For many years, Warner Brothers had pretty good luck making Batman and Superman movies. With SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE they pretty much invented the comic book movie. With BATMAN they reinvigorated it. Sure, there were those Joel Schumacher movies that put the whole venture in peril, but then they took the genre to the next level when they let Christopher Nolan start over and do his very successful and influential trilogy. They’ve had more hits than misses, I think.
But now the rival Marvel Comics company has their whole interconnected movie universe thing, and everybody’s gonna be jealous of their neighbor’s sports car, I guess, so WB is trying to do one of those for DC Comics. So far this has caused excitement followed by disappointment.
But the upside is that because they’re desperate to show off all these characters they own they went for the cool idea of SUICIDE SQUAD, a comic where a bunch of the villains from other comics are taken out of prison and forced on dangerous missions for the government, DIRTY DOZEN or Snake Plissken style. Popular bad guy characters are able to be enjoyed as anti-heroes, and get some amount of redemption for that time when they tried to rob a bank but the Flash caught them or whatever. The movie version is written and directed by David Ayer. That’s the guy who used to be known for writing TRAINING DAY, but more recently he’s come into his own as a writer/director with END OF WATCH, SABOTAGE and FURY. He can also brag that he has a writing credit on THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS. (read the rest of this shit…)
Here’s a weird thing about gigantic blockbuster movies based on popular licensed characters: you can end up making a sequel aimed less at the fans of the first movie than at the people who saw it once and have still not stopped complaining about it. At least that’s the fool’s errand that director Zack Snyder and writer David S. Goyer (this time rewritten by Academy Award winner Chris Terrio) chose for themselves on BATMAN von SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, which selects as its primary theme the criticisms that people had of part 1.
To this day I don’t feel like I understand the widespread outrage at MAN OF STEEL for having a comic book style battle between super beings where buildings were destroyed in the process. I still haven’t noticed this standard applied to any other movie or comic book (including the cover of the very first issue of Superman!) and I stand by everything I said in this essay about how wild misinterpretations of MAN OF STEEL have become conventional wisdom. Still, I gotta thank all of you for doing that because I suspect it inspired the most intense and cinematic section of BATMAN vehemently opposed to SUPERMAN, in which we see the Superman v Zod battle from an even more human perspective than before. Specifically, from Bruce Wayne’s point-of-view as he runs fearlessly into the destruction and tries to help.
We only see the Kryptonians in tiny glimpses, far away, high in the sky. Mostly we see raining glass and brick and glowing energy beams in their wake. They truly are gods. And now we specifically see that rubble landed on one guy and are told that a woman is missing. And Bruce Wayne doesn’t like it.
GONE GIRL is the new David Fincher popular fiction adaptation, another murder mystery but this time I guess you could say with a lighter touch than SEVEN, ZODIAC or THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck, PAYCHECK) comes home on his fifth anniversary to find his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike, DOOM) missing. They were unhappy and he’s not good at faking it, so suspicion quickly falls on him. Meanwhile Amy had a tradition of leaving a series of clues for an anniversary treasure hunt, initially romantic, these days bitter and mean. While Nick and lead investigator Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens, HOLLOW MAN) follow the trail of cute riddles, we start to see Amy’s diary entries telling the story of their relationship from her perspective. And this may shock you but it eventually turns out that there’s more to the story!
This is one that you really need to see without knowing any more than that, so I’m not even gonna attempt a spoiler-wary review. From this point on don’t read unless you’ve already seen it or are mortally wounded and aren’t gonna make it another 2 hours and 25. In which case thank you, I am honored and flattered that you chose to live out your last moments here on outlawvern.com. You know I hope this isn’t too forward of me but if you don’t have any heirs and it’s not too much to ask maybe consider making a bunch of expensive purchases through my Amazon links before you kick. I really appreciate it man, thanks alot bud and good luck to you. (read the rest of this shit…)
Remember when John Woo did a science fictional movie a while back that everybody said was shitty? This was after we’d all kind of given up on him, so I never saw it. Until now.
Ben Affleck, the director of ARGO, stars as Michael Jennings, an amoral engineering genius of a futurist Seattle, some time after the near-future one in STEALTH. (In the future the borders of Seattle will be stretched so far that they will include Vancouver, BC, which is all we see in this movie other than one helicopter shot over Seattle Center). His introduction is funny because he gets to do a John Woo slo-mo strut toward the camera wearing shades (it’s important to the plot that he’s finicky about sunglasses) and, uh, holding a computer monitor under his arm.
ARGO is based on an amazing true story, recently declassified and told in this great Wired article. During the Iran hostage crisis, it turns out, the CIA managed to rescue a group of stranded American workers using an unusual cover story: they were part of a Canadian film crew scouting exotic locations for a STAR WARS inspired sci-fi fantasy epic. John Chambers, the genius makeup artist behind the PLANET OF APES series (and played by John Goodman here), had done “some contract work” for the CIA according to the article (let’s hope he gets a whole series of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE style thrillers) and helped to set up real Hollywood producers and offices for the fake movie. The now-worshipped-by-nerds comic book artist Jack Kirby (seen only in a cameo here, played by DEATH WISH V’s Michael Parks) provided the artwork that they used as pre-production set and costume designs. (read the rest of this shit…)
WARNING: contains spoilers for PEARL HARBOR and World War II
After three financially successful action movies in a row (BAD BOYS, THE ROCK, ARMAGEDDON), Michael Bay got a once-in-his-career itch to make An Important Movie. He probly had SAVING PRIVATE RYAN on the brain, and definitely TITANIC.
Ever since James Cameron’s movie broke all box office records studios had been threatening to make asses of themselves by blatantly trying to catch more lightning in that same melodramatic-love-story-during-historic-disaster bottle. Jan de Bont almost did a love-story-on-the-Hindenburg movie, for example. PEARL HARBOR wasn’t as obvious of a copycat as that because 1) it was a love story set against a war movie as much as a disaster and 2) the love song on the end credits was by Faith Hill instead of Celine Dion. Totally different. (read the rest of this shit…)
In the popular song and cartoon RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, “reindeer games” are the fun group activities that all the popular reindeers enjoy but Rudolph is excluded from due to his low social caste. In the movie REINDEER GAMES the character “Monster” (Gary Sinise) uses it as a synonym for “funny business,” something that he threatens Rudy (Ben Affleck) not to participate in. This misuse of Christmas terminology doesn’t bother Rudy or probly occur to him, but it does bug him when Clarence Williams III keeps referring to “Santa’s dwarves.” So he does have a certain amount of respect for Christmas tradition.
REINDEER GAMES is not a Christmas movie in the sense that it’s about Christmas, or about somebody coming to a realization about the meaning of Christmas, at least not a very convincing one. But I can guarantee you this much: it takes place in December, with a heist planned for Christmas Eve, and with the participators all dressed as Santa Claus. So there are some discussions of cranberries and what not. Maybe a mention of sugar plums, I can’t remember for sure. (Have you ever had sugar plums? They’re actually really fuckin good. I wish I knew a place that sold them. I might have visions of them dancing in my head now that I remembered them.) (read the rest of this shit…)
THE TOWN is a real well done, more-realistic-than-most crime drama. Not exactly a heist movie, because although it’s leading up to an elaborate caper it’s not as much about the planning and executing of the thing as it is about the people who do it. It’s also one of these movies people from Boston make where they’re real anxious to show off every last detail about the Boston neighborhoods and culture. I haven’t been there much so I got no clue how accurate it is, but it seems believable enough. There’s a part where they have coffee at Dunk’n Donuts, that part was real I know. (read the rest of this shit…)
Carnahan fans have been waiting a while now for his follow-up to NARC, and it seems crazy that it’s almost here.
If you’re a fan, you might want to hop over to CHUD, where Devin Faraci has been fielding questions that Carnahan’s been answering on his very own blog.
In the meantime, let’s see what our own Vern has to say about this film that I’m eagerly looking forward to:
You know what this movie is, it’s a remake of BOBBY. Almost the whole movie takes place in and around this hotel. And you got your huge all-star cast of characters with their various intersecting stories going on. But instead of them all living their lives and making corny speeches not knowing Bobby Kennedy is about to be assassinated, they are all trying to sneak into the hotel to kill Jeremy Piven. And instead of tons of stock footage of Kennedy speeches there is all kinds of fighting and guns. So it’s a reflection of our times. Or a very loose remake. A reimagining. (read the rest of this shit…)
Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
God bless Vern. He’s proof positive that anyone can turn their life around if they try. For those of you who haven’t enjoyed his writing here or on his own website, Vern’s a former convict who has channeled his post-prison energy into writing movie reviews. He loves bad-ass films, but he’ll write about the most surprising stuff sometimes. In the last few days, he’s sent me two great reviews, so I decided to run them together. I’d agree with him on one, but not the other, and I’ll let you figure out which one I mean. Vern… take it away.
GINGER SNAPS
Harry, I guess I don’t read your sight closely enough. I never heard of this picture other than it was playing the seattle international film festival and some people said it was good. I didn’t know what it was about but I remembered the title so I pulled it out of a box of garbage like wishmaster 3 and children of the living dead. This was a box of artisan entertainment’s straight to video garbage that not even my video store connection was going to consider watching. They were just gonna dump em off to charity.
So this is the story of the teen horror picture that almost got away. The one that played a couple film festivals and then got dumped straight to video in the US by Artisan Entertainment, due October 23. I mean you can understand with all the high quality pictures showing this summer there’s really no room to put another really good one out there. What good is another good movie. They are so abundant right now what really is the point, right? Can’t think of more than one or two good ones off hand, but I’m sure I’m forgetting something.
GINGER SNAPS is not a movie about cookies. It’s GINGER SNAPS as in THE SNAPPING OF GINGER or GINGER FINALLY SNAPS or THE STORY OF GINGER ACTUALLY SNAPPING. This is a horror picture for the strong independent women. That doesn’t mean it’s for pussies, ’cause it’s gorey and intense. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
CJ Holden on Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday: “Honestly, after finally being able to watch it…I kinda liked it. But here is the disclaimer: I don’t really like…” Feb 14, 11:14
VERN on Queens of the Dead: “That’s interesting so-and-so, I don’t fully understand what causes you to reject it like that, but it sounds like my…” Feb 13, 22:50
Skani on Heart Eyes: “Second watch verdict is in — it’s still very good! Boys liked it a lot, too, across the board. My…” Feb 13, 17:54
Mr. Majestyk on Heart Eyes: “I was not expecting it to be dead serious with that premise. I just don’t think they got the comic…” Feb 13, 12:33
Bill Reed on Heart Eyes: “Maybe I’m a sucker for anything that has a lot of quickly-delivered dialogue, but I liked this a lot more…” Feb 13, 12:33
Skani on Heart Eyes: “Majestyk, I already had plans to watch this with my boys this evening (their first watch, my second), so, I…” Feb 13, 11:14
Dave Chappelle's Emergency Code Word on Butcher Boys: “Maybe Swift’s refried idea is what the fourth-rate Hollywood producer Barry Josephson had in mind when he told Jeffrey Epstein…” Feb 13, 09:37
so-and-so on Queens of the Dead: “i appreciate the outreach that a review like this represents but i think if a straight co-worker were to recommend…” Feb 13, 06:50
Mr. Majestyk on Heart Eyes: “Would like to chime in that I have also cut off the SCREAM franchise on moral grounds. It was not…” Feb 13, 04:54
Simon Underwood on Heart Eyes: “As someone who had their life changed by Scream (among other things, it was one of the key films that…” Feb 13, 01:13
so-and-so on Send Help: “sympathy is reserved for and expressed to other human beings; the characters in a fictional narrative by definition cannot garner…” Feb 12, 21:59
Skani on Heart Eyes: “My friends at Rotten Tomatoes call this “ A mixture of gory slasher and sweet rom-com that ingeniously nails both…” Feb 12, 20:17
Alex R on Dragged Across Concrete: “This review was what made me start reading the site. I believe somebody linked to it on Letterboxd. Two things…” Feb 12, 19:26
Curt on Queens of the Dead: “Yes, it was VEGAS IN SPACE, thank you! I looked it up online and recognized the artwork immediately. Worth a…” Feb 12, 18:40
Mr. Majestyk on Heart Eyes: “I kind of hated this one. As a SCREAM-esque glossy slasher it’s, shrug, fine, but christ, do I hate this…” Feb 12, 17:44
For many years, Warner Brothers had pretty good luck making Batman and Superman movies. With SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE they pretty much invented the comic book movie. With BATMAN they reinvigorated it. Sure, there were those Joel Schumacher movies that put the whole venture in peril, but then they took the genre to the next level when they let Christopher Nolan start over and do his very successful and influential trilogy. They’ve had more hits than misses, I think.
(HEAVY SPOILER REVIEW)
GONE GIRL is the new David Fincher popular fiction adaptation, another murder mystery but this time I guess you could say with a lighter touch than SEVEN, 
Remember when John Woo did a science fictional movie a while back that everybody said was shitty? This was after we’d all kind of given up on him, so I never saw it. Until now.
ARGO is based on an amazing true story, recently declassified and told in 
released May 25th, 2001
In the popular song and cartoon RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, “reindeer games” are the fun group activities that all the popular reindeers enjoy but Rudolph is excluded from due to his low social caste. In the movie REINDEER GAMES the character “Monster” (Gary Sinise) uses it as a synonym for “funny business,” something that he threatens Rudy (Ben Affleck) not to participate in. This misuse of Christmas terminology doesn’t bother Rudy or probly occur to him, but it does bug him when Clarence Williams III keeps referring to “Santa’s dwarves.” So he does have a certain amount of respect for Christmas tradition.
THE TOWN is a real well done, more-realistic-than-most crime drama. Not exactly a heist movie, because although it’s leading up to an elaborate caper it’s not as much about the planning and executing of the thing as it is about the people who do it. It’s also one of these movies people from Boston make where they’re real anxious to show off every last detail about the Boston neighborhoods and culture. I haven’t been there much so I got no clue how accurate it is, but it seems believable enough. There’s a part where they have coffee at Dunk’n Donuts, that part was real I know. 
SPOILER ALERT !!
