Smarmy Jerkface Dot Com

Every so often I get on a movie kick.  Usually what happens is I re-watch a movie I really, really love, which renews my faith in the movies.  Then I go out and get a bunch of new movies to watch, and they all end up sucking.  And then I stop watching movies again.

Here’s what made me fall out of love with the movies this time.

Forget About It – Burt Reynolds and previous co-stars Charles Durning and Raquel Welch appear in this mobster "comedy" that actually makes the mob stuff from Cannonball Run 2 seem credible.  Burt doesn’t even do much in this film, letting Durning and Robert Loggia say most of the dialogue while he hangs out in the background.

As for the story, take every mob movie cliche you can think of and tell them all to a four year old kid.  Then have the four year old kid repeat them back to you an hour later.  Write down his answers, and mold them into a screenplay.

Watching this miserable excuse for a film prompted another segment in my Worst Movie Scenes of All Time series.  There’s actually a scene later in the film that’s even worse (a completely ludicrous shootout at an airport), but putting that one together would have meant watching that scene again… something I was absolutely unwilling to do.

One Missed Call – I find it incredibly amusing that ghosts and demons are now able to haunt the shit out of people simply because we keep inventing technology.  Think about it… Poltergeist, White Noise, The Ring, and now One Missed Call.  If I had the ability to do so, I’d make a parody movie about cavemen inventing the wheel, and then immediately demons take control of the wheel to start killing the caveman’s friends.  Or a movie called The Letter, where it’s the 14th century and when you get a letter, the ink comes to life and kills you.  Stupid, right?  So is this movie.

Edward Burns (The Brothers McMullen) is in this.  Ed Burns is one of the worst working actors ever.

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem – I didn’t think a movie could make the first film look good, but this manages to do it.  The first AvP film at least had a somewhat interesting backstory behind it.  This film just picks up where the first left off and immediately becomes a slaughterfest with no compelling reason to watch it.  And the damn thing is DARK.  I don’t think there’s one single moment where you actually get a good look at any of the monsters, particularly the Predator/Alien hybrid.

I cannot take Steven Pasquale (Shawn from Rescue Me) seriously as the male lead.   I could take Reiko Aylesworth (Michelle from 24) seriously as the female lead, but she’s given nothing to do.  And is it really necessary to make all these little "sly" references to the other Alien and Predator movies?  Like having someone say "Get to the chopper"?  It just reminds me how much better every other movie that inspired these two pieces of crap is.

Lions for Lambs – I knew this was going to be preachy going in, but wow, this is preachy.  So preachy that even Obama’s former preacher said "Whoa, that’s preachy!"  Okay, I suck at making up jokes.  But I rock at using the word preachy as many times as possible in one paragraph.  Preachy.

There’s a compelling story being told here, deep down.  But much of the dialogue sounds like bullet points from a standard debate club simply being expanded upon ever so slightly.

Robert Redford’s face is beginning to resemble a catcher’s mitt more and more every day.