Furious 7: As goes Brian, so go I...

The Fast and Furious franchise, best known for being the sole reason any of its stars continue to have film careers, is something that I LIKE A LOT.

Who names these movies?

When The Fast and the Furious came out in 2001, no one, not even someone with such stunning powers of foresight as myself, could have predicted there would be six-and-counting sequels.  Or that those sequels would metamorphose into a crime-fighting saga with The Rock starring in a government agent role.  Or that the movies themselves wouldn't be sunk by their inexplicable lack of naming convention.

In fact, I - on this very internet! - once decried the third installment as unworthy of existing...

A TIMELINE OF WHAT HAPPENED AFTER I DECRIED THE THIRD INSTALLMENT AS UNWORTHY OF EXISTING

2009:  Fast & Furious (#4) was released.  I freaked the hell out on MySpace about its awesomeness:

...if you poured pure testosterone over an undeveloped film reel, then Fast & Furious would appear spontaneously before you.  It's about 70% virility and 30% stupidity.  Which is 100% entertainment!

2011:  Fast Five was released.  I freaked the hell out on this blog about the trailer that aired during the Super Bowl, and then I freaked the hell out about Dreamboat Paul Walker once the movie was out.

2012:  I bought a car, which meant I had a reason to talk about The Fast and the Furious between film installments.

2013:  Fast and Furious 6 was released.  As is my wont, I freaked the hell out.

Late 2013:  Paul Walker died. :( (I count Dreamboat Paul Walker as number three on my list of all-time movie star crushes.  Number one needs no introduction; number two was Heath Ledger.  Stellar track record I've got going.)

2015 (specifically today):  I BOUGHT A MOVIE TICKET.

Okay, here are my very important thoughts about the very important seventh installment of the very important Fast and Furious movie franchise:

Action shot

Hats off to an incredible job memorializing Dreamboat Paul Walker, and in retiring his character, Brian O'Connor.  I was heartened that between shots of gratuitous sexualization, there was an underlying endorsement of the importance of family, and that Brian was celebrated for leaving behind a world of extraordinarily unrealistic car chases and frequent and brutal hand-to-hand combat so that he might raise his children with the woman he's been faithful to since the day he met her (or at least I think so; it's been a decade or so since I saw 2 Fast 2 Furious so I may be missing something in the canon), despite the minor qualm that "family life" and "having fun" seem to be presented as mutually exclusive options that all men must ultimately choose between, and Brian is the only of the main male characters to take the path toward domesticity, BUT I DIGRESS...

BLAH, BLAH, THOUGHTS.

Yeah, this is what I was doing in the theater.  I was analyzing a Fast and Furious movie.  Like it was something that could be analyzed. 

The entire point of the Fast and Furious movies is that they are dumb beyond all measure, with instantly forgettable plots that make zero logical sense and involve special effects so outlandish one marvels at the puerile mind that thought them up.

But I'm sitting over here, like, man, when are we going to talk more about the implications of this lifestyle on the psyches of those who have been invested in it for years...

Holy shit, the day has come.

I've outgrown the Fast and Furious movies.

TL;DR:  Furious 7 - Eh, the first one's still the best.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (is my previous blog entry. Exactly.)

By a stroke of coincidence, I saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty the same day I finished Susan Cain's intensely life-affirming book, Quiet:  The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking.  Commenting on the fact that I'm an introvert is like commenting on the fact that I'm a woman - it's too obvious to bother discussing, so let's move on to something more nuanced.  (Affinity for nuance is one of the characteristics of introverts.)

The eponymous short story that inspired the Ben Stiller-directed Walter Mitty is one that my mother assures me I must have come across at some point in my schooling career.  If I did, I don't remember, and as I haven't yet tracked down a copy to read, I cannot say with certainty how much the 1939 original was embellished by Hollywood.  For reasons I'll get to in a minute, though, I'd say quite a lot, and the story, which I cautiously approached as yet another protagonist-comes-out-of-his-shell saga (precisely the sort of thing that Quiet argues is counterproductive to a world stocked to the gills with people who are drained dry by constant cultural pressure to be "on") was both far more and far less than I imagined.

The film starts at a computer, but moves quickly to the offices of Life magazine where Walter, played by Stiller, is employed in the negatives room, and which, in a cleverly obvious way, acts as a metaphor for life itself.  Change is afoot.  Life is moving online (life is moving online) though before it does, there will be one last print issue, the cover photo for which is Walter's responsibility.  It's a picture so exquisite that the photographer himself, a ghost-like Sean Penn, names it the best he's ever taken - the quintessence of life.  Unfortunately for Walter, it's nowhere to be found.

Walter is the daydreaming sort, an introvert if ever there was one, but - voila! - now he has the opportunity to step out of his fantasy life and into the real world on a mission to track down his picture.  Will he rise to the occasion?  Of course he will (how else would there be a film?), and that is the surface of the movie, though it is on this point that the story was less than I envisioned, and in the best possible way.  Walter Mitty does take charge of his life, but he sacrifices none of his thoughtfulness or conscientiousness in the process.  The word "introvert" has misunderstood and negative connotations, but it's merely a descriptor for people who thrive on alone time, and benefit deeply from their rich mental landscapes.

Walter goes on a life-changing journey, yes, but it's a solo mission.  The goal here is not to morph into an extrovert.  It is to more fully become Walter.    

The movie's other message, though, the arguably subtler one, goes to the heart of something that wasn't even conceived of when the short story was published.  Walter got lost in his head, but that's not where most of us are drifting off to these days.  It's not him so much that needs saving as the cover-less Life (make that life).  Sean Penn, in a ruggedly understated performance, quietly delivers a gut-punch to the Instagram generation in a scene that serves as the film's philosophical climax.  Modern communication methods get screen time from start to finish, but time and again, that's not where the connections take place.

Yet for all that, it's a comedy, and a smart, non-gross one at that.  There's a scene misinterpreting the aging mechanics of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (another short-story-turned-Hollywood-powerhouse) that made me laugh until I cried (though admittedly, mine is a strange sense of humor).  And alright, there were some gaps in the logic and little of it was all that believable.  But overall, I truly enjoyed it.  I appreciate a movie that makes me think and one that makes me smile, and this one did both.

***

Oh, and while we're on this topic...have you heard that Newsweek is going to back to print?  (!!!)  If you've been reading this blog long enough, you'll remember that its switch to digital, followed by its embarrassing decline in quality, was something that weighed heavily on me. 

But maybe all is not lost!  (And the Walter Mitty in me is thoroughly, if quietly, thrilled about that.)

Picture yanked from The Hollywood Reporter.

Split Decision - Short Film Review! (Something New!)

WELL.  All this talk over here at The B Channel of changing our narratives (or was that just me?) and what do you know, thematically-appropriate media just landed in my lap.

Split Decision, a short film by Antoine Allen, is about to make its film festival debut at the Action on Film International Film Festival in Monrovia, California.  In anticipation of that, I was granted access to an advance screening.

The film is about a Hispanic lesbian boxer (already I can see you nodding your heads in understanding as to why I related to this story) named Lola Rosario, whom we meet the day before her first professional fight.  Her relationship with her father in shambles, she pours all of her energy into fighting...and into her girlfriend...and into her boyfriend (hashtag-plot-twist!)...and all of it builds toward an ending that is as dramatic as it is inevitable.  Life happens.  Messes happen (sometimes intentionally).  And sometimes we're forced to confront our issues before we're ready.

That's a lot to cram into a 28-minute film, but it worked.  I was intrigued from start to finish, and drawn to the universal themes of struggle and self-definition.  Lola is an underdog, but by no means a perfect one.  There are reasons to root for her and reasons to think she can do better.

But isn't that true of all of us?

Best of luck to this film, and to those involved in its creation.  And power to the artists among us who are driven to tell the stories that reflect the highs and lows of a life lived large.     

Split Decision on Facebook and IMDb.

Why "Fast and Furious 6" Is the Best Movie of 2013 So Far

I mean, what the fuck is even going on here?

No one associated with this movie (or its predecessors) - not the actors, not the film crew, not the script writers, and definitely not the audience - takes it even remotely seriously.  It is loud, stupid, has terrible jokes, makes zero sense, and doesn't waste half a second pretending anything otherwise.

ALSO, PAUL WALKER.

Everyone should see this movie.  THIS IS WHAT ENTERTAINMENT LOOKS LIKE.

When is the seventh one out already, I can't wait.

Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: Argo (Spoiler Free, and I Know - I Can't Believe It's Still in Theaters, Either!)

In eleventh grade, I took Advanced Placement U.S. History, and there was a point, roughly mid-year, when our class was temporarily taken over by a student teacher.  I don't remember his name.  I do remember that he wore glasses and, perhaps in an attempt to appear "hip" in front of a sea of seventeen-year-olds, he left the top couple of buttons undone on his shirt every day, revealing what was universally regarded as an indecent amount of chest hair.

He was also the first person I ever remember hearing praise Ronald Reagan.

I went to a public school.  In Tennessee.  Politics had run rampant in my science classrooms for as far back as I could recall, but it had remained strangely absent from history and social studies classes.  Then again, politics was a slightly different game in the pre-internet world.  As late as 1992, when I was in fifth grade, we hadn't yet decided which of our parties was the "blue" one and which was "red."  (I remember this vividly because my homework the night that Bill Clinton was first elected was to color in an electoral map; I messed mine up when the news station we were watching and our local paper utilized opposing color schemes to represent the parties.)

My political viewpoint, then, prior to eleventh grade, had come from three sources:  my parents, NBC Nightly News (which we watched religiously as a family), and Newsweek (which I started flipping through as soon as I was old enough to read).  None of these sources had given me any reason to suspect that Ronald Reagan, president for the first six years of my life, was anything other than an average Republican who had done a bunch of stuff my parents didn't agree with.  I was ignorant of the fact that there even was another viewpoint until, in an unapologetically biased way, our student teacher decided to spend half of his alloted time with our class talking about how "great" he was.

But even more shocking to me than his hard-on for Reagan was his (gasp) utter disdain for President Jimmy Carter.  I didn't know much about Jimmy Carter's time in office (which was before I was born), but I did know that he was a good man who built houses for people and who sent us a Christmas card every year.  Chest Hair up there wasn't showing him the proper level of respect.

Taking aside for a moment the complete inappropriateness of a public school (student!) teacher imposing his political views on his students (not to mention the absurdity of our regular teacher, who sat through every class he taught, apparently not caring enough to say anything to him about it), Chest Hair proved to be a harbinger for future mentions of Jimmy Carter that I found myself privy to.  That damn Iranian Hostage Crisis...it cost Carter reelection in 1980 and it made him a target for every generation of Republican that came after him. 

Illustration stolen from The New Yorker.

Let's just say that when it comes to movies set in the Carter administration, even the famously liberal Hollywood hadn't come up with much to spin the era in Jimmy's favor.

Enter Ben Affleck.

Argo is not a propaganda piece.  It's not even all that political.  What it is is a damn entertaining film about a mostly forgotten chapter in a much screamed about era in American politics.

Does it rewrite the late '70s in Carter's favor?  No.  What it does do is offer a more accessible (and undoubtedly more accurate) account of history than I got in high school.

It's a good movie, regardless of your politics.  But just the same, I hope Chest Hair, wherever he is now, took the time to see it.

Bond. James Bond.

How did it happen that the newest Bond movie was focused around cyber-terrorism but managed to be the most pared-down, old school, classy, down-to-Earth, vintage-feeling Bond movie ever made in history?!

Who knows!  But it was a good time!  And there was man-on-man sexual tension at one point!  

I give it two thumbs up.

Dammit, Jake. (Prophecy Girl Reviews End of Watch!)

Two days ago, I put up an entry about Taylor Swift's attempt to outdo me in the arena of artistically expressing irritation toward the common-sense-challenged man-child known as Jake Gyllenhaal.

"HAHA, THAT TAYLOR," wrote I (well, not literally; I'm dramatizing). "She is saying some of the same things I say, except is less pathetic for it because Jake has acknowledged her existence in public."

I was speaking, of course, of Tay-Tay's Jake-bashing breakup hit, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," and its accompanying scarf-filled video.  I thought the song was hilarious, and the video even more so, both because of the Jake-specific details, and because the song itself comically lent itself to the preset narrative about Jake that I, personally, wrote about online from 2006 to 2007 and then 2010 to early this year.

But Jake, you see, occupies a certain role in my life:  to call him a "weakness" does not do justice to the word "weakness."  He is the crystal meth of my pop culture world.  I took one hit, one time, back in late 2005, and it took me years to kick the habit.  And then I was stupid enough to take another hit in 2010, and I'm still dealing with the aftermath.

Upside?  My tolerance has improved greatly with time.

Downside?  That doesn't mean I'm fully resistant.

An hour into End of Watch...goddammit...he had me rooting for him all over again.  Do you hear that, Jake?  Are you happy?  I was rooting for you.  I was rooting for you because you did a really good job with this movie, and you took a risk in making it - not like the risk you took in making a Viagra-themed love story or a sand-filled Disney video-game flop (which I now look at as part of an experimental phase as you attempted to find yourself, and I forgive you for them because I know you learned from them).  But a risk in going back to being Jake Gyllenhaal.  That guy who makes weird indie (or at least indie-esque) films that are maybe hard to watch but that make people think and bring Big Issues to average movie-goers.  The Jake Gyllenhaal who's not in it for the money, but for the art.  The Jake Gyllenhaal who yes, was probably a total effing dick to Taylor Swift but you're a dick to everyone, and you know what, part of growing up is learning that sometimes guys are dicks.  That music video, which I garnered an unhealthy level of voyeuristic pleasure from, I now see as kind of mean.  Taylor Swift isn't exactly a saint, and Jake, maybe I don't give you enough credit for being a real person in a world where you earn your living by being fake. 

End of Watch was a good movie.  Not the type of movie I would ever see under any other circumstances, but that's maybe the entire lesson of my futile exercise in being a Jake Gyllenhaal fan:  he has always pushed me a little outside my comfort zone.  Sometimes that's meant jetting off to a poetry reading, or going to Los Angeles completely on my own, or pushing my way through the press at a film festival to demand I get what I came for; and sometimes it means watching movies that upset me - that push the boundaries of what I want to believe about humanity and that make me think just a little differently about things in my own life that I take for granted.

So FINE.  There you have it.  I will never watch End of Watch again because the camera-work gave me nausea and the storyline full-on dry heaves.  But I have to give it two thumbs up, because after I watched it, a teensy part of me - a part that is small but whiny and persistent nonetheless - wanted to punch Taylor Swift in her smug face for being so bitchy in that video.

Dammit, Jake.  You came back a little bit with this one.  You may annoy the hell out of me at times, but it's only right to give respect where respect is due, and you got some from me with this one.

Standing ovation, Mr. Nolan.

What a remarkable ending.

:)

Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: Magic Mike

I got carded for the second time in my life at the movie theater tonight as I bought my ticket for Magic Mike.  The first time I got carded was a few weeks ago for 21 Jump Street.

Apparently the Malco Theater Company here in Memphis does not think that I am old enough for Channing Tatum.  (BUT THEY ARE WRONG.)

So.  Magic Mike.  I felt...sad as I left the theater.  And slightly confused.  And maybe a little dirty.  In other words, I felt exactly as I've always envisioned myself feeling should I ever visit a real male strip club.  And then dirtier yet when I found out that the movie was (at least partially) based on Channing Tatum's own experience as a male stripper. 

The theater was almost full, almost entirely women, and good Lord, they yelled at that screen like Matthew McConaughey could hear them.

But for me, the flashy dance numbers did little to overshadow the serious (and sometimes - interestingly - relatable) story of what happens when you sell yourself for a quick buck but then somehow lose sight of your bigger dreams along the way.  And how the company you keep can drag you down before you know what's happening.  And how sometimes male strippers fall for smart chicks.  (Alright, that last was undoubtedly mostly fantasy thrown in for the predictably female audience, but it provided a nice, non-skeezy subplot nonetheless.)

If you're the type of person who likes watching men strip down to American flag thongs, you will probably love this movie.  And if you're the type of person to constantly see parallels to your own life in movies about 30-year-olds who are stuck in neutral then...well...you might want to save this one for a rental.

3.5 out of 5 stars.  And I'm going to go take a shower now.

Goes to R-Rated Movie; Gets Carded!

My three favorite things about 21 Jump Street:

1.  I got carded when I bought my ticket.  Score!

2.  Channing Tatum was even funnier than he was in She's the Man.  Score!

3.  The youngest Franco brother showed up and...he does MOVIES?!  Score!

One of the most genuinely funny, laugh-out-loud films I have seen in a very, very long time.

(Ugh, but then there was a bunch of blood and graphic violence at the end; IT WAS ALMOST PERFECT.)

(But mostly there were three things mentioned above.  Score!)

Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: Dark Shadows

(In seeing this movie, I have effectively proven that I will see anything - anything - that Johnny Depp is attached to.)

Half of the storyline and all of the screenplay for this one go to Seth Grahame-Smith, who famously (or infamously, whichever) wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which I haven't read) and Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter (which I have).  The latter I got for Christmas a couple of years back and have the book review saved here in draft form; I'm waiting to publish until the release of the movie of the same name.

Seth, truly, has some of the most remarkable ideas in pop culture.  But his follow through?

I felt about Dark Shadows (spoiler alert) exactly the same as I felt about Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter - Here was an absolutely fantastic premise (Johnny Depp is a vampire!  From the eighteenth century!  Who wakes up in the nineteen-seventies!  Alice Cooper cameos!) that is abysmally squandered through an utter lack of humor and an unnecessarily scattered plot.

It could have been great.  Instead, it took itself unapologetically seriously.

C+.

My Heart Will Go On

January 17, 2010, in a blog entry about Avatar, I wrote the following about Titanic:

"OH to have been days-from-16 when Titanic came out.  Better yet, to have been a days-from-16-year-old GIRL!  To this day, I weep for those who were not days-from-16-year-old girls when Titanic came out because those people will never understand the emotional impact that movie could have.

I pined over Titanic.  Agonized over the perfection and (yes!) cruelty of its love story.  How could Jack have died?  How could Rose have just...just...just let go of him and let him sink to the bottom of the ocean?  He was her soulmate and Billy Zane just didn't understand and why-oh-why was Leonardo DiCaprio not in love with ME?!" 

There's this point in Titanic when Billy Zane, at his villainous worst, peers down at the lifeboat Rose is sitting in and coughs, "I always win, Jack."  And right before he says it, there's a close-up of Leo's profile.  You can see the tan on his slender, slightly-feminine-looking neck.  That tan fascinated me as a days-from-16-year-old.  I would have watched that scene on an endless loop just for that tan.

Years later, when I was old enough to understand that turning a real-life human tragedy into a blockbuster action-film-slash-cheesy-love-story was less art and more mindless entertainment, I decided Titanic had actually been a terrible movie and I was embarrassed I'd ever obsessed over it.  It was about that time that Avatar came out, and suddenly I had all sorts of things to say about James Cameron.

But then, roughly eighteen months after I wrote entry quoted above, my parents were in the process of moving and I found my 2-tape Titanic VHS.  And for the first time in over a decade, I watched it.  I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.  A heady mixture of Bud Light and pervasive nostalgia made the dialogue seem riveting rather than painful, and the years added to my life made Jack's death feel inevitable instead of traumatizing.  I forgave my days-from-16-year-old self for falling in love with this story.  Class warfare, doomed lovers, and a shipwreck?  What's not to love?   

I was genuinely excited, then, about seeing the 3D version, re-released in theaters to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the ship's sinking.  I decided earlier this week that I'd go Friday afternoon (today); when I woke up this morning, even, I was happy because it was Titanic day.

I wonder what it will be like to see in 3D? I thought to myself as I marched into the theater and purchased my ticket.

I hit up the concession stand, went for a last-minute bathroom break (time has done little to dampen the memory of it being a long damned movie), and, with a spring in my step, waltzed into the theater.

Yeah.  It was me and two other women - one around my age, one significantly older - all of us there alone, all of us clearly trying to recapture something from our youth.  I don't know if the oldest occupant in our theater felt self-conscious, but the snicker that the patron of my generation let loose when I walked into the room (which I returned in earnest) indicated that two-thirds of us realized that there was something perhaps just a teensy bit pathetic about what was going on in that theater.

I think what I learned today was that Titanic is best when ten years or more have elapsed since your last viewing (dammit if that dialogue wasn't sounding off again today) and it's also best when viewed either alone or in an audience that isn't comprised entirely of solitary women.

Not that it wasn't enjoyable; it's still a good story and I still have very fond memories of the love I once had for the film itself.  But the 3D didn't add much, the special effects haven't aged nearly as well on a high-def movie screen as they had on my 32-inch television, and so hey, maybe it's time to once again let the memories of this one reign supreme.

The story of the Titanic has fascinated us for a century.  Unfortunately, in the 3D Hollywood version of this tale, Leonardo DiCaprio's neck just doesn't quite do it for me the way it used to...

Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: The Artist

Thoughts on Jean Dujardin:

On the film's emotional climax:

On the general plot progression:

On the hype about the dog:

 

On the entertainment value of watching a silent movie in 2012:

On the worthiness of a Best Picture win:

On the film as a whole:

Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: 50/50

It was probably a good thing that I was the only person in the theater, what with all of the ridiculous crying I did. 

So much more...real than I thought it was going to be. 

 

I'm glad I saw it.

FAST FIVE

On the list of Fast and Furious movies, my preferences rank as thus:

1.  The Fast and the Furious (The original.  It cannot - cannot - be outdone).
2.  Fast and Furious (Film #4, the series reboot.  Why do I not own this?  If you want to send me presents, send me this movie on DVD.)
3.  Fast Five (Good, but not as good as the above.  But the Fast and Furious movies are the sole reason Paul Walker remains relevant in pop culture, so for that alone, this movie was AMAZING.)
4.  2 Fast 2 Furious (Ugh.  What even?  This was watchable only because of the aforementioned dreamboat, Paul Walker.)
5.  Fast and Furious:  Tokyo Drift (I did not see this movie because a lack of both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker means a lack of interest on my part.)

Overall?  Fast Five earned every fucking penny of its highest April opening ever.  It even made me want to watch Tokyo Drift to catch up on what (very little) F&F lore I do not already have committed to memory.

But parts of it sucked.

But everyone should still see this movie.

Did I mention Paul Walker?

(Unfortunately, Vin Diesel only somewhat compensated for The Rock, who should never be in any movies again, ever.)

Three-point-five out of five stars.

Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: Water for Elephants

For a movie starring two people I have little to no interest in...

...it was riveting.

(I do have to say, though...I had not gotten around to reading the book beforehand, but purely in terms of how the movie was staged, it was Titanic with a lower budget and circus animals.  Oddly, this was less of a bad thing than I would have anticipated.) 

Becky Unsolicited Movie Reviews: Source Code

It didn't suck.

:)

Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: Beastly

Why did this movie happen?

Disney owns this bitch.  Don't even...

(But if I had to find one, lonely, single redeeming factor then..........................blind Neil Patrick Harris for the motherfucking win.)

Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: Red Riding Hood

Who the fuck was the intended demographic for this?  Because for the violence alone, it obviously wasn't me. 

Fail.  Double fail for the theater I saw it in where no one shut up the entire fucking time, COME ON PEOPLE IT WASN'T EXACTLY THE INTELLECTUAL MYSTERY OF OUR TIME.

Total :-/.

Becky Goes to See Justin Bieber: Never Say Never...and It's AWESOME.

Okay, look, this movie was little more than a slick advertising piece and I still think Justin Bieber is a punk-ass sixteen-year-old Selena-Gomez-perving helmet-headed twerp.

But by God that boy showed me a good time for two hours today and that's more than Ben Affleck's ever done for me.  Fuck you, Affleck.

Becky's Unsolicited Movie Review for Justin Bieber: Never Say Never:

I NOW LIKE JUSTIN BIEBER.

(In the sense that he seems like an alright kid who's genuinely appreciative of his fans, friends, and family and has a decent work ethic.  Not that I "like" Justin Bieber because EWWWWW he's young and has creepy hair and sings like a girl.)

There is Bieber music on my iTunes now.  There.  It's been said.