The East

I am happy to see that my favorite woman in movies right now (Brit Marling) has finally broken away from Richard Gere and Robert Redford; two old creepers in Hollywood who are still somehow making films. Yes they are legends in that town and that is probably the reason, along with getting a paycheck so she can continue making real movies; that she worked with them in the first place. But I am 100% sure that the only reason they let her in their movies is because they are delusional and thought that they could still get a piece. I can’t blame them really, if Cash Warren can get Jessica Alba, then anything is possible.

Thankfully Marling has teamed back up with her co-writer and director Zal Batmanglij from Sound of My Voice to make their latest project in The East. If you have not seen any of her previous work, she makes low budget, thought provoking films that typically floor you with the movies’s final scene.  The East is no different however it’s not quite as good as its predecessors.

This movie is about Sarah’s (Marling) attempt to infiltrate an underground terrorist organization called The East who targets major corporations with their attacks. The film starts out with Ellen page’s voice explaining their latest attack and the reasoning behind it as they flood this CEO’s house with oil after his company recklessly dumped tons of oil in a local wildlife preserve killing most of its inhabitants and land. Sarah is a part of an elite private investigation firm that works for these major corporations and their sole job is to go in and expose these troublemakers for what they are and in the process bring an end to the bad publicity they receive which directly affects their profits. Well as is the case with most undercover agents (at least in movies), Sarah eventually finds herself caught in between her duty to her job and her new found empathy for the group.

What sets this film a part from the usual undercover cop story is that The East’s beefs with these corporations all seem legitimate. Sarah becomes more and more detached from the lifestyle she had in Washington D.C. and gets used to the counter culture living of the East. She even develops romantic feelings for their leader Benji (Alexander Skarsgard). But as the movie goes on, their attacks get more and more daring and you begin to wonder if their self righteousness crosses the line.

Overall I give this movie a rating of FRESH but it’s not as if it was free from some major flaws. Marling and Batmanglij already covered cults and their culture in Sound of My Voice but for some reason they felt the need to force some of those elements into this story as well. I caught myself sighing in disappointment during her first dinner scene with the group and their test of her selfishness. Then there was the “Do you mind if I bathe you” scene; which would normally sound hot but instead it just came off lame and kind of silly. My friend called these scenes their” team building activities” and after I finally stopped laughing I realized that she was actually pretty on point with her assessment. They did however have one team building activity that involved spin the bottle which initially seemed pretty pointless but comes back to make sense later on in the movie.  Also there is a scene where a screaming Ellen Page forces an exec to do something that is life threatening. I’m sorry but I’m only worth about fifty dollars, not 50 million dollars like these people were, and there is no way I’m letting a 4 foot 3 inch Ellen Page force me into doing anything. Not outside of the bedroom anyway. It was at this point that the movie got borderline preachy but thankfully it never quite crossed over into Michael Moore territory. 

What saves the movie is the acting and as usual with Marling, the final scene.  I would suggest catching it before it leaves the theater especially since Marling must have tapped into my dreams and realized that all I asked for was just a few scenes with her as a brunette. 

World War Z

 I think I may have finally reached my threshold when it comes to zombies. Whether it’s through all of the recent movies they’ve released, television shows aired, or all of the Halloween costumes that even girls are rocking these days; we have had them shoved down our throat for the past decade or so. Don’t get me wrong, I love zombies, but what happened to our infatuation with angry little people? Bring back the days of Chucky or The Gremlins or even Troll! While we’re at it, why not throw midgets into the mix?  I would definitely go see a movie called Killer Midgets Do Work! But as it stands, Brad Pitt thought it was a great idea to give us yet another entry into the world of zombies with his latest release, World War Z. Now to his credit he at least chose a cool book for his inspiration however when they adapted it to the screen it took multiple rewrites and reshoots to get it done. And if you have ever closely followed the movie making process, this is usually a sign of disaster. But it looks like when the producers (Pitt) decided to bring in the resident Hollywood script saver in Damon Lindelof to save this mess, they may have hit a home run.

First things first, while I give Angelina Jolie credit for being brave and having her mastectomy, I truly believe that she's the one who forces Pitt to only have ugly wives for his co stars. Sure he had Jessica Chastain as his wife in Tree of Life but she was forced to wear old woman make up for half of that movie. And in Z, his wife is played by Mireille Enos who looks like an orangutan whose nickname is Skeletor. I can see her being a bit cautious since she herself stole Pitt from Aniston but man; making him cuddle up next to Enos for 2 months while filming is just cruel!

This movie wastes no time in getting started with the action. In similar fashion to 28 Days Later you see video clips of how we are destroying the world with our hate, ignorance, and negligence while Muse’s 2^nd Law plays over the footage. I hate Muse’s new album but this song seems like the perfect fit for a movie about the apocalypse. And maybe that's because it's signaling the end of their career as well.  Oh well, the movie starts with what seems like a normal morning of breakfast with the kids, however while on the way to school all hell breaks loose in a traffic jam in Philadelphia. You see everyone freaking out and then all of a sudden you see random angry people jumping on top of one another. It doesn’t take you long to realize that they aren’t people anymore but  they are in fact zombies. Pitt and his family are somehow able to escape and he immediately gets a phone call from his friend in the U.N. who is asking for his help. Pitt apparently did special recon missions with Navy Seals teams back in the day and the U.N. needs his help in trying to find the origin of this breakout in hopes to find a cure for it.

The major obstacle this movie had to overcome was its PG-13 rating. With this soft rating comes a lack of blood, gore and nudity. Now I know nudity isn’t usually featured in zombie movies but maybe one day we can change this. It’s for the best people, trust me it’s for the best! But what this movie lacks in blood and gore, it makes up with suspense. Just like in 28 Days Later, these zombies are fast and aggressive. But unlike 28 Days, these zombies are athletic and can jump like Olympic medalists. They also seemingly work together in order to get to those tasty human brains. So you can’t sit there just expecting the uninfected to out run them or even outsmart them. The zombies always find a way to break through. I also liked that this wasn’t just a simple survival story; instead it played out more like an investigation with Pitt trying to figure what happened and why certain areas are apparently handling it better than others. Of course as he goes from devastated region to devastated region, he must avoid the undead that are trying to feed on his beautiful face.

The director Marc Foster does an excellent job of using dark settings to add to the creepiness of the film as well as playing to the strengths of the zombies; which includes their sensitivity to sound. He also uses his experience in action movies to make quite a few memorable scenes by the way of an airline jet and the zombie attack in Israel. The fact that he’s German I’m sure played no role in this.

While I wish this movie was R for the reasons listed earlier, I was pleasantly surprised by this movie and found myself literally on the edge of my seat for the entire second half of the film. I rate this movie as a fairly solid FRESH and suggest that you check it out.

Man of Steel

It’s hard to believe that the public has so easily forgotten how awful the first attempt at a Superman reboot went. Bryan Singer bored us all to death with his melodramatic version of the comic book which included an Oscar worthy actor in Brandon Routh (from MTV’s Undressed) playing Superman and the overacting Kevin Spacey trying so desperately to come from behind the giant shadow of Gene Hackman. And I promise that’s the last time I will talk about K. Spacey coming from behind another man. Well actually I can’t promise that; he seriously needs to come out of the closet already. I mean I will forever give him props for beheading Gweneth Paltrow in Se7en but we all had to know he was gay when there weren’t frequent reports of non stop threesomes between him, Thora Birch, and Mena Suvari on the set of American Beauty! You put Colin Farrell within 200 miles of that set and I guarantee you that Suvari ends up pregnant and Chris Cooper comes out with a black eye.

But as it turned out this weekend, people were lined up by the hundreds to see the latest attempt at a reboot in Man of Steel. This time it was Zack Snyder and his unique approach that he brings to action movies who was allowed to sit in the director’s chair. He relies way too much on CGI with the actual story always taking a back seat but the end result is usually a cool looking movie at the very least. I went in with a little hope that this would be better than its predecessor because Christopher Nolan helped David S. Goyer with the script. And if you know anything about Goyer, when he has someone to actually reign him in a bit, he’s actually pretty decent at writing comic book stories.

So the story starts off pretty cool with the planet Krypton falling apart at the seams and you see Jor-El (Russell Crowe) trying everything that he can to save the planet and at least some of it’s people. But then General Zod (Michael Shannon) shows up with his army and has other ideas in mind. Crowe is able to escape Zod and sends his new born son Kal-El along with Krypton’s most important mechanism to the planet Earth to hopefully start a new life. In the meantime Zod and his crew are captured and are sentenced to a lifetime of imprisonment for treason and murder. He vows revenge for his wrongful sentencing and also promises to find Kal-El in order retrieve the missing mechanism and finish what he started.

Snyder then shows you in non linear fashion how Kal-El now named Clark, is adjusting to society. You see  how he spends his days working different odd jobs until there comes a time when he has to use his powers to save others and he once again has to disappear into obscurity.  He then flashes to when Clark was a kid and how he had to resist fighting back the kids that were picking on him because he was quiet and kept to himself. The entire time he has his dad Kevin Costner reassuring him that he is holding back his secret because he is destined to do something great and will eventually win over the human race with all of the wonderful things he is capable of doing. Little does he know that when Zod figures out where he is, this will be his time to show off his strength and the high moral code that his earthly father has taught him. There are more little sub plots to the story that I will let you discover on your own but it’s a pretty familiar plot.

The coolest part of the movie is the first half because this is where Snyder actually allows the story to engage you. He doesn't get too over the top when he shows both the younger and older versions of Clark doing amazing things to save humans. And the always wonderful Amy Adams actually gives us the first ever cute Lois Lane who is smart and sassy but thankfully not annoying. The best part of the film is when Zod’s ship enters the Earth’s atmosphere and he hacks into every line of communication that we have and sends out this chilling message threatening the human race to turn in Superman or he will destroy every inch of the planet to find him. This is point of the movie where you think Chris Nolan will turn this into the next Dark Knight. But instead, this is where they allowed Zack Snyder to enter the CGI room.

Every action scene is simply one computer generated image apparently throwing another computer generated image about 500 yards somewhere off the screen. The only power they really use is their strength, so it’s just one punch after the other while they look at each other with mean stares. Oh and wouldn’t you know it, they just so happen to land in a Sears store or an Exxon filling station, just in case you were wondering why you felt the need to get a new blender after the movie. After about an hour of seeing the same fight scene over and over you simply get bored. So you would think they would do something to mix it up a bit but no; this movie is completely humorless; no one ever says or does anything cool. Where is my “Son of Jor-El! KNEEL before Zod!” I know they had to adjust to the Earth’s atmosphere but at least have them do cool things with some of their other powers.

The final fight scene between Zod and Superman was actually ok. And everyone did an excellent job acting in it. I just wish that Chris Nolan put the reigns on both Snyder and Goyer. But with the talk of a second one already in the works, I am sure he will learn from his mistakes and make the sequel better. Due to the quality of the first half of the movie and because it was so well acted, I will give this movie a rating of BARELY FRESH!

Pharmakon and MMoths

Being from a small town, it didn’t take much to scare me in my younger years. I’m from a coastal town in Texas that for a brief period banned MTV. Today, I would be jumping for joy if they banned that awful network, but back then they actually showed music videos and had cool shows like 120 Minutes which was hosted by Uncle Fester. So unfortunately, unless it was Bobby Brown Humpin Around or Ice Cube Jackin for Beats on BET, I missed out on any other genres of music. I guess it was ok for the urban kids to learn how to have unprotected sex from Bobby or have Ice Cube teach us about jackin but please please don’t let the white kids get exposure to Courtney Love. And honestly, I wouldn’t want my kid seeing that train wreck either.

The point of all of this is, there was a time when music used to scare the hell out of me; and dammit I miss it! I remember the day when my buddy sneaked Nirvana’s In Utero into my household like a plantation owner’s kid sneaking a book in to a slave. Due to the MTV ban, this was the first time I was ever exposed to Kurt Cobain and all of his weirdness. I heard Scentless Apprentice with Kurt yelling “Like most babies smell like butter He had a smell like no other’ followed by him screaming over these screeching guitars and I nearly threw the cd out of the window. Especially since the liner notes had some guy dressed in women’s undergarments. It was the perfect combination of everything that I was taught was evil and weird in this world! And from that point on, I was hooked (not that I’m evil or weird).  

These days it’s hard to find artists that are truly messed up in the head. Sometimes you get close with the likes of Kanye West or Jack White but for the most part its all an act. Well in this case I might have actually found a girl from New York who just might fit the bill; you cant make the music she makes and not have had one too many acid trips in your life. The person I am talking about goes by the name Pharmakon (Margaret Chardiet) and her music sounds like something Trent Reznor or Marilyn Manson would make…but  evil! She screams indiscernible lyrics over slow driving beats and screeching sounds that are mixed in with industrial music. It’s really tough to listen to for an extended period of time which would explain why she can’t make an album that she likes. She’ll record one and then instantly scratch it. But I think with the right producer to reign her in a bit, her music could be something special. She’s quite technical in her music making process and that comes across in her live shows as each song builds to these chilling and hair raising climaxes with her dancing around and screaming at the top of her lungs. I rate her as slightly WEAK for now but I like her potential. Sneak razorblades in your hair and wear steel toed boots to the show just in case you decide to pop in. Trust me when I say this music isn’t for everyone and quite honestly it’s really only something you go see for the pure spectacle of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_5Xmk5zBpk

So to balance this post out a bit, I thought I’d point you in the direction of MMoths. He’s an Irish electronic DJ/producer who makes atmospheric music you can chill out and bob your head to. He has quite a few guest vocalists on his tracks for those who like vocals with their music, so you won’t quite need to break out your furry backpacks and glow sticks to it. Apparently his EP is based off of events that occurred on his tours with Aphex twin and At the Drive In. And if you have seen a single Aphex Twin video, then you know how disturbing some of their experiences can be. I rate him as FRESH.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mhti79fAl4&NR=1&feature=fvwp

The Internship

I can’t really blame Vince Vaughn for getting fat, old and lazy; it’s happens to the best of us. If I had some success in Hollywood, was able to move back to my hometown Chicago to live like a king, and somehow convinced Jennifer Aniston to date me; I too would eat and drink myself silly until I looked like Dom Deluise in History of the World Part 1. There would be slave girls sloppily feeding me grapes as I lay on my back breathing heavily in my stain covered toga. Now I’m 90% sure that I’ve used that joke on this blog before but if Vince Vaughn can recycle his “Hey, let’s get drunk and make some bad decisions” joke in EVERY movie he makes; then I can too!

With his latest “effort” he tries to recreate the magic that he had with Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers. Here they play the role of two old and struggling salesmen who find out that their company is no longer in business while at dinner with a client. As they struggle to find real jobs, Vaughn decides that this is their one opportunity to recharge their lives and give it some purpose by doing something they actually care about.  So he convinces Owen that they should try and become interns at Google. Owen cautiously agrees and off they go to northern California to compete with about a hundred 20 year old’s for the same job.

And here is where the flood of cliché’s comes roaring at you. As you would expect, no one wants to team up with them, so they are left with a bunch of rejects to be a part of their group.  This team of misfits includes an angry outcast , an abused Chinese boy, a cute, nerdy, and possibly promiscuous Indian girl, and the geeky team lead who already has a job at Google. All that’s missing is the big black cafeteria lady who yells the entire time with her hand on her hip. But as you would expect, they initially don’t get along because of all of their differences and this causes them to fall behind the other groups who are all in a competition to be guaranteed permanent jobs at the company.

Our heroes are up against all odds : the intern director who apparently hates them, a pompous British kid and his group who hate them, and their age which has them completely out of touch with technology and social media. They must however find a way to get over their differences and get along so that they can shock everyone and ultimately win the job. The problem is, you see every scene coming 30 minutes before it actually happens because you have seen this movie about a thousand times before.With that said, there are some funny moments in it that you haven’t already seen in the trailers.

Vince Vaughn’s idea for a new app as well as all of his horrible references to the 80’s further show how much of a dinosaur he and Owen were. Then there was the Quittage match with the geeky team lead attempting to explain the rules to them. And to be honest, I didn’t recognize a single word he said in that 2 minute span. And what buddy movie isn’t complete without a trip to the strip club? I’ll let you use your imagination as to what took place there. I won’t even waste time writing about the Owen Wilson’s love interest in Rose Byrne, who thankfully doesn’t look anywhere near as old in this as she did in The Place Beyond The Pines.

This movie isn’t awful but you’ve already seen it's best jokes in the trailer and the ending is about as predictable as Kim Kardashian getting impregnated by Kanye West was. Come on man, as ugly as he is, you knew it was just a matter of time before he “forgot” to put on a condom. He locked that down with the quickness and props to him for doing so. This movie is WEAK and you should wait for Redbox.

The Purge

My introduction was initially going to be the usual light hearted nonsense that you have come to expect from me but then my race happened. By now Black people talking loudly in a theater has become a bit of a cliché, and you would think a culture that is typically ahead of the curve when it comes to coolness would recognize how wack it is to talk during a movie; but apparently not. There was this idiot that continued to jabber the entire time while her fellow black friends, who were clearly embarrassed by it, laughed nervously at her stupid comments anyway for fear of being beaten. She was a rather large and aggressive woman, so I can kind of understand.

As I was sitting there, I was secretly wishing that there was some sort of a Purge exception rule. My theory was that for one random incident a year, you could kill someone that truly deserved it and forgo your annual night of purging that was legally granted to you by the government.  But then I realized that all that this would do is simply add to the list of excuses that racists would use to kill black people. What if I decided to join in just so I could take out loud idiots in the theater? Would I be the  Clayton Bigsby of Purging? “Condalingus Rice??? Sounds like a Mexican dish! They ought to send her down to Mexico so the Mexicans will eat her. White Power!”

Well once I got up and moved away from this clown,  I was finally able to get into what seemed to be yet another solid effort from Ethan Hawke in the horror game. The premise of The Purge is that in this “new America”, unemployment is at an all time low of 1%, the economy is thriving, and there is little to no violence anymore. And they credit all of this to the one night a year where all forms of violence, including murder, is allowed. Hawke and his family are pretty well off now because he is the #1 salesman of the most popular security system on the market and with a night of violence like this on the horizon, it’s a pretty easy sell.  For the most part his family seems happy, with the exception of his teenage daughter, and she is upset because he won’t allow her to date an older 18 year old boy. Then there is his younger son who can’t quite grasp the idea of no one else seeing a problem with legal murder and violence.

I think you see where I am headed with this. Having the naughty daughter in Zoey (played by the incredibly hot Adelaide Kane) and the morally idealistic and naive little boy; you can’t help but know that one of them will eventually do something stupid that will lead to bad things happening. The moral I got from the story is to simply not have kids.. One way or another they will lead to either excruciating pain or an accelerated death.  The one exception being, your daughter grows up to look like Adelaide Kane and wears a schoolgirl outfit for 90 minutes.

After the entire nation locks their homes down for the night, the little kid Charlie sees a random bloody stranger that is begging for help but no one offering any. So while no one is looking he sneaks him into their home. Well this doesn’t sit well with the party of highly educated and well off kids that were chasing him down and they threaten Hawke and his family to either give up the man or they will come in and murder everyone.

The movie sets the tone for the violence that is to come right out of the gate by showing you video footage of beatings and killings from the year before in the opening credits. And in this society everyone agrees that the purge is necessary and doesn’t really look at anyone sideways for being a part of it. So the people that are at Hawke’s door could be jealous neighbors, disgruntled employees, or just random kids who are out to exercise their legal rights because they are bored. And that’s what’s so weird and creepy about this movie. People that seem to be normal are now at your door with guns and machetes for no other reason than random violence. The director James Demonaco does a decent job of both telling the underlying story of how society views the poor and homeless and in creating a fairly creepy atmosphere as the “freaks” break into Hawke’s home. The lack of a great score however keeps this movie from being as good as The Strangers was with Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler. So scenes where the freaks are sneaking up behind Hawke and his family aren’t as tense as they should be and it comes off feeling more like an action flick than a horror movie. But the scenes where Hawke is shotgunning and axing people to death will have you screaming like the annoying Black woman I mentioned earlier was.

This movie isn’t great but it’s definitely worth the price of admission, so I will give it a rating of barely FRESH.

Now You See Me

I remember there was a time when I actually thought that magicians were pretty cool. Granted I was 14 years old, but still there was something fun and exciting about being amazed by illusions and seeing tricks performed in front of you that you would spend days trying to explain to your friends. Now I’m not quite sure when the tide turned on these guys; maybe it’s when David Copperfield and Chris Angel started banging supermodels. Or maybe it was when David Blaine just bored us all to death by sitting in a box for 400 years! Either way, hooking up with hot girls that we never really had a shot at anyway is one thing but don’t clip your fingernails in front of everyone and try and pass it off as magic.

Even though magicians are now universally considered lame, we still as a butter topping consuming society flock to the theater to see movies about them. And to Hollywood’s credit they actually have provided some average to above average films involving these clowns that we used to beat up in grade school. Outside of that painful Burt Wonderstone crapfest, there was the surprisingly not awful Prestige by Christopher Nolan, the dark gem of a movie in The Illusionist, and lastly the best pg movie to come out in years in Oz. So why not try their luck with 4 magicians in Now You See Me.

If you know anything about the director Louis Leterrier, then you know that he is a Frenchie who likes to make sleek, fun, fast paced, and pseudo trashy films that always have a bit of cheesiness in them to keep things light. Well this movie is no different as it stars the fast talking and arrogant Jesse Eisenberg as the lead magician in J. Daniel Atlas. He is recruited by some mystery man or woman to team up with Mckinney (Woody Harreslon), Reeves (Isla Fisher), and Jack (Dave Franco) to complete this master plan laid out for them in the hopes of getting the ultimate reward. What this reward is, isn't explained from the outset.

The 4 of them make it to big time and have a show in Vegas that is bank rolled by their boss Arthur Tressler (played by Michael Caine). However in their latest act, they surprise everyone in attendance by robbing a bank and giving the money to the audience with the promise to do it again. This is where Mark Scruballo and French hottie Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds) come in. They are the FBI and Interpol agents put on the case to try and not only figure out how they did it but to stop them before they can do it again. Why not just arrest them? Well they did it presumably using magic, so you never actually saw them take any money.

Overall that’s not a bad premise for a story and Leterrier keeps you entertained with his background as an action director. The movie is full of cool fight scenes, car chases, and yes even a few explosions. Apparently if you are a magician, you are not only the smartest person in the room but you are also predisposed to inheriting martial art skills. But as the viewer you don’t care, as long as they aren’t wearing silly capes and those weird pirate looking shirts, you're good. Blow some shit up and show me more of the hot French girl. The writers do an excellent job of keeping you guessing as to what will happen next or who you can even trust.  Just when you think you have a good grasp on who and what is behind it all, they flip the script on you and you’re back to the drawing board.

The only problem is, you should get up and walk out at the 106 minute mark of the movie, because the last 10 minutes completely ruins it.  I won’t spoil it for you but just know that after giving you over an hour and a half of  fun and sort of believable action; they may as well have had a flying Peter Pan singing Three Six Mafia songs while sprinkling pixie dust everywhere to explain what really happened in the movie. ‘See guys, this is what happens in Never Never Land!” The ending is such a stretch that you actually end up laughing as they are explaining it; completely ruining everything else you saw up to that point. Oh well, in the end I was still entertained for almost an entire two hour period. And because of that, I will give this movie a rating of kind of WEAK! 

After Earth

Maybe it’s actually time for Will Smith to team up with Jazzy Jeff again. We all know he’s the real reason why Big Willy eventually got to his A list star status and now has the privilege of drawing the bath water for Xenu and Sir Thomas Cruise. The second he came out with Miami and The Wild Wild West, it was all downhill for him! Remember that awful MTV Awards performance he had where he danced like a duck while wearing chaps and a cowboy hat? It reminded me of the scenes at The Blue Oyster in Police Academy (cue the saxophone music); you know the gay cowboy club that Lt. Harris would always wind up in? Poor poor Will, sadly he may end his son’s career before it even gets started. I now know why he asked his parents for financial independence for his 15^th birthday; its so he can either have control over his own career or so he can make it rain for Selene Gomez! Either way, do work son, do work!

And don’t get me started on M. Night Shamamaononon!  I refuse to say his name correctly until he makes a good movie. Signs had men dressed in rubber suits, posing as aliens who were dumb enough to invade a planet that was made up of 65% of what can kill them, The Village was ok until you saw it a second time and realized how unbelievably silly it was, and Lady In The Water may be the worst movie of all time, oh wait, that was until Avatar :The Last Airbender came out. Maybe M Night’s the one rubbing down Xenu in the tub; because that would be the only logical explanation for him still getting a big budget to make a movie at this point of his career! When my mom, who literally sees every movie with a black lead in it, says to me “Kelly, that movie looks terrible!”; I knew I was in for a long afternoon.

Despite receiving one of the worst ratings in Rotten Tomatoes history, I ignored the critics as I always do because I can typically find SOME redeeming value in a movie. Well let me tell you that there was absolutely nothing remotely interesting in this plodding, boring, and otherwise pointless film. Yeah yeah, I know that in the end they eventually find a way to grow closer in their father and son relationship, but if you didn’t see that coming then you are a 2 year old who is going to the movies for the first time. Here is the plot, Will Smith has found a way to ignore his “choice” to feel any fear therefore he cannot secrete the necessary endorphins for the evil aliens to find him. So as a result, he is able to sneak up them and kill them rather easily. Because of this rare ability which is called ghosting, he has flown up the ranks in the human army that is now living on another planet due to the fact we nearly destroyed our own. And apparently everything on Earth has evolved to not only defend itself against but to also kill any human that it comes into contact with.

Well it just so happens that while on their way to a training mission, Jaden’s and Will’s spaceship miraculously crashes on Earth, leaving them as the only two survivors. In the process, Will’s legs are broken and he must depend on Jaden to find their homing beacon to signal for help. This is Jaden’s chance to finally show his father what he can do and make him proud. Blah, blah, blah…

 I could write a novel on the many things that were wrong with this film but I will just focus on the two main issues. First off, the acting was atrocious. After giving Sho Nuff Momma his idea for a script, as well as the keys to direct it; Will Smith looked completely uninterested in being a part of this film. Maybe he realized after the first day of filming how awful it was going to be and decided the hell with it; I’m getting paid regardless. In every scene he is stone faced and basically mumbles every line. This would be ok if he was playing the equivalent of an Igor in the film, like Keifer Sutherland in Dark City, but he’s not! He is the co lead and plays a major role in trying to make you care about what’s happening on screen; but if he doesn’t care then why she would we?

Second, the CGI animals in this film look so ridiculously fake that they never create any suspense in the film., which is supposed to be Shake Yo Momma’s forte. The scene where Jaden is fighting off what are supposed to be tigers is laughable because the graphics are so poorly done that it looks like they are shadow fighting air instead of each other. It was at this point that I started subtracting the age of young Zoe Kravitz from that of mine to see if I was too old to hook up with her. And wouldn’t you know it, I’m not too old! I take back my previous statement, she was the one thing that stood out in this film. Damn she’s hot, Anyway, this movie is unbelievably WACK and definitely should be avoided!