Category Archives: Our Best Shit

A sampling of our favourite pieces that we’ve written. Isn’t it nice that even the worst movie can inspire something great in response?

If you’ve got a favourite that we missed, please let us know!

Get A Job

This movie was shot in 2012 and it took 4 years for the heat of everyone blushing in embarrassment to die down enough to release it. Maybe they should have given it 4 more.

In it, Anna Kendrick and Miles Teller play self-obsessed millennials who graduate and are astounded to not immediately be handed their dream jobs with rockstar perks. This premise is so flimsy they try to pad it out with a whole bunch of friends also struggling in the real world, thus ensuring that there is never a whole story being told anywhere, but lots of odds and ends you can’t possibly bring yourself to care about. Bryan Cranston is the best thing in this movie, playing the guy who has aged out of his job and is facing unemployment in a job market crawling with shallow selfie-resumes.

Under no circumstances should you attempt to watch this movie. If you do, please contact your local poison control centre immediately, and flush the area with water.

The less said about this ass-munching movie the better, so instead let’s discuss the myriad better ways this money could have been spent. Assuming a very modest budget of 8 million dollars, you could have bought:

11-diamond_bathtub_for_your_po-610x458A Swarovski crystal-studded bathtub for your dog: $39 000

A bejeweled, 18-karat gold Monopoly set: $2 000 000

Exclusive gold shoelaces by Mr. Kennedy: $19 000

A bottle of 100 year old champagne recovered from a shipwreck which may or may not still be potable let alone drinkable: $275 000 Add a champagne bucket by Aston Martin (it’s insulated with carbon fibre) for $38 000

A plain white t-shirt “designed” by Kanye West: $12010-o-GUINEA-PIG-ARMOR-facebook-610x475

A custom-made suit of armour: $20 000; add one for your pet guinea pig: $24 300

A lock of Elvis’s hair, as far as you know: $115 000

A stamp of Nicholas Cage’s face: $19

A ziploc bag of air from Kobe Bryant’s last basketball game: $16 000

A cornflake shaped like Illinois: $1350

il_570xN.603647511_jio03 x-rays of Marilyn Monroe’s chest: $45 000

A banana slicer: $4.75

A ghost in a jar: $50 992

A 1/8 model of a Lamborghini Aventador. It doesn’t move but it does take up lots of space on your desk: $4 700 000 (just to be clear: an actual Lamborgnini will set you back about 400K)

A gold, diamond-encrusted Nintendo Wii system. Be sure to save your crappy old plastic wii-motes because this baby doesn’t come with any! The kicker? It’s already obsolete!: $500 000

William Shatner’s kidney stone: $25 000

Plastic surgery to look “like” Justin Bieber: $100 000

You could buy all of these items for the cost of 1 Get a Job, they’d all be a better use of your time and money, and you’d still have enough cash left over to make The Blair Witch Project. Think on that.

 

 

Tom Hanks & John Oliver at Tribeca

The line to see Tom Hanks and John Oliver in conversation together wrapped well around the venue on Friday night. Sean and I had just seen High-Rise over in Chelsea and had 3374991A00000578-3555220-image-a-136_1461420263964braved a crowded rush-hour subway to get back down to Tribeca and run right past the Ghostbusters building to arrive breathless at the Borough of Manhattan Community College only to be redirected to another entrance that meant dragging my swollen, sprained ankle several more blocks with the remnants of my back surgery burst open and freely bleeding just so that we could stand in line for 40 minutes and then be denied a seat. Denied a seat? But we had tickets in hand – tickets we’d paid for three weeks prior! But us, and the two people in front of us, and the hundred or hundreds behind us (hard to tell) were denied entrance because they’d way, way, way oversold the event and we were shit out of luck. We were also really, really pissed.

We weren’t yet yelling at the security guys because lots of other people were beating us to it. But when someone came out to the velvet ropes to say that one single seat had been found and was there a single person in the crowd, most of us just looked at our partners and shrugged. Except Sean. What Sean did was slap a ticket in my hand and shove me large_large_tom-hanks-2toward the guy with the clipboard. He unclipped the rope and I was being ushered alone up a sad, empty red carpet, the very one we’d just watched John Oliver and Tom Hanks ascend, me still lumping my sore and swollen ankle along. I wasn’t happy to be going in alone and it was only the element of surprise that made me do it. I felt awful that Sean would sit outside with his $50 ticket to nothing, after having driven all the way from another bloody country, while I would be tickled fairly pink. Maybe even almost red. But the guy with the clipboard was so impressed with Sean’s self-sacrifice he basically invented another seat for him and got him in, even though he had to stand. I felt a little guilty because the couple in front of us rightly deserved those seats but hadn’t thought to split up (and actually, we’d already seen a few other singles be plucked from the line behind us) and a little guilty about the dozens and dozens behind us who hadn’t gotten in either, and super mad at the fuckfaces at Tribeca who oversold the event and didn’t tell anyone. But mostly I just felt elation the minute those two men took the stage, and fuck everyone else.

Some highlights of the evening:

-Tom said that without Oliver, our lives would be “void of outrage”

-He then made a reference to the Merv Griffin show so random and outdated that Oliver claimed that the lady holding the “Kiss Me” sign had slowly lowered it.

-Hanks cautioned us against asking “lazy journalistic questions”, basically anything starting with “What was it like…” and claimed that he was often accosted on red carpets

Tribeca Talks Storytellers: Tom Hanks With John Oliver

with “Just one question from Argentina!” and that one question invariably being something incredibly insipid. Oliver agreed that really Argentina should be asking for advice on their desperate economic situation.

-Hanks said that his distaste for social media was because he’d “peaked in the 90s” and Oliver ribbed him about using Twitter as a lost and found (you can Google it- Tom often posts pictures of wallets or lost gloves and tries to reunite them with their owners).

-Hanks and Oliver spar over the American Revolution, and we all find out that Hanks does an atrocious British accent.

-Hanks discusses the first movie he remembers going to the theatre to see – 101 Dalmations – and how it scarred him ever so deeply. Oliver then asks “So how the fuck did you become an actor?”

-Oliver claims E.T. as the first movie he saw in theatres, and his ensuing heartache over Elliott not joining E.T. in the end, which prompts Hanks to ask “How old are you???” (he’s 38).

-Oliver asked what kind of people Hanks prefers to work with, other than them “not being a giant asshole” to which Hanks replied “Sometimes that works.”

-Hanks did an awesome impression of Ron Howard, and confessed to learning about camera angles from Kevin Bacon on the set of Apollo 13. Bacon would suggest Howard use a “BFCU” of KB, which, for those of you not in the know, is a big fucking close up of Kevin Bacon. “God bless Kevin Bacon,” said Hanks.

-To see him do an impression of Robert Zemeckis (director of Forrest Gump, who he calls “Bob”), listen to what he learns from his failures.

-The work Tom’s most proud of? That Thing You Do, which featured his whole family, and was basically one giant love-in to make. He is particularly proud of the scene where the band hears their single on the radio for the first time because – name drop! – Bruce Springstein once told him that he’d experienced it himself exactly like that.

-Hanks told us that the genius of Invictus was that Clint Eastwood never taught us a single thing about rugby.

-The most obscure thing a fan ever yelled at him? “Little boat!” –  a line from the movie Splash which Tom himself had a very hard time placing, and almost had to IMDB himself just to scratch the itch.

-Which of his characters would he most like to have a beer with? Charlie Wilson, hands down.

-On the Disneyfication of characters:

-Hanks said “Movies that celebrate their own nostalgia are a waste of time” and I hope to god he meant Everybody Wants Some!!

-His most exhausting role? Woody, from Toy Story.  “It’s hideous making those movies” he claimed.

Anecdote after anecdote, Tom Hanks proved himself worthy of storyteller status. To those of you who didn’t make it in, I wish I could tell you you didn’t miss much, but the truth is, it was an unforgettable evening.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (An Extremely Non-Spoilerrific Review)

Sean’s from the 70s.  Jay is an 80s chick. Sean is kind of a nerd.  Jay, not so much.  Sean saw Star Wars: A New Hope (though he still just calls it, “Star Wars”) at least 20 times before his eighth birthday.  Jay had never seen any Star Wars movie until this past weekend.  So what did they think of Star Wars: The Force Awakens?

Sean: As a kid, I always loved Star Wars.  I’m at the younger end of the Star Wars generation since I never knew a world without it.  Too young to see the first two in theatres, I caught up by Return of the Jedi thanks to the miracle of VCRs and HBO showing Star Wars around the clock in 1983 (and I kept watching it over and over every chance I got).  Star Wars felt like it belonged to me since it was happening just as I was growing up and learning what movies were.  And because of my age I was still young enough to not be at all cynical about product placement or Ewoks by the time Return of the Jedi rolled around.  To my seven year old self, it was all positive that Return of the Jedi served firstly as a mechanism to manufacture more toys and second as a conclusion to my favourite movie series.

luke skywalker return of the jedi

My two favourites: Luke in his Jedi robe (though I kept losing the lightsaber)…

leia return of the jedi

…and Leia as a bounty hunter (though I always was looking for that goddamn helmet too)!

The only negative was that I had to convince my parents to buy all those action figures and vehicles, but fortunately I was a very spoiled kid so I got more than my share (but sadly, not the amazing Imperial Shuttle, though I’m over the disappointment, I swear).  It helped that I was willing to do pretty much anything to “earn” more toys, whether it was mowing the lawn or painting the deck or saving my proofs of purchase from other toys so I could send away for the Emperor!

The prequels were a whole other matter.  I was so disappointed to see how boring Darth Vader’s backstory was on screen, as opposed to how awesome it had been in my head, having patched it together through whatever references were offered by the original trilogy.  And I don’t think it was the 16 year gap in between, since even in university I was perfectly happy to watch the original trilogy over and over (and I wasn’t alone, my roommates and I would often spend Saturday afternoons watching all three back-to-back-to-back).   Anyway, even though I was still am mad about the prequels’ wasted potential, I watched all three, even seeing the last one in theatres.

Which leads us to Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  Having really enjoyed J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, and since chronologically we could sort of forget the prequels ever happened, I have had high hopes for The Force Awakens ever since it was announced.  And Jay was nice enough to track down tickets even though she could not have been less excited to see it.

Jay: The only exposure I’ve had to Star Wars was a set of sheets I inherited from my cousin Tim, who’s a decade or more older than I am.

The infamous Star Wars sheets. I also had a flannel blanket but we buried my dead dog in it.

The infamous Star Wars sheets. I also had a flannel blanket but we buried my dead dog in it.

I guess he grew out of his single bed so I got his sheets, and spent a good deal of my youth sleeping with Harrison Ford. Plus, I exist in the world. I haven’t seen the movies, but I’ve seen plenty of stuff that references them, so I almost didn’t have to. I can never remember if C-3PO is the big gold robot or the little blue and white one, but I know it’s a robot. It’s just that the Star Wars universe never appealed to me. Science fiction will always have to work harder to convince me, and so will movies with talking animals, green aliens, and make-believe weapons.

So no, I hadn’t seen Star Wars, and I really didn’t care to. My life felt perfectly complete without it, and to be honest, I think 2015 is already way too inundated with movies that are meant for young boys but consumed by grown men (I’m looking at you, Marvel). But I could see that this movie meant something to Sean. It was a revival of his childhood, a tribute to his youthful imagination, and a chance for the franchise’s redemption after the last trilogy sullied things up. Kevin Smith said he cried when he visited the set of the Millennium Falcon because it reminded him of that feeling he’d had for it as a child. And how many times do we really get to recapture those magical feelings once we’re grown up? Not too damn many. It did nothing for me, I wasn’t even curious about it, but I resolved to be by Sean’s side when the portal to his boyhood opened up on the big screen before him.

And you know what? I didn’t hate it. I was enchanted by John Boyega’s Finn and the arc of his character. I had fun slotting together the puzzle pieces of Star Wars trivia I’ve picked up over the years (mostly from The Simpsons, I think) and seeing how they translated 30 years later. I was charmed by Harrison Ford’s rapport with the furry beast Chewbacca. And I felt the momentum of the piece really drove me forward and kept .facebook_1450656563309me interested despite the fact that I was jumping in blind for movie #7. So I was feeling pretty juiced about it, squeezed Sean’s hand during all the parts I thought he must be loving, and had plenty of follow up questions for our car ride home. But you know what? When the credits rolled and I looked over at Sean expecting to see rapture, he shrugged his shoulders. It was okay, he thought, but not great. Not even as good as Creed – not even as good as “The Avengers” he said – “Wait- there was an Avengers movie this year, right?” He couldn’t even remember if there was an Avengers movie this year, but if there was, it was better than this.

Ladies and gentlemen: Sean’s lacklustre response FUCKING BROKE MY HEART. Here I had drummed it up as this Big Fucking Deal and it’s not even going to crack his top ten this year.

Sean: I had no idea Jay was so invested in this, for my sake.   And she’s invested in everything I’m interested in, she’s amazing like that.  I liked Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  My complaints about it are minor and spoilery so I won’t get into them here, but it’s a solid movie and objectively I would rank it third out of the Star Wars movies, behind A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back (yes, ahead of Return of the Jedi as a standalone movie).  That seemed like a ringing endorsement but Jay was expecting more and after reading her thoughts above, I understand why.

let's blow this thing and go home

“You’re all clear, kid. Now let’s blow this thing and go home.” BEST. SCENE. EVER.

This should have been my thing, it should have taken me back to my childhood, it should have sucked me in and made me talk about it for days, and it didn’t.  As a gateway/jumping on point for the next generation of fans/consumers, The Force Awakens works really well.  As fan service, it ticks all the boxes and I don’t think that anyone who anticipated like I did will leave the theatre disappointed, exactly.  But you know what?   This all felt like something I’ve seen before (twice) and I’ve seen it BETTER before (twice).  I’m not trying to be a contrarian asshole (just a regular asshole) when I say that if J.J. Abrams was shooting for greatness, he missed the mark here.  Paying tribute to the feelings I had as a kid is not enough to give me those feelings all over again.  And if you pay tribute by imitating something beloved, the fact the script includes ironic acknowledgements of the imitation does not help make the imitation great.  It only tells me that the imitation was a conscious decision and you went this way rather than coming up with something new.  That’s not reassuring to me in any way and it didn’t invoke nostalgia within your movie.  It just made me wish I was watching the original trilogy and that took me completely out of what was happening on-screen in yours.

second death star explodes

Not quite as epic but still awesome, and the afterparty made it a classic (original footage of the afterparty not found and there will be no Hayden Christensen cameo here).

Maybe it wouldn’t have been enough for The Force Awakens to take a new path.  Maybe my expectations were too high.  Because again, The Force Awakens is a good movie and I enjoyed the ride, but I couldn’t truly love it when it felt so much like a remake.  To quote Jimmy Johnson for the first (and hopefully last) time in my life, “Do you want to be safe and good, or do you want to take a chance and be great?”  The Force Awakens is safe and good, but it’s not the great movie I was hoping for, and that’s why I can’t put it in my top ten for the year.

I give Star Wars: The Force Awakens a score of seven Kessel Runs out of ten.  Seeing that score is as painful for me, Jay, as it is for you.

Jay: What the fuck’s a Kessel Run?

Sean: Oh Jay, we absolutely have to watch the original trilogy.  Something tells me I still hold all those magical feelings from my youth, but the path to them is through the greatness of Episodes IV, V and VI rather than trying to recapture those feelings through something “new”.  There will always be room for new Star Wars stories, but for me I don’t think the originals will ever be topped.

Jay: I think you of all people should be a little more open-minded about sequels. You are, after all, husband #2, and you’d better hope I don’t court warm fuzzy feelings toward “the husband of my youth.”

 

In Defense of SPECTRE: A Review For the BEST of Us.

You may have read Matt’s review of SPECTRE.  He seemed to like it but still called it the “dullest, most phoned-in Bond movie” since Casino Royale.  That’s a bit ambiguous but I think he liked SPECTRE and Casino Royale and just hated everything that came between Sir Sean Connery and Dr. Daniel Craig.

Sir Sean Connery

Real knight.

Daniel Craig

Not a real doctor. As far as I know.

You may also have read Jay’s review of SPECTRE.  You probably should read it just for context.

Jay and I have been together for over six years now.  She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met and that’s one of the things I love about her.  But it also drives me crazy because I have never been able to prove her wrong.  Until now.

Jay is right that she was never going to like this movie.  She hates everything I like on principle.  But that doesn’t make it bad.  Obviously I have fantastic taste in movies.  Exhibit A: The Rock.  Exhibit B: Transformers.  Exhibit C: Bad Boys.  Not coincidentally, those are all Michael Bay movies and two of them turned into franchises precisely becnicolas cage the rockause they were so good (the Rock probably would have been a franchise as well if not for the curse of Nicholas Cage).  Because people loved them.  You don’t get a franchise any other way, and everyone knows that sequels always live up to the original movie.  That’s just a fact.

Score: SEAN 1, JAY 0

Jay also hates franchises on principle.  But franchises make action movies better!  With franchises, we don’t have to worry about plot, or character development, or other boring things like that.   We can get straight to the action!  So when we open with the awesome Day of the Dead sequence, we don’t have to have title cards or anything to let us know that the guy who pulls off the mask is the world’s best spy, because the preceding five decades of Bond movies have already set that up.  Thank you, franchises, for simplifying our lives.

Score: SEAN 2, JAY 0

And okay, the helicopter sequence in SPECTRE is terrible.  Absolutely terrible.  But to say it’s worse than a bucket of army guys?   That’s just hyperbole.  And that’s a logical fallacy. So therefore Jay’s dislike of the helicopter sequence(s) is invalid.

Score:   SEAN 3, JAY 0

Jay also hated the train sequence.  Because it got destroyed.  But that’s actually entirely realistic when you consider who was doing the destruction.  Dave Bautista a.k.a. Drax the Destroyer.  Just look at how strong he is in the WWE (six time champion) or in Guardians of the Galaxy (where he singlehandedly fought a guy who later survived a spaceship crash).  That train was not only real, it was probably very well built, maybe even German.  It just didn’t matter because of how hard Bautista can punch.  If you want some sort of arthouse surrealism that’s fine, Jay, we can go to the Bytowne this weekend and watch a movie where two people can’t get out of a shed.  But don’t blame SPECTRE for your weird preferences.

Score: SEAN 4, JAY 0

Another criticism Jay made was that James Bond had different jackets all the time.  Well, that’s the whole point!  He’s not just a spy, he’s a fashionable guy with a watch that blows up and a car with an ejector seat.  Obviously he also has some sort of flying or floating wardrobe machine as well.  They probably covered that in one of the earlier Bond movies, so there was just no need to explain it this time.  Again, thank you franchises!

Score: SEAN 5, JAY 0

I think I’ve proven my point.  I’ll even give Jay the sockless loafers, Christoph Waltz in general, and the weirdness/creepiness/wasted potential of the whole Monica Bellucci thing, since I’m feeling generous.

Score: SEAN 5, JAY 3

And as for Michael Bay, you already have all the proof you need (The Rock, Transformers, Bad Boys) to rest assured that he’s Hollywood’s greatest living director.

Case closed.

Winner:  SEAN

 

HOLD THE FREAKIN PHONE, MISTER!!!

It seems our math doesn’t quite agree. Over at MY post, there’s a lot more nodding going on. I think we can count Mark, Joel, the other J, and Hammy as all #TeamJay.

A SPECTRE Review For the Rest of Us

Has enough time gone by yet that I can write this without being burned at the cross for heresy?

I didn’t like it. Worse still: I was completely bored by it.

I probably wasn’t ever going to be blown away by it, I was mostly along for the ride, because I sort of naturally abhor “franchises” – I just can’t watch thDaniel%20Craig%20steps%20out%20of%20DB10-largee same thing happen to the same person over and over and be entertained by it. At work I might call such a person pathological, or emotionally stunted, or incapable. At the movies, we call him Bond. James Bond.

007 and I parted ways long ago, but I’ve at least felt the past few movies were diverting, or at least they passed the time. This one actually slowed the clock down. And as soon as the creepy guy in the paisley shirt and twirly mustache sitting next to Matt stopped taking pictures of himself with the VIP waitress, andStephanie-Sigman-2_3482079b himself with his chicken wings, and himself watching a movie, I got bored.

The day of the dead parade was actually promising. Really promising. Wasn’t it beautiful? The colours and the energy and the tension in the long take? But then that opening helicopter scene. Shit. They obviously ran out of money. That thing looked horrendous: completely fake. I’m pretty sure I could spectre-featurette-01-600x350rig up something more convincing with my Samsung Galaxy and a bucket of plastic army guys. It was laughable – and the script is so lazy they use the helicopter stunt twice. You know, because it worked so well the first time.

And then the train. Seriously? I know they don’t make trains like they used to, but if you want people to take your set seriously, and to believe that it’s not just spit and cardboard, then don’t make it crumple every time Bond sneezes. Every time he threw an elbow the whole thing wobbled. I know Daniel Craig is soooo tough and everything, but I’m pretty sure some walls can withstand him some of the time.

And speaking of travel. James Bond is a spy, no? I always had this notion that a spy would travel light. But this spy has a goddamned different suede jacket for every occasion! And he changes sunglasses more often than he changes underpants (presumably).

And I still had less of a problem with Craig’s wardrobe than Christoph Waltz’s. Here is a free piece of advice to any and all of you Hollywood typeJames-Bond-Spectre-trailers, feel free to write it down: nobody looks threatening in sockless loafers. Nobody looks good in them either, but that’s besides the point. The loafers aren’t even the biggest problem with bad guy accessories. Let’s talk that octopus ring. Bond gets it from Sciarra but when Q scans it for DNA, all 3 previous bad guys have also spilled their DNA on the thing. So what, there’s a big mutual bad guy jewelry box, and when all the baddies are getting ready to go out to the club, Le Chiffre is like, “No you wear it tonight, Raoul. It looks so darling with your evil polka-dot pocket square.”

Not that I’m ready to let Blofeld off the hook yet. Because first, why the artifice when heO8AlDuLX-600x399‘s first introduced? His face is literally in the shadows when in fact, Waltz’s name was in the opening credits. There’s no surprise here. Waltz was announced as the villain months ago and the internet has already talked it to death. But now we’re all going to pretend we don’t know? Surprise! It’s Christoph Stupid Waltz! Playing my least favourite Bond villain maybe ever. I mean, spectre-still03how weird is it that he somehow raced back to the empty ruins of MI6 in order to set up a “James Bond, this is your life”  funhouse display (is there some sort of Evil Pinterest I don’t know about)? And then he reveals himself behind bullet proof glass, a move we all know he stole from Ethan Hunt. I’m beginning to think that Quentin

Mandarin collars: all the rage in evil pret-a-porter this season

Mandarin collars: all the rage in evil pret-a-porter this season

Tarantino fooled me into momentarily liking Christoph Waltz. Have I liked him in anything since? I definitely abhorred him in Big Eyes. He was less cartoonish here, but that doesn’t mean he was good. Aren’t villains supposed to seem…evil? Ruthless? Blood thirsty? This guy just came off like someone’s jaunty if letchy, grabby uncle (and p.s., “Cuckoo” is the lamest villain catch phrase EVER).

And speaking of letchy! Confidential to James Bond: it’s fucking 2015, dude. You don’t get to act this way anymore. I was so excited to learn that Monica Bellucci was in this – I love her. Loved her. I’m sorry, but after watching that super weird “makeout session” (?) in front of the mirror, I can’t even look at her the same way. I don’t know if they do it different in Italy, but usually kissing involves…the touching of lips. Not just open-mouthed hoveringSPECTRE-summ-image-xlarge. It felt…well, almost non-consensual. Like, when on earth did she decide this was going down? That it was okay? Because I totally missed that part. And was totally grossed out by the, um, foreplay. And boy did he drop her like she was hot. Literally the script forgot she ever existed as soon as he left her boudoir – her only raison d’être was to look fleetingly luscious in European lingerie (which she apparently put on after sex, as people do – since her back was BARE when Bond unzipped her dress), and she’s goddamned Monica Bellucci! If you’re lucky enough to have her, you use her! But no, by all means bring in a younger version to offer NEKNYq3qRGnHOQ_1_bromance, a doctor so we know she’s not just going to stand around looking cute in her nightie (although, come to think of it, we did get a look at her in her nightie…which she was not wearing when James put her to bed, and yet…WAIT A MINUTE! Is James Bond’s kink to dress women in their lingerie? And is he possibly also wearing women’s lingerie under his relentless supply of suede desert jackets?).

And is it just me, or did things take a turn for the Michael Bay toward the end? When Blofeld declares that the thing about brothers is they always know “which buttons to press” – he then actually presses a button. It’s the kind of cheese I expect from Michael Bay but that line made me cringe for real. Is this really what it’s come to? And now this film has left us with a bad taste in our mouths. James Bond is outed as the exact opposite of the badass superspy we’ve built him up to be – apparently he’s just been a hqdefaultpawn manipulated by Blofeld this whole time. When we thought he was digging up villains in the previous films, it was actually Blofeld cleverly orchestrating the whole thing. In fact: James Bond is terrible at his job. Not only did these villains want to be found, THEY were coming for HIM. A monkey could have done his job, and would have probably worn less suede jackets.

 

Sean thinks he can outBond me? I don’t think so! I’m recruiting more members to #TeamJay – let’s let him know what we think! I’m calling out yet another Jay, and Ben, Kenny, Ruth …maybe even Peggy?

 

 

We are never, ever, ever getting back together.

Some movies you could watch a million times, quote every line, and never get enough.

Other movies, you regret seeing even the once.

Somewhere in between is a movie that you’re glad you watched, but that you know you’ll never revisit. These are mine:

Monster – Stupidly, I bought this one. Does anyone need a copy of Monster? I won’t be using it. Based on the realmonster life events of Aileen Wuornos, who Charlize Theron plays to perfection. Maybe a little too perfectly? This woman was convicted of murdering 6 men, but that’s not the worst of it. Aileen is a prostitute who gets beaten and raped by a client. She wants to quit the life but can’t find any legitimate work and her girlfriend wants to be supported in the matter to which she’s become accustomed. Going back to prostitution, she can’t control her anxiety and believes that every john is out to hurt her – so, she kills them first, and takes their money. It’s never easy to see ruthless murder on film, but it’s so much worse when you’ve seen the back story and understand where all the pain and fear is coming from – and it infects you too.

Inglorious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino presents us with an alternate history  where Jewish-ingloriousAmerican soldiers assassinate Ndeliverance4azi political leadership and brutally murder German soldiers. We went to see this in the theatre, and thing about Tarantino is, there’s no way you’re getting off easy. I was prepared for blood and guts. What I can’t shake is the sound the knife makes as it carves a swastika into victims’ foreheads.

Deliverance – Four friends go out into the woods to have themselves a little male bonding time in nature. Unfortunately, they happen upon some hillbillies who take some of the friends hostage, and force Ned Beatty onto his knees, bidding him to “squeal like a pig” as he is forcefully raped. It’s harsh and humiliating and just about as degrading as it gets – for him, and for us.

Antichrist – Should I even write this? If you’re a nice person, please turn away now. Do not read antichriston. For the rest of you: Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play a grieving couple who have recently lost a child. To cope with their pain, they retreat to a cabin in the woods whee he has crazy visions and she exhibits increasingly violent sexual behaviour, culminating in (last chance! turn away!) her snipping off her clitoris with a pair of rusty scissors after a pretty punishing round of frantic, joyless masturbation. Do I really need to explain why I’ll never watch this again?

Man Bites Dog – A mockumentary that’s anything but funny. A film crew follows around a charismatic serial killer. The murders get increasingly graphic and horrible. The rapes are just fucking brutal. But the haunting thing is that the film crew goes all Stockholm Syndrome and pretty soon they’re willing accomplices. Fucking harsh, man.

Anything Michael Haneke – This guy loves to make unwatchable films. Matt bravely made his way through Funny Games while I bore The White Ribbon, but not happily, I tell you. Not happily.

Clockwork'71Anything with eyes – I have a super duper eye phobia and despise any movie with extreme close-ups with eyes. Worse still: blood shot eyes. Worse still: eyes being forcibly held open. A Clockwork Orange being the worst possible case.

Anything with shaving – Mostly just men royaltenenbaumsshaving their necks. 99% of times it’s just shaving, but I am literally hiding behind my own fingers, certain that at any moment a major artery is about to be opened, accidentally, on purpose, I don’t care, I just can’t take the anxiety leading up to it. And then mostly they just wipe the shaving cream off and continue on with their days, but me? My blood pressure’s through the roof.

Anything where the dog dies. I can’t take dead dogs, whether or not they go to heaven.

So which movies can you never revisit – and why?

 

Meanwhile in San Francisco…: 6 Simple Steps to Liking a Shitty Movie

Finding myself at a midnight screening of The Room on Saturday, I was completely unprepared. If you haven’t already seen Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece of unintended comedy, the first thing you need to do to get the most out of your experience is to manage your expectations. You’re not going to enjoy this movie the way you would, say, Birdman, The Imitation Game, or even The Avengers. Wiseau, who is equally misguided as producer, director, writer, and star, has made what Entertainment Weekly went on to call “the Citizen Kane of bad movies”. Several theaters around the world screen The Room on a monthly basis, drawing enthusiastic “fans” every time. It’s a bad movie but they seem to enjoy it. Here’s how you can too.

1. Remember, kids. You don’t need alcohol to have a good night out. Unless you’re watching The Room. You’ll need a few drinks to wash this one down.

2. Don’t, under any circumstances, watch this one alone. You’ll need a movie buddy. Maybe even a whole group. Choose your company well. They should be able to make you laugh easily. The more sarcastic the better. There’ll be lots to make fun of.

The Room
3. If you catch a screening, be prepared  for people to talk, even yell, during the movie. That’s part of the fun. Several rituals have developed over the years from the Room cult, involving pre-prepared responses for specific parts of the movie. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with those. You can pretty much yell whatever you want at the screen. This is one theater you will not get shushed.

4. Pay attention because the director didn’t. The plot holes, continuity errors, and technical fuck-ups are glaring and, if you’re keeping your eyes open, you won’t be able to believe what survived the editing process. Watch out in particular for the front door. The actors will often need you to remind them to close it.the room 2

5. There’s no easy way to get through the many awkward sex scenes. My advice is to just be thankful that Wiseau didn’t get his way. He wanted them to be twice as long.

6. Beware falling spoons. It’s tradition in some theaters to hurl a handful of plastic spoons at the screen during several scenes because… well, you’ll see. You can bring spoons of your own or just wait for them to literally fall into your lap.

Consider yourself warned. If you go in prepared, you should have as much, maybe even more, fun than you would at a movie that you thought was actually good. I’ve never actually been to a Rocky Horror screening but this is a little like I imagine it to be.