Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday, August 18th, we’ll be watching JOHN TUCKER MUST DIE (2006), starring Jesse Metcalfe, Ashanti, Arielle Kebbel, Sophia Bush, Brittany Snow, Penn Badgley, Jenny McCarthy, Terrell J. Ramsey, and Taylor Kitsch.
The plot:Three ex-girlfriends of a serial cheater set up their former lover to fall for the new girl in town so they can watch him get his heart broken.
I’ll admit I’ve been watching some Jesse Metcalfe films lately. Just yesterday I watched the Hallmark Christmas movie CHRISTMAS NEXT DOOR (2017) and the culture clash romantic comedy THE OTHER END OF THE LINE (2007). I enjoyed them both. Sierra wants to go back and watch the DALLAS T.V. series reboot where Jesse played a grown-up Christopher Ewing! Keeping with that theme, tonight we’ll be watching a very young Jesse as he deals with a plot of revenge from a group of beautiful but scorned young ladies. I’ve never actually watched the film, but it sounds like an enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes. If that sounds fun to you, join us on #MondayMuggers and watch JOHN TUCKER MUST DIE. It’s streaming on Amazon Prime! See the Trailer below:
Probably the best thing about American Assassin is how simple it is.
The film opens on the beach, with Mitch Rapp (Dylan O’Brien) asking his girlfriend to marry him. No sooner has she accepted than suddenly, terrorists are washing up on the beach and, in a genuinely frightening scene, shooting everyone that they see. Mitch is wounded. His girlfriend is killed.
Mitch seeks revenge against the man who killed his “future wife” (to borrow a phrase from The Room) but U.S. Special Forces kill the terrorist seconds before Mitch gets the chance. However, the CIA is so impressed, by Mitch’s single-minded and obsessive desire for revenge, that they recruit him to join Orion, a black ops unit. Under the guidance of grizzled veteran, Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton), Mitch becomes an American assassin. His first mission? To stop a renegade mercenary known as the Ghost (Taylor Kitsch).
In many ways, American Assassin feels like a throwback to the action films of the early aughts. There’s none of the moral ambiguity of the Bourne films and Mitch Rapp never indulges in any of the self-loathing that’s marred the Daniel Craig James Bond films. Remember how Bond got drunk and tried to interrogate that rat in SPECTRE? Judging from American Assassin, that’s something Mitch Rapp would never do. And, if he ever did, Stan Hurley would probably tell him to stop whining and get back to work.
In American Assassin, the bad guys are undoubtedly the bad guys and the good guys are undoubtedly the good guys and, while that may not be the approach that leads to Academy Awards and overwhelming critical acclaim, it still makes for an undeniably entertaining movie. Director Michael Cuesta does a good job with the action scenes and he gets good performances from the entire cast. Taylor Kitsch is far more compelling as a villain than he ever was in any of his heroic roles and, not surprisingly, Michael Keaton steals the whole show as the tough but caring Stan Hurley. Michael Keaton is definitely one of the best actors working today. He can slide seamlessly from a prestige drama like Spotlight to an action film like American Assassin to a comic book film like Spider-Man: Homecoming and he can do it without missing a beat. Those are three very different films and Keaton was the best thing in all of them.
And, finally, we have Dylan O’Brien. Last year, as we all know, O’Brien was seriously injured while filming the third Maze Runner film. At the time, it was announced that O’Brien’s injuries were “substantial but not life threatening” but I know there was a feeling that his career might be over. Even though American Assassin was not his first film since getting injured, it was his first starring role and I have to admit that it was good to see O’Brien back and looking good. O’Brien brought a lot of gravity to the role of Mitch Rapp. He had the haunted look of a man obsessed with revenge. When I saw O’Brien in The Maze Runner and, before that, in Teen Wolf, I thought he was a pleasant young actor but, in American Assassin, he gives his most mature performance to date. With American Assassin, Dylan O’Brien grows up.
As I said, American Assassin is a simple film. There’s not much going on beneath the surface and it you’re looking for anything deeper than pure entertainment, you might want to look elsewhere. American Assassin is what it is and makes no apologies. What it does, it does well.
On the set of the third Maze Runner film, actor Dylan O’Brien had a major motorcycle accident that put him away for some time. It was serious enough that the film was halted indefinitely until he could return. I’m happy to say that after a six month recuperation and some TV time on Teen Wolf, he’s back in film action in American Assassin. The film has O’Brien playing Mitch Rapp, who eventually becomes an assassin and takes on the leader of a sleeper cell, played by Michael Keaton. Sanaa Lathan and Taylor Kitsch also star in the film. I may also give the books a try, which are recommended.
For the past 5 months, every time I’ve gone to the movies, I’ve seen the trailer for Oliver Stone’s new film, Savages. It’s a pretty exciting trailer, featuring sex, violence, and Taylor Kitsch’s abs. Despite Oliver Stone’s recent track record of making preachy, boring films, that trailer got a lot of people excited about the prospect of seeing Savages.
Well, the film has been released, I’ve seen it, and you know what? Sometimes, trailers lie.
Savages is the story of Chon, Ben, and O. Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and Ben (Aaron Johnson) sell the greatest weed in the world and O (Blake Lively) is the woman who loves both of them at the same time. O, by the way, is short for Ophelia and she narrates the film in such a monotonous style that I have to admit that I was shocked to discover that she actually knew she was named after Hamlet’s doomed girlfriend. Chon is a violent former Navy SEAL while Ben is a laid-back buddhist who wants to get out of the drug business so he can devote his time to environmental activism. (Zzzzzzzzzz….)
Ben’s marijuana becomes so legendary that soon, a Mexican drug cartel led by Salma Hayek decides that both Ben and Chon are going to work exclusively for them. Ben and Chon refuse so Hayek sends Benicio Del Toro to kidnap O and hold her hostage until Ben and Chon come around. Ben and Chon, however, have plans of their own…
On the positive side, Hayek, Del Toro, and John Travolta (playing a corrupt DEA agent) all give excellent performances that would seem to indicate that they — as opposed to everyone else involved with Savages — understand that they’re appearing in an expensive B-movie. They openly devour every piece of scenery in the film and have a fun time wringing every ounce of melodrama out of their pulpy dialogue. These three actors are fun to watch and it’s a shame that the same can’t be said for the other half of the film’s main cast.
Jennifer Lawrence was originally cast in the role of O but she dropped out of Savages so that she could star in The Hunger Games. The role was recast with Blake Lively, who looks like she could be Jennifer Lawrence’s older sister but who, as an actress, has never exhibited the type of wounded determination that has become Lawrence’s trademark. As played by Lively, O is such a passive character that it’s difficult to really care that much about whether she survives or doesn’t. Instead of being a strong, independent woman who is unashamed of her lifestyle, O just comes across as a spoiled and vapid pawn, a possession who is traded between the film’s various players. It doesn’t help that Lively delivers her heavy-handed narration in a flat monotone that makes her come across less like a hard-boiled survivor and more like a spoiled rich girl trying to sound jaded. Every time I heard her refer to Chon and Ben as being “my guys,” I just wanted to scream at the screen, “No, you stupid bitch, you belong to them! They don’t belong to you!”
As for “her guys,” Taylor Kitsch is believable as a killer but not as a stoner. (Kitsch’s character comes across as if he’s been snorting cocaine as opposed to smoking weed.) Aaron Johnson, meanwhile, is a very believable stoner but he’s a lot less believable once his character becomes a killer. Unfortunately, neither Kitch nor Johnson show much in the way of charisma in this film and that’s a shame because both of them have shown in the past that they are capable of giving good performances. (Seriously, just check out Aaron Johnson’s performance in the criminally underrated John Lennon biopic, Nowhere Boy.) With neither Chon nor Ben being all that interesting, the film ultimately becomes a rather empty display of style.
And there’s no denying it — Savages has got style to burn. Oliver Stone shows here that — despite such anemic recent films as Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps — he still knows how to film an explosion. Unfortunately, there’s not much going on beneath all of that style and the end result is a film that mostly succeeds in making both sex and violence boring.
For nearly a year now, we’ve been seeing teasers and trailer for the film Battleship and we’ve all smirked and laughed. “Really? A film based on an old board game? Alien battleships that look like they’ve escaped from a Transformers film? Action scenes that look like Battle L.A.? AND LIAM NEESON!?”
Yes, we’ve all been prepared to hate this film. In fact, the most popular thing I ever tweeted (RT’d by 22 people within minutes of being posted, I might add) was a joke about how Battleship looked like it was a film specifically made for people who thought Battle L.A. was too complicated. So, after all this build up, I finally saw Battleship on Friday and you know what?
While I wasn’t one of the many people who applauded at the end of the movie, I actually kind of enjoyed it.
(Does that make me a bad person?)
Battleship is the story of two brothers, a somber-looking admiral, and an alien invasion. Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgard) is a Commander in the U.S. Navy. In a genuinely amusing scene, his irresponsible younger brother Alex (Taylor Kitsch) is arrested while breaking into a closed convenience store so he can get a chicken burrito for Samantha Shane (Brooklyn Decker, a great name) who is the daughter of Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson). Stone arranges for Alex to avoid jail by joining the U.S. Navy.
Jump forward seven years and Alex is now a lieutenant, engaged to Samantha, and hated by his future father-in-law. When five alien ships crash into the ocean, both Stone and Alex Hopper are on the battleships sent out to investigate. They quickly discover that the aliens are not friendly and soon, the future of humanity rests on the untested shoulders of Alex Hopper. Well, Alex Hopper and a street-wise sailor played by Rihanna…
I really, really expected that I was going to hate Battleship and I was even kind of looking forward to coming back to the TSL Bunker and writing up my snarkiest post since my review of Avatar. Therefore, imagine just how shocked I was as I watched the actual film and discovered that it’s actually not that bad of a time waster. Yes, the film is predictable and the script is full of clichés and dumb dialogue but the difference between Battleship and Battle L.A. is that Battleship is aware of its own stupidity and is even willing to encourage the audience to laugh at the pure silliness of actually basing a movie on a board game. Even the film’s final act of heroism — which features a lot of inspiring speeches and a return to duty by an iconic battleship of the past — feels less like typical third act posturing and more like a very deliberate parody on the conventions of recent U.S. Military Vs. Alien Invaders films. Whereas films like Battle L.A. and Acts of Valor often feel like recruiting films for the military, Battleship feels like a recruiting film for movies about the military. The CGI looks good, the battle scenes are nicely done and director Peter Berg seems to be having fun finding ways to visually remind us of the original Battleship game. Taylor Kitsch makes for a surprisingly likable hero, Liam Neeson grimaces through his 6-minutes of screen time, and Alexander Skarsgard is to die for in his white naval uniform. Even Rihanna appears to be having fun uttering silly lines like, “Boom” and “Mahalo, motherfucker.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. Battleship is hardly a masterpiece. It’s about 20 minutes too long and there’s a few times, especially during the middle of the film, when Battleship seems to run out of momentum. Fortunately, every time this happens, Taylor Kitsch delivers another hardboiled line or Liam Neeson grimaces as he stares out at the alien fleet and the film picks back up again. Battleship isn’t a great film and it might not even be a good film but it’s hardly the crime against humanity that I was expecting.
John Carter is a cute Disney film that you may enjoy more than you’d thought you would. It’s lively like The Rocketeer was and really has some great moments and interesting characters. Both the leads carry their roles well, and are eye candy for the audience. It’s worthy of all of the love it should get, but obvious comparisons to movies that came before it (even though the story predates those films), along with a shockingly forgettable score by Michael Giacchino may actually hurt it. If you’re expecting blood and guts, not so much. It’s a Disney film. The kids should love it, though the pace of the film in the beginning may seem a little slow for younger audiences. Skip the 3D version and go for the 2D instead.
The Longer Version:
It’s really sad when you see a movie that deserves all the love in the world, but for some reason just doesn’t quite hit the mark. Part of that is due to the way this was marketed. It really didn’t feel to me that Disney was putting their all behind this. When you look at how heavily marketed Tron: Legacy was, this seemed like a “Hey, we made it, just give us money.” kind of push.
As far as John Carter is concerned, maybe it’s better to look at it like this. We tend to compare things to make sense of them:
This object reminds me of that object.
All of James Cameron’s Avatar reminds me of Ferngully.
Remember, Short Controlled Bursts. What movie comes to mind when I say that?
This is ultimately the problem with Andrew Stanton’s John Carter. In watching it, you’ll end up making comparisons to so many other films that came before it. However, knowing that it was based on the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, it’s a lot like seeing Lord of the Rings for the first time when all you know of Elves and Dwarves comes from Dungeons & Dragons, The Elder Scrolls games or World or Warcraft. Burroughs’ material predates just about everything it showcases, from a pop culture standpoint. Hell, for all I know, John Carter was probably the original inspiration for the Kwisatz Haderach in Frank Herbert’s Dune (though that’s just my speculation). The problem is, with comparisons being what they are, audiences may view John Carter as a copycat of all the movies that were probably influenced by it.
I didn’t walk into John Carter with a lot of expectations. Andrew Stanton, for me, has the track record of being Pixar’s Dark Horse. This is the same guy that killed off a mother and a hundred of her babies in the opening moments of Finding Nemo. A man who gave a bleak, dirty and desolate future in Wall-E. Yet, both of those films had a theme of love and of heroes that rose to the occasion, so seeing the previews for John Carter told me enough.
John Carter is the story of a man in search of a cave full of gold. He wants no part of anyone’s battles and when he’s asked to join a faction, he does his best to avoid it. This leads him to a situation where he’s transported to another world. Just as it was with Earth, he encounters a number of different factions (all of which seem to feel he could aid them), but he simply wishes to return home. When he meets a fierce female fighter (who also happens to be a scientist), they work on figuring out how he arrived on Barsoom and how to get back.
The beautiful thing about John Carter is that it really feels like one of those old serials, or to make a more modern comparison, like an adventure film on the Indiana Jones level of things. There are a number of scenes where I found myself genuinely laughing at what was on screen. The visuals could be better in some places, but it’s nothing that’s groundbreaking. I look at John Carter as a pop culture lesson. You can see where other stories have used elements in the Burroughs tale. In that, it worked for me. The action scenes were really enjoyable for me, but some of the scenes between that could have been tighter. When you find out the reasoning behind Carters arrival, you may end up wondering why more wasn’t done with it with that story arc (on a technical level, anyway). As I’m unfamiliar with the original John Carter stories, I watched a few interviews of the cast and Taylor Kitsch noted that in the books themselves, Carter was pretty much the same person through every one. Stanton added a bit of character depth to him, with a little help from Spider-Man 2 scribe Michael Chabon. Chabon’s also responsible for the great Wonder Boys and The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which I still haven’t finished as of this writing. Carter is a conflicted individual for Disney purposes, but you shouldn’t expect Oscar performances here. It’s far better then Immortals was, in that sense.
Both Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins do well with their roles. Having worked together for about a hiccup in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, they have a good chemistry together. Kitsch is gruff with his mannerisms, and I can almost forgive him for playing Gambit. Collins is beautiful, statuesque even, and her character really does a lot of damage, fight wise. She’s very strong in some areas, though later on in the film, it felt like they may have eased that down a bit. Willem Dafoe has an inspired role in the leader of one of the alien groups that find Carter first when he arrives in Barsoom. Of course, no film would be complete without a villain and John Carter features two in Dominic West (Zack Snyder’s “300”) and Mark Strong (who’s almost always a go to bad guy). West’s character is more of the take action baddie, while Strong’s character is more of a calculating, behind the scenes one. Of note are Samantha Morton (“Minority Report”) as Sola and a little creature called Woola, that really reminded me a lot of Dug from Disney / Pixar’s Up. I wouldn’t mind having a few of those around the house.
The music for this film worked when the scenes were slow. However, when it called for action, I really didn’t feel anything special about it. I stayed to watch the credits only to find that it was Michael Giacchino’s work, who’s normally really good. I don’t know, this one seemed like it was phoned in for the action scenes. It’s okay, but I didn’t have that urge to buy the soundtrack afterward (which I have done for more memorable scores after leaving the theatre).
Overall, John Carter was a fun film in the vein of Disney’s earlier movies, but it’s not anything you absolutely have to run out to the theatre for. I’d love to see it do well and hope that there’s a sequel on the way, but when you’re paying a good $15 dollars for a 3D movie ticket ($20 for an IMAX 3D showing), the visual return on investment isn’t all that great. The story was enjoyable and didn’t slow down too much, but you may find yourself thinking that you’ve seen this film before in the way that so many other movies reference Burrough’s tale.
As a bonus, Disney released 10 minutes of the film. Enjoy:
Battleship is going to be the latest film to come out of that film blockbuster factory called Hasbro Studios. Like them or hate them their Transformers franchise by way of Michael Bay has been anything but flops. They’ve made truckloads of money for all involve despite each successive film in the franchise getting worse and worse. The latest Hasbro property to make it’s way onto the bigscreen will be a big-budget production of that classic naval war boardgame kids of all eras just simply called Battleship.
We’ve seen several trailers of the film now and this Super Bowl Sunday we see a new tv spot trailer which shows more of the alien invasion aspect of the film with more aliens in scifi-looking battle armor being seen. We still don’t know what causes this invasion to occur, but then again most of those who will see this film may not really care as long as the action comes fast and furious with enough of a story to keep things from becoming a huge jumbled mess.
Battleship is still set for a May 18, 2012 release date.
With Skyrim having taken over my life for the past month or so I’ve been quite remiss with my duties on the site, but no more!
To help me catch up on things around these parts I’ve decided to join the rest of blogosphere and post the latest official trailer for what looks like the offspring when Transformers and 2012 decided to mate. What we get is Peter Berg’s ludicrous, but looks to be quite fun, film adaptation of that classic Hasbro wargame toy. Battleship looks to fill up 2012’s lack of a new Transformers film.
Some have begun to call this the Rihanna film, but I rather think that she’s just a piece in the machine that is Hasbro’s latest attempt to rule the entertainment world with their films based on their classic toy lines. I was very iffy about Berg doing this film, but after two trailer and this one showing more scifi carnage and action I may just put this on my “guilty pleasure” list for 2012.
It was just going to take before someone in one of the major Hollywood studios decided to tap into the board game market and pick one to adapt into a big-budget blockbuster. It worked wonders for Dreamworks and their bottom line with the Transformers trilogy. This time around we have Universal Pictures ready and set to release in the summer of 2012 their very own board game turned film in the Peter Berg-helmed Battleship.
Yes, you heard it right. That classic naval warfare game that made long road trips both easier to handle and also ripe for arguments has now been made into a film. There’s not much else to say other than watch the trailer. I will say that Liam Neeson must need a new mansion.
Walt Disney Pictures has finally released the first official trailer for their upcoming sci-fi, action-adventure film John Carter (film was originally titled John Carter of Mars). The film is based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, A Princess of Mars, which would go one to become the first in Burroughs’ Barsoom series.
The film will star Taylor Kitsch (last seen in X-Men Origins: Wolverine as Gambit) in the title role and Lynn Collins (also from Wolverine as Silver Fox) as the aforementioned princess from the original novel. John Carter looks to be a mixture of live-action and fully-realized CGI characters who make up some of the inhabitants of Mars.
It will be interesting how Disney will market this film with little to no big stars and with a director more known for directing Pixar animated films like Finding Nemo and Wall-E in Andrew Stanton.
John Carter is set to have a March 9, 2012 release date.
Through the Shattered Lens 