Monthly Archives: May 2010

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On The Couch #20: The Incredible Hulk

The main reason I wanted to watch The Incredible Hulk is because Iron Man 2 was so good. I remembered hearing that Robert Downey Jr. made a cameo in this movie as Tony Stark, so I took this out from Netflix as a sort-of Iron Man 1.5. Tony Stark is in the movie; unfortunately he’s not in his Hulkbuster armor.

This would have made for one half of an awesome all-CGI fight scene.

I’m not sure if this is a reboot or a sequel to Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk movie. The cast and director are completely different. What’s good about it is that The Incredible Hulk covers the Hulk’s origin in the opening credits, so you don’t have to sit through Ang Lee’s snoozer before watching this.

Edward Norton is great as the yoga practicing, always-trying-to-keep-his-cool Bruce Banner.

Old school Hulk fans will be happy that Lou Ferrigno makes a cameo appearence as an easily-bought-off-with-pizza security guard.

Who wears short shorts? Hulk wears short shorts!

Bruce Banner’s love interest Betty dates the dad from Mordern Family. What is it with this guy? He looks like Eddie Munster all grown up, yet in fictional worlds he lands Liv Tyler and Julie Bowen? I don’t get it.

I wonder if he keeps in touch with cousin Marilyn.

Maybe it’s just because I watched hours and hours of Lost the day before, but I thought Michael Emerson would have been the perfect guy to play Betty’s boyfriend instead. He’s snarky, he’s swarmy, he’s the perfect other guy. Later in the movie, I thought Michael Emerson would make a much better Mr. Blue than the guy they cast. Okay, I want to replace two people with Ben from Lost. This may be a sign that I have been watching too much Lost lately.

Tim Roth plays the big bad guy. He must be happy that there is a Mr. Blue and a Mr. Green in this movie. It’s like an unofficial tie-in to Reservior Dogs. Mr. Blue and Mr. Green aren’t bank robbers, but they are scientists who are working outside the law, which is almost the same, right?

“Why am I Mr. Green?”
“Because you’re irradiated, alright?”

Hey Freaks and Geeks fans, Bill is in this movie! He’s the guy eating pizza in the computer lab. Blink and you’ll miss him. All of his lines landed on the cutting room floor. It’s too bad, because it’s the funniest scenes not in the movie.

If you don’t have time to sit through the two-hour movie, you can watch all the deleted scenes instead. There are so many of them that they become a 20-minute cinematic Cliff’s Notes.

If you didn’t see The Incredible Hulk because you found The Hulk as boring as I did, rent this movie. It’s good.

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On The Couch #19: The Room

My girlfriend thinks that fantasy baseball is a waste of time. I’m starting to agree with her, because if it wasn’t for fantasy baseball, I may have never watched or even heard of The Room.

Earlier this year, I joined a fantasy baseball league through my friend Carl and was told that everyone’s team names were references to The Room. Since I never saw The Room, or even heard of it before this, I named my team Never Saw The Room. Naming your team Never Saw The Room in a league of devotees to The Room leads to people telling you that you have to see the movie.

It turns out I really didn’t.

The Room is hailed as one of those it’s-so-bad-it’s-good movies and has developed a cult following similar to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. People go to midnight screenings dressed as the characters, and Adult Swim ran it once as an April Fool’s joke. Unlike Rocky Horror, there are no catchy songs and the acting is much, much worse.

It’s on par production quality-wise with your average Skinimax movie. There’s the cheesy synthesized music, the slow-cam sex scene (behind a gauze curtain no less!), and very crappy acting matched with very crappy dialogue.

The director, writer and star of The Room, Tommy Wiseau, scares me on many levels. He’s a mess of White Snake era hair atop a roided up Long Island guido. But he can’t be from Long Island with that accent that stems from the “Ridiculous” region of Europe. He has the freakiest laugh in existence. It’s creepier and more off-putting than The Joker’s and he throws it into every line he can for his character Johnny. I imagine each of Johnny’s lines in the script looks like:

JOHNNY

                            Oh, hi Denny.
                                   (creepy laugh)        

The scariest thing of all is that in Tommy Wiseau’s mind, The Room isn’t only a good movie, it’s a great movie. No, I take that back, his laugh is definitely the scariest thing. It hooks its way into your brain and could slowly drive you mad.

This way lies madness!!!!

Tommy Wiseau also thought that viewers would want to see his lumpy, shaved body in multiple sex scenes. If you watch this movie, you will probably have the same thoughts I did during each sex scene, “Why are these guys all fighting over this chubby girl in the mom jeans?” and “Why is this roided up guy with the funny accent and red rose fetish so lumpy?” and “Why am I still watching this?”

Johnny lives down the street from Full House’s Tanners. Pray for Michelle.

The Room is definitely the worst movie I’ve seen this year. In fact it might be the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I’m amazed that people want to watch this more than once. It’s like sadomasochism for cinephiles. It’s cinemasochism.

WARNING: If you watch the interview with Tommy Wiseau about the movie that’s on the DVD, your brain cells might decide “Fuck it” and commit mass suicide.

No one told me that Justin from Aliens in America and Jacob from Twilight were in this!

The one good thing about watching The Room was catching the references of team names in my fantasy baseball league, like Denny, Scotchka and Favorite Customer. A couple had to be explained to me after the fact, namely Wizzo (soundalike for Wiseau) and Sestosterone (nickname for Greg Sestero, who plays Johnny’s back-stabbing pal).

But even here The Room disappoints. Half the league doesn’t have The Room specific names. Rookies, El Sid and Bone In have nothing to do with The Room at all. This whole time I assumed that Griffey’s Aces was the only non-The Room name. Hey, I get it, the guy is obsessed with Ken Griffey Jr. and doesn’t want to tow the line, that’s fine. I’ve been wondering for weeks what the hell a Bone In was and got no answer from The Room. It turns out it just refers to the nickname of the guy who created the team.

“You are tearing me apart, Bone In!”

I think my friend Carl put it best when he described The Room: “Rarely has one put so much effort into making something great and misfired so spectacularly in every single way possible.”

Moral of the story: Stay away from fantasy baseball, kids. It’s a stepping stone to much darker things.

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At The Theater #19: Iron Man 2

Going into Iron Man 2, I was feeling a little worried. People were telling me that it wasn’t as good as the first one, that there were too many characters and that it was all just a long commercial for an eventual Avengers movie. Having now seen it, they were wrong on all three counts. Iron Man 2 is an awesome movie.

It’s full of energy. It starts at 10 and just keeps going.

In one way, Iron Man 2 is better than Iron Man. I’m talking about the decision to replace Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle as James “Rhodey” Rhodes.

I really don’t understand why Terrence Howard would not do everything in his power to come back for this sequel. From what I’ve heard, he was the highest paid actor in Iron Man, more than Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges, all because he was the first actor signed to the film. Going into the sequel, he was scheduled for a major pay cut because when you’re in a cast with Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johansson, you’re bound to become number three or four on the pay scale.

One early 90s outfit that still looks cool today.

Instead of taking the pay cut and getting in on what may be the biggest movie of 2010 (sorry Twilight fans, I see Iron Man 2 doing better than Eclipse), not to mention getting his own armor in this one, the super-badass War Machine armor, Terrence Howard left to make…Fighting.

I don’t remember this movie either.
I’ve never been a big fan of Terrence Howard, and Don Cheadle is awesome in everything he does, so when I first heard this news, I thought “Upgrade!”

As soon as Rhodey appeared on screen in the fully tricked out War Machine armor, I think I audibly said “Awesome.”
Luckily they didn’t cast their 3rd choice.

Has anyone seen the poster below for Iron Man 2? I’ve been told by multiple people that it’s modeled after a Star Wars poster. Sure, the boot jet looks like a lightsaber, but I can’t think of any Star Wars poster that looks like this. Does anyone know what Star Wars poster this looks like? Or is just a thematic thing?

Star Wars?

Like the first movie, there’s a bonus scene at the end of the credits that you should definitely stick around for. All I can say is that it is definitely a great time to be a comics fan going to the movies these days.

In the credits, Iron Man co-creator Stan Lee is credited as himself, but I swore he was called Larry King in his cameo appearance.

Since we’re on the topic of superhero movies, please go to Netflix and save The Crimson Mask to your queue. My friend Elias Plagianos is the writer and director. It’s played in a bunch of film festivals and won over 30 awards. The Crimson Mask is due out on DVD at the end of this month and Netflix requires a certain number of people to save it to their queue before they’ll order copies of it. If it makes it into Netflix, you’ll see a review of it here. Thanks.

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On The Couch #18: The Lives of Others

If The Lives of Others isn’t in your Netflix queue already, go add it right now. Seriously, right now. I’ll wait.

Okay, welcome back. Wait, what do you mean what do I mean welcome back? You didn’t click away from this page to Netflix and add it to your queue? You were just waiting me out? Wow, I thought we had a trust thing going here. Guess I was wrong. Okay, hopefully I can convince you to add it by the end of this entry. But I’m still a little hurt.

The Lives of Others takes place in 1984 East Berlin and is about Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, who starts the movie as the textbook definition of asshole East German bureaucrat. He specializes in sniffing out enemies of the state and is willing to bury people for the slightest infractions against East Germany. If this guy was a cop, he’d be the kind that gave out jaywalking tickets on empty streets.

For zie last time, I um not Herr Moby!

Because of his tenacious zealotry to the state, HGW is his boss’s top choice to spy on and build a case against Georg Dreyman, a playwright who is believed to be conspiring to produce propaganda against East Germany. Over the course of listening in on Dreyman’s daily life, HGW’s heart grows three sizes. Combine this with HGW finding out the motives of his bosses have more to do with greed and lust than preserving the state and HGW begins to subtlety turn on them.

All this makes for a very intense and sometimes thrilling drama, but there is one big unintended comedic bit. HGW’s boss, Grubitz, looks exactly like Principal Ed Rooney from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He’s got it all: the awkwardly parted red hair, the bushy moustache, the gray suit. During a tense confrontation between Grubitz and HGW, I was hoping that Yello’s Oh Yeah was going to start playing. Sadly, this movie has exactly zero scenes of Grubitz being chased by a Doberman.

Vee are listening to youuuu…

The Lives of Others takes place in 1984 East Berlin, but draws parallels to the United States. How different are the Stasi round-ups from the internment of the Japanese in World War 2? A viewer could also see this movie as a warning about how slippery the slope is between the Patriot Act and the East Germany of the 1980s.

While writing this post, I came across a listing on IMDB saying that there is an American remake of The Lives of Others slated for 2011 release. The details were scant, but I did see that it will have the same writer, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, which is a good sign. This new version will take place in America and be about an FBI agent. It will be interesting to see when it will take place, post-9/11? The 1980s? The 1990s when McVeigh and Koresh were in the headlines?

My recommendation is to not wait for the remake and add The Lives of Others to the top of your Netflix queue today. And don’t worry about your shenanigans earlier at the top of the page; we’re cool.

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At The Theater #18: Date Night

I should have known that Date Night was going to be a disappointment right at the first scene. Steve Carell, playing New Jersey accountant Phil Foster, is in a meeting with that annoying SNL couple that call each other babe all the time and ignores whoever they’re talking to. A couple of questions: Does anyone anywhere find these characters funny on SNL? Does even Jason Sudeikis hate these characters enought that they had to replace him from a role he started on SNL?

Speaking of SNL, Kristin Wiig also has a minor part in the movie. You might not recognize her, because she’s not playing the Target Lady. Until now I was convinced that the Target Lady was the only character Kristin Wiig could play. I can’t be the only one who thinks that every one of her characters on SNL is the Target Lady in a different outfit.

When your movie revolves around how boring the main characters’ marriage is, you have to be very careful to not bore your audience. Unfortunately, no one seems to have told the makers of Date Night this. The movie has some very funny comedic high points, but for the most part, it just meanders around why Phil and Claire’s marriage is a snooze fest, which causes those scenes to be a bit of a snooze fest.

I can’t hate on Date Night completely. Looking at the graph, you can see that I thought there were some very funny bits in it. And it’s true, the jokes that work really work. There just aren’t enough of them, and one of the jokes that worked, Phil and Claire being given a hard time about taking another couple’s dinner reservation, is beaten to death so badly that I think they rehash it more times in the movie than I saw it seeing the preview a few times. I don’t feel bad about spoiling this joke, since it’s in the preview, but I won’t spoil any of the other parts I found funny, because that will just rob the humor out of them if you see the movie, and Date Night doesn’t have that many funny parts to spare.

Mila Kunis and James Franco are great as the couple whose dinner reservation Phil and Claire steal. In fact, their spot in Date Night’s preview made me want to see the movie. Unfortunately, they’re not in the movie much longer than they are in the preview. I really hate when that happens, when the characters in a preview that convince you to see a movie are barely in the movie and the preview gives away most of the funny parts.

We’re in this blog post longer than we’re in this movie.

Ray Liotta plays a mob boss in Date Night. Don’t make this the reason you see Date Night. If you loved Good Fellas to the point that you want to see him play a gangster again, watch Good Fellas again; you’ll definitely enjoy it more. If you want to see him do comedy, find a theater showing Snowmen; he’s funnier in that.

We saw the movie at Park Slope’s Pavilion movie theater. Avoid this place. Tickets are $12 and the theater does not live up to the ticket price. The seats that aren’t broken smell of a fine mix of mildew and body odor. The theaters are about the size of your living room and the screens aren’t much bigger than a home projector. I remember enjoying this theater in the past; I used to find it charming in the same way I find the Cobble Hill Theater charming. It was definitely one of Brooklyn’s best theaters not too long ago. I don’t know what’s caused it to drop into such a state of disrepair.

After Date Night, Julie mentioned that she thought we saw more good movies in 2008 when we first did this movie a week thing than we are so far this year. I’m hoping this trend reverses soon.

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At The Theater #17: Paper Man

While I didn’t see Paper Man at the Tribeca Film Festival, it is a Tribeca Film Festival film that I saw while the festival was running. We made it back to Brooklyn from our free Snow Men screening with time to spare to catch the 9:30 Saturday night screening of Paper Man at Brooklyn Heights Cinemas. Woo-hoo! Double feature!

I probably would have liked Paper Man less if I hadn’t seen Greenberg. While watching Paper Man, I couldn’t help but think “This is what Greenberg would be like if that movie wasn’t so annoying.” Similar to Greenberg, Paper Man is about a man with mental issues and without social skills who finds himself trying to get by in a new environment. Greenberg has an awkward relationship a personal assistant played by Greta Gerwig. Paper Man’s Richard Dunn, played by Jeff Daniels, has an awkward friendship with a local high school student played by Emma Stone. Greenberg vents his frustrations to his English best friend who didn’t talk much. Dunn vents all his frustrations to his imaginary best friend named Captain Excellent, a superhero played by Ryan Reynolds. In every one of these match-ups, Paper Man wins. But then again, being better than Greenberg isn’t that much of a compliment.

I wasn’t excited about Ryan Reynolds being cast as Green Lantern Hal Jordon in the upcoming Green Lantern movie. Out of all the stars of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, I thought Nathan Fillion would have been the much better choice as Hal Jordan. Besides looking like Hal Jordan, Fillion proved he can do outerspace action in Sci-Fi’s short-lived Firefly.After seeing Ryan Reynolds here, I’m more excited than I was before about Reynolds as Green Lantern. The guy can carry himself like a superhero. Though the costume designer in Paper Man seems to have borrowed so much from Miracleman for Captain Excellent that I kept expecting him to yell out “Kimota!”

Never let your imaginary friend drive, even if he is a Super Friend.
The best part of Paper Man is Emma Stone explaining how easy it is to make soup. She explains that soup is the easiest thing to make, because you just take all the things you have lying around that aren’t maybe in tip-top shape anymore and instead of throwing them in the garbage, cook them in some chicken broth and you’ve got soup. Hmm, that sounds less appetizing than how she described it.
I’m really glad I didn’t pay $16.50 + $3.50 to see this movie. There’s an important lesson to be learned from this weekend. Very few movies are probably worth what Tribeca Film Festival charges for tickets. You’re better off waiting until they make it to your theater or to Netflix. That said, in a little less than a year I’ll once again be anticipating the Tribeca Film Festival and the Tribeca Family Festival coming to town.
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At The Theater # 16: Snowmen

Late April brings the Tribeca Film Festival to New York City. When the film guide became available, I pored through it, surprised by how many movies I wanted to see. Last year, I couldn’t find one movie that caught my interest. This year, I had a list of 40. I narrowed this way-too-large list to a much more manageable list of three movies I’d really want to see if I could score tickets. With tickets to this year’s festival running $16.50 each, $4 above the average cost of a movie in Manhattan and $6.50 more than I’m used to paying in Brooklyn, I knew I’d be able to justify seeing one movie.

That number dwindled when I tried buying tickets to Beware the Gonzo, a teen comedy that looked enjoyably quirky. On top of the $16.50 ticket price, there was a processing fee of $3.50 per ticket. Stacked on top of that, there was another $4 charge to print my tickets at home. How is that it costs four bucks for me to use my own printer, ink and paper to print my tickets? The prospect of paying $22 per ticket had me convinced that I wouldn’t see any movies at the Tribeca Film Festival this year.

This is why it seems odd that I saw two movies from the festival on Saturday.

Despite not seeing any movies at the festival, I was happy to attend the Tribeca Family Festival on Saturday, May 1. If you’ve never been to the Tribeca Family Festival, you should definitely go to it next year. It’s my favorite part of the Tribeca Film Festival and my favorite NYC street fair. Unlike most street fairs, it’s not the same sausage booth, beer booth and sock vendor repeated for a mile. Instead, the Tribeca Family Fest has good food provided by nearby restaurants, live entertainment, and cool demo booths from companies like ESPN and the NY Knicks. Bloomberg even gives out free popcorn. That’s the company Bloomberg, not the mayor. And, as I’ve mentioned in the past, I love popcorn.

While I was passing a random live entertainment stag, the director of Snowmen, Robert Kirbyson, walked on with Josh Flitter, one of the stars, and announced they were handing out free tickets to a screening later tonight. Snowmen wasn’t on my list of festival movies to see, long or short. But in my book, a free movie = score!

Snowmen centers around a boy named Billy, a cancer patient who wants to leave a lasting legacy that will cause people to remember him after he’s gone. Most of the people in the audience at the Snowmen screening were either elementary school kids or their parents. Before the movie started, Robert Kirbyson said that the movie is uplifting, but also acknowledged that it deals with some heavy subject matters. He wasn’t kidding. Five minutes in, Billy and his two best friends discover a dead body in a mound of snow. That’s all it took for the kid in front of me to demand that his mom take him somewhere, anywhere else.

It’s too bad he left, because he missed a good movie. The director was right. The movie does deal with some heavy topics, which reminded me of Stand By Me, in that they’re both movies that are aimed at kids, but neither talks down to the audience and deals with more meaningful topics than most kids films.

There are some big stars in Snowmen. Ray Liotta is great as Billy’s dad, a used-car salesman who does everything to get on camera and push his car lot. It’s the kind of over-the-top role that is perfect for Liotta. Doug E. Doug and Bobb’e J. Thompson play Billy’s recently transplanted neighbors from Jamaica. If I knew earlier that Doug E. Doug was in this movie, it would have at least made it to the long list of movies to see based on that alone. There aren’t enough movies with Doug E. Doug in them. The guy was awesome in Cool Runnings and helped make Bill Cosby’s late-90’s CBS sitcom Cosby a funny show.

There’s a scene in the movie where Billy and Bobb’e J. attempt to set an airtime record for sledding off a huge ramp (with disastrous results) and I couldn’t help by think that they should have first asked Doug E. Doug for advice. The guy was on the Jamaican Bobsled team, after all.

I just heard the wildest thing, Jamaica’s got a bobsled team.

If you have kids, I recommend taking them to see Snowmen if it makes it to a theater near you. I wouldn’t recommend it for kids under 8. The heavier topics might be too much for them and I doubt they’d have patience for the slower scenes, though they’ll definitely get a kick out of the giant snowball fight.

Despite Ray Liotta, Robert Kirbyson and Josh Flitter being in attendance, there was no Q&A afterwards, which is too bad, because the post-movie Q&A with the director and cast is always a movie festival treat. But that did leave us enough time to get the next movie we would see that night, so who am I to complain?