I didn’t know what a NYAD was, but it’s the last name of a real life person, Diana Nyad, a marathon swimmer who broke a bunch of distance records in the ‘70s and in 1978 tried to swim from Havana to Key West. She made it about 76 miles in 42 hours but had to quit.
Now it’s 2010, she’s played by Annette Bening (MARS ATTACKS!), she’s been retired since her 30th birthday, and she’s just hitting her 60th. She spends her time with Bonnie (Jodie Foster, HOTEL ARTEMIS), they seem like a couple at first, but they’re just best friends. Quirky lesbian pals. Since she’s been angsty about aging, Bonnie convinces her to get back into exercise, and she swims for the first time in years. That goes well, so she announces out of the blue that she’s going to try the Cuba swim again. Bonnie is kinda like jesus christ lady you cannot be serious and then somehow agrees to be her coach. (read the rest of this shit…)
“THE 51ST STATE is very dear to me, because it was the first time in Hollywood that I didn’t have to deal with dolls.” –Ronny Yu, 2004
Three years after the unlikely career milestone of BRIDE OF CHUCKY, Ronny Yu made easily the weakest of his English-language films – a UK-Canada co-production called THE 51ST STATE, but we call it FORMULA 51 here so people don’t think it refers to DC statehood. (Actually I’m not totally clear what it does refer to. But the number 51 is in the name of a super-drug that’s central to the plot.)
Under any name it’s a thoroughly 2001 film, with wall-to-wall dated music (score by somebody called Headrillaz), annoying whooshes and flash cuts, character names and descriptions written on screen as they’re introduced, a long scene at a rave type dance club, and two stars – Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Carlyle – who had ridden the ‘90s indie wave to the specific level of commercial viability where they could be cast in stuff like this. It’s one of a handful of movies, along with THE NEGOTIATOR and SHAFT, that could arguably be considered a straight up Samuel L. Jackson vehicle. But even though it starts and ends with him he’s kind of a mysterious, unexplained character, while co-star Carlyle gets to have the love story and sex scene. (read the rest of this shit…)
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, eh? More like THE YOU KNOW TO BE HONEST I KINDA LIKED THIS ONE SPIDER-MAN if you ask me.
Over the years I’ve gained a rep as an anti-Nerdite, due to some of my challenging of online conventional wisdom and use of insensitive terminology (some people get mad when I use “nerd” instead of “geek”). But the truth is I rarely miss a comic book movie, and I even like some that you all hate (SPIDER-MAN 3, X-MEN 3, MAN OF STEEL it seems, probly something else I’m forgetting). Not to mention the whole issue with STAR WARS prequels and CRYSTAL SKULLs. Face it, geeks – I like this shit more than the people who like it do!
That’s why it surprises me that I never got around to seeing THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN until now. I mean I had intended to see it in the theater in 3D and everything. But everybody said it was bland and they confirmed that they really were re-doing the original story already so I lost the urgency and never got to it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Yes, it’s true, this is a movie about Mickey Rourke and Bill Murray fighting over Megan Fox because she has wings. Mickey plays a jazz trumpeter (the serious type who always wears colorful suits, a fedora and pointy shoes) who gets in trouble because he accidentally slept with the wife of a gangster named Happy (Murray). So he gets beat up and left in the desert.
When he wakes up he wanders and finds a carnival with a sideshow. That’s where he sees this winged lady. Not riding a ferris wheel – she’s in the sideshow, because she has wings. Not sure if you got that. (read the rest of this shit…)
GREENBERG (Ben Stiller from NEXT OF KIN) is a 40 year old sometimes-carpenter who, after some kind of breakdown and stint in a mental hospital, comes to house sit (crash at) his banker brother’s place in L.A. while the family’s on a business vacation to Vietnam. His plan is to “do nothing,” but he’s a huge fucking baby so he starts getting the family’s nice assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig, HOUSE OF THE DEVIL) to shop for him, have a relationship with the dog for him, etc. Through horrendously awkward maneuvers he gets sloppily into her pants and makes things weird. Then he starts being a dick until she doesn’t want to see him again, but the dog gets sick and he doesn’t have a car so she has to bring him to the vet, etc. Romance does not ensue, just awkwardness. (read the rest of this shit…)
This is a story about the dude who Wrote BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and how if that movie alone didn’t prove that he was some kind of demented genius, then this one does. HUMAN NATURE is the story of a woman with a hormonal problem causing her whole body to be covered with hair, who lives among the animals until she falls in love with a scientist whose life work involves teaching mice the difference between a salad fork and a regular fork. Together they try to civilize a feral man who grew up in the woods thinking he was an ape.
Sounds completely silly and random, right? But what surprised me, a film expert, was the amount of Substance in there. If this were just a regular, make you laugh kind of comedy it would still be the most original, and funniest, in a long time. There were less than ten people at the showing I went to and I was embarassed because I was laughing harder than anyone else. But believe me, I’m the one that’s right. This movie is fuckin hilarious. (read the rest of this shit…)
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THANKS EVERYBODY. YOUR FRIEND, VERN
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
CJ Holden on Mortal Kombat II: “Kinda weird that Tom Holkenborg isn’t making the music for these. With his dance music origins and epic drum beats…” May 14, 22:13
Curt on Twister: “BuzzFeedAldrin, to me the ultimate “anything and anyone can be a sellout” moment of 1990s cinema was in THE CROW,…” May 14, 15:25
Curt on Mortal Kombat II: “I apologize for adding to the “sequel that’s being made with the understanding that nobody liked the first one very…” May 14, 14:57
Curt on Dead Man: “Lance Henriksen was of course in both ALIENS and ALIEN 3, so we do in fact have the first four…” May 14, 14:48
burningambulance on Dead Man: ““William and Nobody also encounter some trappers named Salvatore “Sally” Jenko (Iggy Pop, TANK GIRL), Benmont Tench (Jared Harris, NATURAL…” May 14, 14:27
Kevin W on Mortal Kombat II: “Would Undisputed 2 qualify as that type of sequel? The original isn’t hated exactly but it doesn’t seem to be…” May 14, 13:39
zikade on Mortal Kombat II: “Mmmm sequels that have something to prove is just a giant list of comic book movies, honestly. THE INCREDIBLE HULK…” May 14, 13:35
Mr. Majestyk on Mortal Kombat II: ““ it’s one of those sequels that’s being made with the understanding that nobody liked the first one very much…” May 14, 12:32
Borg9 on Dead Man: “Yeah, I love this one too. Jarmusch does indeed seem to have real respect for genre film making and film…” May 14, 03:17
CJ Holden on Dead Man: “This was my first Jarmusch movie. It was on TV pretty often and one day after work I just blind…” May 13, 22:37
Hammer Time on Original Gangstas: “I forget if it was Ebert who said that a mark of a bad movie is if you’d rather watch…” May 13, 20:46
Hammer Time on Twister: “Vern, all of your reviews are great but I feel like you were really on the jazz with this one.…” May 13, 20:39
JTS on Twister: “Helen Hunt played Rafael Casal’s mom in the Blindspotting TV show that Casal and Diggs co-created, which came out in…” May 13, 19:53
Bob Vila on Dead Man: “20 or so years ago, this guy Raife (a dour Russian Lit major) said he had a great movie he…” May 13, 19:16
Alex R on Dead Man: “This is a great review— I’ve never thought of the acid western/anti-western distinction but it’s definitely acid. I haven’t seen…” May 13, 16:36
I didn’t know what a NYAD was, but it’s the last name of a real life person, Diana Nyad, a marathon swimmer who broke a bunch of distance records in the ‘70s and in 1978 tried to swim from Havana to Key West. She made it about 76 miles in 42 hours but had to quit.
“THE 51ST STATE is very dear to me, because it was the first time in Hollywood that I didn’t have to deal with dolls.” –Ronny Yu, 2004
Yes, it’s true, this is a movie about Mickey Rourke and Bill Murray fighting over Megan Fox because she has wings. Mickey plays a jazz trumpeter (the serious type who always wears colorful suits, a fedora and pointy shoes) who gets in trouble because he accidentally slept with the wife of a gangster named Happy (Murray). So he gets beat up and left in the desert.
GREENBERG (Ben Stiller from NEXT OF KIN) is a 40 year old sometimes-carpenter who, after some kind of breakdown and stint in a mental hospital, comes to house sit (crash at) his banker brother’s place in L.A. while the family’s on a business vacation to Vietnam. His plan is to “do nothing,” but he’s a huge fucking baby so he starts getting the family’s nice assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig, 
This is a story about the dude who Wrote BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and how if that movie alone didn’t prove that he was some kind of demented genius, then this one does. HUMAN NATURE is the story of a woman with a hormonal problem causing her whole body to be covered with hair, who lives among the animals until she falls in love with a scientist whose life work involves teaching mice the difference between a salad fork and a regular fork. Together they try to civilize a feral man who grew up in the woods thinking he was an ape.
