I liked it more when it was called [Insert intellectual property here]

R.I.P.D. is one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life.

How is it so bad, dear indexing machine that contributes the most of my pageviews? Oh let me count the ways.

On the whole (and hole, the eyehole), the premise for the entire fucking movie is Men In Black, Ghostbusters, The Sandman, True Grit, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, that Simpsons episode about The Flying/Fighting Hellfish; lifted nearly in its entirety and plopped into a 3D setting in Boston of all the goddamn settings, with Jeff Bridges' accent crammed in there since the human body is nightmarishly elastic and can accommodate massive trauma before succumbing to the damage. It's almost incredible, the lack of thought that went into creating R.I.P.D., even the title reeks of cutesy ersatz-supernatural science fiction masquerading as creativity.

The movie is a spectacular failure at every level, the only new thing it contributes to civilization is finding a way to be even worse than Jonah Hex, the previous "most objectionable comic book movie and/or possibly movie i have ever seen" title holder for several years running. What is it about stories where the main guy is dead the whole time and has remaining unfinished business that wind up being unfilmable? The comic of this must be fun, Jonah Hex must be fun, the far superior progenitors to the abortions must also, by the Socratic Method, be fun. But when crammed into the soulless (lol) ZOG-controlled corporate machine that is mainstream Hollywood, we get a Ryan Reynolds movie that once more stirs up the confused feelings i have about the man.

For the most part, I hate Ryan Reynolds. It might not be entirely his fault, but the man cultivates his image, of a snarky sarcastic too-cool-4-skool canadian asshole who'd fuck your girlfriend behind your back and lie to you about while trying to climb over your gearshift to unbuckle your pants, and you wind up getting chlamydia. BUT (there's always a juicy butt), he also has a skill, an infuriatingly charming and enjoyable skill, that when used appropriately can wind up creating a hell of a piece. Buried, for one. Goddamn that movie is the tops. Safe House (carried 99% by the presence of Denzel but I'll jerk off over that American Treasure another day). His supporting role in Adventureland. Waiting..., even Blade 3. When he succeeds, in whatever way, he hits big.

But the failures completely overshadow every single thing that might be positive or good or prove there's any light in the world, and Green Lantern almost singlehandedly proves that. But now it has a best friend, a roommate in hell. and it is R.I.P.D.

I'm not going too far into the plot (or obvious lack thereof), but when a film starts centered around a gold heist orchestrated by a pair of dirty cops, you get interested. Then the rest of the movie happens, and you get angry at the people in the rows in front of you who are laughing at this.... this THING. When Jeff Bridges shows up, dusting off his Rooster Cogburn accent from the superb reimagining of True Grit, something breaks, and the damage is done.

"Deados" are what out heroes call the antagonists. Souls of the deceased who do not ascend to the judgement of St. Peter, but instead remain on Earth and decay and mutate until they resemble shittily lazily animated antagonists from Left 4 Dead 2. "PILLS HERE" i desperately wanted someone to shout, so I could dull the pain of this cinematic monstrosity. And then Kevin Bacon, in his usual 'Kevin Bacon as the antagonist' style commences, to make you wish you were watching Hollow Man.

Nothing about R.I.P.D. is good, You can't even enjoy looking at it, or laughing at it in the most ironic of senses. If you want to get angry at a comic book movie where the main character is basically a zombie, go watch Jonah Hex. It's a half hour shorter than this pile, and is also lacking in any horrible usages of "Let's Get It On" literally EVERY TIME the avatar of Jeff Bridges' ghost is onscreen and every single man who looks at her immediately gets a raging hard erection and goes into 'papa horney, Michael' mode.

The Delicious Dessert of the Real

Like all nerds, I love franchise opportunities. The more of something, the usual better. Half a thousand Star Trek Episodes, 200+ of Stargate, the Law & Order universe, infinitely many written words that range from Isaac Asimov to Richard Morgan to Kameron Hurley, and then... the hated trilogy.

I have every hope Pacific Rim turns into a series. After Hellboy 3, of course. And then there are the THREE Indiana Jones films, the Original and canonical Star Wars films, The Nolan Batman trilogy especially Dark Knight Rises which is awesome to seduce someone to since Tom Hardy's Bane voice equals lubricant, and finally The Matrix and select parts of its following ventures.

I love The Matrix. So much. Partly because it's sci-fi and it's required, partly because the first film's message affects me so closely, and partly because a huge area of me wants to be something that i'm not, and that if i believed and tried hard enough i could change things for the better.

I live in a world of limbo. Halfway between life and death. A dreamworld, if you will. And it's all because of biology. I am a scientist. I have to become one, and nothing will ever stop me from it, CSU system not accepting applications be damned.

It's because of that mindset that I realize that for all purposes of Darwinian natural selection I should not be alive. Ten years ago, a thousand years ago, I should have succumbed to a wasting disease. A natural and randomly occurring disease, that serves to control the properties of natural selection, a deoxy-ribonucleic acid based computer code aimed at preventing the virus from over expanding outside its containment limit.

But here I am, because of the end results of the thousand year long experiment with the science of medicine and its subfield of oncology, and you're reading this sentence. Which is why I'm dedicating my precious free time to writing about a movie franchise that inspired countless loners to start wearing black leather trenchcoats and pretend they knew kung-fu.

There's only so much I can say about this that hasn't already been said, from the philosophy to the visual style (i fukkin love green), to the implications of artificial intelligence, to the morality of having a huge orgy while a war is going on and you're fighting against the extinction of your entire species , but I'll try to bring something original to this conversation. Which I will start off with a quote. Highly unoriginal, I know.

"Morpheus: I won't lie to you, Neo. Every single man or woman who has stood their ground, everyone who has fought an Agent, has died. But where they have failed, you will succeed. 
Neo: Why? 
Morpheus: I've seen an Agent punch through a concrete wall. Men have emptied entire clips at them and hit nothing but air. Yet their strength and their speed are still based in a world that is built on rules. Because of that, they will never be as strong or as fast as you can be.
 Neo: What are you trying to tell me, that I can dodge bullets? 
Morpheus: No Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to." ~ http://thematrixtruth.remoteviewinglight.com/html/transcript-of-the-matrix-5.html

Every time I hear Larence Fishburne deliver that quote about Agents, I get the chills. There is something so powerful, so finite about his performance, if i was a voing man i'd have nominated Larry for a best supporting oscar right then and there.

Morpheus is so steadfastly sure in his beliefs that when they are invariably proved correct on the rooftop fight in that faceless L.A. rescue scene that it almost makes me a religious man.

I wish I could believe. Truly I do. If there was anything else that I could place my trust in in this universe aside from the inevitable forces of entropy and decay, I would. I don't like crying, but at the end of the day when you face it, the End of All Things is all that is left to me.
The Matrix is a parable of God, I know that for a fact. The original film is a commentary on the differences between logic and belief, a blending of science fiction, fantasy, western, thriller, drama, comedy, action, romance, foreign, every fucking genre you could imagine that it's the BEST Hollywood could ever churn out. This is the best we will ever get on the subject of philosophy. And it's not that bad. Reloaded and Revolutions are increasingly flawed realizations of the same premise, while Animatrix for all of its flaws is around the same level as its source material in quality.
I cannot and will not ever recommend the Matrix enough. The Wachowski siblings (one of whom apparently and applaudingly underwent gender reassignment therapy and I helped contribute to through the purchase of a ticket) stumbled upon one of the greatest philosophical contributions to decaying western society that we have ever known. There is so much that is RIGHT with The Matrix that I cannot criticize it, for all objections fall flat, especially since we truly do live in a dream world. Our very species cut off from the harsh reality of day.

In the end, would I choose the red pill or the blue pill? I may never really know. I hope against hope to make the right choice, the best choice, and it is my strongest wish that you do, too.

H To The Izzo, This Movie Was a Scourge On the Estate of F. Scott Fizgeraldizzo

I've been terrible at keeping this updated, I'm so, so sorry. I blame The Woman.

So. The Great Gatsby. In 3D. (which i actually saw in 2D but fuck you and come fight me if you think 3D in any way improves the narrative structure of a film).

By Baz Lurchman.

Where... where the fuck do I start? The director? The editors? The casting director? The actors? The visual effects? The bizarre decision to make a 3D adaptation of what might possibly be the Great American Novel? Or is it all of the above?

Yes.

I went to see this with Acacia on a date night to prove I can still plan things, and the classless boors who sat in the back row and dropped a 40 oz malt liquor bottle and sent glass skittering everywhere halfway though did not detract from the flim. That was the level of my unenjoyment.

In any other hands, this might have been a good movie. Seriously. Gatsby is an incredibly relevant piece of literature (unfortunately), that details the depressing emptiness to decadence, mindless self-indulgence, alcoholism, materialism, reckless hedonism, manifest destiny capitalism, and so many other -ism's I can't and won't go into describing them all. The disturbing parallels between roaring 20's era Jazz Age financial industry excess and pretty much every boom and bust cycle for the past century are SO GODDAMN PRESCIENT THAT YOU'D THINK THE CLOWNS IN CONGRESS WOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. BUT THEY DON'T. WHAT A BUNCH OF CLOWNS.

But is any of that evident in this particular movie? Only superficially. Which is the exact wrong way to depict the catastrophic precursor culture to the great depression. But that's entirely the fault of Bahz Lurchmann.

To start off, the first 45 minutes of this movie made me angry. Not because of any plot that happened on the screen, but the absolutely confounding  editing process.

Now, I know WHY they did this to me, but my real question is also why? From the start of the picture (that actually stars Tobey Macguire and not Leonardo di Caprio like the previews would lead you to believe), 3D effects more gratuitous than the final cumshot to an hourlong culioneros skin flick featuring Nekane are rampant.

I need to watch this again, to count the amount of cuts there are during a conversation, or a long silence. My estimate is closer to every three seconds. Its so FUCKING fast, and frenetic, i just know that the movie aims to stay moving in order to keep its audience's attention. Which is insulting on an entirely other level.

In order to more properly justify the expense of releasing the movie in 3D, they camera motion had to be constant. Unending. The set design and backgrounds of a 1923 period piece don't grab your eye on their own, unless you are an aspergian faglord who loves intricate easily missed setpieces (me). Every time the camera slowly pans across an actor as they sit motionless in a chair reciting dialogue, the background moves, too. Which make the 3D effects pop, and allows people to go home and feed themselves after selling their souls and working for a corporate machine in creating this affront to the name of cinema.

It just... sucks. I'm tired of always being shown things and not told anything. We don't need this kind of indulgence if there's no superstructure. I'm all for lavish, beautiful and creative visual effects, but if you can't back it up with something that justifies its expense then you might as well blow your brains out on the wall and leave something much more 3D than anything i've ever seen onscreen.

Plot: surprisingly passable, even though it kind of reinforces the fact that Gatsby is a shitty movie but a great book. It just doesn't have the 1st, 2nd, 3rd act structure that movies need.

And then we come to this. The music.

I am completely and utterly stupid when it comes to music. I love weird shit. I will listen to the entire discography of the Beastie Boys (rip M.C.A. you were one of the best humans), hipster on to Run DMC, jam the fuck out to the Black Keys, get my estrogen on with Adele, Ellie Goulding, Kate Nash, get drunk as shit and listen to 105.1 K-Mozart, and pretty much sit through whatever you have playing. I LIKE music. One of my favorite things to do is search youtube for Taylor Swift music videos and laugh at them, and unironically enjoy N*Sync or Britney concerts.

I'm weird.

But this... this THING, executive produced by Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter is just weird and off-putting and poorly planned. Contemporary and modern musical pieces go back to back, dragging you back and forth between the bleeding THEN and the dead NOW. Boardwalk Empire, a similar era period-piece, stays rooted entirely in the past. All the music is from the 1910-20's, much like Deadwood, which adds to the enjoyment.

Gatsby? Well...

Look, I like Jay-Z. For all the faults that that might entail, you racist. But his music has no place here. The Jazz Age rendition of the Beyonce song later in the movie is entirely fitting, but PLAYING "H To The Izzo" WHILE THE CAMERA PANS OVER A CAR FULL OF PARTYING JAZZ AGE BLACK PEOPLE IS STUPID, PROBABLY RACIALLY INSENSITIVE SOMEHOW, AND JUST... FUCK. I got mad, Acacia got mad, for entirely different reasons that wound up overlapping and allowed us to make out in the car later.

The modern pieces wind up petering out about an hour into the film and it gives itself entirely over to Gershwin and his cadre of similarly sounding influences and generic movie score. Which is great, but it should have been like that from the beginning.

Overall... this is a masturbatory flick spawned from the loins of a shitty director, costume designers, interior decorators and people who are obsessed with Art Deco for the form over the function, the style over the substance.

I'm sorry, white people, but you blew it. there's too much here to ignore, and that you completely overlooked. Class struggle, racial inequalities, the impact of World War on the psyche of the returning veteran, the role of women in 20's society that at the same time (like now) that valued them purely for their sex appeal but at the same time judged them for being TOO goddamn sexy, the deja vu effect of teh Matrix when it changes something... EVERYTHING.

Baz Lurhmann is not the person to have given this to. I don't have a list of names on hand to suggest different directors, but Lurhmann is so obsessed with the superficial, what looks and feels good, i'm amazed that Aussie fuck hasn't checked into a rehab clinic for MDMA abuse.

THINK FOR GOD'S SAKE. Let your brain live. Read the book, read any book, watch Breaking Bad, The Wire, Deadwood, anything. I beg you. Please. there's nothing wrong with fun, but the fun had on this was son wrong it makes me wish i was born a hundred years earlier so i could beg Lenin to take an aspirin every day after dinner so he didn't die of a stroke and lead to the worst outcome of socialism that could possibly be imagined.

Two fuck's out of five, only because I love Art Deco so much and will use this moment to plug the novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", which is accessible to both die-hard comic fans and normies alike.

Fear Is the Mind Killer

"A month after the release of The Last Airbender, Will Smith contacted M. Night Shyamalan on August 6 to wish him "Happy Birthday" and to persuade him to direct his movie with his son Jaden Smith as the star.^[6]"

^{Will Smith is dumb as shit.} 

What is it that allows someone to succeed in cinema?

Acting talent? A creative mind capable of exposing the audience to a fantastical wonderland that makes us laugh AND think? Really good blowjob skills?

After today I'm pretty sure it's luck. Knowing your way around a pole is all and good, but it's pure luck.

How else do we explain After Earth, the newest tag-team adventure brought to us from acclaimed writer Will Smith and revolutionary director M. Knight Shymamalam?

After Earth is a hodgepodge of themes, storylines, and accents. Straight from the mind of a 14 year old screenwriter, we open on the clunky expositional narration delivered by Jaden Smith, or as he shall henceforth be known: Kitai Raige, son of Space Ranger General Cipher Raige:

Our prodigal son lays out the state of the universe for us, in which 1,000 years ago humans pollute earth too much and must evacuate. The Space Ranger Corps save humanity by taking them to a new planet called "Nova Prime" which is then promptly overrun by aliens who deploy Hork-Bajir style shock troops soldiers.
These aren't your granddad's tinfoil suit alien spaceman blitzkrieg soldiers, though, oh lawdy no. These are some weird 6 limbed eyeless bugdog monster whose secret weapons is that they smell fear pheromones.

This is where I end this review since it's so fucking stupid that i'm not going to talk about fanfiction anymore. I'm just going to detail my complaints.
1: The actors. Jayden Jaymes cannot act. He just can't. He's in that awkward teenager stage where he's still developing his adult face, and he's ugly as hell right now. Couple that with no innate charisma and a father who is a literal brazillionaire and you have a recipe for disaster.
Will Smith criminally underused himself. Aside from the weirdass Baltimore area accent he was trying to portray as a future accent (which i picked up from my many hours of The Wire viewing), if the movie centered around  him it might have been passable. Except it wasn't. Couple that with the fact that you don't know how his last name is pronounced and it just winds up making you angry. Will Smith says his last name sounding like "rage", the emotion. Which is FUCKING STUPID. But every other ancillary character pronounces it as "raiche" like the alternate non-movie pronunciation of Ra's al-Ghul, which i find much more preferable.
2: Everything else. The general plot of the movie was stupid, shitty garbage that is worse to film than my Relict series that involves an old man, a black guy, a big titted blonde lady, a princess and an excomminucated alien fighting to stop the apocalypse that for some reason that involved mechanical spiders.

2a: The eagle. You have to see the movie to believe this subplot. I can't even describe it, but it's dumb as FUCK. I just.... I can't put it into text. Ask me about it in person.