Hey, Remember That Movie? #13: The Ex

Sometimes movies fade into obscurity quite rapidly. There are movies out in theatres at this very moment that could very well be forgotten about in less than a year. This could include movies that you maybe even wanted to see, but never will because you forgot about them. Then, one day, you see that film practically levitating in front of you on the shelf in the public library; incorrectly filed behind that copy of The Bourne Ultimatum that you really wanted in the first place.

“Hey Andy! It’s me! The Ex!”

Zach Braff seemed to be smiling back at me while Jason Bateman looked like the smug, self-serving prick I think he must be in the real world. I had wanted to see The Ex when it first came out in theatres several summers ago, but between Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, and Shrek 3 there was just no room in my life for a movie that admittedly looked suspect to begin with.

Zach Braff began to speak to me directly. “Come on, man. Don’t tell me you don’t remember me. You loooooooove me. Look at my foppish hair and impish grin. You love me in Scrubs and you are one of the few people who hasn’t gone and changed your mind about Garden State. Take me home. It will be fun.”

“I don’t know, Zach. This movie sat on the shelf for over two years. I even saw commercials for it a year before it came out when it was still called Fast Track and the film suddenly vanished from the Weinstein Company release schedule for no reason at all, and on top of that...”

“Hey, nerd boy,” Jason Bateman was now interrupting me, “Look at the names on the box. You still want to see this. You might not really like how I act in real life by telling fans at awards shows that they should die, but (a) you are supposed to hate me in this movie and (b) you deep down still think I am funny.”

“Very true. What do you say co-star Amanda Peet?”

“I don’t give a shit what you do.”

I liked this movie’s spunk. It spoke to me on so many levels and the question at the core of the movie always intrigued me: if you were being bullied by someone who was disabled would you fight back or continue to cower in fear and shame? A great black comedy can be made from such a question. It would certainly be rude and tasteless, but it could also be bitingly funny. The Ex had just the cast to pull this off. In addition to Braff, Bateman, and Peet it had Amy Pohler, Donald Logue, Fred Armisen, Mia Farrow, and it brought Charles Grodin out of a 14 year long retirement. What could go wrong?

Two days later I finally decided to watch The Ex, thinking that it would be a great idea to cover it for the blog. It was a glorious sun-shiny day when I awoke to face the day as I usually do: singing a show tune while throwing open the curtain to say hello to the world right before eating a healthy breakfast. I was ready for anything and I had The Ex to look forward to. Nothing was going to harm me today!

I put the DVD in and even gleefully watched the trailers before the movie. I also noticed that the sky outside was growing darker. Animals were running away from the house in a mass exodus, while the pets inside the neighbouring apartments were clawing at the doors and whimpering for an escape. I just shrugged it off as a tornado warning. By the time I had selected the “play movie” option on the DVD menu, lightning filled the skies and Lake Ontario turned to blood. The screams of the damned and dying began to emit from the television screen as a wall of fire formed around me sealing me off from any escape routs.

Something was not right. Something had gone very wrong.

Later that afternoon when my roommate came home the house was in shambles. The phone was off the charger and bleating with the sound of a dying battery and a dial tone; a blood stained hand print on the back of the receiver. The walls had been charred black. The pets sat on the lawn, perfectly still and thankful to be alive, but still in a state of shock. The television emitted the only light in the room. My roommate gingerly walked across the room to find me gently rocking back and forth in the corner with my eyes clawed out by my own hands repeating The Ex over and over again.

Alright, I made up everything after the ring of fire part. Also, I never eat a healthy breakfast in the morning, but I truthfully hated this movie on a level that is usually only reached when Roger Ebert reviews a late period Rob Reiner film. I have not seen a worse comedy that didn’t have Joe Dirt in the title or have Carrot Top starring in it. The fact that it came at the expense of one of the biggest waste of talent in Hollywood history makes it even more inexcusable.

Braff and Peet play a married couple who are having a child. Peet has just quite her job as a paralegal in order to become a stay at home mom (which she insists no fewer than three times in the film’s first five minutes is not the same thing as a housewife). Braff has just been fired from his job as a chef by his boss, played by Paul Rudd.

When I saw Paul Rudd, my heart lifted slightly. Paul Rudd is usually good for a laugh or two even in his worst movies. This movie gives him nothing to do in his brief cameo other than having him slap Braff in the face with a pork chop. Any movie where Paul Rudd slaps anybody with anything and I am not laughing has serious problems.

Braff’s firing causes them to move from New York City to some unspecified really white Ohio suburb (that still manages to have a lot of New York scenery and keeps the same licence plates and phone numbers) so that Braff can take an office job (which the movie gleefully points out eighty bajillion times that his slacker ass would never stoop to doing) offered to him by Peet’s father, played by Grodin.

Grodin runs an advertising agency (in suburban Ohio?) with an office that only exists in the movies. Everyone is ridiculously happy-go-lucky and engage in new-agey exercises like throwing around a metaphysical “yes ball” or forcing everyone to write apologies out on post-it notes. None of this matters in the end, it is all just window dressing and parts of missed opportunities to really make the jokes in the film work, but instead add nothing but a level of discomfort attained only by desperate stand up comics who threaten to slit their wrists on stage if you don’t laugh at them.

Braff is assigned to work directly under Bateman, who is not only an aggressively passive aggressive jerk, but is also confined to a wheelchair and just happens to be the titular Ex. All this despite the fact that even though it is implied that Peet and Bateman’s characters once had (amazing) sex, they are never once referred to as ever having even been a couple in the first place. The movie really only tells us that we shouldn’t pity this man because he has a huge dick and can still use it despite his disability.

27 minutes into the movie I was begging for it to end and I just stopped taking notes. It had already annoyed me so greatly that if I were in a theatre or had paid for it in any way I would have stopped watching it and started a Jay and Silent Bob type crusade to go to the doors of everyone involved in the making of this movie to punch them in the stomach. I should have shut the movie off, but I needed to pinpoint exactly where this movie went wrong and how it could have failed so spectacularly. Luckily I was watching the “unrated” version (despite there clearly being a rating on the package for both the U.S. and Canada) that was only one hour and twenty seven minutes; ten minutes shorter than the theatrical cut. But wait! There is even another cut of this movie that is mercifully even shorter. The Canadian theatrical version was only 77 minutes long. I’m in Canada so why can’t I see that version and wrap this shit up quicker? In the end, I did find an answer to why this movie failed. It failed because it managed to get every possible thing wrong. If you made a movie that is the exact opposite of this one, it would be the funniest movie ever made.

The script is horrendous. Lines of dialog are repeated so many times it makes you think that the writers needed to remind themselves every few pages what was going on and decided to keep it in the movie. All back-story is filled in by the characters themselves rather than having someone actually show us what happened, making the proceedings boring and tedious. Entire characters (like Pohler’s) in this movie exist solely to move the plot of the story along to fill in key details. These people are like the villagers you meet in an RPG. You see them all the time, they all look the same, but you talk to them anyway in hopes that they have something relevant to say.

The directing and editing are atrocious. Jesse Peretz directs everything like he is out of synch with his entire movie. Everything is done at such a languorous pace that the wanna-be punch lines just hang in the air like the hydrogen atoms floating in front of the actors faces. The man also can’t frame a shot to save his life. I hated Freddy Got Fingered as much as I hate this movie, but at least Tom Green pulled off a few shots where I could say, “Oh, at least that came out well.” The editing makes the movie incoherent. You get the sense that three quarters of the movie is in a garbage bin somewhere. The movie is assembled about as well as Pootie Tang and that movie was notoriously released in an unreleasable state. The Ex is the Manos: The Hands of Fate of modern comedy.

As for the acting, I will break it down for you as quick as possible so we can all get back on with our lives and put this whole sordid affair behind us. Braff is hopelessly miscast, and he seems to know it. His role requires someone with more of a mean streak than he seems willing to provide and you never buy him for a second.

Bateman does what he can, but most of his best moments seems to have ended up on the cutting room floor because as a villain you never get to hate him enough to make his comeuppance sweeter. It doesn’t help that in the theatrical version it turns out that he isn’t handicapped and is just an asshole and in the “unrated” DVD version he really is handicapped. Would someone please make up their mind? Did you just film every possible scenario for this movie and just slap it the fuck together to see if it would fly?

Peet looks pissed that she even had to wake up for this. Her role is so thankless she should demand reparations. Grodin is the only person who emerges from this mess completely unscathed. He knows what his role requires and being the ever consummate professional, he gives it his all. Grodin has the only moment in the whole movie that made me chuckle and it is a complete throwaway moment. I will share it here with you in the hopes that you never see this movie.

Chances are, if you are reading this. I am probably already dead. Either that, or I have gone on a quest to rid the world of every copy of this movie. The infection seems to be spreading. According to IMDB, a lot of people think this movie is actually somewhat decent. This has to end sometime. This has to end somewhere. What better place than here? What better time than now.

Casino Jack

Casino Jack opens today, Friday, January 28th.



In Casino Jack, Kevin Spacey stars as Washington D.C.'s most controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a man who swindled million upon millions of dollars from various Native American tribes that he had previously served the best interests of and who go caught up in an incredibly shady off-shore casino scandal in an effort to keep up a larger than life lifestyle. For a man as obsessed with movies as Abramoff is on screen and in real life (He is prone to quoting films on a regular basis and calls himself a producer despite only having worked on two Dolph Lundgren films back in the 80s), you would expect a rise and fall story akin to The Godfather or Scarface, but what the audience gets instead is actually more of a farce than high drama and the film hits all the right notes more often than it misses.

Spacey portrays Abramoff as a deeply conflicted man who comes across almost as if he is bipolar. Abramoff is a man who clearly loves money and is a huge capitalist, but also someone who genuinely cares about what God thinks of him and helping the world around him. Abramoff uses his ill gotten gains to fund his dream of starting a private Hebrew school and opening world class restaurants. Abramoff's partner Michael Scanlan (Barry Pepper, who gives what can only be described as a Nicolas Cage-like tour de force) is more of the fancy car driving, mansion dwelling scum that people are more likely to associate with the Abramoff scandal. Jon Lovitz is on hand as a sleazy mattress baron turned casino operator that the viewer would more likely associate with a mob film.

Casino Jack is a good effort for the late George Hickenlooper, but there is still a feeling like pieces of the puzzle are missing. Quite often the film makes the details of the story very fuzzy and possibly more complex than they needed to be. I was in a state of confusion regarding most of the plot until the last ten minutes when it all kinda-sorta comes together. The pacing of the film is also pretty odd and using flashbacks to depict events that happened a mere two hours earlier in the film's timeline feel out of place and unnecessary.

It doesn't change the fact that Casino Jack is still good fun. Spacey is at his charismatic and smart-alecky best, and Pepper and Lovitz turn in really solid comedic and dramatic performances. The dialog snaps and the film is clearly operating on all cylinders. One just wishes the producers took the script to the real Abramoff, who teaches screenwriting classes to prison inmates. He probably could have told the filmmakers that they were on their way, but they weren't quite there yet.

Rating: ***

Music and Memory #4: Round Here

By Wednesday night, your roommate, Jimmy, comes home to find you lying down “getting some rest.” You have a mix of Counting Crows’ angstiest hits blasting the unlit room. “A Long December” appears on the song list six times, though, in your defense, two of those times are the live version. You are bawling. Your arms are quietly flailing, trying to find a comfortable position. Writhing in your hand with motion sickness is Evan Williams—or at least his face on a bottle of his branded Single Barrel Kentucky Bourbon. Jimmy is still in the doorway, trying not to laugh, but petrified.

“Uh. Hey,” he tries.

You try not to look as dumb as you know you look. You swallow, “I just can’t...” in the form of mucus, which loses a very violent fight with your throat before it drops into your Pit Of Emptiness, and you mumble, “... get out of this rut, you know?” Your blank look compliments your heavy panting quite well.

Jimmy is a deer caught in the helicopter spotlights of a SWAT team slowly closing in. His mouth sneaks open so as not let the rest of him notice. His eyes try to run away but they hear the ready-to-shoot “click” from your eyes, unflinching and desperate. Jimmy can’t move, so he plays as dumb as you look. “Work? Ehehh... midterms ’n’ stuff gettin ya? Ehehh....” He is still frozen. The weight of his backpack goes unnoticed.

“So much work. Ya. Soooo much work,” you say. “Ha... other stuff too though....”

“Oh yeah... you’re sick, huh?” He blinks so his eyes can catch their breath. You make eye contact! Your eyes and his work the whole thing out. You both cut the bullshit. He smiles and finally sits down at the foot of his bed.

“So what’ll it be?” Jimmy begins. “Are we goin’ with ‘There are plenty of other girls,’ ‘She wasn’t good enough for you,’ ‘Look at it this way...’ or something new and exciting, like, ‘She probably shouldn’t have cheated on you all those times?’”

Your eyes are closed. The darkened outlines of the room around you are swaying back and forth on the insides of your eyelids. Either that or your head is moving around a lot. Or you might be very drunk. But one thing’s for sure: “She never cheated on me. She never cheated on anyone,” you say calmly, realizing halfway through the statement that Jimmy probably knew this.

“Well, I guess we’re not going with new-and-exciting then.” He waits. The silence is either extremely comfortable or extremely uncomfortable, you can’t decide which. It’s certainly not moderately either of those. “Listen man: this is just that shit you go through," Jimmy says. "It happens, and then it ends. You know, though, this is gonna be a whole lot easier ’cause she doesn’t go to school here. You don’t have to see her, y’know?”

“Haha, yeah. Just like when we were together!” You laugh at yourself for the first time in a while—eleven days. “Man, good thing I kept the whole long-distance thing going through college,” you stammer sarcastically. “Ha... twice the talking, half the sex, and the same old break-up.” You think to yourself that you somehow miss the talking more than the sex. Or maybe you miss the sex more. Yes, you might be very drunk and you need to get drunker. Faster.

“Listen man, I’ll give you some time to just hang out,” Jimmy says. “If you need me, I’m here. You and Counting Crows have a grand old time together.” You hear him laughing on the way out. “Man, I’d almost rather drink alone than listen to that shit....”

You and Counting Crows party all night long.


You spend the rest of the week going through the motions, and staring into space. Only this time you know what you’re thinking about. Sometimes it’s a photo of her lying down beside you. Sometimes it’s a short video on repeat of the two of you at lunch. One of you cracks a joke. You both laugh, and then stop. She stares at you, and smiles. Her hair is dark and curly, and smells like sex. She has one dimple—you’re the only one who’s ever noticed. She wears no makeup, and needs even less. Her clothes are trendy—that’s all you really know, or care about. She loves fashion. She’s looking at your over-gelled hair and “totally into it.” She sees the beard you can’t grow in, and the shirt you wore the day before covering your scrawny, stringy body. She keeps smiling. “Stop staring at me!” you both say at oh-my-god the same time! Boy... you were that couple, huh?


You call her, just to talk about things. If you talk everything out, maybe things will make more sense. “God, it’s like you’re breaking up with me again,” you’ll say after you talk about things.

Her familiar voice is tired. “Then why did you call me?”


You call three more times before the week is over. She breaks up with you three more times. You decide she only had to do it once.

You take out a sheet of paper and write a To Do list. You write until the pen is just a stick of plastic. You get a new pen and a calendar. You overfill it—the lines become blurs, the margins become scrap paper. You keep busy. You don’t know how long it’s been, but you’re sufficiently distracted. You’re getting straight A’s in all your classes, one of which is a graduate level class. You’re now the president of the Entrepreneurship Club, and you’ve joined two new organizations: “Community Got Served” and “Whitewater Rafterz.” Also, you’ve taught yourself how to: whistle; beat box; play the didgeridoo.


You don’t go over your allotted cell-phone minutes for the fourth month in a row. You go home for the summer. You see your parents. You see old friends. They tell you they like your hair without the gel, and the new shoes, too. The beard is growing in nicely. They are impressed with your recent success recording a whistle/ beat box/ didgeridoo album, starting a company to market and sell the album to hundreds, and donating half the proceeds to charity, still turning quite a handsome profit to organize a week long whitewater rafting trip.

Then, when she calls, you are in your old bedroom reading “The Catcher in the Rye” for the sixth time, just because you love nostalgia. As you see her name and long-lost picture show up under the little animated icon of a ringing phone on your cell phone screen, you wonder if you’re over her. You’ve been so busy you’ve just had less and less time to think about her. In fact, Counting Crows aren’t even on your iPod’s Top 25 Most Played Songs anymore. You pick up the phone. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“How are you?”

“I’m good. Good. You?”

The minimalist conversation so far could be transcribed for a Pulitzer. You smile. Something is wonderfully odd about her voice. It sounds... normal. Like any other person. You lie on your old bed, the same bed you’ve had your entire life, gripping a bottle of water. The Catcher in the Rye is on the nightstand, and your speakers sing quiet renditions of Queen music in the background. You realize you’re still on the phone.

“So you called me,” you start. Your pointer and middle fingers tap the music’s beat on your thigh.

“Yeah...,” she answers. “I was wondering if... if you were home... if you wanted to maybe get lunch while we’re here. Y’know, catch up and stuff.”

Your smile grows as you realize how hard it was for her to say that. “Sure, I’ll go to lunch with you. Let’s go tomorrow.”


You drive to her house and pick her up, just like you used to. She shows you her smile as she gets into the passenger seat. The awkward hug that occurs between any two people sitting next to each other in the front seat pays you a visit. You half turn towards each other and reach over the center console of your mother’s Toyota, hugging from head to shoulders, each of your seatbelts in a tug of war for their respective huggers. You take a good look at her. She’s wearing that designer jacket you never really liked. It’s pretentious, and you’re positive that has nothing to do with the fact that she told you how much it cost when she got it. Her face is plain, except for the sunglasses that are way too big. At the Chinese restaurant, she talks about her family, her semester, her friends... her dog, her favorite books, her latest embarrassing moment... her new friends, her never-again friends, her dog again. You stare at her, listening to eight percent of it. You enjoy the sound of your egg roll crunching apart in your mouth. Your teeth work to a beat; you listen to about ninety-two percent of this process. She continues talking. She hasn’t changed—this is clear. But something has. The restaurant scene behind her goes out of focus and her voice speeds up in your head, echoing about her dog.

She speaks. You answer, “Uh-huh.”

She speaks. You answer, “Yeah, seriously.”

She speaks. You answer, “No way! Really?” You are completely over her.


You drive her home. The Queen playing in your car stereo is very distracting because three completely different Queen songs are playing in your head at the same time. You stop in front of her house.

“Listen, I’m really glad we did this,” she says. “I just really hope that we can be friends.”

You think about what you’ve come to realize in the last hour about your ex-girlfriend. You tell the muscles in your face not to move with such sarcasm, but the corners of your mouth reach for your ears. A breath of laughter escapes out your nose.

“Oh, I’m glad too,” you say. You think for a second about what else you may want to say to her. A second is all you need. “But, you know, I don’t think this is gonna work out really.”

“What?” she asks.

You do the upper-body half-turn in your driver’s seat. You unbuckle your seatbelt. “Well, we broke up,” you start. “We were together. You were my girlfriend... I loved you.” You did. You loved her. “Well now that’s over. You broke my heart.” She did. She broke your heart. “It’s been awhile... and... I’m over it. I’m over you.”

Her eyes look downward. “Oh....”

“And frankly... well, I’ve got lots of great friends. I don’t need another friend. Actually, I never wanted to be friends with you. I wanted you to be my girlfriend—and you were. So we never really were friends.” Your eyes narrow in self-reflection. “We were nothing—I mean, we went to high school together, dated through some of college, and now we’re done. We can’t go back to high school together, so I just don’t think the whole friend thing is gonna work, y’know? I guess you can count me out.”

Her eyebrows touch. “But you don’t understand. I still love you. Not in the same way, not as a boyfriend, but still, I still love you.”

You press your lips together. “Listen,” you say. “This really is harder for me than it is for you....” You look her right in the eyes, your face completely honest.

She takes a very deep breath; the breath seems to go on forever. You wait for it to end.

You sit comfortably in the driver seat. There is some kind of weirdly entertaining Queen medley going on in your head. You wait for it to end.

She stammers, “So I guess. Um. I guess this is it. Then.”

“Yeah,” you say, and you’re not being sadistic, you’re just straightforward.

You turn, she unbuckles her seatbelt, and you hug. You do the weird kiss-on-the-cheek-at-the-same-time thing. It seems appropriate. You put your hand up as she walks up her stairs and into her house. You lower your windows and you drive away, so everything that was just inside the car is sucked out into the street, so it turns into someone else’s air.

Halfway down the highway “Round Here” comes on the radio for the first time in God knows how long. Do they even still play Counting Crows on the radio anymore? You know you can’t do what you said. You consider turning the car around in hopes that she is still waiting on the corner for her. The video on repeat before is now cut together with pieces of tonight’s dinner. Her hair and scent was the same as always. Just as you remembered, but even more pungent given the time and distance. You want to crash into a wall for being so selfish. You want to drink again. Above all you want to apologize for having been so selfish. The internal war begins anew. You hate the radio and everything about it. You pull into the driveway in silence, resist the urge to pick up your phone, and pick up a pen instead. It is time to start a new to-do list. This is going to take more time and effort than you thought.

You and Counting Crows party all night long.

Hey, Remember That Movie #12: Cobra

I can safely say with absolutely no hyperbole that Cobra is the greatest movie ever made. How do I get away with such a statement? Fuck you. That's why.

Now if that statement made you chuckle or raise your fist triumphantly in any way, I can safely assume that you will get some sort of entertainment value out of the 1986 Sylvester Stallone action vehicle Cobra. This is a movie so ridiculous that only the wonderful folks at Cannon could have made it possible. By that same token, this is actually probably the best “looking” movie Cannon ever produced, which might not say much, but it is still an accomplishment nonetheless. It is still a pretty silly excuse for an action thriller, but with star and co-writer Stallone and Rambo: First Blood Part II director George P. Cosmatos both on board, Cannon felt this was a safe enough investment to make it the second most expensive project they ever produced (budgeted at $25 million). Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus were rewarded greatly for their investment as Cobra was the biggest hit the studio ever had, making $50 million in North America and another $140 million overseas.

After making the little seen, but highly underrated Nighthawks back in 1981, Stallone made it known to studios that he was keen on playing a police officer once again. The following year, Stallone was asked to take a look at and rewrite a script they thought would appeal to him. That script was Beverly Hills Cop.

Even before Eddie Murphy was attached to the original Beverly Hills Cop, the script was already quite heavy on the comedy. Producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer were interested in a big name star, and when Stallone expressed reservations with the overly comedic tone of the script, Simpson and Bruckheimer agreed to let the Oscar winning Stallone take a crack at it. While they didn't hate the script that Stallone handed in, Simpson and Bruckheimer felt it was too cliché and not the direction that they wanted to go in. Stallone left the project and took his ideas with him. The role of Axel Foley bounced around a few times (almost going to Mickey Rourke and Al Pacino at different points) before landing Murphy and becoming the highest grossing R-rated film of all time; a record that movie would hold for over 20 years until the releases of The Passion of the Christ and The Hangover.

Cobra incorporates pretty much every idea that Stallone had for Beverly Hills Cop without the fish out of water element and adds an unhealthy dose of Dirty Harry. Intrigued by the possibility of landing Stallone for one of his pet projects that was going into production the following year (the arm wrestling truck driver epic Over the Top), Menahem Golan pretty much gave Stallone and Cosmatos complete creative control over Cobra. This wasn't unusual for the Israeli cousins as they stayed out of the direct production of a movie as long as it was going to make money or possibly win them awards.

I can't be too sure if the years have looked kindly upon Cobra. On one hand, this is a really trashy movie that was based very loosely off a really trashy novel (Fair Game by Paula Gosling, which would later be made into the Cindy Crawford debacle of the same name) and has absolutely no socially redeeming value or even a message that hasn't been spouted before in countless other action films. On the other hand, this movie is so far over the top and so packed with cheerfully obvious cliches that it is really hard not to love it. In terms of violence and gore, fans of the The Expendables will not be disappointed because this might very well be the most hardcore film he has ever done.

But all in all, this movie is just silly. As much as I defend it, I defy anyone reading this to sit through Cobra with a straight face. I just don't think it can be done. This is a movie that takes itself so seriously on the surface that you get the feeling that what Stallone was really going for was a form of high camp. But then again, Stallone also compared his failed 1995 snooze fest Assassins to the works of Sartre and Camus. Actually, now that I think about it, Stallone is just crazy, but in a mostly good way.

Stallone plays Lieutenant Marion “Cobra” Corbretti, a Los Angeles cop that works as a part of “the zombie squad.” What this squad does is never established outside of a character saying that they take on the jobs that no one else is willing to take. We never even see another member of this squad other than Cobra and his partner Gonzales. From the second he appears on screen, just from the look and the music, you know that Cobra is the last person you want to fuck with. The dude drives a customized 1950 Ford Mercury and he uses matches for toothpicks. Think you are a bad ass when you say something with a toothpick in your mouth? Try chewing on something that could start a fire at any second. Then get back to me. This is also a guy who rations his last slice of pizza by cutting with a pair of scissors. That's br00tal.

In the glorious opening scene that follows an almost incomprehensible opening montage of Stallone mumbling some crime statistics, people clanging axes for no reason at all and Cobra riding a motorcycle at sunrise, Cobra arrives on the scene of a grocery store hostage standoff that only slightly has any connection to the rest of the movie that follows. The crazed gunman inside has already killed an innocent child (which the movie has the balls to show) and Cobra shows nothing more than mild annoyance that he had to go down there in the first place. It is also the scene where we get the movie's tag line and a catch phrase that should have caught on more than it actually did.

Did you just see that? If you didn't, you might as well just stop reading this review, but lets just analyze what happened there for a second. There were at least three one liners, a psychotic who kept repeating the same lines pretty much over an over again, Cobra stops and cracks open a beer, Cobra never takes his sunglasses off even when somehow emerging from a walk in freezer that makes him look even more badass, and he wastes the guy immediately after saying “drop it” without giving the guy a chance to drop his weapon. And his gun has a Cobra on it. That could only be more badass if he carried two of them. This is the point of the movie and the review where the viewer has to make the choice to either go along with this or stop while they still have a few brain cells left.

It turns out that the guy Cobra just wasted was a part of a secret underground society run by a serial killer known quite simply as the Night Slasher. Since Mr. Slasher is wanted in connection with another 18 homicides in the city, the chief of police tells Cobra to use whatever means necessary to bring this man down.

Cobra starts shaking down people during a musical montage that is just gloriously crazed, but his big break comes when a model named Ingrid, played by Stallone's then girlfriend Brigitte Nielsen, catches the Night Slasher (played by genre actor Brian Thompson) and a crooked female cop that will factor quite heavily into the rest of the movie while they are trying to dispose of a body.

Warning: The following montage is so 80s it hurts. It also features the coolest knife you will ever see in your life. It also contains terrible music, smoke machines, random homeless people, women in skimpy outfits, and robots. Yes. Robots. Also, the edits are synced to the beat of the song. I really wish I could say this was a fan made video, but no, this is ACTUALLY how this scene appears in the movie. It really was shown to audiences like this.

After numerous attacks on Ingrid from the N.W.O and the Night Stalker, Cobra decides to take Ingrid into protective custody. Naturally, the crooked female cop is constantly giving away the location of Cobra and his partner and this results in not one, but two car chases before the finale of the film. These are two of the most cliché but exciting car chases I have ever seen. Just when you think it can't possibly get more ridiculous, it does. In the first chase, it is pretty clear to me where Michael Bay got his ideas for the chases in Bad Boys 2. If my memory serves me correctly it is also the first time I ever saw a car with a nitrous oxide booster. It just looks really out of place in car made in 1950.

Jesus, they went over more bumps and hills than a track you would create in Excitebike just to screw with your friends. Also, if these guys were good enough shots to take out the headlights of Cobra's car to start the chase, why the hell couldn't they have just shot Cobra and Ingrid instead of initiating a freaking chase? This guy has either arrested or killed a ton of the people you associate with. Why would you want to antagonize him?

Because fuck you, that's why. And that is a huge sticking point not only to many Cannon films, but to 80s action films in general. The future was hopeless and the American government was always seen as either corrupt (if you were left leaning) or useless (if you were more conservative). For its time, Cobra is a great example of the action genre at its cheesiest and even as a product of its time it still oddly holds up today thanks to camp value. It is so dated that it could never be remade successfully and there could never be a sequel made today. Both of which are good things.

This movie didn't meet a cliché it didn't like. Towards the end, Stallone gets his Rambo on and takes out pretty much an entire platoon of villains by himself. The ending of the film takes place in what I could only hope to describe as a “fire factory” and the villain meets a gruesome death. Sorry for the late spoiler on that one, but I'm pretty sure you could see that coming from the trailer. Like Cobra was ever going to lose.

Also, I really have to say that while the script, the editing and the acting are pretty laughable the cinematography in this thing is pretty awesome (minus the overabundance of fish eye lens shots. Those are pretty laughable.). The colours are perfect for this film and I think the Director of Photography and Cosmatos both knew how silly this all was and just went all out with it. The Director of Photography is a man by the name of Ric Waite who isn't exactly a household name, but was also responsible for filming Red Dawn, Adventures in Babysitting, and On Deadly Ground. Those were all either fair or terrible movies, but they all looked amazing visually. Waite was an unsung hero of the 1980s if you ask me. This man could film a laundry basket and make it look better than what it is. Maybe not in the case of On Deadly Ground, but you know what I mean.

Cobra is so screwed up it borders on brilliance. Only really competent people could have made something that looks like assembly line material. It was made by people who completely knew what they were doing and stuck to what the were good at. Stallone declined Golan and Globus' requests to make a sequel to Cobra and I really have to commend him for that. This was a movie that was just a one shot deal to let Stallone play a cop again with his own script, get him to star in an arm wrestling movie directed by one of the company's founders, and make a quick buck. For what it is, and by Cannon standards, Cobra is actually very good. By normal standards of people not raised on this kind of film, however...

SPECIAL BONUS ROUND!

Hey guys, did you know that there was actually a Cobra video game? Well, you probably didn't hear about it because it was only for the Commodore 64, and unless you were a huge nerd like me growing up, you probably never played it. I used to have an extremely large assortment of Commodore games, so I very rarely played any of them more than once or twice since I didn't pay for any of them to being with (the whole system and over 200 games were a hand me down gift). Cobra was one of those games I played only a few times, but boy did it leave a lasting impression. It is worse than the movie, but it is also one of those things that is so bad that you can't help but laugh at it.

You play as Cobra going around and just shooting people in three side scrolling stages of hilariously high difficulty. You start off by only being able to head butt people, but eventually you get guns and grenades and all sorts of things that can do damage, but thanks to shitty controls barely ever reach their target. Oh, and your health meter is a hamburger. Also, the developers of this game, Ocean U.K., were under such pressure by Cannon to put the game out in stores that they never finished it. There is no final level and not once do you actually get to face the Night Stalker like in the movie. The game just repeats.

There are three good things about this game, though. It feels like Cobra in that it is just one guy against an entire army. The graphics are really good for the time and for the Commodore. But the best part of this game is the music. If you listen to the music from this game it will be stuck in your head for days. It's right up there with the pause screen from Battletoads.

Hey, Remember That Movie #11: Invasion U.S.A.

I think we can all safely agree that terrorism sucks. Even before it became a hot button issue for Americans just before the turn of the century with Oklahoma City, Columbine, and the events of September 11^th, I don't think anyone could have seriously said that terrorism was the a good thing in most situations. Besides, Americans like myself didn't have anything to worry about. We had the biggest action stars of all time on our side in the 1980s. Who was going to mess with us? More importantly, who was going to mess with Chuck Norris?

Chuck Norris made a lot of films for Golan-Globus and The Cannon Group back in the 1980s. In fact, Chuck Norris appeared in more Cannon films than any other actor, showing up in more that ten films that were either produced by Golan and Globus or were simply distributed by The Cannon Group. Norris was a blue collar kid who grew up to be a black belt, an air force pilot, a tournament fighter, Mountain Dew spokesperson, international dodgeball review judge, and an internet meme the likes of which will probably never be seen again. Norris actually made his acting debut in the 1960s, but it was a Cannon film that actually propelled him to stardom.

Missing in Action was made in 1984 on a minuscule budget (as almost all Cannon films were), but made a huge return on it's investment. After that, Cannon was firmly in the ass kicking business with Chuck Norris as its master and commander. One of the first films to cash in on Norris' newfound bankability as a star was a film called Invasion U.S.A. This movie came out only a year after Missing in Action, meaning it was in production roughly around the time that Missing in Action was released. This means that Golan and Globus probably had no clue if Invasion U.S.A. was even going to be a decent movie. They just knew Chuck would kick some ass and that shit would blow up really good. They were so confident that this movie would be a hit that it is actually one of the five most expensive films that Cannon ever produced.

So they brought back Missing in Action director Joseph Zito (who had just finished work on Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter) and hired Chuck to co-write the screenplay. Yes, to his list of accomplishments Chuck could now add screenwriter. So how good is he at it? He's pretty terrible at it, but this movie is a mean spirited mess even without Chuck's poor attempts at creating a compelling story. This movie also commits the biggest sin of all when it comes to making any sort of action movie. It is very dull to watch. If you don't have any friends to watch this with you or at the very least some sort of chemical intoxicant, this movie is a chore to sit through. In fact, I kind of regretted choosing Invasion U.S.A. as a blog candidate. Then I remembered that a lot of Cannon's movies were nonsensical and boring, so it became a perfect example of their output.

The movie begins as many Cannon films do: as racist as humanly possible. The first scene of the movie involves a run down boat of Cuban refugees getting gunned down by a boat full of mercenaries dressed as the U.S. Coast Guard. The soldiers of fortune board the boat to retrieve a huge shipment of cocaine buried in the floorboards that they plan to trade for more weapons. The head of this group is named Rostov, who keeps changing his accent throughout the movie and has a fetish for sticking his gun down a guy's pants and blowing his testicles off in three shots. Sometimes it is Cuban, Russian, German, Irish, American, or just unintelligible. During the Reagan and Bush eras, there was definitely a culture that stated that every country in the world was out to dethrone the Americans. That wasn't true. It was just one man created by Chuck Norris who was from everywhere at the same time. Only Chuck could create something so evil, and thus he could be the only man to stop it.

Chuck plays Hunter (subtle), who is living like Bayou Billy in the Florida Everglades. One night a man in a suit takes a rowboat to see him to ask for Hunter's help in stopping Rostov. Apparently at one point, Hunter worked for “the company” (sometimes referred to as “the agency,” but no one ever says exactly who the hell it was he worked for). Hunter declines at first since he had a chance to put Rostov away, but something happened and he was freed. What happened? Who the hell knows or cares?

Rostov remembers his last encounter with Hunter very well, and constantly has nightmares about it. Apparently, Hunter was able to sneak up behind Rostov, say “time to die” and was then on the receiving end of a roundhouse kick to the skull. Knowing the Hunter is the only man who can stop his plans for,um, world domination (?), Rostov goes down to the Everglades to get the drop on Hunter even though he had no intention of helping “the agency” in the first place.

You can see where this is all heading, but let me stop for a moment to point out a few very huge flaws that have become trademarks for Cannon films. First, the script doesn't matter at all. It isn't until over an hour into a 110 minute movie that we get a half assed explanation as to what Rostov's plan is hoping to accomplish. Even then, he just says how he wants to create a new world order based on chaos and to “use our freedom against us” even though he never says exactly how he is going to do that other than by just blowing shit up. It doesn't make Rostov any scarier; instead it just sucks all the tension out of the movie, which is a death sentence for a movie that you know the ending of just by looking at the poster or video art. This is a film that simply goes through the motions, plodding along from action sequence to action sequence without even breathing.

Sometime, a film that just becomes a series of set pieces can be quite fun in a “guilty pleasure” sort of way, but this leads me to the second problem with a lot of Cannon action films: the action sequences in this movie just flat out suck. The budgetary limitations of a Cannon film often make for inept mistakes and cheesy looking effects. For example, in the opening scene on the boats, there are roughly 50 guys with guns shooting at a bunch of unarmed men, women, and children on a boat. Only half of these guys are actually shooting anything; the other half are pantomiming that their guns are firing. Also, there are little to no effects showing the people getting shot since they all appear to just be spasming. Furthermore, every time something in this movie blows up (which happens a lot), nothing remains on fire after it happens, and if it does, it is a single flame that won't really do any further damage. There is only one case of anything in this movie of something that exploded still being on fire.

But more on these points soon, lets get back to the movie because Chuck is about to go into ass kicking mode...

Rostov and several of his men very conspicuously take loud motor boats to Hunter's house to kill him. Hunter, with all his infinite training from “the company” can't hear these boats coming from miles away in the middle of nowhere, but his only friend can. Hunter's friend warns him and is killed because of it. They blow Hunter's house up. Hunter's pet armadillo makes it away unscathed, and Hunter officially signs up to take down Rostov once and for all. Under one condition. He works alone.

Rostov has an entire army at his disposal of various shapes, colours, and sizes storm the beaches of Georgia like it's fucking Normandy and herds them into a bunch of rented trailer trucks to take them to various destinations where they can wreak havoc. The local police are as inept as they come because they insist that the trucks used are all antiques (even though one of them is clearly a Pepsi truck and none of them are more that 10 years old, at worst) and that all of the tracks they left behind have been “obliterated.” Later in the movie it is explained that almost the entire police force has called in sick to stay home and protect their families. No, the police can't save you in a situation like this, and the government would never bother to send the military to fight such a force, but one Libertarian with double uzis and a rocking beard will do just fine, thank you very much.

So now we just watch as Rostov and his terrorists take out suburbia with rocket launchers and bombs for maximum carnage. Not only are these scenes implausible (people are everywhere and they don't see the guys parked on the street with rocket launchers and night vision goggles in plain sight), but they also showcase one of the darker sides to Cannon action films. At their worst they are racist and exploitative. Your white middle class complacency will ultimately kill you. If you are poor or a marginalized minority, you are an asshole simply because you are poor. Also, if you are a small child, you are totally fucked because you will play into every single action scene in this film. Children are in peril in almost every scene in the second half of this film. Other than punching a defenceless pregnant woman in the gut or a rape sequence, this is film making at its absolute lowest and isn't all that exciting when you don't have any substance behind it. If you give a legitimate threat as to why these kids are in danger, you could have something going for you. If you simply just throw kids in there with the hopes that it will evoke an emotional response from the viewer as a substitute for real tension, you have just shown that you know nothing about how a good film is supposed to work.

So Chuck thwarts Rostov's army at every turn, leading up to one of the worst filmed climaxes I have ever seen. Chuck allows himself to be captured by the police for being a vigilante so he can go on the news and tell Rostov that it will soon be “time to die.” Hunter knows that Rostov will come after him to kill him, but it is all an elaborate trap designed to get Rostov's army to engage with the real army (finally!) and to lure him into an office building where Hunter and Rostov can act out their own game of cat and mouse, before Hunter tells Rostov “it's time” and then blows his ass out a window with a rocket launcher.

First off, there are four words of dialog in the last 20 minute of the movie. Two of them are Hunter calling Rostov's name and the other two are “it's time.” That is it. Other than that, the only sounds you get are the sounds of war and really obvious musical cues that belong in a slasher film. Second, I have no cue exactly what is happening in these scenes. It is so badly edited that I am not even sure if anyone was even shot in the huge battle that occurs outside this building. It is just terminally boring, and not even in a so bad its good way. I was just praying for this thing to end.

Not to say that this movie doesn't have a few moments of cheesy fun to it. There is a bomb attached to a school bus full of kids singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and we all know from Troll 2 and Manos: The Hands of Fate that no movie that features this song can amount to anything worth watching seriously. Chuck utters the line “If you come back in here I'm gonna hit you with so many rights, you're gonna beg for a left.” The whole running “time to die” gag never failed to make me smile at just how ludicrous and cliché it was. But that is about it.

Cannon did make some guilty pleasure movies far better than this one, but for some reason people seem to gravitate to this one because of its far out plot and the fact that Chuck Norris wrote it. I am here to say that sometimes, that just isn't enough to make a campy action film. This movie takes itself and its underlying politics way too seriously and at times it feels downright insulting to watch. I mean, I wasn't expecting Citizen Kane or even Die Hard from this. I just wanted some good cheese. Instead, I got a steaming pile of shit that I regret watching. So why even bother writing about it? Because if I didn't, the terrorists would win.

Hey, Remember That Movie #10: Deadly Friend

When it comes to listing my favourite films of all time, I tend to be a little wishy-washy. The top 2 or 3 generally stay the same, but their positioning often still depends on my mood. Everything else tends to jockey for position behind those three. Even making a list of my favourite films within a certain genre proves to be difficult and dependant on the inconsistencies of my mood.

My favourite horror film of all time has never changed, however. Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street has been and quite possibly always will be my all time favourite in the horror-slasher category. The imagery and subtext of that film could power a fleet of freight trains and anyone who dismisses it as a mere slasher film is really missing the point of the film entirely. Based on A Nightmare on Elm Street alone, I am more than willing to give any film made by Wes Craven a fair shot. They haven't all been winners, but for the most part they at least end up being somewhat entertaining.

Despite my quest to be a Craven completest, it was with no small degree of trepidation that I approached his largely forgotten about 1986 major studio debut, Deadly Friend. In interviews and books, Craven always held to the notion that Deadly Friend was the worst film he had made. Yes, the man who made Cursed, Vampire in Brooklyn, and the original The Hills Have Eyes 2, thinks that Deadly Friend was his weakest effort. In his defence, Cursed and Vampire in Brooklyn were the result of massive amounts of studio interference (Cursed was shot, then recast and subsequently 90% of the film was reshot with an almost entirely new cast, while Vampire was a result of Paramount wanting Eddie Murphy to make a funny movie when he didn't want to make one), and The Hills Have Eyes 2 was nothing more than a paycheck to help get the original Nightmare movie made. It comes as little surprise that Deadly Friend, which came only two years after Nightmare, was the result of test audience screenings and suits who wanted a film that writer Bruce Joel Ruben (Ghost, Jacob's Ladder, My Life) ultimately wanted nothing to do with when he saw it on screen.

So you watch the trailer for Deadly Friend. Go ahead. Watch it. It is only a minute and a half long. I will be here when you get back. It is crucial that you understand the trailer to understand why this film manages to fail in it's first thirty seconds and yet remain mind blowing/boggling at the same time.



The film looks like your average teenage slasher film, doesn't it? It could be about demonic possession of some kind. The girl could be a zombie or a vampire. She could just be a serial killer or a jilted lover. No matter how you might interpret the trailer, it all looks pretty standard.

The film opens at a truck stop where a purse snatcher is breaking into an old VW party bus to grab some cash out of a purse on the driver's seat. The purse snatcher is distracted by something in the back of the van when out of nowhere the would be thief starts getting strangled by a robot claw.



I thought this was a joke. I thought the camera was going to pull away and this was going to be a movie within a movie showing on a screen at a drive-in. Then the owners of the van come back and we are treated to the pixelated view of the world through the eyes of a robot. From that trailer is there any indication whatsoever that this film is going to end up being about a killer robot? No. And probably because this robot is really annoying.



Meet BB the robot, the creation of young Paul (Matthew Laborteaux), a young man so smart that he managed to skip from tenth grade to getting a full scholarship to study the human brain at the generically named Poly Tech West. I guess creating a sentient robot makes you a perfect candidate for the brain surgery program at a Poly Tech school. Especially when you are supposed to be in the tenth grade but you look damn near 30.

BB might just be one of the most annoying robots in film history. He looks like a cross between Bumblebee and Johnny 5 (which Deadly Friend actually predates) and sounds like Stitch after having a stroke. BB is voiced by Charles Fleischer, who also voiced Roger Rabbit, but don't get your hopes up. All BB really does is wiggle and grunt. Other than the two leads and Paul's mother, it gives one of the best performances in the movie.

Paul and BB go around the neighbourhood to meet a new best friend named Tom (Michael Sharrett), a crazy shut in with a shotgun (the only go-to woman for old and crazy in the 1980s, the lovely Anne Ramsey), and the really attractive girl next door, Sam (played by the original Buffy, Kristy Swanson) who is almost always kept locked away by her abusive, alcoholic father (Richard Marcus). Everyone except Sam and Paul's mother (Anne Twomey) is totally unlikable. Especially that fucking robot.

Through a series of events too pat and tidy to make it worth rehashing them in full, BB is blown away by a shotgun blast from the old lady on Halloween (after the kids and the robot attempt to break into the casa de crazy to get back a basketball that landed on her side of the fence). Then, on Thanksgiving, Sam is accidentally rendered brain dead following a fight with her father. Honestly, Richard Marcus' overacting probably did her in. Alice Cooper was more subtle in his cameo in Freddy's Dead.

Thinking he can revive two birds with one stone, Paul drugs his mother (in THE WORST scene of people trying to drug someone in film history) and takes off with Tommy to break into the hospital so he can use his brain surgery skills to implant BB's A.I. into Sam's brain. This is just as ludicrous and unbelievable as it sounds, but thankfully by this point the movie is already half over.

Paul takes his new fembot to live in his garage so he doesn't arouse any suspicion. The whole neighbourhood already knows that Sam is dead and that the corpse is missing, so why is taking her partially reanimated remains back to the same neighbourhood a good idea? You already broke several pretty major laws, why not just run for it? For a brain surgeon this guy is pretty stupid.

It also isn't even like Paul had that close of a relationship with Sam. There was a bit of a crush and a single chaste kiss between them. The film never gives Paul a real reason to bring Sam back to life because it clearly seems like he hasn't thought this thing through at all. Plus, since BB and Sam were both killed through acts of wrongdoing, they are both out for revenge. This makes no sense since Sam was brain dead before dying, BB was never programmed to kill, and because Paul has an on/off switch for the Sam-bot that he never once uses despite the film going through a lot more trouble than it needed to in order to set it up.

At every single turn, Deadly Friend goes out of it's way to up the stupidity level and to shamelessly rip off A Nightmare on Elm Street. There is not one, but two pointless scares involving Sam's father that Craven takes directly from Elm Street in the most eye rolling ways possible. These scenes were ordered by Warner Brothers after test screenings for a more Science Fiction based version of Deadly Friend (the working title of which was, I shit you not, A.I.) was torn apart at test screenings by teenagers for not feeling enough like Nightmare on Elm Street. There are a lot of classic Craven themes in the film (the suburban nightmare, daddy issues, the inability of a societal institution to save a life in jeopardy), but these scenes absolutely cripple what was intended to be more of a love story. The ending of the film is so bizarre because you can tell where Craven's film would have ended quite naturally, and then tacks on a studio mandated final shock that becomes the most ridiculous thing in an already ridiculous film. These scenes would look badly out of place in any movie outside that franchise.

That is, all except for one scene. There is one scene from Deadly Friend that will forever live on in infamy, and led to the film having to go before the MPAA ratings board a whopping 11 times before finally getting a pass. Thanks to the wonders of DVD, however, it is now available in it's uncut glory. It is Anne Ramsey's death scene. It makes no logical sense on any level and involves that basketball I mentioned earlier. It truly needs to be seen to be believed. I do warn you, though. As funny as this might be, it is probably NSFW depending on what office you are killing time in by reading this.



I can see why Craven tends to overlook this film more than the other films he has worked on, but even still, Deadly Friend is at least a great looking piece of crap. It is beautifully shot and it moves at a great pace despite never knowing just where the hell it is headed in the first place. Ramsey and Twomey are great sports and turn in decent supporting performances. Even Swanson is great for the first half of the film where she doesn't have to play a robot. Once the switch is made, however, she always seems like she is about to lose it like Jimmy Fallon in the middle of a Saturday Night Live sketch. It doesn't help that stylistically the only real differences between living Sam and dead Sam are lack of speech, wearing far too much blue eye shadow, and only being able to make hand gestures that look unnervingly like "the shocker."

Deadly Friend is a film so misguided that it practically begs to be made into a drinking game. Drink whenever you see the basketball. Drink whenever BB commits a really random act of violence. Drink before every jump scare actually happens. Drink for every garbage can you see knocked over or otherwise abused. That last one will get you drunk enough on it's own and will probably lead you to enjoying this trash a heck of a lot more.

The Way Back

The Way Back opens this Friday



The Way Back is the epitome of the "pretty darn good" movie. It is a film that mostly works, looks great, has great performances, and has flaws that are pretty easy to overlook. It is a film that will spark admiration in some and entertainment in others. It will bore some since it is a 133 minute movie about people who walk a great distance with not much else happening. What I doubt it will inspire are very many ardent defenders or virulent detractors. Much like this week's other release, The Company Men, The Way Back simply shows up and does what it came to do. No more, no less. The fact that it comes from director Peter Weir (Witness, Master and Commander, The Truman Show, and many more) might make it seem like a bit of a letdown, but it is better than any other 2011 release thus far.

The Way Back is loosely based on the widely contended story of a man who escaped from a Siberian gulag at the start of World War II and managed to walk to safety in India thousands of miles away. There is sufficient evidence that the walk itself took place with someone, but the only printed account of the walk (from Polish writer Slavomir Rawicz) has been proven to be a near complete fabrication.

A young Polish man (Jim Sturgess) has just been sold out to the Communitsts by his own wife and is sent to a prison camp in Siberia that is so deserted that security is at a minimal. Nature is the cruellest guard of all and if the surroundings don't kill you, the bounty placed on your head would gladly be collected by any locals you might run into. Inspired by an actor who turns out to be all talk and no action (played by Mark Strong), the young man decides to escape with a party of other men including an American contractor (Ed Harris) and a career criminal with a huge debt and a knife that they need for the trip (Collin Ferrell).

One by one the men in the escape party start falling victim to nature and the group is eventually joined by a mysterious girl (Saorise Ronan) who has lost her parents and had been tracking the group for quite some time. By the time they reach the Mongolian border and find that it too has fallen to Communism, they realize their only course of action and shot at freedom is to cross the desert and over the Himalayas into India.

The Way Back is an adventure yarn with a very old school feel to it. There are no real technological advances to help this crew on their way and Weir doesn't turn an blind eye to the physical and mental anguish the travellers must have felt. The film is lovingly shot (thanks to the partial involvement of National Geographic) in the harshest of locations. The film is certainly a marvellous technical achievement.

The performances are strong across the board (especially Ferrell and Ronan, who have the least amount of screen time, but make the biggest impact), but all the characters other than the main leads are totally interchangeable with only the basest of character quirks. The only two "red shirt" type characters to really make it through most of the film are only distinguishable because one is a jokester and the other can draw. A week after seeing the film, I honestly forget which was which.

The film is also quite needlessly repetitive and could have use a good edit. The script takes the characters to the brink of death so many times only to save them at the last possible second that the film really starts to feel padded around the time they pull this trick for the fourth time. Also, if you go to see the film, come late or put your hands over your eyes until you hear the music start up. There is a dedication at the beginning of the film just after the company logos that will outright spoil the end of the film and any sense of suspense regarding the well being of the characters that you might have. And the whole "Communism was really, really bad" history lesson at the end of the film is beyond cheesy and generally unnecessary.

But these are all minor complaints. The Way Back is a good movie. Not great and certainly not one of Weir's best, but this weekend if you are looking for a new release that isn't subtitled, this is the the best you are going to do.

Rating (out of four stars): ***

No Strings Attached

No Strings Attached opens this Friday.



Despite being executive produced and starring former and probably future Academy Award nominee Natalie Portman, No Strings Attached feels more like director Ivan Reitman's cry for help. Throughout this dreadful and highly illogical affair, Reitman works in numerous visual references to his past glories (meaning Evolution and My Super Ex-Girlfriend are nowhere on display) that when we see a Meatballs poster prominently displayed in the apartment of one of the main characters, a knowing viewer feels like he or she is getting elbowed in the ribs to the point of assault. "Remember Meatballs? THAT WAS A GOOD ONE, RIGHT?" Sadly, this film isn't in the same class as Meatballs. It is barely even in the same class with any other film that could even fit into the raunchy romantic comedy sub-genre. It is so strangely off putting without necessarily being offensive and it isn't even that raunchy. Despite having a cast that is mostly giving their all it still manages to leave everyone so horribly adrift that it feels like watching an entire cast left in suspended animation.

Ashton Kutcher stars as Adam, a struggling writer working as an assistant director on a High School Musical style show who is constantly living in the shadow of his more successful actor father (Kevin Kline) who is now sleeping with his his son's ex-girlfriend (Olivia Thirby). In a drunken fit of loneliness one night, Adam calls every woman in his cell phone and vows to sleep with the first woman who agrees to have sex with him.

Adam awakes the next day at the house of Emma (Portman), the girl who keeps randomly popping into his life creating a puppy dog attachment that lasts for years. Adam didn't manage to sleep with Emma or any of her roommates (including the thoroughly wasted Greta Geriwg and Mindy Kaling), but they manage to finally have sex that very morning. This leads to the two of them entering into an agreement where they can use each other for sex and sex along at any time of day regardless of location or circumstance. They are never allowed to fall in love under Emma's predetermined set of rules and guidelines. Adam is far too romantic and can not separate love from sex. Emma is a loner... well, more on that shortly, but if you can read or write or fake doing either, you can see exactly where this story is headed.

You know a comedy is bad when the number of times you check your watch is greater than the number of times you laugh (Final score: Watch 6, Comedy 4). No Strings Attached is almost aggressive in how unfunny it is and it manages to break some of the most fundamental rules of comedy. You would have thought that the director of Ghostbusters and Animal House would have noticed these problems, but apparently that Ivan Reitman is dead to the world and left his talent to his son in the will. He was probably too busy counting the money from people living on his property in downtown Toronto.

The script from Elizabeth Merriweather goes out of its way to make dialog that seems real, but it ultimately comes across as banal. It forces the actors to explain every single punchline to every single joke and pop culture reference. The jokes are telegraphed so far in advance that you could see the punchlines from Jupiter, but then a character will come along and say something to the effect of "That was from..." or "That's because..." Also, you know how when a joke is failing, people like to say what the joke is about? And then they will all, be like, you see, because that was what the joke is about? What I am telling you right now? Because that was the joke? I hope you really love that kind of awkwardness because you are in for a whopping 106 minutes of that pretty much non-stop. In real life such signs of snark are used because a joke is FAILING. Did the writers ever consider that for a single second. The film constantly admits that it isn't funny. These characters are so nervous about their jokes that the projector practically has a seizure every time someone farts one out.

Also, giving characters quirks are not funny unless you give them something funny to do. Example: One of Emma's roommates is very effeminately gay. He over enunciates everything, remarks about seeing thousands of penises, and is flamboyant to the extreme. The funniest line the script throws at him is "Yup, I'm definitely gay." This is when you are first introduced to the character at the end of a scene JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN'T GET THE JOKE I AM GOING TO SHOUT IT IN YOUR FACE.

I want to send a fruit basket to almost every member of the cast. They do what they can with what they have to work with, but the script is so, for lack of a better word, shitty that all we can do is mourn the loss of their dignity. Kutcher gets the material and comes out better than most of what he has to work with. Yes, Ashton Kutcher is better than this movie, but the same could also be said for Killers, Just Married, and pretty much every movie he has ever been in. Also, why hire Ludacris (as one of Adam's best friends) to just explain other people's jokes and nod his head authoritatively whenever Reitman needs a reaction shot from someone? Why hire Cary Elwes as Emma's boss, hide him under a hideous beard, and not give him a single memorable thing to do. As for Kevin Kline, I don't know why he signed on to do this in the first place. Kline, who is normally a great comedic actor, is shockingly unfunny in every scene he is in. Ashton is good. Kline is bad. Up is down. Black is white. Dogs and cats, living together. Mass hysteria!

THAT WAS FROM GHOSTBUSTERS. THAT WAS AN IVAN REITMAN FILM. THAT WAS A GOOD ONE.

As for Portman, she should win an award for stumbling through the role of what may very well be the most thoroughly unlikable leading lady in romantic comedy history. Portman herself is great as Emma, but the character is a mess. Emma is such a sociopath that a dead tortoise could see that sleeping with her in any way would be a bad life choice. Even worse, the script gives Emma no real reason at all to behave the way she does. Anyone who is this mentally damaged has to have a reason to be in order to connect with the audience. Emma doesn't have that. The film attempts to give us a one sentence explanation that is illogical, sexist, insipid, and contradictory all at the same time. It is so tacked on that I had to confirm with three other people that saw the movie that it even happened. Even worse, that one line is contradicted by the third scene in the film which makes he character look even worse the more you think about it afterwards.

No Strings Attached is an endless slog with a myriad of half baked subplots involving characters too underdeveloped to care about being handily tied up over the closing credits. By the time it is over you might have felt like you had a good time if you were really wasted, but you will probably hate yourself in the morning.

Also, it should be noted that Reitman cameos in his own film as the director of the kiddie show Adam slaves away on. Someone please get this man a good script as soon as possible or I see his cameo as being oddly prophetic. As for Portman, a fine actress who does show some comedic ability here, lets just hope this does not turn out to be her Norbit.

Rating (out of 4 stars): *1/2

The Company Men

The Company Men opens this Friday.



The Company Men is a horror film of a different kind. Instead of people getting killed or tortured, they are made to endure hardships that are brought on as a result of shocks to their systems. There is no better place to watch a film like The Company Men than watching it at the Varsity theatre in the heart of one of the richest neighbourhoods in Toronto (where it sadly isn't actually playing starting this Friday) amidst the most white collar crowd imaginable. After the film ended I heard several people nervously remark that the events portrayed in the film could never happen to them, could they? The massive corporate layoffs that drive the plot of the film could indeed happen to them or to anyone else. They are in fact happening somewhere in the Western world at this very moment.

Writer-director John Welles' (of ER fame) tale of a trio of workers of different ages and statuses (but still all really, really rich) caught up in a whirlwind of corporate restructuring at a ship building conglomerate might have resonated more with audiences had the Weinsteins not sat on this film for nearly a full year after it debuted at Sundance. It might be one of the few "white person problem" movies that I actually have a small affinity for. Top to bottom the film doesn't really have any major faults other than being probably too dry to appeal to the average filmgoer and not having anything really spectacular to set it apart from the average adult drama.

The film juggles three different viewpoints of men working for the same company, but predominantly the film follows Bobby (Ben Affleck, again playing someone from Boston where this movie is set), a 37 year old marketing executive and father of two who suddenly finds himself without a job for no discernible reason other than to help the company's CEO (Craig T. Nelson) drive up stock prices to avoid a buy out. Bobby is constantly in a state of denial that things would ever end badly for him and his family. He soon finds out that even at age 37 he is too old to compete in the corporate job market.

If Bobby is too old then Phil (Chris Cooper) and Gene (Tommy Lee Jones) are screwed if their jobs fall through. Gene helped create the company from the ground up, but he is tired of his lavish lifestyle and even more tired of not being listened to when he says that layoffs are not viable and sustainable cutbacks. Phil is the stereotypical consummate professional who worked his way up from the factory floor to become a high paid adviser. Both are in their sixties and probably wouldn't know what to do if they were forced to retire under any circumstances other than their own.

The story is really secondary to the characters and the complex emotions and relationships between them, which is good since some of the plot holes are really large. (Do people this rich never plan for retirement at all? I find this incredibly hard to believe.) Affleck is easily the standout, giving another solid performance as a smarmy prick with a genuine heart and a hard work ethic provided that the work isn't too hard. Jones is equally solid as a deeply unhappy and conflicted man lamenting what became of the company he once loved.

Cooper, sadly, gets the short end of the stick with a really underdeveloped and half baked character. This weakness to Phil nearly sinks the emotional impact of the film's conclusion since in order for it to really work, we need to have cared about Phil at all in the first place. Kevin Costner is also kind of misused as Bobby's wiser blue collar brother-in-law. The scenes between Costner and Affleck are so good, you almost wish the entire movie was about them, instead.

Despite being a solid and well acted film, it is very apparent that Wells cut his teeth on creating scripts for television. The film very much focuses on a single big picture rather than focusing on the individual stories that would have proved far more interesting. The ending of the film is drawn out much longer than it needs to be and in typical television fashion it feels like the set up for another episode or a sequel. All in all, The Company Men is a good movie with some great performances, but it surely will not be remembered the next time awards season rolls around. That's a real shame since Affleck and Jones had pretty legitimate chances of at least getting nominations.

Rating (out of 4 stars): ***

Open Letters to Ex-Girlfriends and Hook-ups #2: J.E.

I don't expect you to read this. I doubt all but two of my exes will ever read this. Even more so than the two girls I have chronicled in this column before you, I am almost positive you have forgotten all about me. I picture you as having moved on to bigger and better things.

That doesn't change the fact that you are the first ex-girlfriend that I feel the need to apologize to in any way. The way I broke up with you was incredibly messed up and the person I am now can not believe that I acted in that manner. I had my reasons at the time that made perfect sense to me, but now I truly realize that I handled it the entirely wrong way. I was in no place to be in a relationship at that point of my life. My mind was just in the wrong place and I was in no way mature to handle a relationship that was as sexual as you wanted it to be. After all this time, I think you deserve an explanation.

I put in for a transfer of locations at work following my last romantic debacle. Despite the high rate of turnover for movie theatre employees, everyone involved in the viscous rumour that crushed my spirits and nearly cost me my job still worked at that location. I couldn't cope. I needed to get out of there. That transfer led to me being the youngest manager at the theatre you ultimately ended up working at.

This theatre was, somewhat astoundingly, and even bigger hive of hormones that the last theatre was. All movie theatre jobs are really great for horny teenagers. I am convinced that if you can't get laid working at a movie theatre, you just can't get laid.

You were still in high school, a private, all girls school in Connecticut, and I was about to start my first year of University after taking a year off to clear my head and get back on my feet after what my parents did to me. I know I never told you the specifics of why that was. I will probably get to that later, but not in your letter. You know how some parents of famous child actors would steal their fortune? That was kind of what happened only I wasn't famous or even remotely wealthy. I didn't fade into obscurity so much as I languished there. At least I didn't get any nasty addictions out of it.

Everyone at that theatre was dating someone. The management was expressly told not to date staff members, but everyone turned a blind eye to those pointless "non-fraternization contracts." Everyone went out together and everyone was sleeping with someone at some point. Everyone, that is, except me.

People kept telling me that you liked me a lot, but you were too shy to say anything. I thought you were cute, but a little too young for me. Besides, I had my eye on other girls my own age. Only when those girls got snatched up by other guys or rejected me did I see you as a viable option. You were truthfully my fourth choice of crush at the theatre. I think I can now safely say this without you ripping my head off.

Despite our obvious flirtations, you were the one that had to make the first move. You said you wanted to talk to me after work. I was hesitant on hanging out after work. The reason escapes me now. It might have been because I really didn't want to do anything at all. I told you to follow me to the stock room and you could talk to me and keep me company while I did the weekly inventory. Thankfully, I was the only manager on and it was a slow night since we ended up making out for almost two hours.

From there we began a pretty dysfunctional (in hindsight) and somewhat one sided relationship. You were clearly more enamoured with me than I was with you. I was happy for the attention. All those mornings where you would purposely come in really early so we were the only ones in the entire building and we would make out until we both absolutely had to get professional and get to work. Those mornings meant a lot to me on an emotional level. It was the first time I ever felt wanted, but I was so self-involved, scarred, and distracted by the outside world that no amount of hand jobs in the stairwell or blow jobs in the projection booth washroom were going to change that. Now that I think back, we only ever went on three dates that didn't involve us getting into some sort of sex act in the theatre. One was to the coffee shop in the same plaza as the theatre. One was to the greasy spoon diner behind the theatre on my birthday. The other was at the Chinese restaurant behind the greasy spoon diner.

I really did like you and you were incredibly sweet, but all I was craving at that moment was physical attention, and that was wrong of me. I remember how you approached me on the last day you worked. It felt like a comedy of errors with a somewhat bittersweet ending. I was changing the marquee outside at the end of August. You had just finished your last shift and you came outside to talk to me.

"Hey, guess what? You're not my boss anymore. You know what that means?"

I manoeuvred the suction cup pole in my hand to move more letters into place. "I have no idea. What does that mean?"

"It means we can finally have sex."

I accidentally pulled the string on the suction cup pole that was holding a giant letter A and watched it fall from the sign directly onto my face, creating a gash about an inch over my eye that probably should have required stitches, but I sucked it up and continued to work anyway. You stuck around for the majority of that night since I was the only manager on duty. I once again neglected my duties so we could make out on the fire escape for an hour or so. God, I loved that job.

You whispered in my ear "I really want to have sex right now."

"So lets do it."

"I don't have a condom."

"I know someone who does!" I said that maybe a bit too eagerly. "If I can get one, do you want to go have sex in the office?"

"Um... Yeah, I guess, but you're a virgin. Don't you want your first time to be special or perfect?"

"It will be! And I really, really want you very badly." I don't know how serious I was about that in hindsight. I am also pretty sure that is the one quote out of this whole conversation that I am getting wrong. Feel free to correct me.

"I mean, I want to as well, but I was going to come visit you at school and surprise you in your dorm. I wanted to make it really special for you. You mean a lot to me."

This triggered an alarm bell that I will get to in a moment, but it also made me more determined to have sex with you that very night.

"It will be special, and who knows when we will ever be able to do that. You will be in a different state and I will be in Boston (lie). We will both have school. I will be filming things (would be a lie) and you will be kicking ass in field hockey. I just want to close this summer on a high note."

You agreed to it and I went to grab a condom from Brian, who I knew always had them on him despite never using a single one of them. He was the most optimistic 15 year old pot dealer that I knew.

Then something strange happened. I actually had to do real work. The prints for the following day had not yet shown up and I had to work the phones to figure out what we were going to do. Two people called in sick and it actually got somewhat busy. Then one of the projectors went down and I had to kick a drunk guy out of the theatre. I was not expecting any of that.

It came upon 10pm and you had to go home soon or else your father was going to start asking questions. You approached me in the box office as I was changing the times for the next day earlier than I should have been. I wanted to finish all my work for the night so we could get our casual sex session on before I had to start closing and you had to go home. You told me you were having second thoughts about tonight. I asked you why.

"I'm not exactly sure if you love me enough."

I thought for a second and then really halfassedly said "But I do love you."

Lie. Lie. Lie. Lie. Lie. Big huge fucking lie. And I think you knew it. You said you had to go home. I didn't stop you and I was kind of relieved. You kissed me goodnight and said you would be in tomorrow night to pick up your paycheck and give me your forwarding information as to where to send your final paycheck. I really wanted to get laid, but the look on your face made me realize that this was not how it was going to happen.

You came in the next night just to get your paycheck. You were there for about 5 minutes and 3 of them you spent kissing me goodbye. It was the last time I would see you. It wasn't because you didn't try.

This is the part of the story you don't know. This is why after you called me that one time at home, I never answered the phone when you called ever again. It was why I never called you back or ever bothered to contact. It is why I dumped you by trying to forget you ever existed.

No one at the time knew that I was not going to be living on campus for my first year of University. I had planned on it, but shortly before that happened my mother, who had the year prior abandoned me along with my father, called me at work and told me she was diagnosed with cancer. When she did it she was drunk and babbling about how I never tried to contact her. Given the subject matter at the time I didn't have the heart to tell her I had a damn good reason. When your parents lose their house, hearing your mother tell you "it looks like you are going to have to find a place of your own" after she just drained your bank account to help her move in with her sister doesn't go over well with a seventeen year old. Still, she was my mother and she needed my help.

I was going to commute the hour on the train from Worcester to Boston every day while still working to help her out financially. Her sister was ready to kick her out of the house because she wasn't paying any rent, but neither did her crack and heroin addicted brother Billy or her deadbeat sister Rose. My mother's whole side of the family was so fucked up that giving you the home number to that house was the worst thing I could have done.

The night you called my mother got drunk, shit herself, broke her forearm, and refused to go to the hospital. You called just after she fell and just before she was so drunk she couldn't control her bowels. At the exact moment you called to tell me you made the varsity field hockey team, my mother was rolling around on the floor like Homer Simpson crying and wondering why I didn't love her anymore. Billy was string out in the living room screaming "MAAAAAAAAAA! MAAAAAAAAAA!!! I NEEEEEEEEEEDD MONEY MAAAAAAAA!" And my mother's sister Lillian is screaming at me over all of this to get off the phone and to to have you never call again. I was apparently never allowed to use the phone because she needed it for everything. I cut our conversation short and called for EMTs to take a look at my mother's wrist which was turning black.

This was where I was going to be living. A place where I would never bring the hardiest or least judgmental of friends.

The EMTs arrived and they didn't know who I was calling to have taken away. They thought it was Billy at first because he was so cracked out, but they were wrong. Then they thought it was Lillian because she was a cranky woman with an oxygen tank. Then they came to my mother who so steadfastly refused to go to the hospital that the EMTs had to strap her to a chair and load her into the ambulance that way. I remember Lillian scolding me on the way out with them saying I was never to call for an ambulance to her house ever again. She was so protective of Billy (who never actually did any drugs in the house, mind you) that any authority figures in her eyes were the enemies of her son. Billy would die of pneumonia shortly before my mother and father would pass away.

I watched as the ambulance drivers strapped my mother down on a gurney. They handed me back the chair and said without insurance I couldn't go back to the hospital with her. I just watched as the ambulance drove away and I stood there in silence.

I could never bring you into this. I couldn't bring anyone into this. At that point in my life a relationship would never have worked. I still craved love and affection, but you were too young for this and it was way above your pay grade.

Despite a laundry list of physical and mental problems, my mother was released the next day because she didn't have insurance I didn't have power of attorney over her. Lillian did. She thought her sister loved her more than her own son. How wrong she would turn out to be.

You called several time after that. I always pretended to never be home or I would see the number and ignore it. After a week and a half you gave up and we were done. I was protecting you. Or so I thought, but I definitely went about it the wrong way, and for that I am sorry. I was young and scared. I had no idea what to do.

I have no idea where you are now. There seems to be no trace of you anywhere online. I do hope you found some happiness. You were very sweet and I do still think about you now and then. They are all happy thoughts except for all the ones that remind me of how terrible I was towards you in those final days.

I think I am pretty close to figuring this relationship thing out. I am definitely older and wiser now that I was then. I know what I want, what to do, and what not to do. The last crush I had when I started this column just didn't pan out because she really wasn't that into me. Now, I have a crush on someone that I know is into me and who I really like in return. I don't know why I am telling you this. Probably because I want to spend more time dwelling on you than writing the next letter in this series. That one, will be the hardest and most conflicted one of all...