“You’re Next” – Promise?

Apparently, there is a whole genre of movie called “home-invasion horror.” I had no idea this was a real thing until I read some of the marketing materials for You’re Next. Incidentally, The Purge, a movie that released just a couple of months ago, is also classified as home-invasion horror, though I don’t remember anything marketing it as more than just horror. I feel like this sub-genre was made up as a marketing ploy specifically to target a certain audience, but I have no idea who that audience is. It’s hard to believe there are people out there who get excited about watching movies where deranged killers break into people’s homes, but then there are people who watched The Human Centipede on purpose. And, can’t you see this kind of marketing run amok to the point where every movie is its own sub-sub-genre? Transformers could be classified as “robotic-alien-invasion sci-fi-fantasy-action-thriller.” The Replacements could be in the “football-work-stoppage romantic-comedy” section. Bridesmaids would live in “shitty movies that aren’t funny in any way and make you want to rip your own fingernails off.” Well, maybe that last one wouldn’t be a very good marketing angle, but my point is that when a movie is being marketed using a specific sub-genre, that’s Red Flag Number One.

Red Flag Number Two is the opening scene of the film. You hear a couple having sex and see their feet through a cracked doorway. The camera cuts to a more revealing shot of a man hammering away on top of a bare-breasted young woman and she has the most disinterested look on her face you could possibly imagine. For a moment, I wasn’t sure she even knew she was in a sex scene (or a movie for that matter) until the man utters something that changes her expression from disinterest to mild disgust. The two of them are murdered a few minutes later, but this opening sequence establishes the tone of the film. If the woman can’t be bothered to even pretend to be interested in the scene, why would the audience be interested in the movie? For that matter, what was the director doing during this scene? Did he direct her to be that way on purpose or he was just as disinterested in the film as she was? Either way, it’s unintentional foreshadowing that sets the tone for the entire film. The movie tries to establish a tone of tension by showing us the words “You’re Next” scrawled in blood on a glass door of victims’ house, but it’s already too late for that.

The rest of the film revolves around a family reunion in a house nearby the location of the first two murders. The patriarch is retiring, has lots of money, and is throwing a party for himself. The group consists of mom (Aubrey) and dad (Paul), their four adult children – Crispian, Drake, Felix, and Aimee, and their children’s significant others – Erin, Kelly, Zee, and Tariq, respectively. Since the movie is only 95 minutes, it’s not long before the killers show up wearing plastic animal masks and start murdering the group, one-by-one. After a couple of deaths, we soon learn that Erin grew up in a survivalist camp in Australia and is going to be the heroine of this film. In what is the only non-cliché of this entire movie, Erin takes a rule learned from Zombieland – the Double-Tap – and multiplies it by roughly infinity. Every time she takes on a killer, she makes sure that guy is not going to get up again, usually by turning their heads into mashed potatoes or the knife version of a pin cushion. While it’s refreshing to see a potential victim not act like the dumbest person on the planet, it leads to an audience reaction that shouldn’t happen during a horror flick – laughter.

It’s really not a good sign when the audience is laughing throughout a movie billed as horror, but that’s exactly what happened. After the tone set by the opening sequence, it’s hard to predict how an audience will react, but I couldn’t have predicted comedy. Every death seemed more like an attempt at goofiness (multiple knives to the chest and person still won’t go down; axe to the head while standing on person’s neck, blender to the brain, to name three) than building terror and watching the characters act like every scary-movie character before them didn’t help. I’d like to believe this was an attempt at poking fun at the horror genre – excuse me, home-invasion horror genre – but this was not Scream or a Wayans movie.

You’re Next felt like it was trying to be serious, while inadvertently tripping over itself in slapstick fashion. Between terrible acting, bad dialogue, lame one-liners, and an almost non-existent plot, the movie felt like an example of how not to craft a film. They even manage to negate the opening scene murders once the motivation is revealed, validating the initial woman’s disinterest as appropriate. As the movie slogged through the killings, all I could think after each death was “can I be next?”

Rating: Ask for all of your money back. You should never pay for unintentional comedy.

“Kick-Ass 2” – Pardon my language.

Do you know what the difference is between an R rated movie and a PG-13 rated movie? Aside from sex and the word fuck, that is? Blood. After watching Kick-Ass 2, my friend thought that it was really violent; much more than a movie like The Wolverine. While she is correct that it was very violent, it wasn’t any more so than The Wolverine. The difference is that Kick-Ass 2 shows you all the blood that goes along with that violence while Wolverine manages to slaughter whole battalions of bad guys without spilling a drop of blood. My point is that according to Hollywood and the MPAA, violence is perfectly acceptable as long as no one bleeds. One can only imagine the level of psychosis required to be perfectly okay with violence and be terrified of blood, a four-letter word, and female nipples at the same time.

Another hilarious aspect of that psychosis is that mainstream print media is subject to those rules as well. I read several other reviews of Kick-Ass 2 from large news outlets and laughed at reviews too scared to print “naughty words.” One of them even went so far as to tell us that they “couldn’t print the villain’s name in a family-friendly space.” Do they honestly think that anyone old enough to read a newspaper has never heard words like shit or fuck before? It’s amazing how far we’ve come in some areas of culture, yet still subscribe to the delusion that kids and adults have never heard or said those words and that they will somehow become deranged criminals if they do. But, it was fun to read some of those hacks’ reviews as they danced around the names of the characters. For God’s sake, the title character’s name is Kick-Ass. I’m pretty sure we’re past the point where reading the villain’s name – The Mother Fucker – is going to scandalize us. Speaking of which, let’s talk about these characters, as they are the meat of the film.

(By the way, there are spoilers coming and you should fucking know that by now.)

Kick-Ass
Also known as Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Kick-Ass persuades Hit-Girl to train him how to actually, you know, fight. He wants to keep fighting crime and realizes that he kind of sucks at it. That’s where Hit-Girl comes in. They start ditching school (they’re in high school now) and Hit-Girl spends a large amount of time teaching him martial arts, how to do pull-ups, and shooting him in the chest. Don’t worry, he’s wearing body armor.

Hit-Girl
Also known as Mindy Macready (Chloe Grace Moretz), she’s enjoying torturing Kick-Ass while continuing to moonlight as Hit-Girl. She openly disdains the bitchy high-school girls, but is pushed into becoming one of them by her guardian, Marcus, who forces her to promise to quit the superhero business so that she can “have a normal childhood.” Most of remember those bitches in high school and would agree there is nothing normal about them.

Marcus
Also known as “fuck that guy” (Morris Chestnut), he is arguably the worst detective and parent on the face of the planet. After Hit-Girl’s father was killed, he became her guardian and believes that her childhood was stolen from her. His actions lead to nothing but hurt for Hit-Girl, including being forced into what can only be described as play-dates with the high school bitches. This drives a wedge between Hit-Girl and Kick-Ass, as she is forced by Marcus to stay away from Kick-Ass, including texting. We keep hoping Hit-Girl will tell him to go fuck himself, especially after said bitchy girls and other “popular” kids leave her stranded in the forest. He seems to have come from the same mold as Jonathan Kent from Man of Steel – being a shitty parent and forcing his talented kid not to help people. He even manages to be a terrible police officer, at one point blaring his siren and speeding through a suburban neighborhood in attempt to catch her in a lie. Like I said, fuck that guy.

Colonel Stars and Stripes
Also known as Sal Bertolinni (Jim Carrey), he has formed the group Justice Forever – a band of misfit superheroes inspired by Kick-Ass to do good. He is a former enforcer for the mob, has a dog trained to attack wieners, and wields a stick painted like an American flag. When Hit-Girl abandons Kick-Ass, Kick-Ass ends up joining the group after being recruited by Doctor Gravity.

Justice Forever
The group consists of Colonel Stars and Stripes, Doctor Gravity, Battle Guy, Night Bitch, Remember Tommy (this is actually a married couple), and Insect Man. Some of them are relegated to little more than stage props, with the exception of Doctor Gravity (Donald Faison) getting some lines and a wicked baseball bat, and Night Bitch (Lindy Booth) looking incredibly hot and having sex with Kick-Ass after fighting crime.

The Mother Fucker
Also known as Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), he christens himself The Mother Fucker after accidentally killing his mother in a tanning bed. Donning her S&M gear as his costume, he his hell-bent on getting revenge on Kick-Ass for his father’s death. He puts together his own evil gang consisting of The Tumor, Black Death, Genghis Carnage, and Mother Russia. The gang is completely useless, with the exception of Mother Russia, who appears to be the more manly and bloodthirsty version of the Romanian dodgeball player from Dodgeball. After wreaking having and killing several idiotic cops (they literally drive into their own deaths), The Mother Fucker sets the stage for the climactic fight scene in which the two gangs battle around a shark tank. Don’t ask.

Javier
Also known as Javier (John Leguizamo), he is possibly the most underutilized actor in the entire film. He serves as The Mother Fucker’s bodyguard and guy-who-can-get-things, but, in the words of The Mother Fucker, “you’re like my Alfred.” Javier blanches at the comment, but even he knows it’s true.

While the movie maintains the technical quality of the first film, the novelty has worn off on foul-mouthed adolescents administering violent justice, so the lack of a stronger plot is much more obvious. The movie doesn’t give Hit-Girl and Kick-Ass much to do and focuses a little too much on their lost childhoods. I’m sure I’m not the only one who got a little bored with that part of the movie and watching it end with projectile vomit and diarrhea seemed like an apt description for that piece of the screenplay. What I like about this film (and its predecessor) is that it’s not afraid to embrace its essence and revel in the bloody violence and f-bombs, effectively giving the finger to the prude, blood-fearing pussies of the MPAA by casting the 16-year old Moretz in a movie she’s not even allowed to watch without parental guidance. Dumbasses.

Rating: Ask for three dollars back. Excessive cussing is no substitute for a weak fucking plot.

“World War Z” – A two-hour ass clench.

Have you ever heard someone say “I don’t need to read the book; I’ve seen the movie?” This phrase is usually uttered by smart-ass teenagers who think they are being clever or are trying to avoid reading a book assigned to them in school. As awesome as it would be for kids to be told to read World War Z in school, I can assure that if you think you’ve read the book because you saw the movie, you haven’t.

The only aspects of the movie shared by the book are the title, the premise of a zombie apocalypse, and the main character being a United Nations employee (though in the film, he is a retired employee forced back into action by circumstances). The problem with turning this particular book into a movie is that the book is written as a series of anecdotes told by survivors of the ten year zombie war to that U.N. agent, Max Brooks (also the author of the book). That’s not exactly a formula conducive to a movie meant to entertain folks who are too lazy to read. Instead, the film is a generic action flick following the tried and true formula of most action flicks – everything is fine, the main conflict occurs, zombies eat people, main character and family must survive, zombies eat more people, family is rescued, main character must go find a cure, zombies find a buffet, main character must survive more ordeals, zombies take a break from eating to climb a wall, eating resumes, conflict is resolved-ish, cut to credits. Substitute anything else for the zombies and you can see how closely they adhered to that formula.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying this movie was bad or even ho-hum. In fact, it was quite good and one of the two most intense films of the year (the other being The Call). Brad Pitt is at the top of his game as Gerry, the former U.N. employee, travelling from location to location searching for answers and dodging hordes of zombies. Several times, he comes very close to becoming a chew toy and the film does a good job of convincing you this is possible. On that note, it’s actually a little disappointing that his entire family survives. Gerry is motivated (i.e. forced) to search for the cause of the zombie outbreak in order to keep his family on board an aircraft carrier rather than have them be moved on shore with everyone else. Because of that, his wife is very resistant to him leaving them whereas with a prior death, she could have been far more supportive of his efforts. Protecting his family is his motivation anyway, but it’s far less effective when he hasn’t lost any of them. Or, maybe I’m just a little deranged.

Even though his family is Gerry’s motivation, they are mostly irrelevant, especially considering the movie would have been no different had Gerry been a single man still working for the U.N. There’s still a zombie apocalypse and Gerry is the only one that can find a cure, so of course he’s going to do it. His family is really only there to intensify Gerry’s situations, whether that be physically with him during the initial outbreak or calling him on a satellite phone while he tries to sneak past zombies. That being said, the only other interesting characters are the zombies. In interviews, the filmmakers said they wanted to create a somewhat unique zombie. We’re all familiar with slow zombies and fast zombies, etc. so the filmmakers made their zombies act as a swarm. They said they patterned the movements after flocks of birds and similar swarming creatures to create something a little more frightening. It worked. The zombies move extremely fast in groups and always threaten to spill out of the screen and overwhelm the audience. The best example of this is when they throw themselves at the giant walls surrounding Jerusalem, eventually scaling the wall by climbing over each other. The rest of the characters are also foils; they help Gerry achieve a goal or obtain knowledge only to become zombie snacks.

Beyond the generic characters and plot, the film does a very good job with special effects and music. These things, more than the story, help create the non-stop tension as the film progresses. The swarming nature of the zombies makes you expect every scene to end badly and you experience it in very high detail. While the music sets good tone in most scenes, its absence in the climax creates the tensest scene of the film, as Gerry and a group of doctors are trying to be as quiet as possible while making their way through a research facility. Trust me – you almost have to peel your fingernails out of the arm cushion by the time the scene is over.

While I did enjoy the movie, there were parts of the book that I wish they could have included. The film would have been better had they focused on a climactic battle that occurs early in the ten years of the book, rather than fall back on the generic action formula, and end it just after the battle. The book also examines how dogs react to the zombies, how zombies can walk under water because they are already dead, and many other clever things that we’ve never thought about zombies. Maybe they’ll include these things in the sequel(s), but you’d still be missing out if you don’t read the book.

Rating: Worth every penny, including what you paid for the popcorn you didn’t eat because of your death grip on the arm rests.

“2 Guns” – Hey…Mark Wahlberg really can act.

With a title as stupid as 2 Guns, I went into the theater expecting a lousy, half-assed, run of the mill action flick. Really, can you blame me? For starters, the title doesn’t make much sense in the context of the film. The two “guns” are supposed to be Marcus Stigman (Mark Wahlberg) and Bobby Trench (Denzel Washington), but neither one of them is what I would expect a gun to be, which in my mind is a hired gun (more on this in a minute). More importantly, they didn’t even bother to spell out the number two. In my book, that’s just lazy and there isn’t much worse in this world than bad grammar.

Besides the title, the other red flag for me was that Mark Wahlberg is one of the most inconsistent actors on the planet. Sometimes you get the Mark Wahlberg that nails it (Boogie Nights, The Fighter, The Departed, Rock Star); other times you get the Mark Wahlberg that makes you write profanity laced tweets telling him to go Funky Bunch himself (The Happening, Max Payne, Ted). If there’s one consistent weakness in his performances, it’s that he tends to come off as a little whiny and smaller than the role needs him to be. Maybe it’s his fault or maybe it’s just bad direction, but it’s rare when he owns his character. That is, until 2 Guns happened.

2 Guns is most similar to Lethal Weapon. It’s basically a buddy cop movie, but without the ham jobs typical of Will Ferrell or Tracy Morgan that turn potentially decent films into shit fests. Unlike Martin Riggs, Stigman isn’t suicidal, so there’s far less chance of Wahlberg inserting too much solemnity. What Stigman does have in common with Riggs is that he is a little on the crazy side, is an extremely accurate shot, and provides the lion’s share of the comedy throughout the film. Also like Riggs, his partner is an older black man in the form of Bobby, though Bobby is never “too old for this shit” as evidenced by his having sex with a colleague half his age, Deb (Paula Patton).

While the movie plays out in a similar way as Lethal Weapon, the details are different, including the fact that Stigman and Bobby aren’t partners, at least not in any kind of traditional way. When we first meet them, they are staking out a bank they plan to rob. Unbeknownst to each other, each is working undercover and planning on the other guy taking the fall for the crime since they think the other guy is an actual criminal. After robbing the bank, they discover that they have stolen far more than the three million dollars they were expecting to get, as well as that the money didn’t belong to the drug dealer, Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos), they intended to rip off in the heist. Instead, it belongs to
Earl (Bill Paxton), who is much worse than Papi.

After the heist, the story twists and turns through double and triple crosses as Bobby and Stigman try to avoid getting killed by Earl, Papi, and Quince (James Marsden) – the third bad guy who is a crooked naval officer and responsible for Stigman being involved in the first place. While some people may find the plot convoluted and hard to follow, it’s actually a good weave of a bunch of crooked people – some more so than others, even our heroes – trying to get their hands on the money or trying not to die. This also forces Bobby and Stigman to come back together to help each other, as it’s the only way either of them will survive.

Beyond the plot, Wahlberg, Washington, Paxton, and Olmos make the movie much better than your typical action movie. Paxton and Olmos deliver good bad guys and do a very good job of making you root against them, while not coming off as too serious. They also create a great contrast to Washington and Wahlberg, who manage to recapture the witty banter that’s been missing since the days of Lethal Weapon. Wahlberg especially shines as he appears to thoroughly enjoying himself as Stigman. He is literally smiling through most of the film, almost as if to say “See everyone? This is what I signed up to be an actor for.” Or, maybe “I can’t believe how bad I was in The Happening either.”

As I said earlier, 2 Guns is the type of movie where you hear the title and see the previews and just assume the movie is going to stink. But, I promise you, it’s far better than either of those two things makes it look. You’ll enjoy the action, laugh at the comedy, and wonder why it’s taken Wahlberg so long to find a character that he can finally own. I’m sure he was wondering the same thing.

Rating: Don’t ask for any of your money back. The film will make you forget Wahlberg’s bad movies and that there was ever a Funky Bunch.