Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

…could be cited in a screenwriting textbook as a perfect example of what NOT to do in a screenplay. This was awful! Characters have weak goals, they set out on quasi-quests that go unfulfilled, they leave notes for people they hope to confront. It’s a disaster! They all DESERVE to die! There’s one funny scene in a TGI Friday’s that hints at what this movie could have been. A bacchanal. A balls-to-the-wall, petal-to-the-metal sex and revenge orgy. Then as the Earthlings stand naked and bloodied, awaiting their fate, the asteroid cruises right on by as the credits role. That’s the movie I want to see. This? This was terrible.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

An amazing, unknown piece of history! Some of today’s best historians, including Bill O’Reilly and the publishers of textbooks in Texas, have discovered brand new facts about historical figures and scientific theories that bravely and completely redefine what less enlightened “scientists” and “historians” have been teaching us for years. This is no exception. Not only do vampires exist, but they caused the civil war. Lincoln was secretly trained to kill them! The cinematic depiction of Lincoln’s secret life is a bloody, flaming bonanza! Here’s hoping this information, along with the truth about where we come from, creationism, makes it into text books as soon as possible.

Savages

It’s actually kind of tame for an Oliver Stone movie. The ad campaign cultivates hope for another Natural Born Killers, a funny, insanely violent satire. But Savages falls more in line with U Turn, a dirty, dustbowl crime-fiction noir. A world in which there’s bad people and then there’s WORSE people. So it’s less dangerous than the title and the trailers would have you believe. Not that that’s bad. There are fun moments. But the ending’s a debacle so this is a mixed bag.

The Do-Deca-Pentathlon

The busy Duplass brothers just put out a movie in March, Jeff, Who Lives at Home. This seems like the same movie, but not as good. It’s more ugly, more “mublecore”, and the motives of the characters are less worked out. I admired this movie for the low-tech, improv style in which it was made. Five characters, one house, and lots of tension. This looks like it was made with a couple of credit cards. But the story of the feuding brothers in Jeff Who Lives at Home, along with the great cast, makes it a much better movie than this.

Safety Not Guaranteed

A pleasant romantic comedy about a reporter who at first investigates then befriends a kook who believes he can travel through time. The reporter, Aubrey Plaza, impressively acts with her eyes more than anything else, to great effect. The kook, played by Marc Duplass, is a little hard to believe as a sincere but misunderstood geek, since I’ve seen him play the wise-ass in so many other things, including The League. The movie says a lot about love, and wanting to go back to the past for no other reason than to take another shot at a long lost crush. It runs a little slow at times, but it feels pretty honest.

The Queen of Versailles

Great, great, great documentary. Funny in all the wrong places. I can’t pronounce it, and I can’t use it in a sentence, but the word “schadenfreude” comes to mind, which is to say that watching these obnoxiously dumb and outrageously wealthy people go from being billionaires to millionaires is both hilarious and painful. The trophy wife at the center of the story is Jackie Siegel, a beauty queen who married a sleazy time-share billionaire thirty years her senior. When she gives a tour of the 90,000 square foot house she’s building, talking about the ice rink and the bowling alley, you want to strangle her. Watching the money disappear, watching them layoff the servants, and watching Jackie try and keep her family together is hilarious and poignant. As I was watching, I could almost FEEL my worldview changing. I thought about how out-of-touch these people were. About ugly and nasty extreme wealth could be. I thought about poor people. And I thought about myself, and areas in my life where I waste money. In the end, Jackie Siegel comes off as a pretty decent person who really just wants a nice life for her family. She likes the bubble that she’s in -- she more or less admits that. But when she buys her son a bike, and the film cuts to a garage full of at least a dozen bikes, you can’t help but wanting to grab a sign and head on down to the nearest occupy Wall Street protest. A must see movie.

Prometheus

It’s possible that I was so happy to be seeing this movie that I may not have been able to watch it objectively. I can admit that and I think it’s perfectly fair to feel that way. Nevertheless... Ridley Scott’s long-awaited prologue was fantastic to watch. Every frame and every sound was beautifully expressed by the actors, the designers and the crew. It’s true: the script leaves a million unanswered questions and there are times when characters do really stupid things that smart scientists in space just wouldn’t do. But there are great performances here, too. From Noomi Rapace to Michael Fassbender. There are suspenseful sequences that terrified me. There’s a four-minute “surgery” scene that’s one of the most hilariously tense scenes I’ve seen in any movie in years. And in spite of all of the unanswered questions, the movie fulfills EXACTLY what it promises to: the origins of the Alien. Beyond that, we’ll just have to wait for the sequels. I’d buy my tickets now if I could.

Crooked Arrows

A really corny underdog sports movie with all the best intentions. Make a movie about a less popular sport. Check. Make a movie featuring Native American culture and Native American actors. Check. Have the team win the big game against the rich white dudes. Check. Have the hero learn a valuable lesson about himself and his heritage. Check. Have a “Spartacus” moment. Check. Have several wise elders dispense pearls of wisdom like, “You have the speed of the eagle.” Check. It’s a very by-the-numbers movie, but the 12-year-olds I saw it with liked it.

Snow White and the Huntsman

Expertly designed. The dark and creepy contrasts beautifully with the fairy tale utopia. It’s Charlize Theron’s movie, and she dives enthusiastically into her crazy, narcissistic queen, having a ball the whole time. Conversely, Kristin Stewart pouts and sulks throughout, even at the end when she’s supposed to be happy. Would it kill her to smile once in a while? Show some fucking levity? Yeesh. Still, it’s a fun movie to watch, seeing the fairy tale world rendered with bona fide imagination.