Rare Praise: The Dark Knight

WARNING: If you’re one of the six people left in the world that hasn’t seen The Dark Knight yet, there may be spoilers below. If, like me, you’ve already seen it three times, then read on.

I hate hype. Rarely, if ever, does a big summer movie live up to the hype that inescapably accompanies it. The recent Indiana Jones and Star Wars poop-farms come to mind, although as far as I’m concerned, those franchises are still only trilogies. Let’s just pretend those other four “films” never happened, shall we? Oh, sorry; five “films”—someone keeps letting George Lucas make Star Wars movies, only now they’re fully computer-animated instead of being only 95% computer-animated. Don’t you have enough goddamned money yet, George? FUCK!

But I digress. I’m not here to chastise Hollywood for butt-fucking yet another good idea to death. I’m actually here to praise them for somehow managing to churn out what is arguably the best piece of summer entertainment I’ve ever seen. The Dark Knight’s hype was grandiose, yet the movie itself still managed to deliver more than any ad campaign could have ever promised. Try swallowing this: from the same studio that brought you Batman and Robin comes yet another comic book sequel…but with a dark and complex story, featuring stand-out performances by an all-star cast, one of whom posthumously gives us one of the best villains in movie history. Sounds like total bullshit, right? Nay, good readers. It be the gospel.

Now I’m not saying this film is flawless. Even after three viewings, I still can’t figure out why Batman doesn’t just send Gordon to save Dent and rescue his beloved damsel in distress himself (aside from the fact that blowing up your love interest is fucking NAILS, Brothers Nolan!) And I just can’t shake how forced Heath Ledger’s laugh seems to me throughout the film. (In the dead man’s defense, that shit ain’t easy to pull off, and it’s the only chink in an otherwise masterful performance.) AND, in a movie filled with Batmen and Jokers and Eric Roberts of all people, my disbelief only became unsuspended when not one of those ferryboat passengers was able to blow his condemned counterparts straight to hell. (But perhaps that’s more telling of my own lack of faith in mankind than any glaring misstep by the filmmakers.)

Which brings me to the point of this little column, dear readers: the fact that a Batman movie can make me question such things as my faith in mankind is nothing short of extraordinary. The mere notion that an escapist popcorn fantasy could elicit such thought and emotion from even one its viewers is simply astounding. If for no other reason than that, this movie has raised the bar for me. Not just for action movies or comic book movies, but for movies in general. The Dark Knight showed me that movies don’t have to be just 90 minutes worth of mindless, useless drivel aimed at temporarily satiating an increasingly apathetic, idiotic public. Movies can make you feel, they can make you THINK. Hell, they can inspire you to write blogs about how inspired you are to finally be inspired again by this medium that once so inspired you! In short, movies are still everything I hoped they could be.

So I add my voice to the hype for The Dark Knight. But now I’ve probably built it up too much. Maybe you should go see The Clone Wars instead. I hear George Lucas needs the money. Douchebag.

Crapping on My Childhood: Robocop 3

Forgive me.  I know I'm 15 years late on this.   I don't care.   Allow me to set the stage. 

Back in the late 1980s before I had a driver's license or a car, my best friend and I would ride our bikes up to the movie theater every Friday.   We did not care what we saw as long as it was a) violent, b) ultraviolent, or c) hyperviolent and preferably starred one of the holy trinity of Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, or Seagal.  The list of bad movies I paid to see as a teenager is perhaps only exceeded by the number of bad movies those 3 actors have combined to make in the intervening decades.



So in July 1987 when Paul Verhoeven unleashed Robocop on an unsuspecting American audience, my mind was, as the kids say, BLOWN.  It was a perfect storm of dystopia, hyperviolence, adult content and dark, dark humor.   Peter Weller, who I'm pretty sure is just barely human as it is, was perfect as the titular cyborg police officer.  And Kurtwood Smith may still be my gold standard for screen villains.  Ain't nobody been written yet that can fuck with Clarence Boddiker*.   Outside of Robocop and his fellow officers, the rest of New Detroit was inhabited by horrifically unlikeable and compelling douchebags, whether they were the alpha male bottom-liners from OCP, Clarence's posse of felonious freaks (most notably Paul McCrane as Emil), or the random weirdos that dotted the Blade-Runner-Gone-Wild landscape (a hostage-taking mayor and the absurd "I'd buy that for a dollar!" guy).



I could write several thousand words about how completely awesome the original RoboCop is.  But that's not what I came here to do today.  I came here to heap scorn and vitriol upon the back-alley abortion that is RoboCop 3.   I avoided watching this movie for 15 years because I knew in my heart of hearts that it would kill a little bit of my soul.   From the trailer alone, it had 3 strikes against it: 1) No Peter Weller, 2) Rated PG-13, 3) Robocop could now fucking fly.  If only the reasons I hated this move stopped at those three.   What else could possibly go wrong?   How about Robocop's nemesis in this film being a samurai robot THAT ONLY LOOKS LIKE A ROBOT WHEN YOU DISLOCATE ITS JAW? The rest of the time, it's just a buff Japanese dude wielding a sword.  Geigh.   Despite this, he somehow gives a very well-armored and armed Robocop a run for his money. If there's anything I've learned from movies (particularly Raiders of the Lost Ark), when you bring a knife to a gunfight, it is going to be a very short fight unless your name is Morpheus or Neo.



And then there's this stupid kid running around.   I don't hate kids or kids movies, but this is fucking Robocop.  If there are going to be kids in this movie, they need to either be murderous drug-dealing anklebiters or marauding pillaging Little Leaguers like the were in RoboCop 2.  Not moppet programming geniuses who, I shit you not, make an ED-209 "loyal as a puppy."   If I need to explain what an ED-209 is to you, you are not my audience and I hate you for not being angered by the fact that Robocop STROKED A KID'S FUCKING HAIR WHILE MUTTERING SOME MUMBO-JUMBO ABOUT LOVE.   I would quote the line, but I wasn't paying attention because I was too busy cutting myself.  I get the whole machine-with-feeling routine, but that, simply, is not how Robocop rolls.



Oddly, the one place where this movie scores, its casting, it completely squanders any opportunity to be cool.   Only Rip Torn salvages his dignity, but I'm pretty sure that's because he doesn't have much, and he always plays "Rip Torn."   But seriously, look at the illustrious group of character actors that litter the credits: Bradley Whitford (The West Wing), CCH Pounder (The Shield), Stephen Root (News Radio, Office Space), Daniel Von Bargen (Malcolm in the Middle, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?), and ubiquitous Japanese old guy Mako (every movie that needed a Japanese old guy).  And to a person, they chewed scenery like Red Man at a gun show.



And I blame it all on Fred Dekker.   This is his last listed directing credit and let us all thank Christ for that. It pains me to type that.   Mr. Dekker wrote and directed one of my favorite horror movies, Night of the Creeps.   But he took one of the greatest action heroes in cinema history and turned him into a flying (with visible fucking effects wires, natch) joke.   Oh and did I mention that Robocop doesn't even show up for the first 15 minutes of the movie?  That's not suspense, Mr. Dekker, that's hating on the audience.



So, yeah. RoboCop 3 = ass nastiness.   Because I can't find a clip of the stupid wires when RoboCop flies at the end, here's a lame fight sequence between Robo and robot samurai guy. Keeping in line with the abyss of suck that surrounds this film, it of course ends 2 seconds before the aforementioned visible wire sequence which I wanted you to hate in the first place.



*Geek note: My buddy was working on a show with Kurtwood Smith and they were alone together in a trailer where my buddy was cuing Kurt's action. for the scene. So my buddy starts asking him about good directors and Kurtwood starts talking about Paul Verhoeven and how he gave him so much freedom to run with his character in Robocop and then proceeds to re-enact EVERY COOL SCENE FROM ROBOCOP with commentary on how and why he came up with his lines and actions. Geek fucking heaven.

Crapping on My Childhood: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND BELOW. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED. THAT'S WHY IT'S CALLED A WARNING.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Plastic Head, as it shall be referred to heretofore, is an awful, awful movie. It peaks during the opening credits (an Elvis-scored drag race) and begins a long slow spiral downward thereafter. Peach Basketeers, consider your childhood crapped on. How so? Let me count the ways:

1) Harrison Ford sucks. Maybe it’s not his fault. His performance after all resembles that of an actor forced to read every line of execrable dialogue at gunpoint. This would not surprise me, if he had not been paid something along the lines of 30 million dignity-sapping dollars to star in this flaming bag of poo. It’s not even that he’s too old to play the character of Dr. Henry Jones, Jr., anymore (he’s not). It’s that he’s too poor an actor.

2) The Crystal Skull Plastic Head sucks. The rumored budget for this movie was approximately $185 million. Of that, about $3.99 went towards the ARTIFACT MENTIONED IN THE TITLE. It’s a plastic bubble stuffed with cellophane. I would say it probably has a “MADE IN CHINA” label on it somewhere, but that would unfairly insult Chinese craftsmanship.

3) David Koepp sucks. It might surprise you to discover that I don’t have a big issue with the film’s underlying alien premise. In theory, I could have bought it… if Koepp had bothered to put together a remotely plausible or entertaining framework around which to build said premise. Instead, it’s a slapped-together cause-effect-plotpoint bouillabaisse. They waited 20 years to make a sequel and this is the script they approved? I hate Hollywood.

4) Steven Spielberg sucks. Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark? (If you don’t, he will hit you over your plastic head with it several times during the current installment.) If you’ll recall, Spielberg took his time unspooling the story for you. Yes, it was far-fetched. Yes, it was action-packed. But the time was taken to create a universe in which a) you believed said action was possible, and b) said action appeared to have motivated and tangible consequences. This “film” jumps – nay! – teleports from CGI action sequence to CGI action sequence with Ford and Shia LaBeouf yammering some gibberish about oxen and cities of gold in between. It’s the worst parts of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom crossed with the worst parts of Artificial Intelligence: AI. (That would be all of them, Stevie. You thought we’d forgotten, didn’t you? Never forget, my friend. Never forget.)

5) Cate Blanchett sucks. Just kidding. She’s actually the only thing that’s watchable for the entire running time. And hey, look, we’re hating Commies again! Awesome!

6) George Lucas sucks. Mutt, Jar-Jar. Jar-Jar, Mutt. Even Short Round thinks he’s annoying.

7) Shia LaBeouf sucks. This is not entirely his fault, anymore than it’s Warwick Davis’ fault the Ewoks sucked. He’s just entirely miscast as an unlikable 50s greaser rebel. Even Homer Simpson’s formidable powers couldn’t make Poochie a beloved character.

8) The first three movies suck. OK, not really, but believe me, you liked them all much better the first time you saw them. This is not a new movie. It is the cinematic equivalent of a clip show retrospective, complete with expository “Unfortunately, Sean Connery and Denholm Eliot couldn’t be with us tonight, but ladies and gentlemen, give a warm welcome to…”

9) “…Karen Allen” sucks. Not Karen Allen so much as her character. If this is a clip show, she’s sort of around as a “Where are they now and Jesus do they look old?” interview. (And where the fuck is John Rhys-Davies? Apparently, Sallah has moved on to greener cinematic pastures.) By she and Indy’s third fight, you’ll be rooting for the fire ants or the Commies or the deadly natives or anything on earth to kill either you or them and put you/the film out of your/its misery.

10) Aliens suck. Chris Carter can sleep well knowing that he can now only release the 2nd worst why-the-fuck-are-they-doing-this-sequel-now alien movie of the summer.

Oh, and, just because I can, whatever you do, do not click on the following very offensive (NSFW, big time) pun-based image of how you'll feel after the movie. Seriously, don't.