The Wolverine

HOLY LATKE FRYING MOSES, THE STINGER FOR THIS MOVIE IS OUT OF THIS WORLD!!  THE NEXT X-MEN MOVIE IS GONNA ROCK.

*Ahem*

As for the rest of "The Wolverine", its a movie that isn't so much middle of the road as much as glued to the yellow dividing line.  This is the sixth X-Men movie at this point, a series that has gone from passably mediocre to sinfully awful and then briefly touching excellent with "X-Men First Class", until finally with this newest film going full circle and ending right back at passably mediocre again.  Its hard to imagine that there really was that much of a market to see a movie exclusively about Wolverine anymore, after he's already had the starring role in three of the X-Men movies and a whole prequel origins story to himself.  Admittedly, that prequel origins story was one of the worst super hero movies ever made, but its not like Wolverine is in desperate need of much exposure anymore.  Also, this is a sequel to "X-Men 3", a movie that doesn't quite need continuation as much as big pit in the Southwest in which to be buried for all time.

I mean, really?  Are there really people out there who spill sexual excitement when they hear that Wolverine is going to have yet another movie?  I'm sure there's those surviving members of the Nineties comics generation are oozing over Jean Valjean's pecks in that poster there, but as for us casual movie nerds, what does "The Wolverine" really offer?  To be fair, it did fix most of the issues of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", in that this movie is actually about Logan and not a badly rushed plot that existed mainly to find a way to shove Deadpool, Gambit, and a man in a bad fat suit into many many badly pandering cameos.  There are only three mutants in this movie, and one has a power that is entirely useless to combat and is instead just a girl really good with swords.  This time the plot is an evolving mystery putting Logan at the center of several warring factions and betrayals in the midst of modern Japan, basically making him the cynical detective in a noir story.

But just the fact that "The Wolverine" doesn't do anything particularly wrong doesn't make it a good movie.  Hugh Jackman, as always, is game as the lead, but none of the supporting characters are quite up to being in the same scene as him.  The main female love interest offers nothing beyond being a Princess in Another Castle.  The movie introduces a huge element of Wolverine losing his powers, making him actually vulnerable for once... then does nothing with it.

Only God Forgives

Since "Only God Forigves" is one of the most controversial films of the year, I've decided to do something a little different.  Rather than a traditional review, I'm going to stay a hypothetical conversation between director Nicolas Winding Refn and star Ryan Gosling.  Obviously this is all conjecture.  There is no way to know if this conversation ever took place, but I am certain some elements of this discussion had to happen at some point.  Even if the final product doesn't entirely show this, "Only God Forgives" was made by humans, presumably, and it helps to remind yourself this while watching it:

Ryan Gosling:  Okay, Nick, I'm a little confused as to my motivation here in this one scene.  Can you help me out a bit?

Nicolas Winding Refn:  Alright, alright, Ryan.  We can take five here.  What do you need, buddy?

Gosling:  Alright, I'm at a restaurant in Thailand.  I've brought this Thai prostitute with me to pose as my girlfriend for my evil Lady McBethian Mom.  Kristin Scott Thomas over there is going to go all out on this insane Oedipus-flavored rant against my fake girlfriend.  Presumably I have a lot of issues with my mom, I get that.  But I don't understand, why don't I ever talk in this scene?

Refn:  Because you're being enigmatic and cool.  The audience doesn't know really what you're thinking.  Its a while other level to the scene.

Gosling:  ...Alright... But even then, presumably any normal person would have something to say at this moment, right?  And would probably react with a facial expression?  At the very least, I should show some emotion to the audience?

Refn:  No, no, no, no!  We've been over this one hundred times.  Two hundred times!  You never show emotion once.  If you're watching a prostitute masturbate, don't react.  If somebody tells you your brother is dead, don't react. Not once.

Gosling:  Yeah, but there's subtlety, like my character in "Drive", and then there's nothing.  I have nothing to do in this whole movie.

Refn:  Sorry, Ryan, you said the "D-word".  We're not making a sequel to "Drive" here, we're making a higher level piece of cinematic art.  That's not a camera, that's my brush.  This isn't a set, its a canvas.  And you, sir, are a prop.  A prop in my masterpiece.

Gosling:  I think I'm starting to see the problem...

Evil Remake

What do you know?  It sucked.

I'm going to be fair right now, I did not rent "Evil Dead" thinking it was going to be bad.  Well... actually I did, I have almost no faith in remakes, especially a remake of one of my favorite horror movies of all time.  But the trailers for "Evil Dead" were promising, the reviews were mediocre for a regular film but not bad for a horror movie, and at least this remake had the express blessing of director Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell, who both were producers on this project.  I knew this movie was going to suck, but I wasn't renting this movie with the same jackhammer of critical murdersauce that I carry when I review utter hateful shit like "Jack and Jill".  Remember, just last week a legitimately good horror movie came out with "The Conjuring", which was basically a remake of "Amityville Horror".  Only that movie had sympathetic characters, and mood, and tension, and style... while "Evil Dead" has buckets of gore.

What else does it have besides whole fuel tankers full of bodily fluids?  Absolutely nothing.  It was obvious to first time director, Fede Alvarez, that nobody could ever replace the sheer iconic star power of Bruce Campbell's Ash.  So rather than trying to make a new protagonist that could be fascinating in his own way, Alvarez surrendered, and created a cast of characters out of spare plywood and corkboard.  Then he dipped those pieces of plywood into buckets of red paint, and called it a day.  He hopes that he can have a character lop off her left hand her feet, then juggle them while catching the squirting blood with her tongue, and we'll be impressed immediately by the grisly abandon of it all.  Of course, ultimately forgetting that gore and horror needs to have mood.  Are we going for all-out fun, dancing in sprinklers of red blood cells?  Or is this a disgusting nightmare?  You really can't have both when your characters are so boring, when your new plot is so slow yet utterly bland, and when the movie is so boring it feels like its ninety minutes are like an eternity in hell.

But then again, an eternity in hell would actually be scary, wouldn't it?  Or at the very least, the Devil would probably be able to present some level of personality to his torture.  I can appreciate getting my bowels ironed out if its being done with some showmanship.  Otherwise, I think I'm just going to yawn.  "Evil Dead" is not entertaining.  It just doesn't understand what made the original film scary, and does not even try to replicate any of the humor of the sequels.  It is simply awful.

Despicable Me 2

There will never be another product in 2013 that is capable of producing as much raw uncut joy as "Despicable Me 2".  This is just a lot of fun, and honestly, that's all I need to say.  Do you want to be happy today?  This very second?  Go see "Despicable Me 2".

The original "Despicable Me" (I guess now retroactively known as "Despicable Me 1") was a pretty nice surprise back in 2010, where it was a sweet little parody of super villains with a cute heart.  Audiences walked out from "Despicable Me" entirely satisfied with big grotesque grins on their faces like they were all drunk on pressurized Joker Gas.  I had my own grotesque concrete grin for about a week and a half.  This is a film series about cartoony super villain and spy antics, three lovable little girls, and an army of hilarious little yellow pill minions and their mischief.  If you're looking for a template as to how to make an excellent family cartoon take "Despicable Me" as your guide:  loving satire, lovable characters, and innocent jokes that can make a person of any age giggle.  As it turns out, the secret ingredient to making a fantastic kid's movie is none other than Love.  Love is all you need.

"Despicable Me 2" is something of an inferior film, the hideous involuntary Joker grin lasted only three days, but that's still a great deal better than most films can pull off. While the original film was about Gru, a cliche Germanic supervillain learning to open his life up to three little girls, now its about Gru, a reformed Germanic super spy learning to open up his life to a yet another female influence, and this is one he can have sex with!  Because the alternative is simply too horrifying for words.  Anyway, the focus this time is a little more scatterbrained, with Gru's new job as a superspy sharing time with a massively expanded chorus of Minion festivities, and then sharing time with the little girls, who are now something of an afterthought to the larger story.  Gru, the girls, the villains, and even the new quirky and well-rounded love interest character all sort of lose focus as the film hammers in new Minion slapstick and entire Minion song and dance numbers.  But again, its all done with love.  And love is all you need.

Need I say more?   I loved this movie.

The Conjuring

Okay, tell me if you've seen this movie.  A family moves out to an old creepy house in the country, hoping to settle in a new peaceful period of their lives.  However, instead of wide-open spaces for the children, and a new level of intimacy for the parents, there's ghosts, nightmares, and supernatural attacks from all sorts of malevolent spirits.  Exorcisms are needed, paranormal investigators are called, weaker members of the family are possessed, and finally we end with a battle of wills between the living and the dead.  Let's give double points if its supposedly based on a true story that actually happened to a real family several decades ago.

Of course you've seen this movie, Hollywood has been making it for about thirty years now.  Sometimes its called "The Amityville Horror", sometimes its called "Poltergeist", sometimes its called "Paranormal Activity", "Insidious", "Sinister", "Mama", "Dark Skies", "Dream House", "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark", "The Apparition", "The Last Exorcism", "A Haunting in Connecticut", "A Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia", and the criminally underrated "The Navidson Record".  There are probably about six hundred other movies with this very same plot whose names are failing me right now.  If you haven't seen any of those movies yet, then you are the only one.  Scientists would be interesting in examining you, because you're about as fascinating as somebody with an XZ chromosome.  Most of these films are utterly forgettable and bland, which is what you'd expect when you're dusting off a script so old it probably still uses the medieval Long S.  (Which is why I prefer to call James Wan's last movie, "Inſideous".)  I skip just about 99% of these movies since if I wanted to watch the same damn movie over and over again with a different cast, I'd rather that movie be "Batman Returns".

But sometimes, and this doesn't happen often, you can take the most generic movie ever and due something decent with it.  "The Conjuring" offers no new twists on the formula, it is following the recipe exactly.  No spontaneous dashes of cinnamon for this director, James Wan, who is best known for making the Saw series.  This guy has had exactly one good idea, then proceeded to make six more increasingly inferior copies*.  So when he's ripping off movies made thirty years ago, nobody should be surprised.  We should be surprised that even when "The Conjuring" is about as artless and unoriginal as movies get, its still actually scary and competently made.  This movie keeps the tension going with a variety to well-timed and well-crafted frightening moments, without needed to lean back on jump scares or gore, and it never turns into a self-parody.  "The Conjuring" simply works, when by rights, it should be a valueless wreck.