Tag: red dawn

“Who are you killing next? Do you take requests? Because I was thinking maybe some Kardashians.”

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Two recent movie watches, one drawing some laughs intentionally, the other not so much.

God Bless America (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was Bobcat Goldthwait’s third feature in the last few years. It’s a funny, if clumsy, cri de couer against the vanity and banality of reality TV, radio shock jocks, bloviating political pundits, and other forms of celebrated hatefulness in popular culture. The best part was how following each killing of a mean person by the everyman protagonist, the media’s attempt to blame something simple and headline-y (terrorists! violent movies!) rather than look for a pattern. Anyway, it’s a nice — though extremely violent — anti-stupid fantasy for those of us who hate TMZ and Glenn Beck.

Nellie was determined to watch the remake of Red Dawn (imdb | rotten tomatoes), even though it carries a 12% rating and was rewritten and delayed for ages. I like how Rotten Tomatoes summed it up: “The rebooted Red Dawn lacks the original’s topicality, but at least pays tribute in delivering the same short shrift to character development and general logic.” I mean, they didn’t even leave in the iconic scene — the one good thing about the original — of hundreds of parachutes falling quietly to the ground outside the school’s windows. Instead, we get a cutting-room-floor scene from Friday Night Lights and a Camaro with a minigun mounted on top. Blech.

7 hours and 4 minutes I can't get back

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Last weekend I had an urge to watch a big, dumb, loud movie. I didn’t get to fulfill it (I watched Enemy At The Gates, which was big and loud, but not so much with the dumb), so last night I suggested we see what was sure to be the very epitome of big, loud and dumb. And man, did 2012 (imdb | rotten tomatoes) deliver. It was ridiculous, poorly scripted, badly acted end-of-days porn. Did it look stunning? Absolutely. Did it carry you along to the point that you barely notice 2.5 hours have gone by? Yup. Did we roll our eyes so far back in our heads that we could give the chair-kickers behind us the stinkeye? Oui. Entertaining, sure, but I would have hated myself if we’d actually spent money on tickets.

Oh, and avoid the Yonge/Dundas AMC on a weekend night. It’s like a stupid kid bomb went off in there.

I’m not sure what to say about Drag Me To Hell (imdb | rotten tomatoes) except that I’m just not a Sam Raimi horror fan. I didn’t like the Evil Deads or Army of Darkness, probably because I didn’t see them as a teen. I never found it scary, and I didn’t find it funny either…at least not how they intended it. I’m amazed that it holds a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I guess I shouldn’t be. There’s a lot of nostalgic Raimi love out there.

Finally, just now, Nellie and I watched a documentary that we nearly scheduled during this year’s film festival: King’s Ransom (imdb) by Peter Berg. I’m glad now that we didn’t. There was nothing there I didn’t already know, and I don’t know much emotional insight you can get out of your subject when you’re about to tee off.

To make my shit movie weekend complete, Nellie wants us to watch Red Dawn (imdb | rotten tomatoes) tonight. She claims it’s a classic, but her criteria for such a designation is that a) it came out in the 80s, and b) she liked it.