Brent is Angry at Room 237, leaves an upper decker in the bathroom

 

As I consider myself to be a student of both Stanley Kubrick and the horror genre of films, The Shining stands as one of my favorite movies. 

Although it was largely unloved upon its original release, The Shining quickly scaled the heights of fandom to become recognized as one of "the scariest movies of all time." I personally don't find the movie to be all that scary, but I do think the cumulative effect is spooky, somewhat unsettling. What I respond to the most are those Kubrickian hallmarks: the glacial pacing, those slow-tracking dolly shots, the cold and somewhat detached performances from the actors, the sometimes jarring score. All of these elements mix nicely with a the traditional elements of horror to produce a unique film that only grows richer with each viewing.

So, imagine my eager anticipation when I first read about Room 237, a documentary about other fans of The Shining who had watched it so much that they'd developed conspiracy theories about the hidden meanings of the movie.

Sure, we've all read about the nuts who think Kubrick shot the footage of the faked moon landing, and how he'd left winking clues in his subsequent films. But the ideas of The Shining being an allegory of the Holocaust, or of the plight of the American Indian, these were new ideas to me.

So, I waited. I was hoping it would screen locally, but that day never came. I was willing to rent it, or travel to see it, or buy it outright. I scoured torrents. But I just couldn't find it.

Then the announcement came that IFC would be distributing the doc On Demand, and so the countdown began.

I decided that we'd hold a movie night, where we'd watch The Shining, followed by the documentary. And so, after many false starts and some calendar juggling, we finally made that happen this weekend.

The Shining is still The Shining. It's still slow and a little silly, but how could you not love it? Has Jack Nicholson ever been more Jack Nicholson-y? Has Kubrick ever been more Kubrickian? It's just such a gorgeously shot and hypnotically cut movie, watching it, it's easy to see why folks who are inclined to search for patterns where patterns may not actually exist could be sucked into their own headspace by this movie. It's a really great one.

Then came Room 237.

I had been warned by a couple of friends that I would be disappointed, that the documentary wasn't very good. However, I'd read just as many accolades raving that it was a great, great film. Crap, go look at that beautiful poster again. If you loved The Shining, and you also loved crazy people, you'd be pretty stoked by that poster, right? Critics seemed to love this movie.

So, I went into the screening hopeful that perhaps my friends were just being a little harsh (which is usually my job).

I found, instead, that they'd been too kind.

Room 237 is very, very, very poorly made. Like, amateur level production. If this is the state of acclaimed modern documentaries, I'm going to start shooting some on my iPhone.

Don't get me wrong. Room 237 delivers on the promise of arguably crazy people offering up far-fetched theories on the hidden messages of The Shining. Some of these accounts are a snooze. Some of them are compelling. Not so compelling that I'd actually start to believe any of them for a second, mind you, but still, compelling.

But where Room 237 fails is in a basic film-making competency. And in that respect, it fails on every level.

The decision was made to not show the speakers, but to only hear them in voice over. Fine, I have no problem with that in and of itself as a device. But since we aren't seeing the speakers, we are instead shown a barrage of  film clips. And not just clips of The Shining, mind you. Or even just clips of other Kubrick films, used to enforce the claims.

No, instead we are assaulted by a litany of completely unrelated film clips from movies that have absolutely no connection to The Shining, Stanley Kubrick, or the theories being presented. No connection whatsoever.

And what's worse, we are shown several of the same clips REPEATEDLY. AND OFTEN IN SLO-MO. And I don't even mean, like, real slo-mo, but instead, what looks more like the "manual tracking" feature on an old 6-head VCR. It is relentless, it is endless, it is insufferable, IT MAKES NO SENSE. WHY???

This itself may have been forgivable if the audio accounts of the theorists had been up to snuff, but instead the recordings are also an amateur affair. Some of them have very poor audio fidelity, sodden with distortion that is often distractingly bad. Others suffer from a complete lack of editing, as background noises, children wandering into the conversation, etc. are left fully intact. This does not make for a compelling movie experience. It's just annoying.

If you love The Shining, and you love conspiracy theories, part of me would say sure, give this a shot. But there's another part that would advise you to skip Room 237 altogether and just read some wikis about these wacky theories. The stories you conjure in your brain will be far more well constructed than this flick. Bah.

Brent still likes Iron Man, even if Robert Downey Jr doesn't

 

Yup, this poster is hideous.

Watching Iron Man 3, one thing becomes very clear early on: Robert Downey Jr. must be so tired of strapping into the uncomfortable armor that he lobbied to be in the suit as little as possible in the new film.

Don’t worry, there’s still plenty of Iron action. Remote piloted suits, suits split up into individually responding parts, Rhodey in the War Machine/Iron Patriot armor, and more. (In fact, in the film’s climax, there’s much, much more.)

But as for scenes of RDJ inside of the actual Iron Man armor? Not much.

However, you probably won’t mind, because while the tone of the film fluctuates, it is never less than entertaining, oftentimes very much so. The vibe is different from the other Marvel films to date, as the movie primarily focuses on the high tech espionage angle of the character, occasionally dipping into buddy cop territory (which makes sense given the pedigree of writer/director Shane Black, who wrote the Lethal Weapon movies as well as writing/directing the RDJ starring Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.)  The movie sometimes plays like a mega budgeted television procedural drama.  There’s definitely more James Bond and CSI to IM3 than you might expect, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And don’t worry, just because Downey isn’t in the suit a great deal doesn’t mean he isn’t in the flick.

Actually, as has become the case, the movie is piloted by his singular performance. These films are as much about Downey flexing his charisma as they are about robots beating up on other robots. And since he’s superhumanly charming (his actual superpower?), this isn’t really an issue.

The story primarily centers around Tony Stark’s trek of revenge against global terrorist The Mandarin (Sir Ben Kingsley, in a delightful turn), and how he ties into the motives of tech guru Aldrich Killian (a supremely oily Guy Pearce) and his Extremis technology, which uses the human brain to make people more than human. There's also the fact that ever sense he fell out of a wormhole in the sky while fighting a bunch of aliens in New York, Tony has been a mass of anxiety. This thread is a nice touch, tying the new movie firmly into the greater Marvel movie universe without beating us over the head with it (aka Iron Man 2).

 

The plotlines dovetail in amusing ways. Iron Man 3 isn’t a real work out for your brain, but it at least provides its characters with interesting motivations and provides a couple of possibly unexpected twists.

As for the bad, I don’t have many complaints. There are times when the glow-in-the-dark super soldier villains look a bit cheesy. And again there’s the issue of RDJ’s very obvious desire to stay out of the suit as much as possible while still starring in an Iron Man movie (the effort going so far as to very awkwardly digitally place his face in some shots that definitely aren’t connected to his body). 

But these are very minor nits to pick. Iron Man 3 is fun stuff, and the change in tone is surprisingly welcome, proving the adaptability of the characters into various genres.  At the end of the day I still feel like the first Iron Man is still the best of the Marvel releases to date, but there’s no question that IM3 is a world better than the last outing, and that Marvel has become the go-to place for genuinely fun and smartly made action adventure flicks. I liked it quite a bit. Let me know what you thought.

SPOILER DISCUSSIONS!

-     _     Shouldn’t Pepper have been much, much angrier that Tony failed to catch her at the end? I mean, sure, she turns out to be fine, but Tony didn’t KNOW she’d survive. He failed, in a big way, and then jumps right back into fighting. It was definitely the most emotionally inconsistent part of the movie.

-     

-      _     Danny brought this up, and it hadn’t really occurred to me: the Iron Man suits are powered by the Arc Reactor in Tony’s chest, the same one that keeps the shrapnel away from his heart. But in IM3, the suits seem to have their own power source, as evidenced by the fact that the individual components of the armor are capable of flying themselves hundreds of miles to connect with Tony, and the fact that one of the suits LOSES power on his long flight to Tennessee, and must be recharged by a car battery type scenario. But if he still has the reactor in his chest, why wouldn’t the suit run off of that power? When did this change, and why? Was there something in Iron Man 2 that I missed because I thought it sucked? DANNY WANTS TO KNOW.

-      

      _     Poor Don Cheadle, he really does deserve better than this. Have you seen Hotel Rwanda? Boogie Nights? All we can hope is that he eventually gets his own War Machine movie out of the deal.

-     

    _       Playing “Spot the Armor” at the end of the flick is a fun game. Looking forward to freeze-framing those scenes. Thought I spotted some familiar looks, but can’t be sure.

Brent went to Hell, left unimpressed

 

So, my first warning should have been "From Roland Emmerich..." but I didn't really see that on the little miniature version of the poster for this movie that popped up in my Netflix queue. You know how it is: it's Saturday night, basketball season is over, the missus went to a book club meeting, you are sick as a dog, and you're scrolling through your queue, looking for something to scratch that cheap genre itch.

I have a couple hundred movies on my list, many of which demand respect and should have won out over this selection. And yet I am a child of the 80's, and I love sci-fi, and post-apocalyptic stuff in particular, so when something like this shows up, it gets thrown into the mix for future perusal. And this weekend, well, Hell's number came up.

Hell is a 2011 Swiss-German movie, set in the year something or other, where the Earth's temperature has risen 10 degrees Celsius (which translates to 15 litres, or 240 cubits, I believe), making everything very hot, bright, and unpleasant. We know this because whenever our protagonists leave the confines of their car, the film stock gets all washed out and we can't really see anything.

Since this is a post-apocalypse movie, you should already know that everything centers around Gas and Water. From The Road Warrior to Ice Pirates, we have been trained to understand that fuel and hydration are all that really matter in the future, and we will be willing to fight to the death (sometimes wearing spiked football shoulderpads, sometimes wearing eye patches and sleeveless shirts) to procure them.

Hell follows a lady, her teen sister, and the lady's boyfriend as they plan to drive into the Alps in hopes of finding sustenance. I don't remember any of the character names because who cares. While stopping in at a seemingly abandoned gas station (Note: seemingly abandoned anythings are never actually abandoned) they encounter a scruffy guy who seeks to rob them of their supplies. There is a scuffle, then a potentially lethal stand-off, and then once it turns out that he knows how to change a fan belt, he becomes a welcome member of the group. Because hey, mechanic.

What follows is unfortunately a very rote and unremarkable march through the tropes of Post-'Poc flicks: searches for water, roving gangs of bad guys, sexual assault and cannibalism. Such elements are ripe for exploitation thrills, but this movie is sorely lacking in that regard. With this material you either need to do something new, or go for the throat. Hell tries to play it straight down the middle, and in doing so amounts to little more than a series of foreign language outtakes of lesser scenes from The Road.

To be sure this isn't a bad movie. The performances are fine, even good, and the movie is competently constructed. But in such a crowded genre, it's going to take more to rise above the heard. Hell falls far short of its namesake. I'm willing to go as far as Heck, and that's generous.

Brent Loved Pontypool!

The voice-over intro to Pontypool is rambling and somewhat disjointed, and yet it seems to pull a double trick by both establishing the spooky, vocabulary driven nature of the film, as well as dropping several clues as to the origin of the virus about to be released.

The plot is fairly simple: Grant Mazzy (the sonorously voiced Stephen McHattie) is a former big city shock jock who finds himself humbled to take the job of radio announcer at a station located in the basement of a church in small town Pontypool, Ontario. On his way to way to work he is approached by a woman who appears out of nowhere, spouting jibberish and banging on the window of his car.

Somewhat shaken, Grant goes on to his shift at the station, where he is joined by engineer and war hero Laurel-Ann (Georgina Reilly) and his producer Sydney Briar (played by his real life wife Lisa Houle).

Pretty soon the dots are connected between the woman who approached him that morning, and news of an outbreak of violence at the home of Dr. Mendez (Hrant Alianak).

On the surface Pontypool is the story of a infected/zombie-ish outbreak in a small French-Canadian town, but what separates it from the herd is the style in which the story is told, and the method of the transmission of the outbreak. The tone is darkly comic without ever fully tipping the scales into parody.

For most zombie/infection pictures, the line of influence can be most directly drawn to the great George Romero Dead movies. However, with Pontypool, the most obvious stylistic influence is Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Although Pontypool is based on the book Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess (who also wrote the screenplay for this film adaptation), it came of no surprise when I learned that it had also been simultaneously adapted as a radio play, a format which would be very much suited to the strengths of this particular story.

Most of the action unfurls within the confines of the radio station, the story told on the faces of Grant and Sydney as they take calls from locals, and in particular from their "eye in the sky" helicopter reporter Ken Loney (who actually does his reports from his Datsun parked up on a hill, as the station can't actually afford a helicopter). While you never actually SEE Ken Loney, the conviction of his voice, coupled with the reactions of the radio station staff, sells you on the reality of the person, and the events he is witnessing.

It's remarkable how much tension can be drawn from the method of telling, not showing. As always, what is conjured in the imagination is so much more vivid than what is often shown on screen. No amount of latex makeup can match the horrors created in our brains. And so it is that Pontypool makes us see an entire city filled with flesh-eating monsters, without ever showing us much of anything at all.

It's the sort of movie I wish I had made, and in fact, it is inspirational in that effect. I can't imagine that it had a very large budget, and most of the action is confined to a single space. However, it is a testimony to the strength of writing, acting and sound design, that a movie as shoestring thin as Pontypool could be a thousand times more frightening than any number of multi-million dollar CGI crapfests from Hollywood. Very highly recommended to those who like their scares to be a little more atmospheric, and a little less splattery (though there is some of that as well).

Pontypool is available on Netflix streaming.

Brent really liked Rob Zombie's The Lords of Salem

 

Rob Zombie's career has been frustrating for me, in that he has often times failed to live up to his obvious potential.

There is no question that he is immensely talented. In the interest of full disclosure, I confess that I was a fan of his art metal outfit White Zombie, who mixed audio clips from Hammer Horror movies with grinding stoner metal, married to a visual carny horror show aesthetic. If I have an alley, that would be pretty much all up in it.

In time, musically speaking, RZ seemed to lose his way. His solo act continued along the techno and dance trends of White Zombie's latter day albums, and though his popularity increased enormously, I tuned out. The music just didn't speak to me.

So it was that I met his first film, House of 1000 Corpses, with very low expectations, and was subsequently delighted to have them surpassed by the actual movie. To be sure, Ho1kC is not a great movie, but there is a certain magic to its everything and the kitchen sink approach to horror. The movie is jam-packed with ideas, not all of them very bright, but most of them memorable. The story doesn't really hold, the script isn't so hot, the performances aren't so great, (aside from a very game Sid Haig in what would turn out to be a star making turn as chicken-selling clown Captain Spaulding) but the story of a family of serial killers who terrorize couples in their ramshackle den of evil is plenty entertaining. The need to one up each gruesome scene with a new set piece leaves the movie piling up the cliches faster than you can count them, but they're never less than interesting to look at.

Again, it's not great, it is incredibly uneven, the pacing is way off, and there are the aforementioned issues with the words and the people who are saying them. But Ho1kC showed great PROMISE. I came out of the movie not sure exactly what I'd seen, but certain that RZ was going to be a filmmaker to watch.

I feel like my faith was rewarded with his follow up, The Devil's Rejects. If Ho1kC was his gonzo take on The Hills Have Eyes, then TDR was the gritty Texas Chainsaw Massacre On the Road follow up.

The Devil's Rejects is a much more streamlined horror/crime hybrid. Gone is the basement laboratory of Dr. Satan, and all of the unnecessary oddness contained therein. Instead, Captain Spaulding (the aforementioned Sid Haig), Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) and Otis (Bill Moseley) flee their home as they are pursued by a dogged Texas sheriff (William Forsythe), leaving a trail of corpses in their wake.

Where Ho1kC was a candy colored carnival haunted house nightmare, TDR is straight forward grimy exploitation. The film is grainy, emulating the 1970's grindhouse pics of yore. And its this grounding in reality that gives the movie its weight. When Otis brushes his hair out of his face and tells a victim "I am The Devil, and I am here to do the Devil's work,", it's powerfully creepy stuff.

TDR still suffers some of the problems with dialogue that dogged its predecessor. RZ uses "fuck" in his scripts as a space filler the way most folks us "like" or "um". There's so much pointless cursing that it quickly progresses from forced to annoying. 

However, while TDR is shocking, grueling, and often times very, very unpleasant, it firmly established that RZ had the real stuff as a film-maker.

So imagine my disappointment when he made two Halloween movies that were so god awful that I'm not even going to talk about them anymore after I finish this sentence.

So it is with a glad heart that I tell you that though it seemed like our friend Rob had been derailed, with his new picture, The Lords of Salem, not only has he proven that he still has the goods, he has also delivered his most mature and complete film to date.

Still employing the grainy-filmed textures of 1970's exploitation flicks (hey, don't fix it if it ain't broke) The Lords of Salem is the story of  Heidi (again with the Sherri Moon Zombie) a dreadlocked recovering heroin addict who works as part of a late night radio DJ trio, alongside a RZ stand in (Jeff Daniel Phillips) and hip talking black guy (Ken Foree of Dawn of the Dead and Zombie's The Devil's Rejects). 

The gang features a regular segment on their show during which they play records by aspiring artists and praise or trash them on the air. So it is no surprise when an album shows up at the station, addressed to Heidi.

The vinyl album comes clamped in an ominous wooden box, the only name attributed to the group being The Lords. When the record is played, the women of Salem (Heidi included) are caught in its sway, gripped by some sort of satanic hypnosis.

What follows would be a pretty standard riff on Rosemary's Baby (a trio of kindly old women care for Heidi, but in fact their motives are more sinister), but I won't spoil the exact details...though honestly I don't think it would really impact your enjoyment of the movie.

So, the story isn't particularly original, but what works is the telling. As I said earlier, this is RZ's most complete, mature film. He has largely abandoned his dialogue crutch ("Fuck" being uttered only once or twice) and has managed to bring the performances down several notches. Sherri Moon Zombie may never be a great actress, but this is definitely her most restrained performance to date, and both she and the movie are much better for it.

To be certain, there are a lot of RZ's gimmes on display here; for one, there are plenty of lingering shots of the (admittedly glorious) bare backside of his wife. Hey, sure, why not. 

He also continues to employ ladies from what I'm pretty sure represents the list of the major crushes of his youth. His previous movies gave us Karen Black, Priscilla Barnes and PJ Soles, and with TLoS he serves up Patricia Quinn (Magenta from Rocky Horror Picture Show), Dee Wallace (The Hills Have Eyes, The Howling, E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, etc) Maria Conchita Alonso (who still looks good to me!) and Judy Geeson. The obvious fanboy slant to his casting only serves to make his movies more endearing to those of us who dig classic character actors and the ladies of horror. Let me go ahead and put in a request now for Linnea Quigley in your next flick, Rob.

Also of note is RZ's usage of familiar pop music in unusual context. The Lords of Salem features a song written and performed by the titular Lords, but its intended creepiness is outshined by the unexpected presence of The Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties". It sounds positively evil.

There comes a point when the movie comes dangerously close to tipping over the edge...this point being when a satan midget with chicken wings shows up...but ultimately the movie pulls back just in time from falling into self parody. It's not a serious movie, per se, but it does have a quiet, sinister atmosphere, adequately creating a sense of unease while never providing much in the way of actual scares.

Instead, the movie climaxes spectacularly, serving up a psychedelic onslaught of religious/shock horror tropes, bordering on silly but still aggressively serving up the trippy vibe. 

With The Lords of Salem, Rob Zombie has given us his Suspiria. It is a simple story told with great visual passion, and while it may build slowly, the pay off was ultimately worth it for this viewer.

I'm pretty sure most mainstream film goers would hate, hate, HATE this movie, so I can't say I recommend it to everyone, or maybe even anyone. But if you think this might be the sort of thing to scratch a particular itch, you'll be pleased. Fans of this sort of stuff can smell it in the air, and I'm happy to tell those people that The Lords of Salem is the real deal. Rob Zombie is back on the right track, and I'd like to think that eventually he's going to serve up a masterpiece. Stay tuned!

Brent is pretty much ok with The Evil Dead, if it has to exist

 

Some time ago I just had to reconcile myself with fact that these horror remakes were going to keep coming whether I whined about it or not. I actually enjoyed Dawn of the Dead.  I endured Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Hills Have Eyes (and its sequel). I lamented Halloween, Halloween 2, and The Fog. I shook my head in disbelief that someone thought the world would want remakes of I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left.

Hollywood had bludgeoned me so constantly with the reanimated corpses of my favorite horror classics, to the point where I could no longer muster the strength to complain about The Evil Dead being trotted out to the re-imagining slaughterhouse. There was a time when the very idea of befouling such a holy cinematic relic with a remake would have sent me wailing, gnashing teeth, and the whole bit. But by now, what could I do other than shrug my shoulders?

It lessened the blow when I found out that original director Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell would be executive producing the remake, a production of Raimi's Ghost House Pictures company. It's sorta like finding out that you're going to be beaten up by one of your best friends. It's going to suck, but hopefully they'll make it as painless as possible.

Perhaps this wasn't the right attitude to bring into the movie. Perhaps it was exactly the right attitude. All I can say is that by keeping my expectations suitably lowered, I was able to come away somewhat impressed with what I saw.

Evil Dead (no extraneous "The" this time, thanks!) is a new story featuring new characters, who are put through very familiar paces. If you're a fan of Raimi/Tapert/Campbell's Evil Dead trilogy (and really, what sort of person wouldn't be? A jerk?) you will catch the many references to the earlier films.

So, this is a remake in that it is once again a story about five friends who go to a cabin in the woods, encounter the Necronomicon, and then are forced to do battle with the demons who are inadvertently released from the book. There's a mash up of calling cards from the first two films; no one gets a pencil in the ankle and there's no stop-motion animated corpse meltdown scene, but there's a one-handed person wielding a chainsaw, a glimpse of "The Classic" (Raimi's old car that appears in each of his movies), a possessed lady singing nursery rhymes in a basement, and an act of sexual assault performed by possessed foliage.

The Evil Dead was an exercise in guerilla filmmaking overcoming a zero-budget production. Raimi's nascent mastery of ingenious camera work and fierce cutting was coupled with a relentless assault of gore (which now seems almost quaint in hindsight), to produce a jarring, inventive masterwork of z-grade horror.

Evil Dead II was The Evil Dead with a budget and a sense of humor, as Raimi refined his insane camera movements and Campbell perfected his punishing slapstick bonehead leading man persona. Taken together, those two movies are a veritable textbook on low/no budget film making, horror or otherwise. There's scarcely a wrong move between them. I really hate to bring this word out, as it is far diminished by over-use, but Evil Dead 2 is what I consider "genius" film-making. It is pure cinema.

Our new Evil Dead goes for the straight horror of the original film, altogether eschewing the "splatstick" genre that EDII (and later Army of Darkness) pioneered. And what it lacks in replicating Raimi's nigh inimitable camera style, it attempts to make up for in piling on the gore.

This version of the story revolves around Mia, a heroin addict who is retiring to a cabin in the woods with her brother and closest friends, in order to kick the habit for good. As one of the party discovers the Book of the Dead wrapped in barbed wire in the basement (I guess someone thought it was a good idea to just leave it laying around?) and makes the sound decision to open it up and read from the passages aloud, a demonic presence is released. The film attempts to create some question as to whether or not the events are really happening, or if they're all just a product of Mia's withdrawal-addled imagination. But that interesting take on the story is jettisoned soon enough as the bodies start to pile up.

The movie is often squirm-inducing, and downright unpleasant in stretches. It pushes the envelope of R-Rated gore about as far as it can go. And I suppose that's admirable, to some degree. But in my heart, squirms don't necessarily equal scares, and what the film adds in goopy latex, it loses in genuine atmospheric creepiness.

In the original films, the cabin and the surrounding woods were actual characters, every bit as important as Campbell and Co. Their roles feel diminished in this movie, but not really to the benefit of the human characters, who range from caricatures to barely drawn cyphers. It is difficult if not impossible to foster any empathy for them, and therefore there's no emotional resonance when, say, one of them saws their arm off with an electric carving knife.

I don't want you to get the impression that I didn't like the movie, because I did. I didn't love it, but I liked it.  In fact, I liked the opening sequence very much, and there were several well composed shocks. It's well made. It's just hard to measure up to the high water mark set by the earlier movies, so much so that it is unfair to compare them. But that is what we must do, I'm afraid.

Evil Dead is a stylishly made, unrelentingly gruesome and occasionally amusing horror film. If you like this sort of thing, it'll give you what you looking for. But not much more than that.

Brent is Angry at G.I. Joe Retaliation

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If you’re the sort of person who might actually come to this site and read this sort of thing, we will forgo a detailed plot summary of G.I. Joe Retaliation. I would assume you are familiar with the concepts of G.I. Joe, Cobra, guns and movies. There’s not much else to glean, aside from a master of disguise impersonating a president, and imminent nuclear destruction.  Got it?

The makers of G.I.Joe Retaliation attempted to learn from the mistakes of the first film…but instead have simply made a whole new batch of mistakes. 

Although its predecessor G.I.Joe : The Rise of Cobra was a cartoonish, woodenly acted, terribly written, hamfisted CGI mess, it was at least created with the idea of being "fun".  Whether it actually succeeded at being fun is debatable (I would take the “Oh God no” argument), but they tried, damn it.

Retaliation, on the other hand, is played totally straight (aside from a litany of truly terrible jokes).  The problem with this “real world” approach is that it’s difficult to take the somber atmosphere seriously when confronted with the silly code names, garish costumes, and howlingly bad dialogue. You can’t have it both ways. Rise of Cobra sucked, but at least it knew what it was.

And just so it doesn’t seem like I’m being unnecessarily mean, let’s look at some of the good things about this movie:

 

* There seems to have been a real effort to use practical effects when possible over CG. Or at least the CG wasn’t as noticeable, for me. Many of the vehicles used seemed to have real weight, and exist in real space. I think they actually built some of those weird-ass tanks, hovercrafts and bikes, and that is pretty cool. Good on ya. Let’s have more of that, thanks.

·          * Although I normally detest the ninja element of the G.I. Joe mythos, I must give credit where credit is due; the indisputable highlight of the movie is a lengthy fight/chase across the mountaintops of what I’m assuming is Tibet (I wasn’t really paying attention). It is the closest that the movie ever comes to being exciting.

*    * Snake Eyes' mask doesn't have a creepy mouth on it anymore, thank God.

·          And…I think that’s probably it for the good stuff.

Now, my nitpicks, which are particularly pedantic considering I didn’t even LIKE the first movie so why am I writing about this oh please stop me before I kill again

·         * Where are the other Joes from the first movie? I mean, I don’t exactly MISS Marlon Wayans, but some acknowledgement that he (and Scarlett and Heavy Duty and every single other character from the first movie) existed at all would have been nice, or maybe not even nice, but it would have at least made sense. This is the rare sequel that seems to pretend that its first film never really existed, or if it did, had little impact on what was to follow.

  

Instead we get exactly two returning Joes (Channing Tatum’s Duke and Ray Park’s Snake Eyes), three new Joes who we are supposed to pretend we are familiar with (Lady Jaye played by some chick with god-awful fake tits who always manages to have perfect makeup and hair even during combat, and some other guy who I am told was supposed to be Flint, because he got to wear a beret in the last scene. OH, spoiler alert, he survives the entire movie).

Otherwise, the ranks of G.I.Joe are filled by a bunch of nameless, faceless grunts (but not Grunt, mind you) who are slaughtered (bloodlessly, of course…this flick is PG-13) before we can get to know anything about them. Where are the characters from the first film? Where are any other characters from the Joe comics and cartoons? I mean, I don’t need to have a detailed profile of each guy on the field, but would it have killed them to have a guy run around in the background with a red football jersey?

This immediate need to dispatch with as many characters as possible as quickly as possible, in order to tell the tale of three people you don’t know anything about anyway, seems counter-intuitive to me from a marketing standpoint. If you want to sell this thing to kids, sell them on the characters. From the Marvel Universe to Pokemon, kids love memorizing all the random code names, costumes, weapons and such of an entire universe of characters. To strip the G.I. Joe pantheon down to essentially four, maybe five or six characters tops…it just seems so odd.

·         And that’s just the Joes. What happened at Cobra?  Also gone are Baroness (who is never mentioned at all…wait, did she die in the first movie? I really can’t remember) and Destro, who is represented by a body suspended in high-tech prison juice. Why even mention Destro if you’re never actually going to show Destro, who was something of a major character in the first flick? And there's the fact that Cobra Commander doesn't actually seem anything like the Cobra Commander from the first movie. I understand that there was no way in hell you were actually going to get Joseph Gordon-Levitt back for this sequel, but these don't even remotely seem like the same characters.

·         Of course, if he had been in the movie, there’s no guarantee he would have had anything to do. Poor Arnold Vosloo returns here as Zartan, and by that I mean he has exactly one line of dialogue where half of his face appears, and then appears two more times, both in silence, once wearing Old Chinese Guy makeup that makes Joel Grey in Remo Williams look like an authentic Chineeman, and once again later after he is dead. Sorry about the spoiler. Believe me, you don't care. What I'm saying is: someone please give Arnold Vosloo more work, so he doesn't have to do stuff like this to collect a paycheck. He was Imhotep. He was Darkman in the direct to video Darkman sequels when they couldn't afford Liam Neeson anymore, ferchrissakes.

But for most of the movie, Zartan isn’t Zartan. He is Jonathan Pryce in a double role, playing both the President of the United States, as well as Zartan playing the President of the United States. I like Pryce, I think he’s an underappreciated gem of a character actor, but he’s can’t really do much with the crap he’s given to say.

·         So, that leaves Cobra Commander, President Zartan, Storm Shadow, and new guy Firefly, as the only named members of Cobra. Again…why???

·         * And what is going on with the accents in this movie? Where the hell is Firefly supposed to be from?  At first I thought Australia. Then I thought Texas. Then I thought “Holy shit, what the hell is going on here?”  And the less said about The RZA’s work as Blind Master, the better. I mean…whoa.

·         * You can practically see Bruce Willis counting the zeroes in his paycheck. There’s phoned in, and there’s phoned in. And Bruce is phoning it in like A.G. Bell.

Look, I love G.I. Joe, in my way, and I still believe, in my heart, that it is possible to make a really good G.I.Joe movie. But two films and hundreds of millions of dollars later, we’re no closer than we were when I was a kid.

Now it’s time to prepare my soul for yet another cinematic Transformers abomination.  Why do I hate myself so much?

PS: We didn't see it in 3D, because 3D sucks, so I have no comment on that, except to say Don't See 3D Movies. You're paying more money for a dimmer picture and generally worse movies.

PPS: If you want to experience a G.I. Joe story written with intelligent adults in mind, you can't go wrong with G.I.Joe: Cobra: The Last Laugh.  This is G.I.Joe in the "real world" done right. A very clever, incredibly violent and oftentimes surprising story starring everyone's favorite Joe, Chuckles. Seriously. It's like they tried to use every Joe character that was ever mocked for sucking (Crystal Ball, Croc Master) and managed to make them awesome. And G.I. Joe affiliation aside, this is just a really well written and composed espionage comic. If you dig Brubaker's Captain America, I think you'd probably like this too.Check it out