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The DaVinci Code
So we’ve got a somewhat interesting premise, but execution that’s more farted up than a twenty-year-old couch with stiff acting and chase scenes similar to the other three dozen times this summer. I don’t care if they take place in exotic locales and I care even less that all this frickin globetrotting is in the name of blowing the lid off the biggest snowjob in the history of mankind. I felt like I was watching The Beatles movie Help! after about a half hour. Oh, let’s go to The Louvre. Now let’s go to London. Anyone up for a jaunt to a hidden crypt? It was like going on a scavenger hunt with some scrawny Euro trash that couldn’t score any coke and saw Raiders of the Lost Ark too many times. For a movie that opens in the season of The Brainless and Light-hearted Romp, going to see and actually watching The DaVinci Code was just about more trouble than it was worth. But life imitating art can be really irritating sometimes. If you’ve turned on a television for even a few minutes over the past few weeks, you’re aware there’s been controversy over this movie. It seems that some people have been taking their entertainment way too seriously and well…that can be downright sad. I had to battle five members of the local religious zealots just to get my ticket torn. I don’t know how they got the permits for a steel cage match, let alone one in a movie theater lobby. I got bum rushed by some right wingers and next thing I know I’m surrounded by Jesus Freaks. They were going off about eternal damnation and hellfire if I go see The DaVinci Code. One of them had a gleam in his eye and I could tell he was getting ready to swing his picket sign. The… head one I guess started reading from a phone book-sized bible very loudly and Gleamy was getting ready to trade in his nickname for Twitchy. I’ve been playing the Godfather video game a lot, and I’ve been itching for some hand to hand combat. In true strategic tradition, I punched the head one in the face. Take out the officers and work your way down the line. Grandma went down like a $20 hooker and Twitchy got a kick in the junk to hold him at bay while I put the subordinates down for a mid-afternoon siesta. It was just Twitchy and me at this point. He shook it off and seemed a little pissed to say the least. He whipped out a replica of the Jesus brass knuckles Keanu Reeves had in Constantine. I’m sure he got them off G-Bay. I knew this could go south really quick and if he connected I was going to be in trouble. He swung and missed as I rolled to the other side of the ring and grabbed one of the picket signs. Twitchy jumped down on me, got a sharpened stick in his chest and promptly turned to dust. Some days it’s great to be alive. From there it was all downhill. The DaVinci Code wasn’t as enjoyable as going Blade on pushy confrontational Christians, but the movie had its moments. Tom Hanks’ hair was almost as mesmerizing as Audrey Tautou. The movie was explained on a level that even illiterate third-graders could understand, which was almost insulting, but if nothing else I didn’t have to do any homework before seeing it. The movie looked good and justified combating religious fanatics. But then again, getting out of bed justifies battling militant religious lunatics, so you just take that any way you want to… Poseidon
Which brings us to Poseidon. Was a remake of The Poseidon Adventure really necessary? Shit no. It was the Armageddon of its day. It was made by Irwin Allen who was one of the original popcorn salesman who made his millions on disaster flicks. He made movies that no one would intentionally watch by today’s standards. The original Poseidon Adventure is the kind of movie that someone would intentionally watch under only a few sets of unfortunate circumstances. For example, if you can’t afford the movie channels through your cable provider and nothing else is on. Another instance under which you might watch that movie is if you’re visiting your great uncle who has a thing for Shelly Winters for some odd reason. And let’s not forget if you’re the laziest person alive and the batteries in your remote control die while you compulsively change channels (because it is possible to know whether or not you want to watch something after 0.0105438942541335150 seconds and don’t let anyone tell you any different). Ultimately, The Poseidon Adventure’s only redeeming quality was its kitschy and dated production values as it aged horribly and if nothing else makes for a good comedy. The same can’t be said for Poseidon. It takes itself way too seriously, to the point of being off-putting. I can’t stand people or things like that in real life, so why the hell do I want it in my entertainment? The cast consists of Josh Lucas of Stealth and Glory Road fame. You know who I’m talking about—the guy who always looks like some kind of cleaned up white trash wife beater when acting in any scene that requires concentration or intensity. We’ve also got Kurt Russell, who’s like that uncle you loved when you were a kid, but since then you’ve come to realize that he’s full of shit. Kill a few Gennys with him and maybe you won’t mind so much. Richard Dreyfuss also stars, trying to prove to the world that he’s not dead yet, but doesn’t quite pull it off. There are also a couple of girls in it who you probably won’t see again until they show up for supporting roles on a Fox sitcom in a few years. So how bad can a remake of a movie where an ocean liner gets turned upside down be, you ask? Let’s ask director Wolfgang Petersen, as Poseidon has all the conviction of a high school term paper that was started the night before it was turned in. The movie looks like Petersen spent his lunch breaks with a .38 snubnose in his mouth while the regret of his high maintenance and expensive 22 year-old trophy wife slowly consumed him. Watching Poseidon is a lot like picking up a reissue of a CD you really like. There might be an extra track on it and hell, it might even be remastered. The problem is you already own the album, you know exactly what to expect and you’re just not sure if you want to piss away $15-20 on an album you’ve already heard a thousand times. I say if you like generic disaster movies with trite dialogue, then be my guest. If nothing else there are women who are wet for 90% of the movie and you know what that means—runny makeup, rat’s nest hairdos and nipples trying to escape through evening gowns. Just My Luck
Something else about Just My Luck that kind of leveled me out (or at least made me chuckle) was that it reminded me of the numerous study halls I had in the last half of my senior year in high school. My inner underachiever convinced me to take the path of least resistance, so there you go. Three study halls a day. I didn’t put too much thought into it at the time, but a lot of the girls in my class read Cosmopolitan. You know--beauty advice, articles and instructions on how to be a total whore in the bedroom/tips on giving a better blowjob. At the time, I naively thought it was a ladies’ fashion magazine but it wasn’t until years later when I first got together with my current girlfriend that I realized it was a manual for wannabe sluts. And teenage girls are reading this? I’m either getting old or I was born too late. Either way, that’s hot. So the whole premise behind Just My Luck is that Lindsay Lohan plays an unnaturally lucky cosmopolitan professional who is not unlike Sarah Jessica Horseface’s character on the dead-but-unfortunately-not-forgotten Sex and the City. After consulting her latest issue of Cosmo, she lets a cute (I guess) bowling alley janitor with really bad luck teabag her at a masquerade party and through genital-to-forehead contact, their luck exchanges. His luck turns around and she gets crab infestations through that crimson coif of hers. Bummer. What had me howling throughout Just My Luck was watching little girls act like old tramps. It was an unofficial Disney version of an HBO show about gay men disguised as semen-soaked glamour hags. It was like watching ten-year-old girls putting on make up and looking like Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane—a horror beyond compare, more horrible an experience than waking up five minutes before work. And finding yourself next to Katie Holmes. See No Evil
So as you can imagine, the teens are picked off one by one by the killer, Jacob Goodnight, played by WWE wrestler Kane. One gets crushed by a safe, a vegan is eaten alive by wild dogs and another gets a cell phone shoved down her throat. I kind of liked that one, to tell the truth. But the reason I mentioned fate earlier was because a question that I’ve been long awaiting the answer to was finally answered. I’ve always wondered when I was going to have to pay for all the terrible and rotten things I’ve done in my life. After all, See No Evil was directed by Gregory Dark, whose resume consists of porn flicks. This isn’t a bad thing entirely, unless you’re rehashing David Fincher films and Nine Inch Nails music videos. It was while watching this movie that I came to the realization that there really aren’t any more horror movies—just really long nu-metal music videos without the music. And they’re never going to stop, because there’s always a gang of nincompoops who scurry to the theater to see these things; eagerly shelling out their net worth for a reason I may never understand. This just may do none of us any good. Film studios, like any other businesses, have only one goal in mind when making a movie and that is to make money. What you see on the screen is merely a means to an end. Whether the final product of a several month production is a modern day classic or forgettable crap is irrelevant. Its success is measured in two terms only—dollars and cents. It’s simple—anything that makes money you will see more of, regardless of its content and if it doesn’t see dollar one it will go the way of the dodo. If said movie or film is inspirational, brilliant, controversial, offensive, art or otherwise, that is irrelevant and when the numbers come in those qualities may only be regarded as a bonus. Many movies made in this day and age are produced as a way to finance one in a series of beach houses, luxury automobiles or drug habits. They are the products of complacency. While the majority of today’s film listings consist of safe, non-threatening fluff that allows you to check your brain at the lobby, there are those out there who pour every ounce of heart and soul into what they do. And for that they are to be commended. What they do has been labeled as different, challenging and in some cases completely incomprehensible and while it finds a small cult audience it is usually swept under the rug if it’s not seen on cable occasionally. It’s our responsibility as filmgoers to seek out a film that invokes thought or something resembling it and take the road less traveled the next time we find ourselves renting a movie or rapidly changing the channel. In a future age when our ancestors look at the era in which we currently reside, they won’t look back and say those were the good old days. Presuming there is a future generation, they will view this point in cinematic history as the brink of annihilation, and look to our past as well as theirs for inspiration and entertainment. After some scrutiny, I can no longer consider myself a film critic. As if I could ever call myself as such before. The title doesn’t require much—only a certain level of articulation and the ability to peel through the layers of a film while both observing and explaining its inner and outer workings. I consider myself a product critic, in the same way that a restaurant critic wouldn’t review a trip to a fast food restaurant. While a trip to a restaurant with a dollar menu may be a guilty pleasure or even an occasional reward to some, very few can argue that said restaurants’ fare can prove to be a substantial diet and in ample amounts fatal. The same can be argued concerning entertainment along these lines as it can also inspire dangerous thinking. But then again, similar comments could also be said about substantial entertainment. Good night, and good luck. |
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I
was not one of the millions who read The DaVinci Code.
The fact that it was a hot topic for discussion among soccer
moms while they drank their overpriced beverages down at the
Starbucks in the mall was enough to put me off my lunch—not
to mention make me want to confiscate every copy I could get
my hands on to start the fire at my own Burning Man party.
From what I heard it was about an intellectual who’s put on
the trail of a conspiracy concerning the truth about Christ
through a convoluted journey that was told with no style and
even less panache. Oh, but it made you wonder what the truth
really was. And of course when a book almost outsells the
bible you can bet a watered-down screen version is on the
way. 
So
here we go—the first of the summer remakes. We’ve got Poseidon—the
remake of The Poseidon Adventure. Of course with remakes
these days it’s not a remake remake. It used to be
that you’d remake a movie and you’d have somebody like Mark
Wahlberg playing a role originally done by Cary Grant or George
Clooney playing a role originally done by Frank Sinatra like
in the remake of Ocean’s Eleven. A remake which brings
me to the next point I’d like to bring up about remakes and
how the movies aren’t remade, but the stories are. Now filmmakers
don’t even bother with redoing the characters, just the situations.
Watching
Just My Luck was almost comforting in an odd way. What
about watching a teenybopper Lindsay Lohan movie could possibly
offer solace, you ask? Well, I got exactly what I expected
for one—a mindless, yet vaguely amusing tale of someone with
worse luck than mine, not-so-cleverly packaged for and geared
towards teens—who in all likelihood see it by default because
they don’t look old enough to get into R-rated movies. I zoned
out precisely when I expected to and snapped out of it occasionally,
whenever Lohan looked hot enough to hold my attention.
I’m
not a big believer in karma, fate, kismet or whatever the
hell you want to call it. At least I wasn’t until I saw See
No Evil. It’s the perfunctory tale of a bunch of juvenile
delinquents who are sent to clean up an abandoned hotel where
a steroid-jacked serial killer is holed up. Oh, and the cop
who shot the lunatic is supervising the rotten little bastards.
Ooooh!
