Category Archives: Jay

Last Days in Vietnam

This documentary was nominated for an Oscar this year – it lost to Citizenfour. Even though I hit the categories hard, I only managed to see 3 of the 5 before the Academy Awards were broadcast and I’m sadly only getting around to this one now.

This film offers a fresh perspective on the end of the war – the kinder, softer side of an action that’s been vilified and condemned, and for good reason, but this movie shows that no matter what the politicians were maneuvering, there were good hearts over there doing their best to help real people.

As American troops are removed from South Vietnam, the North is marching in, and cities are falling. The American embassy is cognizant of what their pull out will mean to the people, especially the Vietnamese who were known allies. Lots of American soldiers and Vietnamese heroes risked their lives and went against White House orders in order to help evacuate the panicked, innocent residents.

There’s nothing innovative here, it’s just diligent work. Rory Kennedy uses great archival footage, lots of in-depth, exhaustive first-person interviews, and paints a panoramic view of what could only have been a chaotic time, while being sensitive to the moral dilemma at its heart.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2

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Dear Adam Scott,

I have watched and enjoyed you on Parks and Rec. You are cute and witty and charming, and so I’m telling you, as a friend, that your agent fucking hates you.

You know who’s too good for John Cusack’s sloppy seconds? YOU ARE. But did your agent tell you that? No he did not. A quick glance at your IMDB profile tells me he’s been feeding you shite for years. Does your agent appear to have a rampant addiction? Do you think it’s possible you are feeding that addiction with your 10%? Because a normal agent is supposed to stand between you and sodomy. I mean, I don’t think that’s what it technically says on their business cards, but it’s definitely part of the job. Since you are paying dearly for their services, then the script that would have your testicles spurting a milky substance into Rob Corddry’s face should never reach the light of day. It should be tossed in the Pauly Shore pile, or maybe Rob Schneider’s. Possibly Danny McBride’s. But since it ended up in your hands, Adam, and you were somehow convinced to sign on, then I can only surmise that your junkie agent is also a charismatic cult leader deft at brain washing and mind control. That’s the only logical explanation for this movie, and your presence in it.

So for the love of Adam Scott, Internet, will you please band together, so we can FREE ADAM SCOTT! FREE ADAM SCOTT! FREE ADAM SCOTT!

Yours truly, with concern, compassion, and zero tolerance for unnecessary sequels,

The Assholes

Pitch Perfect 2

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Welp.

It managed to earn $70 million in its opening weekend, more than the $65 million the original earned during its entire domestic theatrical run back in 2012. The only other sequel to have out-earned its original in the first weekend was Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, so rest easy, Internet, we’re in good company.

Pitch Perfect The First was a bit of a gamble for me, having a raging hate-on for Anna Kendrick and all, but the Fat Amy effect seemed to mitigate the bad Anna juju. And I managed to look past the Miley Cyrus tribute with generous applications of ladies of the 80s, and forgave a song featuring the actually-talented Sia being referred to as “that David Guetta jam” (FUCKING BULLET TO MY HEAD). All things considered, totting up the pluses and the minuses, I found that it was a slightly net positive. Win.

The sequel, however, has left me feeling distinctly negative. My sister, a fan of the first, felt the music was lacking this time around. Except for some 90s hip hop, it was. There are some scenes that are blatantly trying to reignite the flame of the first, but none are entirely successful, and some are incredibly not. But what really stood out for me was how offensively one-dimensional some of the characters are. Character development is a joke – we don’t learn anything new about anyone, but some are reduced to stereotypes that should shame us all.

Ester Dean is back as Cynthia Rose, and to be honest, I’m surprised she even has a name because as her character is actually reduced to saying in the movie, she’s the black lesbian, and she does nothing in the film (beside providing the requisite rap interludes – and she actually has a lovely voice) is remind us how she’s a lesbian, which means she can’t help constantly macking on every single woman around her. Like, grope her friends’ breasts and try to take advantage of a sleepover situation. She has absolutely no other character traits or back story until at the very end she proclaims that she’s moving to Maine to have a gay wedding and we’re all invited! Does she have a partner? We’ve certainly never heard of her before this moment, and she remains unnamed, which is maybe for the best since just a tiny bit before this her supposed fiancée is molesting her mates, because as you know, gay people are walking same-sex hard-ons and no one is safe from their sloppy gay groping, especially not their close personal friends.

Meanwhile, Chrissie Fit is brought on board this time to fulfill the role of illegal immigrant who reminds everyone how lucky they are to be in college without apparently having to attend a single class or work a job or worry about tuition or the job market, let alone having diarrhea for 7 years like she did back in Guatemala. Her plans for the future? To be deported immediately upon graduation, of course! But don’t worry, all the white girls go on to have happy, well-rounded lives. Well, the thin ones at least.

This movie is Elizabeth Banks’ first turn behind the camera, though I believe she also produced the first one. I wish I could support a movie that has a female screenwriter AND director AND a whole bevy of stars, but no. This one’s a perfect pass. Kudos on the Snoop cameo though. Now that was pitch perfect.

The Other Woman

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The premise: Leslie Mann discovers that her husband is cheating on her with Cameron Diaz, and together they discover that he’s cheating on both of them with Kate Upton. This weird chain could have continued ad nauseam (even though I’m already nauseous enough) despite the fact that the cheater in question is not that good-looking and not very charming. How did he land any, let alone all of these women?

And why, why must they resort to revenge? And why can script writers only ever think up the same exact 3 forms of revenge? And why must an explosive poop incident always be first and foremost among them?

Why do we keep retelling the men-are-scum story? Has it ever soothed a scorned woman? And isn’t it quite degrading to men that we’re continuing to perpetuate this men-just-can’t-help-themselves stereotype? And what is it about our society that we can extract comedy from infidelity and broken marriages?

It also makes you feel a bit bad for Leslie Mann. First, she’s forced into the role of the “least attractive.” And then they make her do all the work too. You have to give it to her, she’ll go for broke, but I hate the forced physical comedy. It’s demeaning. It feels desperate for laughs, cheap laughs, and it’s not like I have high expectations for a Cameron Diaz vehicle but honestly – aren’t we getting a little old for this?

The Showdown

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After world domination by Furious 7 and The Avengers, a couple of palette-cleansers are hitting theatres this week: Mad Max: Fury Road, and Pitch Perfect 2. Still, sadly, not an original thought between them, but I have it on good authority that The Rock appears in neither, and that’s gotta count for something.

Pitch Perfect 2

I was a little late to the party seeing the first one. I kind of hate Anna Kendrick and her horse teeth and avoid her as much as I can (which is fine, we rarely attend the same parties – I like artisinal cocktails, and she prefers hay). However, my sisters sold this to me. At least two of them, and maybe even 3, saw it together, and I vividly remember them reenacting Rebel Wilson’s “mermaid dance” on Mom’s kitchen floor. There were a lot of giggles. There may have also been a lot of daiquiris, because there usually are if no one is pregnant, but for the last 4 years that’s been a big if.

For the second one I expect that Kendrick is back to her neighing, along with a stable full of girls for harmony, but Rebel Wilson is usually the lube that makes the whole thing bearable, and it just so happens that the babiest of my baby sisters is visiting me this weekend all the way from Charlottetown and I’m keen to keep the mermaid love alive.

Mad Max: Fury Road

I don’t think they purposefully set out to find the complete opposite to Pitch Perfect to compete with it this weekend, but I do think that’s exactly what happened. I can’t quite remember the first time I saw the trailer to this movie on the big screen but I think it nearly eclipsed whatever movie I was seeing at the time. I couldn’t even tell you if the movie looked good or bad, it just looked BANANAS. And plot? Bah! This looks as plotless as a nightmare and just as sinister.

So which one are you going to see?

The Cobbler

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Not a super duper movie, but for once it’s not Adam Sandler’s fault! He reins in his inner moron to give a modest but adequate performance. In Hebrew his name, Sandler, means cobbler so it’s fitting that he plays the Brooklyn shoe maker resentfully hanging on to a business his father owned and abandoned when he abruptly left his family.

One night Sandler stumbles on a secret hidden in the basement: if you mend shoes using an antique machine, you can become the shoes’ owners simply by wearing them. This is just the escape he was needing – to slip into someone else’s skin, live a more glamourous life, see the city or even just the neighbourhood from someone else’s eyes. This is where The Cobbler becomes Freaky Friday. The body swap schtick means that Method Man gets to do his meanest Adam Sandler impression, and mostly fails. Dan Stevens does passably better, but his time in the film is short.

At any rate, this is a pretty neat party trick that fails to develop into anything exciting or worthwhile. In fact, the results lack any imagination whatsoever. You kind of feel like the director dangled the carrot, and then put the carrot in his pocket and walked away. Critics on Rotten Tomato have it sitting at a limp 9% although he’s got his mother beat, and his lover too (Reese Witherspoon played his angelic mother in Little Nicky; her film Hot Pursuit’s currently at 7%. Kevin James, who played his pretend boyfriend in Chuck and Larry, is sitting at 6% for Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2). Audiences, however, are much more generous with middle of the road reviews, calling it “watchable,” “potentially charming” and “a slight step up from Adam Sandler’s recent comedies.” Hear that? That’s the sound of ringing endorsements!

Hot Pursuit

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I’m having a hard time writing anything about this movie because it really didn’t make an impression. If you don’t have what it takes to be good, then at least have the decency to be bad, and mean it. This one just kind of meanders along the line of blandly okay when it’s not veering too close to annoying (or god forbid, racial caricature), but I did, in all honesty, stumble upon some genuine giggles along the way, so not without merit, but mostly meritless.

Actually, if you mention the title to almost anyone, the reply more than half the time is “Which one is that?” And that’s about all the review you need. It’s forgettable. It follows the formula HARD and colours within the lines even harder. Sean and I went for drinks before this movie, and when the waitress asked what we were seeing, she responded “Oh, the Cameron Diaz one with that Latino woman?”. Yup, that’s the one.

I wanted to like this movie; you want to like this movie; we all want to get on board. How often does a movie starring women get produced and directed by them as well? This one does, but instead of celebrating it we’re all just kind of looking at our shoelaces.

It’s awkward when a likeable star fails. Reese showed real comedic chops when she did Elle in Legally Blonde, or even better: Tracy Flick in Election. She has an Oscar and her own production company so what the heck is she doing saying yes to a barely mediocre script (a script trying to ride on the coat tails of barely mediocre The Heat) in a vaguely offensive movie?

Reese is charming, and even appears to be having fun, but Sofia Vergara isn’t quite up to the task. Poor woman only has one speed, and without the wit of Modern Family, it starts to feel like Latina parody rather than an actual character. I never got the appeal of Vergara. She looks like a drag queen to me, with everything dialed constantly up to 11. Opposite Reese it’s even more vulgar, and the one-notedness more glaring and irritating.

Hot Pursuit is entirely missable. Full steam ahead to Mad Max: Fury Road and please baby Cheesus let it be good.

Under the Skin (is Under Mine)

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Under the Skin is described as a science-fiction-horror-art film. I hardly know how to talk about Scarlett Johansson as this alien seductress but what I can’t help talking about is the thing that’s still haunting me three days later: the score.

It was composed by the brilliant Mica Levi (and produced by Peter Raeburn, who recommended her to director Jonathan Glazer). Mica primarily used the viola to write and record the music, deliberately seeking out the most “identifiably human” sounds the instrument could make. She

Insert creepy music here

then altered the pitch and sometimes the tempo of these sounds to “make it feel uncomfortable” which she accomplished with crazy amounts of success, I tell you what. It made me monumentally, UNCOUNTABLY uncomfortable.

Glazer had her writing music to express Johansson’s feelings as her character experiences things for the first time, with the music following and reflecting her in real time, so to speak – “What does it sound like to be on fire?” he asked of her, and oddly, she had an answer. Another scene where the alien Scarlett attempts to eat cake is a stand-out for me, but is actually accompanied solely be the normal clatter of a popular family diner. The stark absence of scoring is as jarring as the creepy, otherworldly music can be.

The greasy, sinister sound of the viola is accompanied by percussion whenever a new man (victim?) follows Scarlett into the abyss. This music is unrelenting and aggressive, and it repeats with each new conquest. In an article for The Guardian, Levi wrote: “Some parts are intended to

be quite difficult. If your life force is being distilled by an alien, it’s not necessarily going to sound very nice. It’s supposed to be physical, alarming, hot.” Well, I’ll give her alarming. And unnerving. The sound is experimental, but at times she can get a whole orchestra in on it and it gives you the shivers.

Pitchfork wrote that “the strings sometimes resemble nails going down a universe-sized chalkboard, screaming with a Legeti-like sense of horror.” There’s nothing hummable or toe-tappable in this soundtrack, but it’s filled with innovative sounds that your body reacts to on a visceral, immediate level, leaving your mind racing to catch up.

I still can’t get those strings out of my head. They contribute to an audio-visual experience that’s unequal parts tension, perversion, anticipation, anxiety, and a big ole dose of the willies. The willies! Oh man, tonally and aesthetically this movie is disturbing. I’m disturbed, guys. There’s no going back.

Reel Quick Movie Reviews

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Seventh Son – Saw this one unintentionally at the drive-in. A rare misstep for Julianne Moore, and Jeff Bridges seems to have just wandered in accidentally. Moore is artfully costumed but as Sean put it “the movie wasn’t very interesting and there weren’t any cool parts.” Three days were not enough between seeing Alicia Vikander in the well-executed Ex-Machina and this poop machine.

Diplomatie – A historical drama that depicts the relationship between Dietrich von Choltitz (Niels Arestrup), the German military governor of occupied Paris, and Swedish consul-general Raoul Nordling (Andre Dussollier). The acting is superb but it’s 84 long minutes of two men talking in an office (please don’t blow up Paris – but I must – well we’d rather you didn’t – but really I must) and I wasn’t that into it.

Jupiter Ascending – They weren’t joking when they said this one was bad. It’s bad. It feels more like a Saturday morning cartoon, Eddie Redmayne makes an ass out of himself giving a weird, whispered delivery, and though at times strikingly beautiful, the CGI overload mostly falls flat. But good news for Matt: apparently if you’ve never been stung by a bee, it’s because they recognize royalty.

Escobar: Paradise Lost – A young Canadian (Josh Hutcherson) goes to Columbia to follow his dreams of surf and sun and ends up meeting the love of his life, Maria – and then meets her uncle Pablo (Benicio Del Toro). You can imagine that things don’t go particularly well for him because it turns out drug lords with political ambitions aren’t overly loyal. Makes you wish Del Toro was in a true Pablo biopic, and not some movie filtered through the eyes of a white boy.

Ex-Machina: How to Expertly Avoid Reviewing a Movie

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So last week, the Assholes enjoyed a late lunch on a sunny patio, some margaritas as we planned a future trip to California, and a movie that we all admitted to thoroughly enjoying.

Ex-Machina is a damn fine piece of cinema that we all came away from chittering about like we’d been starved of good film-making for centuries (and it being Avenger week, I guess it did kind of feel that way). And then we all promptly avoided writing about it.

Now why is that? Probably because I’m not interested in rehashing plot. I am, however, frothing to talk about what happens, really happens. So I’m writing two posts. This one, spoiler-free, for those of you who haven’t seen it yet: Go see it. It’s about a beautiful robot who’s (artificially?) intelligent and has a sporting vagina. How can you resist that? Answer: you can’t. See it immediately, and then come back to discuss.

And for those of you who have seen it, please follow this link to the real meat and potatoes, where we can finally get all those glorious WHAT THE FUCKS off our chests. Sound good? See you there.

Jay