Minute Movie Review Corner

Priest (A Fist Full of Cheese)

If you enjoy the gritty imagery of Dark City, the cinenamatography of The Matrix, the thrill of the hunt (and hunted) of Blade Runner, then Priest is the movie for you. 

Like an incredibly bad version of Mad Max (except in American English) and a CGI-enhanced “B” vampire flick, Priest is the hi-tech epitome of modern day entertainment. All the coolest movies, books and music have already been cashed in on (and copyrighted) by someone else, so all that there is left to do is take the best of the best and make it your own. In pop music, this concept is called sampling, and basically, it is an end run around getting sued for copyright.  In movie-making, Hollywood calls it entertainment.  I call it re-animated cheese. 

How shall I count the cheesies?  It will be tough, but following are some of my difficulties. Priest is supposed to take place in the far off, distant future.  So far off and distant, you see, that people are riding around on motorcycles that can break the speed of sound.  In fact, the bikes look a lot like a saddle with fuselage attached, a veritable crotch-rocket for-real.  Nevermind the vampires and the class of warrior, Catholic priests that was created to fight them, let’s talk about suspension of disbelief. 

I can suspend my disbelief just long enough to buy into the vampires and their nemesis, the priests.  I can even buy into the world having obliterated itself back to the dark days before electricity and indoor plumbing.  What I can and will not buy into is the fact that in the face of the new technology (especially the crotch rockets) that the characters are STILL using vinyl records.  WTF?  Really? Vinyl records??  You mean the recording industry has not developed yet another medium allegedly superior over compact discs with which to continue to fuck the fans??  Now that’s what I call fantasy.

To a lesser extent, I also object to the usage of a could-have-been-really-cool-but-isn’t character called Black Hat.   He’s so badass that not only is he a warrior priest, but he’s also been transformed into a (wait for it) vampire!  Gasp! Shock! And his demeanor is based on none other than the king of the spaghetti western, himself, Clint fuckin’ Eastwood, right down to wearing an identically-styled, trademark cover AND using a hoarse, whiskey-laden speaking voice. The cheese doesn’t get much stickier (or stinkier) than this. Rent this one only if you don’t have access to any of the original movies referenced above that it was inspired by.

Minute Movie Review Corner

Hanna

Hanna is a blonde haired, blue eyed, sixteen year old girl.  Slight of build, she is deceptively cunning and agile.  She has spent her entire life in a remote cabin, far from civilization, learning survival techniques and training to kill with her rugged, hirsute padre in the frozen tundra somewhere above the arctic circle. What she knows of the modern world, she has learned from her father’s books. Then one day, Hanna informs him that she is ready.  She confidently flips the switch on the transmitter that broadcasts their location to an unknown third party’s GPS that then picks up the signal.  Shortly thereafter, a special ops unit of unknown origin shows up at the cabin in the middle of the night.  Hanna is retrieved and removed to a special bunker somewhere in Morocco.  Meanwhile, Eric, her father, is en route to France. 

This flick moves along in typical, action-packed fashion with the kind of soundtrack that hasn’t pumped you up this thoroughly since the Rocky movies or even, Midnight Express.  So much ass to kick, so little time to do it.  You know that Hanna is a different sort of girl, you just have no idea why.  And neither does she.  But hey, wherever she goes, shit does seem to get blown up a lot, and, dead bodies tend to accumulate.  There is the obligatory doctor evil –this one in female form with a really bad haircut and an even worse dye job–  The audience doesn’t know why the sick bitch is after Hanna, or, for that matter, her father, but it is fun to watch. 

Hollywood hasn’t really had much use for a female-dominated storyline unless she has been spread & ready or armed to the teeth decapitating werewolves. And there especially hasn’t been much interest in teenaged girls unless they are drooling over boorish, narcissistic, male vampires. Who knew that there would one day be a market for such rubbish written by a mediocre female writer who can barely string two words together?  Welp, Hanna isn’t a trollop, and she doesn’t drool over boys, in fact, she doesn’t even quite grasp the concept of indoor plumbing or electricity, but hey, she sure knows her way round firearms and smashing a man’s nose up into his brain.  And all without those damn vampires, too.

I have no complaints about Hanna, generally speaking.  It appealed to my fascination with all things genetically modified, and re-awakened my long since forgotten liking for the days of Dark Angel, before the writers turned the human jungle cat, Max, into a quivering pile of romance novel-inspired, air-headed, ditz.   But, substantively, I do, however, have just a few small quibbles with the screenwriter’s thought process. 

If all Eric wants for his astoundingly, athletically-gifted daughter, Hanna, is to have a regular life, then WHY are they living in an isolated cabin in subzero temperatures and WHY the HELL would you EVER have her push a button on a transmitter so the evil, red dye job who wants her dead can find her??

Wouldn’t it have made more sense to integrate quietly into society and just sign Hanna up for track or something at the local high school and THEN have the evil, red dye job somehow find her?  But noooo, you just had to bring out the transmitter and have her stupidly press the button so she could be easily located in the woods. Either the writer thinks the audience is THAT dumb, or this is the kind of insipid trash movie producers think will sell.  Even the girl with the dragon tat wasn’t this obtuse.

Minute Movie Review Corner

Limitless

What if you could take a pill that would make you utilize more than 10% of your brain? And what would you do with that new-found productivity? 

Limitless answers these questions in a fast paced manner with a likable protagonist and a kinda, sorta believable story line. If you believe, that is, that human beings are basically good. 

Meh, not so much.  I think that the average person on the street’s sense of self-importance and overall level of douchebaggery is directly proportional to how much money he has in the bank, but hey, we’re talking about the movie.

We rented Limitless without knowing diddly about it, and were pleasantly surprised.  The movie moves along in a frentically paced, CGI cinemagraphic experience, and so there is not a lot of time to ponder whether the story line is, or is not possible.  Although it did remind me, vaguely, of a latter day version of Johnny Mneumonic.  

Not much to dislike here except maybe Eddie’s girlfriend, whose sense of commitment to him to  seems to lie somewhere between very little to none depending on how much cash he has.  Good for a Friday night rental with no place to go and nothing to do but entertain yourself with a pitcher of homemade Bay Breeze, less on the bay, but heavy on the breeze…

Sourcecode

As much as I enjoyed Sourcecode, I have to say that it reminded of a high tech version of Groundhog’s Day.  Jake Gyllenhaal has long since shedded his Donnie Darko days, but at least he’s staying true to character here and sticking with action packed storylines instead of making pussified movies for a Lifetime Movie for Men Channel (cough Costner cough).

Captain Colter Stevens is sitting on a train across from a pretty girl headed for destinations unknown somewhere in Chicago. It all seems fairly mundane until the train explodes and he wakes up in a metal pod of sorts only to return to the train again and again. Turns out, Stevens is teleported into another guy’s life on the same train, across from the same pretty girl every 8 minutes until he can figure out where the bomb is and who planted it.  Meanwhile, Captain Goodwin is his only on-screen guide in the pod, and she isn’t much into detailed explanations.

Now, I know what you’re thinking…you’re thinking this is a gimme…the bomber is obviously the pretty girl, and ol’ Jakey is far to engrossed listening to the lull of his hormones to figure it out.  But you would be wrong! That’s all you’re getting from me for now as I would not want to spoil the movie for you.  You’re just going to have to rent it yourself and see what happens.  Highly recommended.

Yiddish Word of the Week

Have you ever noticed that the Yiddish language is full of words that you couldn’t normally get away with in polite society?  For example, you wouldn’t walk around the office speaking in an amplified voice using the word, “fucked” to describe persons or events.  That’s right, Prattle readers, there is an even better word than fuck!

You could get away with the Yiddish equivalent because even if some delicate blossom waggled a finger or raised an eyebrow at you, the fact is, the American workplace has become so terminally politically correct that no one who wanted to keep his job would dare to question usage of a word that did not sound like it was English.  (Wouldn’t wanna offend the foreigners overrunning the country, dont’cha know? )

So the next time you find that you would like to express your opinion in a non-politically correct manner, just use a Yiddish word such as ”Fakakt,” \Fa’ cocked’\  which essentially means (in the vernacular, that is) fucked up.  As in, the American economy has been mismanaged and has become so systemically corrupt for the past 50 years that is it 100% irrevocably fakakt.

Learn it. Know it. Use it. Love it. Until next week, goys & gals, practice your Yiddish for a more fun-filled week!