The BEAST: Buffalo's Best Fiend

KINO KORNER: Film Reviews by Michael Gildea

Assault on Precinct 13

Here we are. Three weeks into the new year and we get hit with a unnecessary remake of a cult classic. A cult classic that, under an objective viewing, wasn’t that great to begin with.

If you’re unfamiliar with the plot of the original: a small band of criminals and cops in a soon-to-be-closed-down precinct are overrun by faceless gang members who stick it to the man by surrounding the building and opening fire with silenced weapons at anything that attempts to make a break for it.

So now, decades later, some unneeded rationale is added to this zombie premise without the zombies. Gang members are replaced with rogue cops trying to kill a mobster (Lawrence Fishburne), sending the whole thing straight to hell.

If all of these things don’t break the deal for you, Ethan Hawke is in it. The fact that he’s starring with another commanding black actor in another dirty cop movie cements my belief that Hawke is only convincing as the shitty punk ass white boy next to an ebony monolith that will play the bride to Hawke’s bridesmaid at the Oscars.

Presuming he can find his way there.

To be honest, I was so distracted by Ethan Hawke when watching this movie that I couldn’t really get into it, much less pay attention to it. I kept thinking of how incredibly stupid he is. I’ve accepted the fact that he doesn’t wash his hair. I can deal with the fact that he thinks he’s a really interesting director and a brilliant author who can only write about an angry and confused young artist. I’ve come to terms with that, and I’ve never been happier. But what I can’t get past is the fact that a donkeydick like Hawke managed to land a goddess like Uma Thurman, convince her to have his children, and then cheat on her.

That’s like walking off a $75,000-a-year job on a whim. I mean, who the hell does that? Especially in this town.

Long story short, rent the original. Or wipe your ass with your money and flush it. I don’t care.

Are We There Yet?

Ten minutes into Are We There Yet, three little words kept spinning around in my head like a mantra: Fuck Ice Cube. Fuck him in the ear.

I understand that everything one of my adolescent heroes does cannot and in all likelihood will not be just as good as The Predator. Torque and both Barbershop movies have proven this to me and I’m okay with that.

But Cube’s not even trying anymore. The PG rating is the biggest red flag here. The man who once wanted to slaughter white devils everywhere is now the organ grinder’s monkey as he entertains their spawn. The black dude who tap-danced for Lawrence Welk has more street cred than Ice Cube will after dropping this turd, and I’m pretty sure that poor son of a bitch is dead by now.

Are We There Yet is nothing more than a Home Alone rip-off with fewer redeeming qualities, if you can believe that. At least the smug little bastard in the Home Alone movies was fighting for his life. The rotten little shits that Ice Cube is babysitting, for some chick he’s trying to cornhole, are just mean for the hell of it and no other reason. They should be castrated and left in solitary for thirty years and beaten regularly. And so should Ice Cube. The only reason I could think of him doing this movie is that he needs the money.

Elektra

If you’re one of the sorry sons of bitches that saw the tragedy put onto film known as Daredevil, you know what a clunky piece of shit it was, and you are also partially responsible for this awful spin-off.

You brought this on yourself, ass rod.

I don’t know about you, but every time I see Jennifer Garner, I zoom in on those beady little black eyes, and once she starts talking (you know it’s going to happen anyway), she blasts away any vestigial remnants of sexual attraction that I may or may not have had for her. Then I start thinking of the Canadians on “South Park.” You know, the ones with the beady eyes and the flapping heads?

The fact that she dates Ben Affleck doesn’t help matters any.

Elektra doesn’t even make mention to Daredevil or the only saving grace of that film, Colin Farrell as Bullseye, who killed Jennifer Garner’s character. Between this, The Punisher, and the upcoming Fantastic Four film coming out, the comic book movie scene should finally sputter and die in 2005. Keep Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman going. Give The Hulk and Superman one more shot. If they don’t make good, I won’t stand in the way of their deaths.

But if you feel the same way I do, we have a responsibility to end the Daredevil/Elektra thing right now. If anyone ever mentions either film in a favorable manner, punch them in the head. I don’t care if you have to chase them down for six city blocks. If you don’t want to see any more shit like this, you know what you have to do.

Coach Carter

I can sum up Coach Carter in four words: Wrong place, wrong time.

You go see a movie about thugs playing basketball in downtown Buffalo and you’re asking for trouble. Nothing terrible happened, provided that not being able to hear a movie can be a good thing.

No, really. I love hearing cell phones go off every thirty seconds. Have a ten-minute conversation with Tiny. I don’t mind. Go ahead; I’m sure it‘s important. Oh, your baby daddy’s on the phone? He’s going to be on “Cheaters?” Get out! When’s it on? Ask him!

Please, talk to the screen. It’s really going to have an impact on the plot of the movie. I mean, it always does when you yell at a horror movie. They can hear you and they will listen to you.

Yeah, that bitch is pretty fly. I’m not a booty man myself, but yeah, that would look good with some cole slaw slapped up on that shit. I’ve never been freaky with the mayo before, but I’ll give anything a shot, you know?

That shorty is spending all the child support on her new man. Let’s go fuck his shit up RIGHT NOW!

In Good Company

This snoozefest stars Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, and Scarlett Johannson, and never fails to bore or annoy.

Quaid’s a verteran salesman whose company gets bought out, and his boss (Grace) is half his age. But things try to get more interesting when his boss winds up banging Quaid’s daughter.

If this is the kind of shit that Grace is going to quit “That 70’s Show” for, he shouldn’t turn in his bellbottoms yet. Bad haircuts and playing the quintessential dork do not a career move make. And as for Miss Johannson, what the hell is this? You were on the fast track with Lost in Translation, and this is what you follow it up with? Screw you and your It-Girl status, your glow-in-the-dark dye job, and your mannish walk.

The movie’s like week-old bread that no one bothered to stick in the refrigerator, let alone rewrap. It’s like a beltsander taken to the side of your head. Watching infomercials that push pyramid schemes for three days straight. No sleep.

So yeah, you can expect to hear about it from stupid people with no taste for weeks to come.

Racing Stripes

Remember in Fight Club when Brad Pitt’s character was working as a projectionist and splicing single frames of porn into the kids’ movies, and Edward Norton was narrating it? The talking animal movie with the celebrity voices? Well, this is it.

If you can disconnect Frankie Muniz’s, David Spade’s, and Steve Harvey’s voices from their faces in your mind, you may actually enjoy Racing Stripes. Of course, having a kid nagging you to take them to see it should be somewhere in the equation.

But then, this is coming from someone who’s a sucker for animal movies and Animal Planet. Babe is one of my favorite movies and imagining Dudley Moore sloshed while recording the narration for The Adventures of Milo and Otis only adds to the film’s already abundant charm.

Rounding out the cast of Racing Stripes are Dustin Hoffmann as a donkey, Joey Pants as a pelican and Snoop Dogg as—you’ll never guess—a dog! Who could have thought of that?

White Noise

I can’t decide which is worse, these dull and lifeless horror movies that work off of a lukewarm plot—the ones that pretty much sum up the whole story in it’s snoozeville trailer and try to give you your money’s worth with a donkey turd of a twist, or the sad bastards who go and see these things and convince everyone they happen to come into contact with just how great it was.

Are they trying to convince us that it was good or is it themselves, in an effort to rationalize that they really didn’t just piss away more than eight dollars and the 300% markup on the popcorn they gave to the theater.

Run-on sentences aside, White Noise is just another orbit in the downward spiral that is the modern American horror movie. Maybe it’s the sort of film that will be appreciated in fifteen to twenty years on cable. You know, when nothing else is on and “Yes, Dear” on UPN loses the coin toss.

I’ll bet that Michael Keaton (the biggest star in this turkey) is really glad that he stopped doing those career-ruining Batman movies.

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The 50 Most Loathsome People in America 2004

21. Alan Colmes
Crimes: An angry conservative’s wet dream: an effete liberal dive artist. As a professional doormat, Colmes’ only tasks are to serve as a comforting aggregate of Republican stereotypes about Democrats and a target for the seething derision of his psychotic guests. Stands idly by while voracious green-blooded co-host utilizes Gestapo tactics against centrist Democrats.

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Inaugural Balls

Allan Uthman

...The real problem isn't that Bush's vision is vague, or that it signals an imperialist agenda that has already been in place for years. It isn't even that he's completely revised his justification for war in Afghanistan and Iraq for a proudly amnesiac public, or that he's launching his trial run at Iran. The real problem about Bush's speech is that it simply isn't true, and doesn't make any sense. It's 100% manure from start to finish.

Devil in an Ice Blue Dress

Matt Taibbi

I’ve always thought that one of America’s best selling points was that it never had a king. If there is one thing that defines us as a people, as opposed to all other peoples, it is this fact. Every other nation in the world has a dozen or so of those embarrassing chapters from the past to live down. Not us.

2004 Timeline: The Year in Regret

[sic] - letters

CHEQUE YOURSELF
Mr. Uthman,

I found your magazine online through a link to your '50 Most Loathsome People' article. Great stuff. However, as a Canadian, I feel the need to point out a few factual errors in your otherwise insightful 'O Buffalo' article:

Time Lies

Matt Taibbi

...What was great about Sullivan's "Year of the Insurgents" column last week was how beautifully it threw the rest of the "Person of the Year" issue into contrast. Here's Sullivan bitching about bloggers needing to stay on the margins where they belong; meanwhile, his "respectable" media company is joyously prancing back and forth along 190 glossy pages with George Bush's cock wedged firmly in its mouth.

Disinformation Age

Allan Uthman

....The problem with the left is that our whole model of changing opinions—that contrary facts will alter people’s views—is inherently flawed. Mundane, oafish Americans, in a national competition to see how many $3.99 “support our troops” ribbon magnets they can fit onto the backs of their Suburbans, simply aren’t interested in reality...Let’s face it; there is a sizable chunk of the population who deny the validity of evolution—evolution. Who are we kidding, thinking we can make them see the errors in Social Security privatization?

Power 1, Truth 0

Michael Manville

On December 12th I opened my Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times and saw in the obituaries that Gary Webb was dead. More specifically, I saw that Gary Webb had killed himself. He had, it seems, shot himself in the head. When movers arrived at his house on Saturday they found a note on the door that said "Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance."

Drowning the Scorpion

Stan Goff

When I was first invited by Dr. Stephen Smith to speak at Winthrop University in South Carolina, I was preparing a trip to Haiti and I didn't give much thought to how I would handle the engagement. I'd just finished being pole-axed by a bout of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and it was everything I could do to just pull the Haiti trip together. So I didn't pay much attention to the person who would appear with me - one Patrick Clawson - to represent "the other side" in a forum/debate billed as "What Next in Iraq? A Post-Election Perspective."

The Top 10 Hacks of the 2004 Election

Matt Taibbi

10 - GEORGE WILL, NEWSWEEK: Will uses big words and pompous literary references to dress up what are basically the brutish and vulgar thinking patterns of a non-union meat-packing plant owner. He is a pig in a lace hat.

Pick of the Litter

Pat Ragpicker

It's 4am on a winter night, and I'm parked on a dead end street near Kaisertown. It’s a secluded corner of the city I found by driving around aimlessly. I'm new to town, and penniless after buying my van with $700 I squirreled away the last time I got a paycheck. That was 7 months ago. Over those months, I managed to live off a few hundred bucks while sleeping in a warehouse closet and helping some friends make a TV show to try selling to a network.

Tortures-R-Us

Christopher Lord

Iraqis wondering what the next phase of the Republicans' invasion of their country will bring should consider El Aguacate airstrip in Honduras. In 2001, 185 bodies were dug up there: the victims were the 'terrorists' and 'enemies of democracy' of the day.

O Buffalo

Al Uthman

It's time to face some unpleasant facts, Buffalo. This country may not be the best place for us anymore. On November 2nd, we all bore witness to a terrible turning point in our history; a bad lifestyle choice, if you will. We had the chance to reject the increasing madness of our nation's leadership, their blind march to pointless war and craven desire to take advantage of us in every manner conceivable, and we blew it. America has spoken, and it said "duh."