>>> Casual Misanthropy
By staff writer JD Rebello
April 26, 2006
You know what makes me feel old? I used to love the summer movie season. Shit blowing up, $300 million squids eating San Francisco, a black cop and a white cop teaming up to stop a heroin dealer and throwing racial slurs at one another for 90 minutes all the while screaming “I'm really too old for this shit.”
Unfortunately, those days have passed. Now I look forward to the Oscar movies, which means I've gone from straight cowboys to gay cowboys. Great progress.
I don't know what it is. At first, I thought I'd matured. Then I perused my DVD collection. Sure enough, there's Speed, and Face/Off and True Lies. Ooh, and Con-Air. So what happened? Did I mature? My columns about itchy assholes, masturbation, and peeing on yourself in the shower would beg to disagree.
“Here's my question: 30 years from now, will they be remaking our remakes? Will it be like when P. Diddy remixes his own remixes?”
Personally, I think movies have gotten shittier. Last week I watched The Rock twice on HBO On Demand. If you haven't seen it, it's only the second-best action movie of the 90s (Face/Off was the first and don't bother arguing, I'll kill you). You've got Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage sneaking into Alcatraz, killing about 100 Marines by themselves, saying shit like, “Winners go home and fuck the prom queen,” and sticking green chemical balls in a guy's mouth forcing him to throw up his skin. Phenomenal film, not one Oscar nomination. What a waste.
Anyway, why don't they make movies like that anymore? People nowadays have been tricked into thinking films like Italian Job and Bourne Identity are action movies. To that I say “meh.” They're not bad movies, but ten years from now are you going to watch them On Demand at 3AM, even though you've got a final the next day and you need at least an 85 and that squirrelly fucker in the front of the class is going to rape the curve? My guess is no.
Anyway, here's a rundown of this summer’s movies with a special guest critic. Enjoy.
Flight 93
The plot: The story of the harrowing final hours of the doomed flight on September 11th.
Justin says: I typically don't like to mention 9-11 in my column for three reasons: 1) it's a humor column, 2) I'm not a good enough writer to find comedy in September 11, and 3) it brings everyone down. But let me get this straight: we're less than 5 years removed from probably our nation's greatest tragedy, and Hollywood’s already stuck its greedy claws in it? It's one thing to reference it in a movie, like Spike Lee did in the terrific 25th Hour, but to make a whole movie about it? Come on, give it a few more years. Christ, it took 20 years to make a movie about the “Miracle on Ice,” and that's a memory people are actually happy about. Way to go Hollywood, maybe next you could make a movie about the time my dog died. Assholes.
Justin: Hey SmarterChild, do you want to see Flight 93?
SmarterChild: Um…I think so.
Justin: You un-American sonofabitch.
Mission: Impossible 3
The plot: Mr. Katie Holmes is back as a spy in a series that inexplicably went from a taut, Hitchcock-style thriller to some bastardized version of The Matrix and a story that's about as coherent as Tim McCarver when he's forced to say something other than ” I heart Derek Jeter.”
Justin says: Am I the only one who thought M:I 2 sucked? Why make a third one? The first one was so good—a true thinking man's action movie with dope stunts. That's right, I said ” dope.” Do we really need another movie where Tom Cruise pretends to run from CGI? Please. And who names their child Suri? As in, ” Suri I gave you a fucking retarded name.”
Justin: Hey SmarterChild, you think M:I 3 is gonna suck worse than M:I 2?
SmarterChild: I don't have particularly strong feelings either way.
See? Even SmarterChild is indifferent.
Poseidon
The plot: A remake of the 1970s film The Poseidon Adventure. A ship overturns and people fight for safety.
Justin says: Awesome, another remake. We need more of these. Here's my question: 30 years from now, will they be remaking our remakes? Will it be like when P. Diddy remixes his own remixes? Anyway, I actually want to see this. It promises to be Titanic without the suck.
Justin: Hey SmarterChild, what would you do if your ship sunk?
SmarterChild: Who knows?
Justin: You'd be lousy in an emergency.
SmarterChild: Huh? What's with that?
The Da Vinci Code
The plot: A movie based on a book that came out, oh, ten minutes ago, that everyone loved except for Catholics and people who think a book should be more than hair brained conspiracy theories to get teenaged girls who never read to say things like “LOL, best book ever! OMG!”
Justin says: Personally, I never read The Da Vinci Code, mostly because Jesus told me it was inaccurate. Seriously though, why is everyone getting so defensive about it? It's not a textbook. And allow me to rant about the Catholic Church for a second….
Okay, it's perfectly fine to make movie after movie after movie about devils and zombies and boogity-boos and give priests crossbows and vampires attacking Baby Jesus, but if you try to make one thoughtful film that examines the actual polemics of Catholicism, everyone goes crazy? How does that make sense? For example, in 1999, they made a movie called Stigmata in which a woman is cursed with the wounds of Christ that turn her into a raving, possessed loon. When that came out, nobody made a peep. Then, a year later, Kevin Smith made a movie called Dogma in which it was argued that God had a great sense of humor, could theoretically be a woman (which would explain tidal waves), and loved us all unconditionally all the while maintaining infallibility. Well, William Donohue and the rest of his degenerates went absolute batshit. I mean, what's more offensive, a woman being cursed by Jesus and turning into a zombie, or a movie that claims Jesus loves us? Unless you're a Jew, doesn't it have to be the first one?
Justin: Hey SmarterChild, have you accepted Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?
SmarterChild: I don't know, to tell you the truth.
Justin: Heathen!
SmarterChild: What about Heathen?
X-Men: The Last Stand
The plot: God, I don't even remember. Something about mutants.
Justin says: Boy does this one have its work cut out for it. Even though I enjoyed the first two, didn't Batman Begins set the bar pretty high? I guess it'll be fun to see Frasier as the Beast, and one more go around of Halle Berry as Storm, trying to continue her streak as the worst Oscar-winning actress in history.
Justin: Halle Berry sucks, eh, SmarterChild?
SmarterChild: I see. You don't like Halle Berry? That's the first time anyone has told me they don't like Halle Berry.
Justin: Well stop talking to Halle Berry, asshole!
Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
The plot: I'm not going to even dignify this with a response. Cars go fast, there you go.
Justin says: The first one was just awful, even though the drive home was fun. (Something about this movie made me drive like, 115 miles an hour through the streets of Rumford, Rhode Island. I guess it’s similar to that phenomenon when someone sees a Vince Vaughn movie and suddenly starts talking very fast). Anyway, they made a second one that I never saw, probably because the thought of replacing Vin Diesel with Tyrese is sort of like your doctor telling you you don't have cancer, but he did find some lupus.
Justin: Hey SmarterChild, do you have lupus?
SmarterChild: Maybe YOU have lupus.
Justin: Oh you crafty sonofabitch.
Superman Returns
The plot: Superman…umm, returns?
Justin says: Superman sucks. Batman, baby. Batman.
Justin: Hey SmarterChild, Superman or Batman?
SmarterChild: Um…Batman!
There you go, even SmarterChild agrees, and he's the intellectual equivalent of an aborted fetus.
See you at the movies! (God, that is the lamest possible exit. I'm so sorry.)