The Secret Village

Everyone involved in making The Secret Village did bad and they should feel bad.  Very, very bad.  If this movie is any indication, they feel nothing.  Do you know that person that sucks the life out of a room the minute he or she walks in?  The Secret Village is the cinematic version of that person.

Two characters named Greg and Rachel end up sharing a house and investigating something that is either mass hysteria or, possibly, witchcraft in a small town.  A bunch of really stupid script writing happens, there’s some really bad editing decisions made,  and someone’s idea of what makes something suspenseful gets taken out back and shot.  That was the movie I saw.

There’s some attempt at creativity with…I don’t know…time, I guess.  But it feels like someone tried extrapolating the idea of “shaky cam” to create something called “shaky time” and it’s not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Plot lines develop, almost.  Then never go anywhere.  Characters have no personality, no motivation, appear and disappear for no reason.  And the soundtrack?  I can’t even anything about the soundtrack.

Now, the movie the director/producer/actors/etc. wanted me to see is another story.  What that story is, I cannot begin to comprehend based on what I saw and heard.

There are some bad mistakes that not even a rookie would make.  Like placing a call with a cell phone and, instead of hearing the standard tone you’d hear from the earpiece, you hear the recipient’s ringtone.  I’d expect something like that in something from the Scream franchise.  But as a point of humor.  Not as a serious moment in the movie.  The characters cast as the “bad” guys, are so freaking inept at being threatening that it is almost humorous.  But it’s not.  It’s just apathetic.

My ability to enjoy a movie in the moment and not try to figure out the ending was completely thwarted by this movie.  Being generous, I had it figure out in 30 minutes.  And was sorely disappointed to be right.

If you could extract the the dullest parts of ennui, boredom, lethargy, and mediocrity and combine them into some new even more listless sensation, you would still have something more exciting than this movie.

You could give a six-year old child a film editing machine (don’t do that!) and access to Plan 9 From Outerspace, Birdemic, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.  That kid would put together something more compelling than this movie.  Hell, you could have the kid’s movie dubbed into Swahili and then have that translated and subtitled into Swedish and that would make more sense than The Secret Village.

Olympus Has Fallen

Olympus Has Fallen and, let me tell you, there is not enough erectile dysfunction medication in the galaxy to get it back up.  Is this movie about a falling out with your sparring partner?  Is it a touching story of an adult man’s vaguely disturbing concern for the president’s kid?  Is it a hot mess of crap trying to pluck at your patriotic heartstrings so hamfistedly that you’ll cry bacon juice?  I don’t know.

But I do know this:  you’d think that with a line up like Aaron Eckhart, Gerard Butler, and a bit of Dylan McDermott that keeping Olympus up wouldn’t be an issue.  Yet it is.  Morgan Freeman is in this manly embarrassment, too, and he doesn’t seem very happy about it.  You can’t blame him.

The movie opens with Eckhart (as U.S. President Benjamin Asher) and his family getting ready for some winter holiday party or appearance or something.  You can tell everyone loves each other a whole hell of a lot and there’s still passion in them there fires.  Apparently, how well the president loves his family is the major criteria for being a “good” president.  As that’s pretty much the only thing we have to judge him on as a president.  Soon, they’re all off in their limos and SUVs and to grandmother’s houBAM!  A crash.  Gerard Butler whose job it is, as a Secret Service agent, to guard the president decides to…well…do his job and save the president’s life.  And the president’s wife dies.  Right after exchanging holiday gifts in the back of a limo because, goldurnit, that’s the American president way.

Under president Asher, doing one’s job is grounds for demotion and Butler’s character, Mike Banning (a name that almost oozes testosterone), is demoted to security for STD or FTD or some odd branch of the Secret Service that involves tossing a koosh ball against your monitor. But he’s still friends with the director of the Secret Service (played by Angela Bassett).

While the president is meeting with the prime minister from Korea in the Oval Office, a retrofitted cargo plane (it sure looks like that) is in Washington DC air space and it’s got guns.  This magic cargo plane of shootiness is so fantastically terrific that it has a higher kill rate while flying overhead than armed soldiers on the ground.  It’s killing tourists and officers in bullet-proof vests and just pretty much everyone – all while FENDING OFF THE U.S. AIR FORCE!  Killing everyone except Mike Banning, that is – the one person running around in slacks and a shirt (pretty sure he’s not even wearing a t-shirt).  Oh, and it doesn’t kill the busload of Korean tourists.  Because this terror from beyond space and time retrofitted heap of junk (it honestly does look more like a Lockheed C-130 Hercules though the may have been going for the look of a Lockheed AC-130, than anything capable of precise and widespread killing) is just that goshdarned good and apparently got a gold star in target practice.

The president and a bunch of high-ranking people are shuffled off to the super secret bunker hidden in the bowels of the White House.  And they bring the Korean visitors with them!  Could that be a bad idea?  Let’s see!

In the secret bunker, shit goes sideways.  A couple three of the Korean guys start killing people, including the Korean prime minister.  The president and a bunch of other people you don’t care about are hogtied and Kang (yes, really, Kang) and his small gang are in charge.  It’s never really clear what the motivations are beyond “my mommy died, you Americans and Korea grrr <fist of rage>” – there’s nothing really political or personal or anything motivational enough to rise to the level of taking down the White House.  Just a pissed off guy with mommy issues.  Oh, and Kang has a sexy female computer nerd to help him out with his master plan of turning America into a nuclear wasteland by blowing up our own nuclear weapons while they’re in their silos!

In order to carry out this nefarious plan, Kang (you know, that name just feels like it should have an exclamation mark after it so, henceforth, it will) needs the three CERBERUS codes.  (In some half-assed logic that only a government or a movie director could come up with, having the codes that disarm the missiles can actually be used to blow up the country.  DON’T ASK QUESTIONS!  THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT PATRIOTIC AMERICANISM AND OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN!)  Three different people have a code.  All three of them are in the bunker.  Dylan McDermott is also in the bunker.  We saw him earlier sparring with the president.  Turns out Dylan McDermott is a traitor.  Kang! wants the codes.  Kang! starts killing people to prove it (there is a helluva lot of gore porn in this movie, actually).  The secretary of the Navy has one of them.  Kang! threatens to slit his throat if he doesn’t give it up.  The president hollers “TELL HIM THE CODE!  HE’LL NEVER GET MINE! I AM AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT AND A HERO CAN’T YOU HEAR THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER PLAYING? TELL HIM, MAN!”  (Maybe not exactly that, but pretty close and still better dialog than in the actual movie.)  And the secretary finally complies when the president issues a direct order.  Kang!’s sexy computer assistant enters it into the computer.

Meanwhile, Mike Banning is running around worrying about finding the president’s son and kicking ass and killing a bunch of Koreans who broke into our White House (turns out that those tourists were part of Kang!’s coterie).  It’s like Mike Banning is the brawny love child of Jason Statham and Bruce Willis.  Hmm…um…oh my…um…wonder if Santa could fit that down the chimney…hmmmmm…where was I?

Oh, yeah.  Movie review.  Sorry about that.

Then Kang! needs the second code from the secretary of defense.  But this one’s a woman, so we won’t threaten to slit her throat.  We’ll just smack her around and kick her because it’s a lot more angrily abusive looking than just holding a knife to a throat.  (There’s some serious misogyny in this movie.)  The president hollers “TELL HIM THE CODE!  HE’LL NEVER GET MINE! I AM AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT AND A HERO CAN’T YOU HEAR THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER PLAYING? TELL HIM, WOMAN!”  (Maybe not exactly that, but pretty close and still better dialog than in the actual movie.)  And the secretary finally complies when the president issues a direct order.    Kang!’s sexy computer assistant enters it into the computer.

Sadly, while our president was busy saving the lives of secretaries, he wasn’t being very smart.  Turns out that with two of the codes, a computer running cracking software, and a sexy geek assistant, you don’t even need the third code.  But why would they go through all of this if they could just do that with the other two codes, too?  DON’T ASK QUESTIONS!  THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT PATRIOTIC AMERICANISM AND OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN!

During all of this, there are a lot of scenes of a serious Morgan Freeman as the acting president, and Angela Bassett, and a bunch of other bureaucratic types trying to get this thing under control and conversing with Mike Banning about the president’s kid or the president or tattoos and more killing.  There’s a scene of a tattered American flag being ripped down from atop the White House which is supposed to make your patriotic heart skip a beat and your eye juice to leak a little.  I’ll admit it, my eye juice did leak a little.  From laughing.  “Here’s a bunch of gore porn and several actors and a magic cargo plane of shootiness and now here’s something to gives you a sad.”  Jeesh.

The Air Force is finally showing up!  But wait!  Kang! has a super top secret weapon installed in the White House.  But, in a bit of dialog with one of the bureaucrats and Morgan Freeman, we find out that the U.S. is the only country with this technology.  So, how did Kang! get it and get it installed in the White House?  Or if he didn’t, why didn’t the Secret Service/Department of Defense/”cleaning lady who is really a mad killing machine in charge of defending everything presidential” use that awesome thing to blow up the magic cargo plane of shootiness or the tourist bus of non-tourists (hmm…terrorists + tourists = terrourists)?  DON’T ASK QUESTIONS!  THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT PATRIOTIC AMERICANISM AND OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN!

A bunch of other stuff happens.  The highlight of which is watching the secretary of defense being dragged down a hall (in a camisole and a skirt) while hollering the Pledge of Allegiance.  (Spoiler: she lives.)  Dylan McDermott hollers at the president something like “Why shouldn’t I sell out?  How much does a presidency cost?  $500 million?  You’re the one that sold out….”  Then goes off to try and kill Mike Banning.  As if the government hadn’t been tainted by money and lobbyists for decades before.  The incredulity it is stretched.

All the stereotypically good people we stereotypically care about live.  All the stereotypically bad people die (although Kang! was pretty sexy in a crazy kind of way).  Except for maybe the sexy computer geek – not really clear what happened to her.  Mike Banning saves the presidential offspring.  President’s wife is still dead.  Mike Banning gets his old job back or something.

Then president Asher makes some half-assed patriotic speech and there’s a shot of Old Glory once again flying proudly above the White House.

The end.

Good cast. Potentially good storyline.  Really had potential.  This movie would have been so much better if it had some actual feeling behind it, if it didn’t play so heavily upon gore porn and Asian stereotypes, if it even bothered to flesh out a few things (like why anyone did anything in this movie), had a few scenes of all the men shirtless, or just including a few scenes of Zeus fighting leprechauns.

The Possession

You’ve enjoyed a nice dinner of split-pea and matzoh ball soup, along with a nice chilled glass (or two?) of Mogen David Blackberry wine, you tuck yourself into bed and, around about three in the morning, you sit bolt upright with the brilliant idea “My god! If you combined Yentl and The Exorcist, you’d have a hit movie!”

Well, actually, you’d have The Possession.  Kyra Sedgwick co-stars.  For some reason, she gets third billing after the guy who plays her ex-husband and the girl who plays their daughter.  This is inexplicable.  Although, overall, the acting is fairly flat and it seems like everyone just called it in.

It starts with a woman trying to destroy a wooden box and something happens to her.  (I’m not sure what, as I watched this movie over several weeks because it is just that engaging.)  The primary players though are your typical broken nuclear family – husband/wife split and two daughters and the wife has a new boyfriend.

Dad and the girls are at a yard sale and the youngest takes a liking to the wooden box the woman was trying to destroy (who may be the woman in the full body cast in the house next door that freaks out – which isn’t easy when you’re in a full body cast).  Things start to get creepy with bugs and the little girl just pigging out when she eats and no one noticing the stupid, big, ugly ring she’s now wearing because she <peers around fearfully> figured out how to open the box.  (Nah, no Pinhead inside.  That would have made it too interesting.)

Then things get weird.  Things like the little girl suddenly wearing some drab dress when she’s “teh debil <spooky music>” and people almost getting killed (some people do get killed, some people she just smacks around).  And some maybe getting killed or not (looking at you mom’s boyfriend).  And a rapping Hasidic Jew (technically, he’s not rapping but just singing along) who, later, does a fairly good job at an interpretation of a straight white guy dancing at a disco in the 70s (aka “an exorcism”).  Yes, suddenly this has become something related to the Jewish faith and possession by a dybbuk – the dybbuk that had been locked in the wooden box! Dun dun duh!

Then the girl’s not possessed and the dad is and the Jewish guy keeps on dancing exorcising and then dad’s not possessed and everything is happy happy.  See, the boyfriend is gone.  (Dead? Smarter than everyone else? Got a better gig as a waiter at Chuck E. Cheese?  We don’t know.) So dad is back cooking in the kitchen and everyone’s happy and the Jewish man who exorcised the demon calls from dad’s car (because he needed it to get back to New York City which is 220 miles away) and everything’s OK because he has the wooden box containing the dybbuk and everyone liv… BAM!… hit by a tanker truck.  But not hard enough to cause the burnt out former-car they show.  Or so it seemed to me.  But, you know, had to have some way for the wooden box to get into someone else’s hands for The Possession II – This Time We’re Line Dancing.

The audio on this movie sucked.  Hey, audio engineers:  WTF is up with your jobs?  Can’t hear the dialog, so I crank up the sound, and then BLAM LET’S BURST THEIR EARDRUMS AND BREAK SOME WINDOWS WITH LOUD MUSIC AND/OR SOUND EFFECTS.  Whomever is making that decision just needs to be locked in a room with Yoko Ono for a week.

Continuity or editing kind of falls apart at the end with a couple of “wut…wait…huh?” scenes.  Are we at a hospital?  Are we at a school?  Physical therapy room!  Run, no one will see us!  Oh, a morgue.  Must be the hospital.  Obligatory “dad hit me” and “you can’t take away my girls” scenes that really don’t fit.  At all.

One creepy scene involving the little girl.  If you’re the kind of person who’s ever spent long nights wondering “I wonder what it would look like if someone were trying to crawl out of my mouth”, this movie will answer that question.  But it will leave you with many other questions: “What the hell are those damned bugs anyway?  What the hell did he/she say?  Why the hell am I still watching this?  Christ, why didn’t I buy two gallons of vodka at the store?  If I could go back in time and show this movie to Hitler, would I?”  And, possibly, many others that will leave you in a cold sweat.

There is one positive note here for children of divorce:  getting possessed by a dybbuk will bring your family together.  (Not really. Do not try this at home or anywhere, including the mall.)

Abduction – Part 2 (all the rest of the awful)

This is the conclusion of my review of Abduction.  Part 1 can be read here if you are that in need of pain.

First some corrections: In the first half of the review of the movie Abduction, I misidentified Constigasm boy’s home as maybe being in Virginia. In fact, the NYC bad guy’s trace initially went to South Carolina, then pinged up to Michigan, and then stopped in southwestern Pennsylvania. Apparently near the border of either West Virginia or Maryland. See, there was something that happened later on that made me question what the hell was going on. So, dear reader, for the sake of your sanity, I went back and watched portions of the first half. Additionally, there will be some overlap between the end of that review and the review of the second half of the movie Abduction because I unintentionally left out some salient points. I hope, dear reader, that these errors have not caused you any discomfort or inconvenience. And, now, on with the further adventures of Constigasm boy and girlfriend!

While at the safe house (which is in Arlington, VA and which they got to by walking on foot for a while and hitching a ride in a Uhaul – “Can you take us to Arlington?” “Sure, hope on in.” and that’s just how hitchhiking works in real life) and before peeling out in the BMW, the girlfriend made a call to her uncle to let him know she’s OK because her parents are on a trip in Italy and she’s been staying home alone. Alfred Molina (the CIA guy) answered the call. Not her uncle. Not some weird blippy dialtone thing. Just the voice of Alfred oozing out through the earpiece. Again, your tax dollars at work because surveillance is just that darned good. Also, Constigasm boy discovered a picture of his birth mom, whom he “knows” even though he was only three and hiding under a bed when she was killed. So, he’s sensitive or a braniac or just reads the script they give him or something.

Back to the peeling out: the kids peel out and the BMW motor rumbles monstrously down the residential street as they make their way to a cemetery. Because there was an address with Constigasm boy’s mom’s picture back at the safe house. They find her grave and there are fresh flowers on it! Now, one might expect a damned-near flowerbomb of flowers for this woman or something. But no. It appears to be the kind of bouquet you’d pick up at Safeway. Still, it makes girlfriend think “someone had to send these”. So it works.

Cut to the cemetery greeter (caretaker, son of the local embalmer???) and he’s at a computer in a nice Columbarium hallway and girlfriend (who’s looking real fresh and purty despite just washing up in a sink for maybe a minute) turns her feminine wiles upon the overweight geeky kid at the computer and gets an address. The flowers were sent by some guy they can trust. In Nebraska. And that’s pretty much the end of the “guy we can trust in Nebraska” storyline. Also: the CIA has included cemetery computers in its surveillance network because “OMG we know where he is! Hooray for us!”

While the CIA was wasting time tracking Constigasm boy and girlfriend via cemetery computers, the bad bad guys were busy tracking them using traffic monitoring cameras which are pretty ubiquitous in Virginia cemeteries. Although, if you have a token black friend that you can call for help, they seem to have a Cloak of Untraceability about them. Because you can meet up with your token black friend, after calling to set it up, and not get caught. Although they can still track your car in the parking lot.  [Seriously, my writing of this review makes as much sense as the movie.  Yet, humble reader, I proffer that it is more entertaining.]

(At this point, the two main bad guys come into focus (they may have been there before but who knows). One looks like a slightly slimmed down Peter Griffin. The primary bad guy looks like a slightly heavier, Rodney Dangerfield. So, I shall refer to them as Peter and Rodney. They probably have names in the movie, but who knows. [At this point, you may be wondering why I’m making up these supposed resemblances. Again, and I do hate to disappoint you, I am not.]

After the cemetery, Constigasm boy and girlfriend board a train where people are checking passengers’ ID, but they don’t check the ID of Constigasm boy and girlfriend (keep holding your breath, it’s not over yet). But they can’t escape PETER GRIFFIN!! Who watches them board the train with a smirk.

Constigasm boy and girlfriend are in their room on the train and things are getting hot and heavy. When girlfriend gets hungry and Constigasm boy is all “oh, heheh, yeah I could eat too”. Gosh. An 18-year-old boy stopping in the middle of sex for dinner. It is the brave new world we’ve all hoped for!

Off to the dining car toddles girlfriend and something something and she’s walking back to the room when Peter Griffin jumps her! Now, a bad guy that looks like Peter Griffin really may not be convincing to audiences. So he attacks her and ties her up and threatens her with a gun and threatens to cut off a finger. But girlfriend loves Constigasm boy (I assume the threat of the loss of a digit releases the love hormone), so she tells Peter what room they’re in. While all this is going on, Constigasm boy is just sitting. In the room. Reclined in a chair. Looking at his watch every once in a while. No masturbation here!  Although Constigasm boy will steal a blanket to keep warm because that’s good stealing, he won’t touch his danger zone.  Until he’s married.  I guess.  Or something.

Finally, stuff happens and it’s PETER GRIFFIN v. CONSTIGASM BOY on the 3:42 to somewhere. Constigasm boy wins and throws Peter Griffin out the window, girlfriend somehow gets free and is back in his arms. While hugging, Constigasm boy looks down and sees Peter Griffin’s glasses and steps on them. (Not “crushes”, not “stomps”, not “pulverizes”.) But, given the just-finished fight, rather daintily, if pointedly, steps on them. Whew! Trains! Who knew?

For some reason, the train has to come to a stop in the middle of nowhere (maybe more CIA/bad guy shennanigans; maybe seeing someone’s body go out a window – we don’t know) and the kids get off and Alfred shows up.

Finally, Alfred and the CIA agents corner the kids on a hill in a small town where we find out that all the above has transpired in a mere 22 hours. Of course, Constigasm boy is careful and smart and thoughtful and smart and demands ID. Constigasm boy plays hard ball. He’s not going with that sissy “let me see your badge” or “who was the 38th president of the U.S.”; no, none of that silly stuff. “If you really are CIA, what’s my real name?” (As with prior disclaimers, I am not making up dialog, either.)

So Alfred offers to buy them lunch because he’s just that kind of agent and he and Constigasm boy have a little chat in which Alfred informs him that this isn’t a war of bullets or borders or some other shit but that “the currency of this war is information”…because currency is to bullets as … oh who the fuck cares at this point. (Your head isn’t the only one hurting and we’re not done yet. So grab some pills (the legal kind you can buy OTC at Walgreens) and soldier on.)

Alfred further informs Constigasm boy that Constigasm boy’s dad stole this information from Rodney Dangerfield and that “to the naked eye it’s a list of meaningless numbers and letters” (cut to Constigasm boy flipping open a cellphone in his lap to a screen of Matrix-like green text flowing back and forth).

During the meeting (and because the CIA is on top of things), there are agents stationed on nearby rooftops and near the restaurant. And the bad guys are able to easily kill them from further-away rooftops using rifles with silencers. Except when they get close to the plate glass window where Constigasm boy is dining with Alfred. Then they can’t shoot for shit. Because plate glass is made with magnets and unicorn poop. (OK, I did make up that bit about plate glass. But, fuck me if it wouldn’t have made the movie better.)

Some other shit happens. Constigasm boy makes another untraceable/untrackable call to token black friend to set up a meet in public with Rodney. Because Rodney has figured out Constigasm boy has the info and he wants it back. But Constigasm boy is all “Oh, uh uh. My adoptive parents taught me to fight and my real parents are super deep cover CIA agents and I have the Nokia Phone of Holding so we’re doing this my way…IN PUBLIC!”

The token black friend makes shit happen, baby! Oh yeah! It’s gonna get real at PNC Park because the Pittsburgh Pirates needed some media attention and this movie was all they could afford. There’s a ticket taped under the foot of the statue of Roberto Clemente (educated guess on my part, because Constigasm boy is suddenly wearing a Clemente jersey) and there’s a gun taped under a chair and Constigasm boy and Rodney have this kind of spaghetti-western staredown while walking down aisles separated by a swath of seats. They finally get to their row and Rodney is all “GET UP” to the regular paying customers who really, as far as can be seen, aren’t blocking anyone’s way and just trying to, you know, ENJOY A DAMNED BALL GAME and not be part of some lame movie.

Long drawn out scene of Rodney shoving piece after piece of popcorn into his mouth and chewing and Constigasm boy reaching for the gun that token black friend taped under his seat (not sure if the holster was just one of those friendly touches or if he charged for that) then not reaching for it then dialog with Rodney and then reaching for the gun and…IT’S NOT THERE! “Are you looking for this” menaces Rodney.

Some other shit happens and suddenly Constigasm boy is being chased through the stadium by Rodney and he’s leaping and swinging from beams (yes, he is) and running…until he drops from a canopy and now Constigasm boy has an ankle ouchy and he has to limp but not Rodney (who really is a pudgy middle-aged guy that probably couldn’t run a lemonade stand let alone through a stadium). You could cut the tension with a weak stream of warm piss. Oh dear!

Suddenly! Something something and Constigasm boy’s real dad calls and is all “Do this! Now do that!” and BANG! Rodney is dead.

Then someone gives the Nokia Phone of Holding to someone and we find out that Alfred’s name is on the flowing Matrix-like text of mystery on the Nokia Phone of Holding so someone’s career is over. Then there’s some kind of touching talk (over the same phone) with dad and “you’re all the family I have left and I need you dad” and “blather blather dangerous life…I’ve always been watching out for you” click.

Undoubtedly, some of you have been paying attention and may be wondering whatever happened to Sigourney Weaver? Did she die in the Fireball of Burning BMW SUV?

Well, after all of this, Sigourney just saunters up from the ballpark parking lot and gets a little “how are you handling this” concerned and then asks Constigasm boy if he wants to come live with her since all his parents are dead (except for dangerous-job dad who apparently has attachment issues) and Constigasm boy is all, you know, real cool like James Dean “sure”. Because every teenage boy’s worst possible fucking nightmare dream is to live with his therapist.

Cut to Constigasm boy and girlfriend sitting in the empty stadium (where is everyone? how did they evacuate so quickly? how did these brats get back in…oh, that’s right, it was “Super Kickass Kid of Super Kickass Deepcover Agents and Most of His Parents Are Dead” day at PNC Park [I’ll bet they had fucking awesome bobbleheads that day too!]) and reminiscing about their first date.

CUT! JESUS CHRIST GET US OUT OF HERE!

So, my advice to readers based on this movie:

Get yourself a therapist with the Balloon Bouquet of Invisibility skillset; get yourself a token black friend for making untraceable cellphone calls; avoid using, or having someone use on your behalf, cemetery computers; if you need to get somewhere quickly, hitching a ride with a Uhaul driver is the way to go; Nokia Phones of Holding have ugly green screens; DO NOT EVER visit missing persons websites because you just don’t know (no, you don’t…no, stop it…they’re after you because they found you a “few years ago using a cyberattack” [no, I’m still not kidding]); and your dad left you for a very good reason and even 15 years later he still won’t meet you face-to-face because “CIA is my-i-way! CIA is the only way! CULater S-O-N, CIA is my only friend” (if a single, solitary tear did not roll down your cheek and you did not see a flag wave in your mind while singing that very moving lyric, you may be a terrorist).

Now, after all of that you may be thinking “Gee, that sounds like a movie I would really like to see because Taylor Lautner and the CIA and Rodney Dangerfield. What could go wrong?” Well, instead, I would recommend copy/pasting all this text, removing all the hard returns, and wrapping it in marquee tags. Just watch all that go by, and it will be more entertaining and make more sense and you’ll get more bang for your buck.

Abduction – Part 1 (because, sometimes, all the awful cannot be contained)

I watched the first half of Abduction starring Taylor Lautner – an actor who appears to be this decade’s breakout Shia Lebeouf, yet with a facial emotional range that seems to be frozen in some combination of “dealing with severe constipation while pleasuring myself” and, heretofore and hereafter herein, referred to as “Constigasm boy”.

It has a bunch of other actors I don’t know. Except for Sigourney Weaver. I know her. But not in that <air quotes> way.

Our story opens with Constigasm boy unconvincingly partying down then, apparently, going home to an abusive dad. But wait! It’s not abuse! It’s a loving dad teaching his kid to fight and to teach him a lesson about drinking and staying out all night because this is 1912 2012 when dads do that kind of thing.

Any way, Constigasm boy while working on a school assignment at home with the girl he was partnered with in class (who also happens to be his neighbor who he also happens to have a crush on because life happens that way – really – it does) stumbles across a website for missing children that (you better go pee now, if you have to, because this huge!) has his picture on it. Dun dun dun!!!!  Because life happens that way, too.  Really.  It does.

Of course, he’s got to start up an online chat on a website he knows nothing about. Because why bother talking with your parents or anything or even question that some kid might be messing with you considering that your assignment partner/neighbor/love of your life is was (we know it’s “was” due to a dramatically enacted “large picture ripping” scene) the girlfriend of your arch high school nemesis.

Back to the story: the online chat triggers an alarm in an apartment in New York where…wait for it…a tall skinny guy with a shaved head gets Constigasm boy’s address from the online chat and makes a call. Apparently, “this is the kid we’ve been looking for” or something. And he finally after years and years and years stumbled across our faux missing persons website.  (Although, given recent NSA revelations, this may not seem as farfetched as it did a year ago.)

Next thing you know, skinny guy and sidekick are in Virginia (I think) at Constigasm boy’s home and there’s gunfire and death and oh my god run son run BANG!

Constigasm boy’s girlfriend/assignment partner of course wanders into this mess and gets shot. Head to the hospital! Call 911 to report “my parents were murdered and I’m at the hospital” and get your call transferred immediately to Alfred Molina (CIA agent of dubious trust). Because 911 works just like that, folks. Really. It does. Your least little problem is really worthy of CIA attention, so all 911 calls are double-checked with the CIA so that you get the most out of your federal tax dollars.

Suddenly, Sigourney Weaver pops up (actually, she popped up back at the beginning of the movie as Constigasm boy’s therapist) with a balloon bouquet (by now, you may be wondering which parts of this I’m making up and which parts I’m not, well I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not making up any of this). Turns out she is one of Constigasm boy’s handlers or watchers or something and she used to work with Alfred Molina. Using the Balloon Bouquet of Invisibility™, she gets Constigasm boy and his girlfriend (“she’ll just slow you down”…”I’m not leaving her” dialogue up and out the piehole) out of the hospital before the bad, bad guys can get them. (Now, these bad bad guys are not the same bad guys that tracked down and paid a visit to Constigasm boy’s home. But they’re related. Apparently, our country’s vast net of surveillance is more robust and reliable than we may have been led to believe because, somehow, the bad bad guys are able to find out he’s at the hospital by magnets or something.)

Sigourney loads up the kids in her BMW SUV (BMW seems to heavily invested in some sponsor placement due to high visibility of logo and the very pointed reference to “late model BMW SUV”) and peels out! And, I don’t know about you, but nothing screams “manly danger” like a peeling out BMW SUV.  We move from city to country in a flash, so I’m really doubtful that Sigourney is following the speed limits.  Which really doesn’t send a good message to either the youth in her charge or the poor youth that got suckered into ponying up money for this movie.

While being chased by the bad bad guys and breaking local speed limits, Sigourney quickly kind of tells a story that kind of maybe makes sense about Constigasm boy’s adoptive parents being deep cover something or other and they’re coming up on a blind curve in 20 seconds and Constigasm boy and girlfriend will need to jump out while she creates a distraction.

A little more story while Sigourney counts down (really, “you have 15 seconds…you have 10 seconds…”) and info about a safe house where they should go. The address is stated just once. Which is all that’s necessary when your parents have been killed and you’ve been on the run and you’ve talked with Alfred Molina and you find out your therapist is your minder/keeper and she’s breaking all the speed limits…that will just cement the address right into your gray matter. (During all of this, there is one actually very good moment of acting. Constigasm boy’s girlfriend, hands aside her head, just goes “I don’t think I can handle this”. And the viewer thinks “that’s probably the most honest bit of teenage acting dialog I’ve ever heard”. For a moment, you hope that common sense takes hold and she’ll be all “Oh, uh uh. You are sooooo by yourself in this Constigasm boy. I’m taking dad’s Amex and holing up at a HoJo until this shit blows over.” But, as we all know, when a teenager has just broken up with her boyfriend and seen two other adults get killed (as well as getting shot herself) and her first date with the new guy has basically been murder/bullets, those hormones just kick in and she will get all “Oh baby I am in this with you til the bitter end because I don’t really know you or maybe even love you, but that constant look of being stuck between dealing with severe constipation and pleasuring yourself is just too much for me to resist”.

Sigourney’s countdown ends just as they hit the blind curve. My best guess is that she’s driven this route a thousand times at these break-neck speeds (which, honestly, appears to be 35mph) while counting down with a stopwatch because “dammit, something might happen some day”. The kids jump and roll and there’s a river, at which time Constigasm boy informs girlfriend that “we have to go in the water because they’ll track us”. And, suddenly, helicopters and a large flash/explosion from what appears to be Sigourney’s BMW SUV or at least the general area she was headed.

The kids make it to the safe house (on the way to the safe house, Constigasm boy does steal some stuff from a pretty nifty looking little trailer park, but it’s just stuff like a blanket to keep them warm so it’s, you know, “good” stealing because we don’t want to send the wrong message to any children watching), at which point Constigasm boy sniffs some clothes (no, still not making things up) and girlfriend does something and calls someone (dun dun dun!). But, cool man!, there’s a BMW sports car in the garage! It must be expensive and high powered because, while a small car, it takes six sequentially lit overhead lights to illuminate. So, they peel out of the garage (I feel compelled to say “BMWs peeling out is bitchin’ man” which isn’t true but something about this movie compels me). In a suburban community in the early morning with no one chasing them. They also apparently are racing down the street because “BMW delivers high speed performance even on quiet residential streets in the early morning and none of the neighbors will care because WE ARE FUCKING BMW” or something.

Now, I apologize. At this point I feel asleep. Or maybe I blacked out from banging my repeatedly against a brick I brought in from the front yard for just such a purpose. So I don’t know how it ends.

But I’ll probably try to catch the rest of it. Because…well…no real reason I can think of other than I hate leaving things unfinished.

Addendum: I had held a belief that poorly-done green screen was a thing of the past. Rest assured, it is not. I’m pretty sure that anything that doesn’t happen inside a building is done with green screen. It’s so bad that you can almost see the actors standing in a huge empty sound lot.

Wild, Wild World of Batwoman

I watched MST3K’s take on Wild, Wild World of Batwoman over the weekend.

I was completely underwhelmed by MST3K for primarily one reason: audio. The audio on the movie was too low, there was too much overtalking by the MST3K gang, and the MST3K gang continually talked over each other. Couldn’t hear large parts of the movie and couldn’t hear the comments (esp. at the beginning). Yeah, parts were funny. But it was mostly just annoying.

Based on that viewing though, it can be officially stated: there is a worse movie than Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It’s like the director dropped acid, took meth, shot up with heroin, ODed on Xanax, chugged 60 litres of tequila, smoked a bowl of hashish, then sat down to put his innermost thoughts and feelings into writing.

Oh. And. Mole people!