JOVIAL HUMANS and the consequent roller coaster of emotions

What will hold me over 'til DISTRICT 9? The answer: DICK JOKES (or FUNNY PEOPLE).

FUNNY PEOPLE (2009)

If you were like most normal high schoolers, or at least like my sisters or Avril Lavigne, you went through the inevitable range of fads as you strove your find your true identity as a teenager. It probably started with the hippie stage, where you smoked grass, crafted such fine art as tye-dye t-shirts and peace quilts, listened to magnanimous musical artists like 311, and lounged around all day accomplishing absolutely nothing. After that, you likely transitioned to the goth stage, when one day you suddenly relished in your own self-loathing and angst at the sight of a Hot Topic at your favorite hang-out spot: the mall. And in the final stage of self-discovery, you came to the realization that you enjoyed the works of immortal wordsmiths like Soulja Boy and Snoop Doggy Dog, wearing t-shirts that are long enough to provide your body complete warmth in the dead of winter, and playing high-stakes casino games like street craps. Yep, you finally realized that you were black.

Judd Apatow's third directorial effort is one that has a noticeable (and similar) identity crisis. While more mature than THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN and KNOCKED UP, FUNNY PEOPLE certainly has its share of the typical Apatow-crew lewd humor. This is all fine and dandy, but for a film that tries to yank at the very cords of your vagina, FUNNY PEOPLE is a film that will leave you at a strange paradox wondering whether or not you found the flick funny or sad.

FUNNY PEOPLE is a nice looking film, thanks especially to the somewhat confusing choice of the renowned Janusz Kaminski as cinematographer. For all intents and purposes, FUNNY PEOPLE is an adequately directed film, highlighted by some old school home movies of Adam Sandler, but the cheese factor that Apatow was able to qualm in his previous rom-coms is laughable in its abundance here. Adam Sandler suffices, but while he delivers a performance certainly better than that of his previous stinkers like LITTLE NICKY and CLICK, he's as dull as dishwater when he's not making his SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE era funny noises (why wasn't this movie called FUNNY NOISES?). A slimmed-down Seth Rogen is also adequate; he's funny but not over-the-top and annoying for those that are tired of his humor.

FUNNY PEOPLE is funny. It has its sad moments, but it never really sold me on the dramatic end. I guess the only real thing that I was sold on walking out of the theater was that I have a crush on Aubrey Plaza. My new most anticipated movie of 2010: SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD. I don't know who you are, Scott Pilgrim, but your girl Aubrey does strange things to my boy parts.

C+

Note: no more stars. Since there are more letter grades than stars (on a five-star scale and without half-stars, and counting pluses and minuses, of course), I like the new abundance of choices with letters better. Maybe I should try to learn the Chinese alphabet for this purpose... Nah, fuck that.

Next up: DISTRICT 9. Fuck yeah!

BRÜNO ist vergnügt!

I don't know of many leading men in film today that are as polarizing as Sacha Baron Cohen. You either loved BORAT or you absolutely despised it. As for me, well, BORAT was a true side-splitter, and the highly anticipated follow-up BRUNO was certainly no let-down.

BRÜNO (2009)

Buttons are pushed. People are mad. Dildos are inserted.

BRUNO goes there.

The follow up to Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 smash-hit mockumentary BORAT, BRUNO is both a resounding triumph of jocosity as well as another perspicacious look into the naiveté of overly-conservative culture. Looking for a new highway to fame after a disastrous fashion show incident, Bruno heads off for America looking to start fresh as an A-lister. After some utterly outlandish attempts for quick fame fall to the wayside — including a talk show where Paula Abdul sits on Mexicans, an uncomfortably funny spinning and talking wiener, and the adoption of an African baby named O.J. — Bruno realizes that going straight is the only alternative, seeking the help of some sidesplitting confrontations with "gay converting" priests, good ol' boy hunters, and an arena full of bloodthirsty hicks at a cage match.

There are quite a bit of incommodious moments in BRUNO that are sure to weed out those who are easily offended by such antics. BRUNO makes no qualms to push the button in terms of what folks find socially and morally acceptable straight from the get-go, including a completely absurd montage involving an exercise bike turned into a dildo inserter. A film for the squeamish BRUNO ain't, but beyond all of the excessive homosexuality, penises in strange suction cups, and ridiculous gay caricatures, BRUNO is a film that, like BORAT, is an eye-opener into how the supposedly culturally liberal West is, in fact, quite the opposite.

BRUNO is lewd, shocking, and downright hilarious. And let's face it, if we were talking about BARBARA instead of BRUNO and audiences were being barraged with boobs instead of balls, not nearly as many common folk would walk out of the theaters with their panties in a bunch. That's why BRUNO is genius — the people that Sacha Baron Cohen is making fun of are exactly the type of people that are offended by his provocative and shocking commentaries.

Bravo, Mr. Cohen. You know how to make me laugh.

Though I should probably be in the hospital getting the ulcer I undoubtedly got from the 80 minutes of laughter that BRUNO gave me, I'm going to give a mid-year run-down of the few films that interested me enough to go see:

1. UP
2. BRUNO
3. WATCHMEN
4. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
5. PUBLIC ENEMIES

Next up is DISTRICT 9 on August 14, but since Judd Apatow really knows how to tickle my private parts, I'm sure I'll be catching FUNNY PEOPLE at some point prior to the release of DISTRICT 9. I'm okay with that. *shrug*

PUBLIC ENEMIES disappoints

Though the summer movie season is hitting the halfway mark, only a couple films slated for summer release remain marked on my schedule. I knocked off one tonight, PUBLIC ENEMIES, and while so much about it seemed promising, the end result was a tremendous disappointment.

PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009)

Let's pretend that somehow, by the grace of god almighty, you've just caught wind of a pristine, untouched gold mine in the middle of nowhere. You gather your equipment, your crew (if you so choose), and you head out to pillage this cave of unforeseen fortune and happiness. You get there, ready to behold a new life of affluence and opulence, only to find that inside this supposedly prosperous mine is actually a room full of freshly pinched turds. Big. Brown. Turds.

That's PUBLIC ENEMIES.

Director Michael Mann's take on 1930's bank robber John Dillinger is a wonky flick, one that suffers from an erratic narrative that floats for two hours on a flimsy story. Depsite the fact that PUBLIC ENEMIES seems to be fairly heavily derailed from actual historical events, ENEMIES tells its tale in three pieces: Christian Bale (playing Melvin Purvis) talks, Christian Bale sends men with guns to some place, Christian Bale and Johnny Depp (as Dillinger) shoot at each other. Rather, rinse, repeat for 140 minutes and you have a movie as dull as PUBLIC ENEMIES.

Though Mann has never been one for an overtly polished aesthetic, it's taken to an entirely new level in PUBLIC ENEMIES, choosing to forgo standard film in favor of (largely) handheld, digital video. Whilst Mann's intentions to give the film a more realistic and documentary feel are understandable, the end result is a cheap and amateur aesthetic that is nearly impossible to fall for. Ugly and meretricious, PUBLIC ENEMIES never sells its pseudo-documentary look, instead distracting from a story that's already razor-thin to begin with.

To make matters worse, the Ali/Frazier collision of acting superpowers is grievously disheartening. Those that aren't too fond of Christian Bale won't be particularly wooed by PUBLIC ENEMIES as Bale's protagonist, fed investigator Melvin Purvis, is a flavorless, empty potato sack of a character that expounds all previous complaints about Bale's traditionally callous screen presence. Depp suffices as Dillinger, though it's not enough to create anything particularly memorable. Dillinger's character arc is equally as unimpressive, despite some terribly lame tropes that try to move it forward. The real star here is Marion Cotillard... simply because she's hot.

Bland, visually uninteresting, and suffering from a shoddy story and uninspired acting, PUBLIC ENEMIES ends up being colossally disappointing as well as terribly frustrating. At least I can take solace knowing that I got to see Marion Cotillard with a blurred-out nipple. Is that weird? Where's that gold mine again?



In significantly better news, the theatrical trailer for the Peter Jackson produced DISTRICT 9 hit the interweb today. After UP, DISTRICT 9 was the only other summer film that I really had my eyes on. Check it out.

TRANSFORMERS 2 brings the rain!

I'll admit that I'm one of the few brainless bozos out there that got a kick out of the first TRANSFORMERS. Sure it was big and dumb but it was entertaining nonetheless. Anywho, I caught the follow-up last night, and unsurprisingly, I found it to be another fun piece of harmless popcorn entertainment.

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009)

If one had to describe the experience of watching TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, it'd probably be like eating a bag of testosterone and steroids. It's big, it's dumb, and it's 150 minutes of relentless, big-time Michael Bay spectacle.

Bay doesn't really bring much new to REVENGE other than an affinity for close-ups on ball-sacks, butts, and bosoms. Though Bay has amped up the scale, featuring an epic destructive climax on the Egyptian pyramids, the intelligence quotient has dropped dramatically, leaving one with a hopeless sense of derangement and stupefaction once the credits begin to roll.

That's not to say REVENGE isn't worth the bang for your buck, as there is certainly plenty of bang, as well as crashing metal, explosions, and sheer awesomeness. REVENGE never tries to be something it's not, and while virtually every second of screen time we see humans is so humiliatingly awful to the point that your orifices will begin to bleed, the sheer cool-factor of the robots, their overly-romantic notions of honor and justice, and the [nearly incomprehensible] fight scenes make REVENGE a justifiable watch.

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN is sound entertainment; a film that appeals to the lowest common denominator and does it spectacularly with the grandest form of hick charm (see: illiterate and buck-toothed black characters, relentless and surprising foul language and a blatant love for ass and tits). Throw away the racial stereotypes, wanton cuts to dog-on-dog butt-humping, a gratuitous and uncomfortable affinity for scrotums, and dialogue straight out of a Danielle Steele novel and you get two-and-a-half hours of a harmless, fun, firey metal extravaganza that defines the nature of summer movie season.

Pixar's UP shoots for the sky

Every so often a film comes along that reminds us why we cherish the medium so much in the first place.

UP, Disney/Pixar's tenth film, does just that.

UP (2009)

Directed by MONSTERS, INC. helmer Pete Docter, UP tells the tale of the irascible 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), a former balloon salesman, who when faced with eviction to a rest home, ties thousands of balloons to his house for a voyage to South America to honor the childhood dream of his now deceased wife Ellie. When Russell, an eager and persistent "wilderness scout" is inadvertently brought along for the ride, a wild and adventurous trek breaks out as Carl and Russel, along with a rare bird Kevin and a (sort of) talking dog Dug, team up as the old man searches for the place that he and his wife fantasized over since youth.

UP succeeds in the same manner that every Pixar film - with maybe the exception of CARS - did before it. Highlighted by a moving montage showing the evolution of Carl and Ellie's relationship - from the high of pregnancy to the low of miscarriage; from courtship, marriage, and the crafting of their house from scratch to coming to grips with the death of his wife - UP makes no qualms going into territory that most animated films wouldn't dare. UP takes its viewers on a cavalcade of emotions; it's ardent and lugubrious, but also starkly blithe and intrepid, leaving a fully-rounded and realized flick that hits on all notes.

The audacity and lack of regard for conventions is what makes Pixar's output, UP most notably, so rewarding, especially when the seemingly invincible production house comes out on the other end sparkling each and every time. Last time Pixar did it with a film with virtually no human dialogue, just plain old adorable robot infatuation. This time it's the beauty of love, the disconsolate nature of death, the bleak reality of growing old, and the rounding of a character arc for a man that realizes sometimes you just have to let go. It's stuff that comes from a magical partnership between Walt Disney and his company and an animation studio that is consistently re-writing (or just ignoring altogether) the rulebook.

Though the film loses a little steam in its final act, the consummate beauty of the first act, as well as the sparkling humor and rip-roaring adventure of the second, makes UP not only a beautifully realized film, but also a film that will almost assuredly bring Pixar their fifth Best Animated Feature trophy next year at the Oscars.

UP will make you laugh. UP will make you cry. And above all, UP manifests what it is that kindles our love for watching movies.



With the release of UP this weekend comes the teaser trailer for TOY STORY 3. Keeping with Pixar tradition, the trailer is a teaser in every sense of the word, but since TOY STORY is near-and-dear to my heart and one of the definitive movies of my childhood, I feel obliged to share this glorious, nostalgia-inducing video with all of you:

June 18, 2010. Can't wait! :)