The LaGrange has been closed the last couple weeks on Monday and Tuesdays for “renovations”, so tonight was the first night I could make it out this week to see a cheap movie. I hope that “renovations” doesn’t mean “you’ll shortly be paying more to see movies here”. I guess I’ll wait and see.

There were many movies to choose from at the LaGrange tonight.

Simpsons Movie – I saw this in a first-run theater. I’d like to see it again, but prolly won’t review as Two Buck Schmuck. I have no snarky things to say about it – how can you lambast a movie that shows Bart’s doodle and has a Spider-Pig?
Live Free Or Die Hard – Seen it!
Transformers – “Directed By Michael Bay” are not four words I am generally happy to find strung together.
The Invasion – Hey, I’ll see this one!

I saw the Philip Kaufman directed Invasion of the Body Snatchers back when I was a kid, and it scared the bejeebus out of me. I thought it was great, especially the ending, with the creepy trees and Donald Sutherland screaming. Just a little side note, those strange trees really do exist. I went out for a walk when I was at a conference in San Francisco and stumbled upon the location where they shot that last scene for the movie. I still don’t know what kind of trees they are. I tried asking people in the vicinity about the trees, but they only told me I should lay down and take a nap, and asked me if I would hold their pod plant for them.

In my twenties, I saw the original, which is short, snappy and very well-made. Hey, it was made by the fantastic director Don Siegel – how could it *not* be great?

I have yet to see the Abel Ferrara remake Body Snatchers, but I have heard it’s pretty good.

Anyways, this is a film that has been remade a couple times, and at least the original and one of the remakes were great. So, I was curious about this version. And now I am no longer curious, having seen it.

It’s not that great.

In the two versions I have seen, there were pod plants that produced replacements for human beings. It was one of the cooler aspects of the films, as the protagonists eventually stumbled upon the enormous logistical operation that was being undertaken to transport pods across the country. One of the best parts of the original was when Kevin McCarthy’s character jumps into the back of a truck and realizes it is full of pods.

In this film, the infection begins with a space shuttle crash, where the many pieces of the exploding shuttle fall across parts of the United States, and carry some very robust alien organism. The organism enters a couple people’s bloodstreams, who then proceed to vomit into assorted beverages and give them to their unsuspecting loved ones. You think I am trying to be funny, don’t you? I’m not. That’s what they do. Well, they can also vomit on your face, which works almost as well. But the aliens really like throwing up in coffee. Go figure. So you take out the cool pod plants being carted this and way and that, and you replace it with vomiting. It frankly looked a little silly, though it was played so seriously. The whole film took itself waaaaay too seriously.

One of my favorite character actors Jeffrey Wright has a relatively important part in this film, where he has the unfortunate responsibility of delivering expository dialogue informing us of the scientific mumbo-jumbo underlying all the vomiting and the people-becoming-emotionless-dweebs. I was a little surprised that his character didn’t follow the arc that Leonard Nimoy’s character did in the 1978 version. It’s a crime when Mr. Wright is underutilized in a film. Yes, I am calling the people responsible for The Invasion criminals.

Nicole Kidman is the lead. She’s fine, I guess. One of the first scenes involves her in a very, very thin white undershirt (attention, nipples!), which is always a nice way to introduce a strong female character. She’s got a kid, whose well-being is presumably supposed to be the focus of much suspense and tension. I dunno — he was just some cutesy child actor — make him a pod person, what do I care? My favorite part of the movie actually occurs in a scene between Kidman and her son. She’s been infected (vomit on the face, not vomit in a cup), and is trying to stay awake. She tells her son to stab her in the heart with a hypodermic needle if she falls asleep. Surprisingly, this did not phase the kid at all. It’s all these videogames and cop shows today, desensitizing children from stabbing their parents in the heart with hypodermic needles!

I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, so I’ll ROT13 encode it (use my decoder on the right sidebar to decrypt the text): Vg fhpxf!

So I get out of the theater, and it’s only 10:30pm. I took a quick glance around as I left Theater 2, then snuck into Theater 1, where the 9:20pm showing of Transformers was already in progress.

I stayed for about twenty minutes. I didn’t stay for the ending, because I don’t hate myself.

The little scene I saw was like an extremely crappy version of the Joe Dante film Small Soldiers, which itself was an extremely crappy version of the Joe Dante film Gremlins. So, in a nutshell, it was a third-rate Joe Dante ripoff made by the guy who brought the moviegoing public the shittiest film ever made.

Toodles!

Two movies after 9:00pm this week at the LaGrange.

Knocked Up – I’d seen this and liked it in a first-run theater, but didn’t feel like seeing it again.

Live Free Or Die Hard – Oh boy oh boy oh boy.

So, it was the Die Hard movie I subjected myself to, and yes, it sucked harder than all its predecessors.

The bad guy in this movie was computer superdude Thomas Gabriel, played by Timothy Olyphant, probably most recognizable as Seth Bullock on the HBO series Deadwood, where he displayed a wide palette of emotions — agitated hostility and hostile agitation. He plays basically the same character here, except without a mustache.

Mr. Gabriel creates havoc via his team of hackers to shutdown the US, in order to get money, or teach us a lesson, or be a jerk, or something. Ah, the action movie that uses computers as a major plot device. Excepting WarGames, these movies never work.

Here’s some tips for Hollywood types thinking about making an action movie centered around computers:

1. Watching someone hit a Delete key, even if it results in an explosion causing their death, is not exciting.

2. Having a closeup shot of a cable being plugged into a USB port is not exciting.

3. Watching people sweating under pressure typing on a keyboard is not exciting.

4. Building up suspense to reveal the ultimate uber hacker (which invariably leads to a “comical” revelation that he lives in his parents’ basement) is not exciting.

5. Having that uber hacker be Kevin Smith is not exciting.

John McClain, now an unstoppable action machine, has a nerd dork in tow for the entire movie — it’s that asshead Mac guy, Justin Long! I still blame you for making me go out and buy a new wireless router, jerk!

I don’t know. I really enjoyed action movies in the 80’s where all sorts of physical laws were routinely violated by the hero, and much destruction was done to anonymous henchman, but here it just left me cold.

Bruce Willis is just such a humorless smarmy wiener, it’s impossible to enjoy this movie. And, I’m no strapping young buck, but the man’s head is approaching some sort of strange four-sided polygon shape. I’m a little concerned for the man’s health. Maybe he should eat more circles.

Ah, the approach of fall, and crisp, chilly evenings. It’s my favorite time of year. And with fall comes Halloween, and with Halloween, HORROR MOVIES. HORROR! HORROR!!!!

The late 9:00pm schedule is truly crazy this week at the LaGrange. I only had two choices:

1408
Waitress

From what I could ascertain, Waitress does not contain any overt, intentional moments of horror, so that was out. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a good old-fashioned horror movie, and from the look of it, 1408 looked to be a crappy old-fashioned one. Still, old-fashioned.

So, I checked into the John Cusack-laden 1408 (check out the movie poster’s shitty graphic design! Tres magnifique!):

I have now seen movies in all four theaters of the LaGrange! Tonight’s showing was in Theater 3, which is apparently the “musical” theater. Theater 3 is exactly like Theater 4, except for the fact that the artwork that adorns the sides of the theater consists of badly rendered record albums and musical notes, rather than badly-drawn eagles and soldiers.

I got to the theater with some minutes to spare. As I sat there reading a Chicago Reader snagged from the lobby, I realized they were playing Abbey Road, which was quite the unexpected pleasant experience, although “Get Back” was rudely interrupted to make way for a preview of Captivity. From its trailer, it appeared to be another entry in the torture-porn genre that looks improbably shittier than Hostel II.

The director’s name popped out at me during the trailer — Roland Joffé. He’s responsible for movies reportedly liked by some friends of mine — The Mission, The Killing Fields, etc. Looking up the movie’s entry on the IMDB, I see that the film was written by Larry Cohen, who has done a lot of interesting work (It’s Alive, Maniac Cop, Q). I don’t know, maybe I’ll see it, but it looked horrifically bad.

Boy, it’s taking me a while to roll around to talking about 1408, idn’t it?

Okay, I’ll get on with it. First, some positive things. I like that the title of this movie is a number, with no words. Now just because I say this, doesn’t I mean I like the movie title 300. Because I don’t. I don’t like that movie title. Sheesh, I’m fickle.

Second good thing: When Cusack is first in the super-duper-haunted Room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel, there is some nice suspense when you are waiting for something extraordinary to happen.

Alright, now you know everything good about the movie.

Samuel Jackson phones in a performance as the manager of the Dolphin. I used to be so excited to see him in smaller film parts early in his career. Hell, I remember being really impressed by his performance in the crappy National Lampoon movie Loaded Weapon 1. Could the thrill be gone? Could it?

The film is pretty stinky. 1408 is essentially that one scene in The Shining where Jack Nicholson goes to Room 237 to see what the hubbub is all about. The only differences between that scene from The Shining and this movie is that 1408 doesn’t have a hot, wet young naked lady, and it doesn’t have a creepy, wet old naked lady, and it goes on for about an hour and half longer than the Room 237 scene. Did you know both movies were based on the work of Steven King? You did? Oh, I’m sorry, then. I’m wasting your time.

Jerk.

Oh, brother. Bad movie choice here. Seriously, I may get my nonexistent movie reviewing license revoked for seeing this one.

So, what were my choices?

Spider-Man 3 – Seen it.
Meet The Robinsons – Didn’t feel like a kid’s movie tonight.
Bug – This might sound a little petty (and it is), but I still am reluctant to see an Ashley Judd movie since my last experience with one of her movies near the dawn of the millenium.

Bug actually sounds kind of intriguing, though perhaps a little derivative of a Cronenberg movie — characters believe there are insects crawling under their skin. Hey, an hour and a half of insects crawling under one’s skin might be better than the time I spent seeing:

Hostel: Part II

I honestly should have foreseen my troubled evening when I was stopped by not one, not two, but three trains as I attempted to reach the theater. Thank you, suburbs!

It was late enough that I skipped the customary Walgreen’s stop for plain M&M’s, and ended up just plunking down a fiver for a large RC cola and a small cup o’ popcorn. As I took my seat, I had every intention of enjoying a well-constructed horror movie.

Then the groups of high school girls and guys started filing in. There were six rows of them eventually sitting to my right, all part of the same group. And they all had cell phones. And they all were looking at their bright, bright cell phones. And they all were talking on their cell phones. Now, keep in mind that if there is any judgment passed by the patron god of cinema, it was judging me, a mid-30’s guy alone with his popcorn and large soda, more harshly than them. But still, goddammit. I think a rowdy audience is great, as long as it’s not a moronic, rowdy audience. Two Buck Schmuck WAS NOT AMUSED.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, someone on the other side of me was whipping something small and hard at my neck. When the first bit of gory violence occurred, I felt something bounce off me. Then when the next bit of violence occurred, bam! — another whap, which I was able to grab before it fell. It was a small cherry. I looked back one row and saw an excessively nonchalant high schooler sitting behind a couple of girls. I promptly got up and sat in his row. I wasn’t sure it was him, but the cherry-pelting did cease. It’s an interesting psychology behind the cherry-thrower — engaging in a little petty violence as some putrid excessive violence unfolds on the screen. Not to mention he was a jag-off.

This movie… this movie was not scary at all. It actually starts promisingly, picking up with the survivor of the first Hostel. But he is promptly dispatched at his kitchen table, shown with a cat licking his neck where his head used to be. And on we follow more unwitting victims we don’t like, tortured by people whose motivations we don’t believe, in a world we’re not supposed to care about. The film was really just a boring, ugly picture of humanity, and a celebration of that ugliness. It was like nihilism and a poop-throwing monkey had a baby together.

I equate this movie with the majority of dreck that John Carpenter’s Halloween spawned during the Reagan years – Friday the 13th, etc. It’s dull, unimaginative, and has nothing to say. AND IT’S NOT SCARY.

The only thing different is its philosophical focus. While the 80’s movies sought to inflict punishment on teens for having sex, this movie is more concerned with inflicting punishment on teens because hey, it would look really cool here if we hang this girl upside-down and have her bleed on somebody.

There have been words coined to describe this genre — “torture porn”. I dunno, that seems a bit trite. Can’t we just call it bad cinema?

Just as Jack Kerouac feasted on Benzedrine as he produced the large paper roll that became On The Road, so too does Two Buck Schmuck sit, a large RC and bagful of plain M&M’s in his gut, mulling over his latest opus to the cinematic arts… oh, I’m sorry, didn’t see you there. I was just self-mythologizing a bit.

Here’s the movies I had to choose from at the LaGrange (or as I like to call it, The The Grange):

Georgia Rule
Disturbia
Delta Farce
Spider-Man 3

Georgia Rule? Nah, I still don’t need the stink of Garry Marshall upon me.

Disturbia? Nah, that’s okay. I have Rear Window on DVD.

Delta Farce. Delta Farce. Oh, I think I just pulled a brain muscle. I see that as of this writing, on the IMDB page for this movie, the user rating for this film is 2.0 out of 10, with a total vote count of 2,148 thus far. When you’re feeling down, be comforted in the knowledge that the moviegoing public can recognize a cinematic dookie. Well, I guess you can still be depressed that over 2,000 people actually saw this movie. I noticed the poster for Delta Farce, which parodied the poster for Full Metal Jacket, had a slogan that said, “War Isn’t Funny…but this movie is.” Perhaps they should have put quotes around the word “is”, as in “that depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.”

So, I saw Spider-Man 3. This was kind of an unusual situation for me. I have already seen Spider-Man 3, paying full price. I was a little disappointed the first time around, but felt like seeing it again. I’m a former superhero comic book collector, and Spider-Man is still near and dear to my heart. I’ll be giving away a plot point or two for this movie, so’s you have been warned.

First, the good things about Spidey 3.

1) The Dark Spidey-Suit
I loved what they did with the dark Spidey suit. It was different from the comics (which I liked as well), but it just fit really well — I can’t imagine it any other way, which is a compliment to James Acheson, the costume designer.

2) Pretty much every scene with Harry Osborn
The first action piece is a really personal fight between Harry Osborn as the new Green Goblin, and Peter Parker (in his civvie clothes). A lot of neat things happen — Parker gets thrown through the corner of a glass skyscraper, Harry gets clotheslined, etc. The later fight scene between Harry and Peter is also nice, and more than a bit vicious. The tender scenes between Harry and Mary Jane are great. I don’t even mind the kind of cheesy Marvel Team-Up Harry and Spidey do at the end to fight the combined forces of Venom and the Sandman.

3) Some small character moments
Just some nice flourishes with actors that had small parts in the previous Spider-Man movies. For some reason, it makes me happy seeing actors in small roles pop up again in later films of a series. I think the various cast disappearances of the Back To The Future series (Crispin Glover, whoever Elisabeth Shue replaced) left a bad taste in my mouth. When I see an actor again, I breathe a sigh of relief, thinking “Well that’s nice that everything worked out with that actor and the film production.”

Bruce Campbell *again* has a cameo that’s great, but it also works seamlessly within the context of the film. The manager of Peter’s building, as well his daughter, show up again. The manager actually gets a nice quiet moment with Pete, which I appreciated. Even Flash Thompson shows up in a very brief, non-speaking cameo at Harry Osborn’s funeral. It was a small little detail, but appreciated.

4) Venom
Venom first came onto the comics scene a few years after I stopped collecting, but I have read a few of the comics, and thought they were kind of cheesy. I liked him much more in the film.

And, the bad things…

1) Why did you people bring in your three toddlers to see this movie?
Seriously, it’s 10:00pm now. What were you thinking? I remember going to the Davis as a childless young man. A large family with screaming kids would be sitting in front of me. I would be pissed, but back in my mind, I would think, “Well, it’s gotta be rough having a family. I know they must want to get out and see a movie once in a while, and maybe they can’t get a babysitter.”

Well, I have three kids now. I can safely say, without a doubt, these people are nimrods. They were sitting in the back of the theater, apparently under the assumption that sound does not travel through air-filled space. It does, however. The screaming of children died down in the last hour or so of the movie. I looked and they were mysteriously gone. I guess someone complained. Oh no, it wasn’t me. Sure, I turned around in my seat and gave them the stinkeye a couple times, but I was about twenty rows in front of them and silhouetted by the screen.

2) Jesus, when is this goddamn movie going to end?
There was just too much damn movie to get through here. I loved Sandman in the comics, but I think he didn’t really belong in this movie. And Venom didn’t even come onto the scene until the very end of the movie. If it would have been possible, I would have cut Sandman and moved up Venom earlier into the film.

3) Cheesy, cheesy character moments
  a) Oh, crap. Stan Lee makes a cameo.
A SPEAKING CAMEO. His lines, as he (as a complete stranger) walks up to Peter Parker and says, in reference to Spider-Man — “I guess one man *can* make a difference. [beat] ‘Nuff said.” OH CRAP. I wanted to rip my eyes out of their sockets. “‘Nuff said” is a well-known Stan Lee catchphrase, but here are a couple other phrases I would have preferred to have him say:

“Say, could you squeeze my balls?”
“Do you think I need a boob job?”
“Hail Satan!”
“I’m Stan Lee. Did you recognize me? Here’s a little fact. A Marvel Comics movie’s crappiness is in direct proportion to the size of the role given to me, Stan Lee.”

  b) J. Jonah Jameson
I love J.K. Simmons, and I love him as J. Jonah Jameson in the first two Spider-Man movies. But here? It’s like they didn’t know what to do with him. They had a running gag where his secretary buzzes him, and the buzzing is so jarring it startles him, makes him spill a bottle of pills, etc. Why is the buzzer so loud? I have no clue. It’s just a gag, but a completely ludicrous gag. It would be like Ted Raimi’s character Hoffman popping in randomly into Jameson’s office, mentioning an old bluesman’s name, then leaving. Sure, it’s funny, but what the eff?

Jameson also has a completely lame scene where he buys a camera off a little girl, who is snapping pictures of the climactic fight. After he gets the camera, he realizes the camera is missing film. One, would the girl be using a camera that uses film? Two, would the girl, if she had film on her person, be shooting pictures knowing that her camera was not loaded with film?

  c) Sam Raimi’s kids
Speaking of that little girl, hmm, she looks a lot like two other boys in the crowd watching the climactic fight. Oh, I see. They are all Raimis. And, how shall I put this? They are not actors.

Two Buck Schmuck would like to thank his daughter for the loaning of the Spider-Man mask in the above grimacing picture.

Tonight at the 9-ish shows at the LaGrange Theatre, here were my choices:

Wild Hogs — Seen it!
Georgia Rule — A Garry Marshall comedy, starring Jane Fonda and Lindsay Lohan. I’d be afraid to attend because my heart would explode with warmth and laughter.
Blades Of Glory — Like Talladega Nights on ice. Though I would probably enjoy Will Arnett and Amy Poehler’s supporting roles as a vicious ice-skating couple in this movie, I didn’t feel like seeing a comedy tonight.

Which leaves us with:

Fracture — a “suspense” “drama” starring Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins.

I don’t believe I have noted it previously, but all the movies I have seen up to this point at the LaGrange have been in Theater 1, the curvy seated room with dim lighting and no drink holders.

Tonight, I saw the majesty of Theater 2. It was a perfectly acceptable theatre, a little on the smallish side, with the screen not quite big enough for the projected images. But it had bright enough lighting for me to read my cherished Movie Fun Facts prior to the movie, and cup holders as far as the eye could see (which isn’t terribly far in Theater 2). One kind of disturbing thing about Theater 2 — you have to walk down a very long, blood-red corridor to get to it. Zoiks!

Hey, have you ever heard of the well-respected film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum? He’s actually turned me onto many interesting films — for example, the works of the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Apart from periodically providing capsule reviews of recent releases, Rosenbaum also writes weekly columns in the Chicago Reader that are articulate and often thought-provoking.

Now that I have gotten *that* out of the way, here’s his review of Fracture in its entirety (taken from here):

An engineer (Anthony Hopkins) goes on trial in Los Angeles for trying to murder his wife (Embeth Davidtz), and the prosecutor (Ryan Gosling) attempts to push through what appears to be an open-and-shut case but isn’t. With its lavish architecture and Spielbergian lighting, this absorbing thriller has a high-toned look, but director Gregory Hoblit and writers Daniel Pyne and Glenn Gers got much of their training in TV cop shows, which shows in the adroit way they semaphorically abbreviate certain characters and plot developments to slide us past various incongruities. The main interest here is the juxtaposing of Gosling’s Method acting with Hopkins’s more classical style, a spectacle even more mesmerizing than the settings.

Rosenbaum actually gave this movie a “Reader Recommend” (the equivalent of a “thumbs up”). One thing that I have noted in particular with regards to the more “intellectual” film critics, is that occasionally when reviewing a piece-of-shit mainstream movie, they focus on some dumbass component that makes them think the film is somehow watchable. This film wasn’t just a turd, it had teeth, too. Seriously, “semaphorically abbreviate”? The juxtaposition of Gosling’s and Hopkin’s acting styles, a mesmerizing spectacle? Are you fucking kidding me?

This movie was not just boring, it was relentlessly boring. I am not exaggerating in saying that I looked at my watch *at least* ten times during this movie.

The one bright spot in this movie was that in a few scenes Ryan Gosling was wearing a shirt for Camp Ki-Shau-Wau, apparently an old Boy Scout Camp once owned by the Starved Rock Area Council.

My bleary, reddened eyes opened briefly at the sight of the words Starved Rock on his shirt, because that’s a lovely northern Illinois state park I have had the pleasure of hiking. From what I can tell, Camp Ki-Shau-Wau is not located in the park, but a little ways down the Vermillion River. It appears that the camp has been converted to a resort.

Why not learn more about Starved Rock? On the Starved Rock page, do you see those background images of the park drifting behind the happy, active, middle-agish seated couple? Watch those pictures for about two hours, and you’ll get a sense of how it felt to watch Fracture (except the couple was Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins, and they were spectacularly mesmerizing in their contrasting acting styles).

That was nice how I tied that all together, wasn’t it? You didn’t think I could pull it off, did you.

That’s why they pay me the big bucks, ladies and gents.