make it secret. Drum up excitement early on! If you're having a problem getting it made, leak that you're trying to make Unbreakable 2 and see who comes out in support. I know I will. If not, it should happen, dammit. We get four flippin' Shrek movies, 5 Scary Movies, and 6 Saw films but we can't get 2 films in a series built for it? Sometimes I hate this planet.

Here's the conflicted part: I may love it even if it isn't Unbreakable 2. Given Shyamalan's deft handling of the first film, I may find myself totally enjoying another original take on superpowers that isn't the sequel I've wanted. Wait, am I saying that I would be happy either way? This will never work.

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What's in a name? Crap. Crap is in a name.

And a happy humpday to ya! I assume everybody had or once had that creepy dude at work who wished you a happy humpday. Well, seeing as how he's probably been fired and/or those charges finally stuck, I figured I'd take over for him. Speaking of inappropriate, Ain’t It Cool has sources so deeply embedded at 20th Century Fox that they must have been willing to receive full lobotomies. That's a dedication to spying so deep that Karl Rove is looking for a way to leak their names to the press. The big news that the traitors to the 20th Century Fox mission statement ("Making bad movies that make good money") were able to leak: The names of the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot and the next Die Hard movie. They are, respectively, Fantastic Four Reborn and Die Hard 24/7. I think if you tried really, really hard, you couldn't come up with two worse titles. Okay, maybe something with a colon that doesn't need it (cough, Captain America: The First Avenger, cough).

As for the projects themselves, I'm on the fence. On the one hand, we must never forget that 20th Century Fox is almost incapable of not ruining the films they have access to. It's almost pathological with them (boy am I going to have to delete these posts fast when I try to shop my screenplay to 20th Century Fox...I can, and will, sell out). On the other hand, whenever I read the current Hickman run on the "Fantastic Four" comic, all I'm left thinking is "how come THIS can't be an incredible movie?" If they went for a blend of comic book and sci-fi, I think they'd really have something. Plus it has instant family appeal if it's done, you know, not totally shitty. And by totally shitty, I mean this:

All fear Galactus' sort of glowing silhouette and his massive...fart cloud? And even worse:
She's a scientist because she wears glasses because scientists wear glasses even if it means they're not as pretty. Hate.

So, maybe a new FF movie could, I don't know, follow some of the more clever storylines in the comic, not get bogged down by an origin that is in no way complicated (scientist/astronauts get bombarded by cosmic rays. The end.), and cast it more appropriately, I'd be down for it. They certainly had to start over after the Galactus fart.

Now, as for the geriatric John McClane...I kind of liked Live Free or Die Hard. The title was a Galactus fart (I'm using it now), but it was kind of fun. Not as a Die Hard movie, because it was like a Looney Toons version of one where there was no actual blood, but as a generic action movie. I have no clue about the plot of the next one, but seeing as how the series was realistically dead after the second one (you can be a guy who something crazy happens to once or twice, but after that it's totally insane), I just want something fun. See, I'm not overly demanding.

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Quick hits: Bruce Willis lies and Blackbeard lives!

I don't want to call Bruce Willis a liar, because he can probably beat me up a lot. I don't care how old he is or that he's an actor, I can tell he has the rage. The big "news" yesterday was that MTV talked to Willis, who is out promoting Cop Out because he has to contractually, and got him to say that there's going to be a Die Hard 5. Huh? Oh, and that it's shooting next year. WHA? Oh, and that it's going to go "worldwide." HUHBUHWHA? First off, this is likely hokum (which is not a delicious party drink but an old-time euphemism for doody). Second, if it isn't, that's dumb. I liked Live Free or Die Hard just fine. It's not a Die Hard movie, but I liked it just fine. I think they should return the series to its roots. I liked Slashfilm.com's suggestion that it should take place in a mall. That would be rad. I don't like the thought of Bruce hopping plane to plane, blowing up international terrorists in gay Paris. I want him taking out local baddies in a confined environment. That's what Die Hard is. You're now just making mediocre action movies and calling them Die Hard. Stop it.

Next up is a quick note telling you that Ian McShane, who got famous for saying a word that rhymes with socktucker on HBO in "Deadwood," is going to be Blackbeard in the next Pirates movie called On Stranger Tides. This is fine. It doesn't really sway me into getting full-on excited for the movie, but I liked the first one so much that I'm going to see the next wave no matter what. I think they have a chance to make something special happen, if they pit Depp versus McShane and don't spend too much time convoluting things with dumb-ass side characters who we only remember as "not Johnny Depp." McShane is a good evil looking guy who has kind of always looked like a pirate and has a creepy voice. I don't know what supernatural element they'll work in, but I hope they allow McShane to say lots of things that rhyme with his famously delivered word. He should describe Jack Sparrow as a "sock-tucking coke-stacker" or a "rock-chucking clock-plucker." It would be great.

Ryan's Junk Drawer

I like this image because it's kind of creepy. This guy apparently keeps a mouse tail, a tube of what appears to be "love rocket lightning," a screw, Canadian money, and a snakeskin in his junk drawer. Creepier still, I got this from "Highlights" magazine. There was a poem that went with it, but any poem that doesn't have a line ending with "izzle" is dead to me (unless it's written in haiku form, which we all know to be the superior poetic formula). I'm going to use this image to introduce my junk (the top 5 non-big stories of the week) until I'm legally forced to stop.

Here's the top 5 non-big stories (aka, MY JUNK!)

1.) Red just got red hot - Why do I follow phenomenal comic writer @warrenellis on twitter? I don't know, because he delivers tweets like this: "I have 149,935 followers. The 150,000th must kill someone of my choosing or I will murder their family." That's good stuff. Ellis writes a shitpile of comics, some very good, some just weird. "Red" is one I haven't...ahem...READ yet, but I fully intend to. Back in April, Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis were joined in this tale of a CIA operative who is "too old for this shit," quits, and of course "knows too much" and thus gets people trying to kill him. Willis is the old CIA man, Freeman is presumably the bad guy, Helen Mirren has just joined (fingers crossed as the sexy-time love interest...I kid...unless you're into that), and the real exciting news just dropped this week. Apparently, John C. Reilly has joined up...and Willis got his real love interest (no, not Reilly...unless you're into that): this gal.

There were any number of photos of the lovely miss Mary Louise Parker that I could have chosen from in various states of undress, but I think this best proves why she must have made a deal with the devil to be so thoroughly beguiling at 45. LOOK AT THAT WOMAN. The beauty is she's somewhat age-appropriate for Willis's character BUT she still looks like a young hottie, so it satisfies Hollywood's hatred for aged women (other than Helen Mirren, Judy Dench, and Meryl Streep). Spy movie? Written by a comic nerd? With John C. Reilly? AND Mary Louise Parker? Red just shot to the top of my hominhominahomina-gots-to-see-this-NOW list.

2.) So, you're saying you think a Depp/Jolie movie will make money? - I have always admired Johnny Depp for not taking the easy way out. After his "21 Jump Street" introduction, he quickly went batshit insane, taking on roles in a John Waters movie and becoming Tim Burton's muse. Until Pirates, he was a leading man without a signature role or huge franchise hit. I didn't mind that Pirates became all PIRATES but now it looks like he's gotten a taste of the big-time bug and doesn't want to let go. According to Variety, Depp will be taking over for Sam "How the f**k did I get famous" Worthington in The Tourist, a movie about an average tourist who gets convinced to help the government track down an ex who is a major criminal...the criminal in this case being Jolie. It kind of sounds like every other Angelina Jolie movie, and Depp will probably want to play the tourist with a prosthetic leg and a lisp, but to be honest it sounds so commercial I'm shocked Depp is involved. I really hope we aren't losing one of the good ones to the path of least resistance. Also, to show I'm an equal time fella, here's a picture of Johnny Depp (albeit one in which he looks like the guy working at Starbucks who will give you your goddamn latte but resent you whilst doing it).

3.) Direct-to-TV sequel? - I kind of want to see 2012. I know it's going to be total crap story-wise, but you're talking to one half of a husband and wife team who have viewed The Day After Tomorrow about 3 times on FX after seeing it in the theater and not liking it. I haven't truly enjoyed the movie during any of my 4-5 times watching it...so that must say something about crapmaster Roland Emmerich's ability to make watchable bullshit (and about my wife's and my obsession about apocalyptic disasters). Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Emmerich is pimping "2013," a TV series that would be set after the events of 2012. I know, you were hoping for a series that explored what happened if you added 113 to 1900, but you'll have to wait. Sure, this kind of reveals that the Earth doesn't implode in 2012, but so long as it doesn't end with John Cusack facing down some of the worst computer-generated wolves of all time like Day After Tomorrow, I'm okay knowing that humanity survives. Again, I'm torn. I know that Emmerich makes crap, but I watched every episode of the poorly acted "Jericho" because I was so obsessed with post-apocalyptic scenarios. Damn you, Emmerich for putting me in this position. And now, to make myself feel better (and because I mentioned John Cusack above), here's a squirrel holding an invisible boombox above his head.

4.) Angelina Jolie tastes like familiar Salt - I like that we have a female action star, I just kind of wish it wasn't Angelina Jolie. First off, I don't buy that she's able to fling her 87-pound body around with any force. "Oh no, she hit me with all the inertia of a wet noodle." I mean, when Jennifer Garner was throwin' 'bows in "Alias," I bought it. Jolie, not so much. Plus, all of her stuff is starting to look the same. Watch the trailer for Salt, which was rewritten by Kurt Wimmer (the guy who rocked Equilibrium and then farted out Ultraviolet), and tell me it doesn't look exactly like Wanted and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Jolie's a good actress...so maybe more of the acting should happen now.



5.) Dick Cheney's dream of a white Middle East is realized! - I don't know why no one is able to find a single Middle Eastern actor or actress to appear in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. I also don't know why the first movie in a potential series can't just be titled Prince of Persia. Why we're at it, I don't know why Jake Gyllenhaal has a British accent for his role as a Persian prince...or why Gemma Arterton (who is totally hotsies, don't get me wrong) is the female lead when there are plenty of beautiful Middle Eastern ladies available...or why Ben Kingsley is the bad Persian guy...or why this trailer confuses me so much when I played the entire game it's based on...or why they decided to give Arterton, who nobody knows, the entire voiceover for the trailer...and why SHE speaks in a British accent. So, this appears to be a movie in which white people pretend to be Persian and a lot of computer effects happen. I want this to be fun but boy does it look like a hot white-Persian mess right now.

Movie Review: The Surrogates

Another day, another movie review. This time, it's The Surrogates, last weekend's only major new release (sorry, Fame, you don't count and never did...call me when you don't look like an MTV reality show). Ben "B-Nasty" Coffman, he asked me to call him that, is here with a look at some semi-inspired, semi-blah sci-fi.

Robo Cop-out
Willis dons a toupee, acts like a robot, in Surrogates
Ben Coffman

The idea of future human beings jacking into a matrix to live virtual lives is a sci-fi theme that predates even The Matrix. In the film Surrogates, based on the graphic novel by Robert Vendetti and Brett Weldele, this theme takes a Blader Runner twist when future human beings are allowed to lounge at home while living vicariously through robotic versions of themselves. Right now, somewhere, the most naturally robotic man in the world, Keanu Reeves, is firing his agent for not getting him into this movie.

Instead of Mr. Reeves, our lead is Bruce Willis, who plays both crusty FBI agent Tom Greer and the super-handsome, blond-toupee-wearing robotic version of FBI agent Tom Greer. Surrogates starts with what is becoming a well-worn formula for modern sci-fi movies: that is, a montage of realistic news clips narrates for the viewer what horrible/great things the human race has accomplished lately.

In this case, a giant corporation (are there any small businesses in the future?) has been producing lifelike robots that can be controlled remotely by users—surrogates that can perform all of the tasks of their human users, without the humans having to leave their couches. And you thought buying a Rumba made you lazy.

With the advent of the surrogate, everything is gumdrops and rainbows in Utopia. Violent crime has sharply dropped off, and the population is happy—until a bad guy starts blasting surrogates with a weapon vaguely reminiscent of a Ghostbusters proton pack that also kills the surrogates’ users, a disturbing development to be sure.

Greer is assigned to the case, which takes him and his partner Peters (Radha Mitchell) through the usual machinations of a cop drama—interviewing suspects and rounding up evidence—with a few passable Terminator-like action scenes thrown in for good measure.

Surrogates, perhaps due to its lack of originality, never quite lives up to its potential—instead it’s a safe murder mystery with a shot of corporate intrigue that masquerades as a sci-fi flick. A half-baked subplot featuring Greer’s wife Maggie (Rosamund Pike), a human touch that could have saved the movie (or at least lent it a shade of pathos), falls well short of the mark, perhaps owing to the fact that the writers responsible for the unholy stench of both Catwoman and Terminator Salvation rendered the screenplay.

That’s not to say that Surrogates is all bad. The makeup department’s ability to apply bucket loads of Maybelline smooth and clear concealer to its sometimes gnarled-looking cast (I’m talking to you, Bruce Willis) is unrivaled. And, in all seriousness, the film does a good job of quickly establishing its derivative sci-fi world and playing within its own rules.

Although some of the more practical problems of the widespread use of surrogates, such as someone taking over another person’s surrogate, are explored, Surrogates mostly glosses over the moral and ethical questions it seems to pose. It’s these deeper existential themes that separate the wheat from the chaff in the world of sci-fi, leaving Surrogates firmly in “meh” territory.

Grade: C-

I'm still going to see it, if only because I have a Bruce Willis toupee fetish. Not a regular toupee fetish, JUST a Bruce Willis toupee fetish. I'm very particular. Seriously, check it out:
Tell me that's not awesome.

It's been too long since my last Expendables post

Bruce Willis is joining the cast of The Expendables for a cameo, according to Moviehole. We shall now chart my excitement for this film using a Venn Diagram:



Yes, I'm counting this as an update. You don't know how hard it was to make this diagram.