MacGruber (2010)

MacGruber (2010)
Directed by Jorma Taccone

Everyonce in awhile a movie comes along that makes me feel so fucking good about life I can barely contain myself. It makes me laugh at least once an hour hearing dialog re-played in my head. I try to tell everyone I know that I respect to go see it. In an almost subconcious way I try to wrap my life around the feeling I got from the movie. I'm like a junkie, seeing it multiple times in the theatre, quoting it constantly, listening to the soundtrack non-stop, pathetically wondering what it'd be like to live in that universe.

Why?

I don't know. It just feels so good to get out of that theatre and see the world painted just a little like the story I just watched.

"Jesus is this guy a fucking dork."

Movies shouldn't be the most exciting thing I do, but most of the time it's the only thing that can make me feel anything on a meaningful level (besides music and sex). I don't think I'm a sociopath. I care very much about the people in my life but films hit a space in my brain that no human or event can reach.

I saw Inglourious Basterds three times in the theatre and the last two times I cried. When Donnie Donowitz comes out from under the bridge swinging a bat to the music of Ennio Morricone I started crying. It's kind of irrational, it wasn't a particularly moving scene.

The same thing happened to me during MacGruber.

"The fucking SNL movie...you cried during an SNL movie?"

Yes I did. MacGruber gets out of his car dressed in a white suit and cowboy boots in slow motion and the moment his foot touches the ground "Take Me Home Tonight" by Eddie Money starts playing. It hit me like an emotional punch in the face after having laughed my ass off for most of the film. It instantly took me back to 1986 when I lived in Las Vegas right before my parents got a divorce. I remember hearing it on the radio while driving around with my Dad. We got home and he proceeded to tell us that he was leaving.

I guess a piece of film being poetically put to good music is what really does the trick. Did my brain reach back to 1986 and bring up the pain of my parents divorce? I guess so...and now here I am crying alone in a theatre in Marietta, GA watching a MacGyver spoof.

Val Kilmer (looking like he's done some serious drinking in the past few years) does a fantastic job as the villian Dieter Von Cunth. Will Forte creates a suprisingly complex character out of the SNL Sketches. MacGruber is arrogant, stupid, insecure, reckless, homophobic (even though he offers to "suck your fucking dick" to keep from being kicked off the case twice), backstabbing and stubborn. Somehow you end up liking the guy and enjoy watching him fuck things up. Ultimately you find out that he's responsible for turning Dieter Von Cunth into the man he's become which makes him just as evil if not more so.

Kristen Wiig plays Vicki St. Elmo, a mouse-ish musician who's skills are detection and running away. After seeing the film three times it seems her character is necessary to balance MacGruber's idiocy and provide a love interest but is the least interesting of the movie. Wiig does a great job playing the part, it just seems hollow by design.

The plot is a seemless blend of Rambo, Lethal Weapon, Roadhouse, Die Hard, Tango and Cash and many other 80's action films. The main part being "bad guy steals nuclear warhead which he will use for something evil and only one man can stop him" kind of thing. Powers Boothe essentially plays Col. Sam Trautman from First Blood and he and Ryan Phillippe are excellent straight men for Forte's string of non-sensical ideas and actions.

The film pushes the envelope for laughs so if you don't like throat rippings, corpse desecration, dick jokes, solo saxophone performances or ghost fucking you should avoid MacGruber. However, if you're someone that doesn't have a stick up their ass and realizes that jokes are jokes you will most likely enjoy this film.

Any film that can make me laugh hysterically, bring up childhood trauma, expose me to Emerson, Lake and Powell and make me think about terrorism in the same 90 minutes is a great one in my book. Some people on this earth still know how to tell a good joke.

A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)

5/09/2010
A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)
Directed by Samuel Bayer
Rated R

I woke up around 1:30 pm as I had stayed up til about 6 that morning looking up wiki articles about American English dialects and info on Wigger Slam bands. Two cans of Java Monster found in a free case at the entrance of my practice space had done it. I'm really sensitive to caffeine.

"Are you up yet?"
"Not yet, I'm about to get up."

My girlfriend had called.

"Ok, well I'm out shopping for Mother's Day, what are you gonna do?"
"Um, I...uh...I think I'm gonna go see the new Nightmare On Elm Street movie."
"Ok, well call me later."

I always feel awkward waking up at my girlfriend's house after she leaves for the day. She lives with her parents and I sneak like a cat burglar every morning into the bathroom, brush my teeth, put in my contacts (unless I slept in them), piss, whatever. I then sneak back into her room and do some stretching and maybe some push-ups, leg lifts, etc. if I'm not hungover or feeling lazy.

It's not like I'm dating a teenager and her parents can't know I'm there...it's just...weird running into them in the hall. I don't know how parents look at somebody like me. I don't work very much, I sleep late, I spend most of my time playing loud music and reading and I dress like an alcoholic on a Florida vacation.

I'm not ashamed of how I live my life but most normal adults think I'm a bum and they treat me like one in the politest way possible. PHEW! Nobody in the hall. I rushed to my car and high-tailed it outta Wickerberry onto Pinegrove towards Marietta. It was 2:17, the movie started at 2:25 according to moviephone.com.

I pulled into the parking lot at 2:36 and ran into the theatre. I fucking hate being late for movies. If I'm more than 12 minutes late I don't bother going. I usually get there mega early because I'm a nerd and don't have anything better to do. I sat down as the first establishing shot of the film played on the screen. I missed all the previews.

A noir-ishly lit diner in the middle of an Ohio suburb was where we were (it was filmed in Illinois and Los Angeles) as a sleep deprived "teenager" sits in a booth drinking coffee. He looks like some rich prick from Buckhead. I automatically can' t relate. He sees some weird stuff, drifts in and out of sleep, talks to a possible love interest about his "real" nightmares. I'm bored.

Finally after five or so agonizing minutes here's Freddy. I remember Jackie Earle Haley from The Bad News Bears as a kid. I also have fond memories of the first time I was told about Freddy. I believe I was about five or six when one of my neighborhood friends told me about the scary movie with the burnt man and knife hands. Before I had even seen it I was scared shitless. A man with burnt skin and knife hands?!? My five year old brain bounced bizarre imagery around for awhile. Was he completely charred? Did any bone show? What kind of knives did he use? Did I need to see this in a diaper?

One of our neighbors when I lived in Las Vegas worked for a video store and had a large cardboard stand-up of Freddy Krueger in their window. That was the first time I laid eyes upon him and I'll never forget it. Around age eight or nine I began watching the films, number 4 was the first. I watched every one I could as a kid and no-bullshit Freddy started showing up in my dreams.

Obviously he didn't kill me, but there was one incident where he cut my arm in a dream and I woke up with a scratch. I ran screaming into my Mom's room and upon further inspection it appeared that the shitty metal frame for my bunk bed had done it. Okay...so he wasn't real.

Ooops, in the midst of my reminiscence for the 80'sI forgot to pay attention to the film I had paid for. Shouldn't be to hard to figure it out, this dialog sounds like it's been written for NBC's "Passions". Ok, I get the gist. Freddy's haunting these kids dreams because all of their parents killed him, but, in this version it's because he molested all their kids...and NOT ONE OF THEM REMEMBERS?!?

They did something marginally interesting with the first act in getting you to think this "Kris" character (played by Katie Cassidy) was the lead, but they pull a Psycho and kill her off the same way "Tina" met her demise in the original. Good thing she wasn't the lead, she pretty much cried or panicked the entire time she was on screen. I can't stand poorly written female characters that cry and whine and panic on screen. I guess it's the only way dumb, fat Wal-Mart shoppers can latch on to the story.

God, I'm bored just writing this review. Let me get to the worst hits here. There's completely needless CGI, bad acting, annoying little LA orange tan perfect hair no eyebrow morons populating the film. I don't give a shit how any of these people die. The gore is not bad. Jackie Earle Haley does the best job he can with the crappy writing. Clancy Brown of Highlander and Buckaroo Banzai plays Quentin Smith's dad. Hmmm, this movie isn't very good at all. But I'm the mark who put down my 7.50 to go see it. Exploitation movies are alive and well in Hollywood, they're called Re-boots or Re-imaginings or Re-makes and just based on curiosity alone these L.A. fuckers usually make a profit.

"They re-made A Nightmare On Elm Street."
"What? Why? The first one is perfect."
"Well I'm curious to see what they'll do."

There, that right there, if at least 3 million people say that spead throughout the country they got 25-30 million dollars. Now, i'm not sure exactly how much they spent on this film, IMDB says 35 mil. The original was made for 1.8 mil. I don't really know what I'm bitching about here. The re-makes aren't going to stop because it's instant money on an established name and in this economy I guess that's comforting to the movie biz. I think 99% of them are terrible but everyonce in awhile you get John Carpenter's The Thing and that's one of the greatest horror films ever made.

The credits rolled and I felt like I had wasted 90 minutes of my life. I didn't even want to finish my planned double feature of Nightmare/Iron Man 2( I usually pay for one and see two or three). At least the score was effective as I felt on edge a lot of the movie but maybe that was the coffee I had had.