Well now that I have gotten the good vibes out of my cinematic soul, the time has come to tie on my leather apron,sharpen my nefarious instruments and get ready for some meat work.
Time to tear apart some of the films from last year and tell you why you shouldn't waste your time with any of these awful offerings.
Savages
Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Taylor- Johnson, John Travolta, Salma Hayek and Benecio Del Toro
Directed by: Oliver Stone
Synopsis
Pot growers Ben and Chon face off against the Mexican drug cartel who kidnapped their shared girlfriend.
Oliver Stone finally separates himself from his bong of self indulgence in an attempt to try and stay edgy with this hyper stylized tale of hippie/cartel capitalism and proceeds to make a fine mess out of what could have been a pretty decent crime story.
As someone that I learned a great deal from enjoys saying, casting is crucial and it certainly proves true here in terms of being what dooms this movie from the start.
This material is far out of the range of both Blake Lively and Taylor Kitsch ,who also ruined the hopes I had for the overdue John Carter adaptation but I'll get to that train wreck in a moment.
Lively narrates the movie and does it no favors in doing so, she also is the centerpiece for entire series of events, being the shared love interest of Ben ( Johnson) and Chon (Kitsch), two long time pals who have carved a considerable Marijuana empire for themselves in southern California.
Chon is an ex military mad dog and Ben is a hippie with a magical green thumb who share the affections of Lively's Ophelia or "O" as she calls herself.
The Three share this weird and kind of annoying love between the three of them, with O being held up by both men as their shared queen basically.
Then things get dicey for these dumb dirty gen-y hippies when the Mexican cartel begins expressing desire to "merge" their businesses. Chon's steadfast refusal to do so causes the Cartel to becomes more and more aggressive until they finally kidnap their beloved O.
Salma Hayek and Benecio Del Toro play the heavies on the cartel side with mixed results, but this was the one bit of casting Stone got right.
Del Toro is on his game (as always) and just brimming with creepy, slimy, serpentine energy.
Hayek's performance however, is vastly uneven, though I can blame that more on the writing than her acting.
Anyhow so the two business hippies engage in a series of tactical warfare against the cartel in order to get their annoying, strangely unemotional hippie princess back.
The film has flickers of a good crime story but ultimately fizzles with what has got to be one of the weakest and cheapest endings I have ever seen.
All in all, this film is a waste of your time, unless you are watching for free, then it's a waste of your free time.
The Raven
Starring: John Cusack and Luke Evans
Directed by: James Mcteigue
Synopsis
When a madman begins committing horrific murders inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's works, a young Baltimore detective joins forces with Poe to stop him from making his stories a reality.
In cheap and imaginatively unimaginative spirit of "Abraham Lincoln; Vampire Hunter" comes The Raven.
A story about Edgar Allan Poe being forced to play detective in order to save his lady love from the grips of a killer who models his acts after Poe's chilling tales.
This movie is absolute tripe, we are forced to watch John Cusack attempt to portray a man who is far beyond his acting capabilities meander through a murky yet insanely dull and contrived plot.
I fail to understand how director James Mcteigue could have managed to direct such a fantastic film like 2005's V for Vendetta and also direct such a horrid piece of near blasphemous (to literary lovers anyhow) garbage such as this.
If you (like me) are a Poe lover, stay far away from this one, it will only make you angry.
Watching a very inauthentically pale John Cusack stagger about the streets of 19th century Baltimore amidst a backdrop of darkened streets and ominous fog ( admittedly the look of the movie is it's one saving grace) paying sleuth and playing the part with far too much gusto and well roundedness than one can believe the real Poe to have had just makes one think that the master of the macabre is most certainly tossing in his grave over this schlock being carried out in his name.
Total Recall
Starring: Colin Farrell , Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston and Kate Beckinsale.
Directed by: Len Wiseman
Synopsis
A factory worker, Douglas Quaid, begins to suspect that he is a spy after visiting Rekall - a company that provides its clients with implanted fake memories of a life they would like to have led - goes wrong and he finds himself on the run.
Not gong to church it up at all here, this movie absolutely sucks and I hope director Len Wiseman is forever haunted by the ghost of Philip K. Dick for ruining one of his finest short stories.
If you have never read Dick's classic short story "we can remember it for you wholesale" that this movie was taken from, I suggest you seek it out instead of throwing your hard earned money and well deserved time on this dreadful piece of glossed over, ultra "futurey" remake of Paul Verhoven's 1990 classic, which I will also encourage you to pick up instead of this.
The cast is crap, with the exception of the outstanding Bryan Cranston who does what he can with his role.
The rest of the cast, a puddle of movie stars trying to pretend to be actors, pout and furrow their brows trying to look as determined and serious as possible, but Ferrell, Biel, Beckinsale....they all just suck at acting.
What's really bad is I went into this movie with very low expectations and I still came out very disappointed.
I knew what they changed about the film going in and still it made me want to stop watching movies forever( for a little while at least.). That is the sign of a very, very lousy piece of movie in my opinion.
John Carter
Starring: Taylor Kitsch
Directed by:Andrew Stanton
Synopsis
Transplanted to Mars, a Civil War vet discovers a lush planet inhabited by 12-foot tall barbarians. Finding himself a prisoner of these creatures, he escapes, only to encounter a princess who is in desperate need of a savior.
You know the feeling you get when you find out that they are finally bringing to life a piece of literature that was a part of your childhood, and you get very excited for it and await eagerly it's release?
Then you get so amped up that you actually start to feel like a kid again and you start to think maybe this will be the one where Hollywood cracks the secret code and manages to make the perfect film?
No? Sigh, well your lucky then because it is because of these feelings that I was forced to endure Disney's mutation of "A princess of mars" entitled "John Carter".
This two plus hour pseudo epic was sloppily adapted from the books of Edgar Rice Burroughs and brought to the big screen probably about twenty years too late.
I do believe that this movie would have done huge business in the eighties and would have been a much more remarkable movie as well. But in the post post modern era, where the imagination and whimsy of escapism have apparently gone to die, this movie just does not cut the mustard.
Taylor Kitsch really doesn't help with his lame portrayal of a classic literary hero, but there is enough blame to go around here to every single department.
Unless you have a time machine handy or you can somehow unsee every big budget blockbuster/epic from the past fifteen years, this movie will do almost nothing for you.
That's My Boy
Starring: Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg and Leighton Meester
Directed by: Sean Anders
Synopsis
While in his teens, Donny fathered a son, Todd, and raised him as a single parent up until Todd's 18th birthday. Now, after not seeing each other for years, Todd's world comes crashing down when Donny resurfaces just before Todd's wedding.
I do not know why I am one of the fools that is always willing to lend my time to Adam Sandler's played out, man child drivel but I am, it's just something I have come to accept about myself.
Maybe it's the connection his movies have to my own adolescence being that Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore hit when I was just entering the phase where I would gobble that kind of crap up, I'm not really sure.
Abut twice every year, I always set myself up for the same fall by sitting down for one of his movies (with the notable exception of 2008's "you don't mess with the Zohan" which was the usual Sandler shtick, but the concept carried me through it) laden with the same jokes and the same washed up cast of his pals.
That's my Boy, while it is Sandler trying to sharpen his comedic edge in the Judd Apatow style of shamelessly raunchy and strangely sweet style of comedy that is en vogue now, is somehow a worse movie than last years god awful "Jack and Jill".
Sandler's model never really changes and while it produces less than thrilling material, it pleases the easily pleased and makes enough money to allow itself to carry on, for that I must tip the cap to him.
However, it does not mean that he will ever get my money or time from this point on.
Do yourself a favor and spare yourself the incest and molestation humor, the obligatory bad sports anchor (go away Dan Patrick, I beg you) and athlete (Rex Ryan) cameos, the very odd casting choice of Vanilla Ice in an appropriately vanilla performance and the inexcusable under usage of Andy Samberg (a funny guy rendered utterly useless by his material) and just skip this one and wait for grown ups 2, then skip that one too.
The Apparition
Starring: Todd Lincoln
Directed by: Ashley Greene
Synopsis
A couple is haunted by a supernatural presence that is unleashed during a college experiment.
The acting (even by horror film standard) is abysmal, the story is incoherent, the effects are awful by modern measure and you have seen every scare they give you a hundred times before.
Do not waste your time or money, you are better off watching House of the dead backwards than this lukewarm garbage. his has to be my candidate for worst movie of 2012.
Starring: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill
Directed By: Akiva Schaffer
Synopsis
Four men who form a neighborhood watch group as a way to get out of their day-to-day family routines find themselves defending the Earth from an alien invasion.
So this lazy movie answers the question of "What if we took the ghost busters script, put it in a microwave and handed it to three "funny but not that funny" actors who always try way too hard to get laughs onscreen?" You get the Watch, a stale, unfunny and intensely predictable buddy comedy that gives no laughs and no creature effects we have not seen over and over again, in better movies.
This story about four schmucky, flabby fellows uncovering an alien invasion while operating as the neighborhood watch could have actually been a decent movie if they had a decent script and better casting, but alas, instead we get this turd in our cinematic punch bowls.
BBBBBBOOOOORRRRRIINNNNGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!
Starring: Benjamin Walker
Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov
Synopsis
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States. He makes it his mission to eliminate them.
I know I said earlier that the Apparition may have been my candidate for worst of 2012 but I forgot about this highly forgettable piece of drek that is Abraham Lincoln; Vampire Hunter, this is without a doubt the worst of the year for me.
I hated everything about this movie and while technically, I found no glaring flaws in the films look or execution, the movie proves the already proven point that even with a multi million dollar budget, you can still make a big shiny, pretty turd.
I won't lie, the pseudo literature this crappy movie is based on is a major factor in my disdain for the movie.
I don't like the trend of mutating history just for fuck of it and to me, i shows a lack of ability to create ones own world as a writer.
So there you have it, I am biased and I don't care how much it infects my opinion, this movie sucked worse than the earlier mention Edgar Alan Poe mutation "The Raven" and ideas like this should be stuffed back down the toilet they came from.
This has been my blast of negative nellyness for awhile, next up, I am going to profile the films that surprised me last year.
