The Films of 2012

2012 has come to a close and I guess we all survived.  It’s a little disappointing for me because I now feel obligated to write one of these really long reviews talking about all of the movies of 2012 in order to whip out my movie dick and measure it against yours so that you will feel inadequate.  I went to the theaters quite a bit this year and caught quite a bit of what I didn’t bother with in theaters when it came out on DVD.  Of the 253 movies that Wikipedia listed as a 2012 release, I saw 46.  This is also the very first year that I’ve been writing reviews for the entire year, so I’m sure I have even more to write about this year than I had last year.  So let’s dive right into the films of 2012.  And, since this is essentially 46 mini-reviews, you may feel free to dive right to the deep end and just read my top and bottom 5.

JANUARY

HAYWIRE

I have no real reason to have been as interested in this movie as I was, but I really wanted it to be awesome.  It had some really good action because Gina Carano is very good at translating her MMA career into fake fighting, but there was not nearly enough action and the rest of it was really boring.  Edit about 40 minutes of Gina Carano walking down a street with nothing happening and maybe you have a movie here.  Until then, skip it.

UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING

I think the Underworld series on the whole is actually much more serviceable than one could expect going in.  The story has nothing shocking to be found in it but you also probably aren’t really expecting that as you go into the movie.  The action is cool and stylized, and I am never going to argue with you about seeing a movie with Kate Beckinsale wearing skintight clothes.  This movie is worth a rental at least.

THE GREY

I was not into this movie.  I know it’s probably mainly due to the fact that I have ADD and require a movie to keep me constantly riveted, but I’ll just blame the movie instead of myself because it’s easier that way.  The performances are great and the story is a great look at the way people would react to the building tension of the constant threat of death, but only on rare occasions was that threat in the form of an unconvincing CG wolf, and the constant threat of death by falling asleep because you’re really cold is not going to keep my attention.  But, because some people really like this movie, I’d call it worth a rental.  I wasn’t into it, but there’s a chance you would be if you’re more patient than I am.

MAN ON A LEDGE

I watched this movie as part of a mad rush to try to see as many movies from 2012 as I could.  It was one of four I watched on Christmas day.  I went into this movie expecting it to be really shitty, but it actually wasn’t that bad.  It wasn’t groundbreaking, and it kind of felt like it was an amalgam of Phone Booth and some heist movie, but it was an interesting enough premise for a movie, it kept my attention well, and had some good performances by Elizabeth Banks and many of the non-Sam Worthington people.  Sam Worthington was at least serviceable.  As was this movie.  Decent enough to earn itself a rental.

FEBRUARY

CHRONICLE

I was actually fairly surprised by how much I liked this movie.  I felt like it was a little bit hindered by having to force the found footage style onto us, but the movie might not have made any real impact without it.  It was a nice superhero-esque movie and an interesting character study.  Good story, good action, minor problems.  Definitely worth a rental

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

I saw this movie because Harry Potter was in it.  And also ghosts.  I like both of those things.  It didn’t necessarily lead me wrong, unless I went in expecting it to be Harry Potter.  It wasn’t a whole lot like those movies.  It had some thrills to it but was hindered in my mind by a piss-poor ending and lack of any surprise to the story, but it was good enough.  And Daniel Radcliffe did a good enough job that some people might actually be able to look at him as something other than Harry Potter.  But not me though.  I will always call everyone in that cast by their Harry Potter character names.  You could rent this movie, but you should just go buy Harry Potter instead.

STAR WARS EPISODE 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE 3D

Fuck this movie, and also fuck 3D.  …Did I see it in 3D?  Fuck no, I didn’t!  I’ve made enough bad decisions in my life.

THIS MEANS WAR

I went into this movie with low expectations, but I found the movie charming on the whole, and mainly because all of the parts of the movie were charming.  A lot of the dialogue was charming, the story itself was an interesting idea because it was a chick flick that had a good deal of action to keep men just as interested, and all three of the leads in the movie were very charming.  Rent it if you desire to be charmed.  …CHARMED!!!

MARCH

THE LORAX

The Lorax wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t good.  I know that the overblown environmental message would come hand in hand with a movie about an orange, mustachioed creature that speaks for the trees, but it wasn’t funny enough for me to not get irritated by it.  But the movie wasn’t made for me.  Kids should like it for its goofiness and its colorful landscapes and adorable animals.  Parents might not even find it unbearable as most things kids might make them watch.  But I haven’t made the mistake of getting someone pregnant, so it’s not my cup of tea.

JOHN CARTER

It’s probably too easy to kick this movie when it’s down.  They tried very hard with this movie and just failed miserably.  It had lots of ingredients that could sometimes be assembled into a great movie, like some big action scenes and epic landscapes with tons of well-realized CGI, but when they put it together it was just really boring and all the characters in the movie were overshadowed by a dog creature.  There was no tangible reason that this movie was as boring as it ended up being, but it was.  You could rent it, but I think you’d be safer not wasting the time or money.

SILENT HOUSE

A cool idea that never needed to be realized.  Silent House invested so much into making the movie seem like it was one, continuous shot that they forgot that movies should have stuff happen.  They also forgot that feeling it was necessary to film in one shot meant that their camera angles would occasionally be annoying and make you miss stuff that you shouldn’t be missing.  The story was a good idea and Elizabeth Olsen was great, but the movie fell flat.  Skip it.

WRATH OF THE TITANS

I knew this movie was going to suck when I went into it.  It didn’t disappoint me.  The story was bland and even the action that was certain to be the only thing of interest was lackluster.  But the movie did look good, and Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes brought more credibility to it than they should’ve felt necessary.  It’s not the worst movie you could watch, but there’s also not a whole lot of reason to bother going to rent it.  If you want to sit around with your friends and crack wise about the movie, it’s good joke fodder.  Otherwise, skip it.

GOON

I liked Goon a lot.  I found the movie charming, even in its violence and occasional vulgarity.  It had some solid laughs, and spent most of its time being generally amusing, but I think the movie had been talked up to me too much for its own good before I started watching it, leaving it a mountain too hard for it to climb to be considered funny by me.  But it was charming and I enjoyed my experience with the movie overall, so I’d say it’s at least worth a rental.  Just don’t go in thinking it’s going to be the funniest thing ever like one of your friends acts like it is based on one really funny scene in the movie.  There’s a whole lot of movie bookending that one really funny scene.

APRIL

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

I was left with a bad taste in my mouth because of this movie, but I don’t think it was really as much the fault of the movie as it was the fault of the world.  I had expectations set up for me for this movie that I would be blown away by it, and that the twist in the movie must not be spoiled in its epicness.  I thought the movie was okay, but it did not blow my mind.  And the “twist” kind of got on my nerves because it happened as the very first thing in the movie, and thus did not feel twisty.  Not twisty at all!  But it was a pretty decent idea for a movie, it had some funny moments, and overall it was at least worth a watch.  Especially since you could be one of the people that really loved it.  I say rent it for now.

MAY

DARK SHADOWS

Not really the worst thing I watched this year, but also a complete waste of my time.  I think it wanted to be funny, but it wasn’t.  It probably wanted to be interesting, but that also didn’t work out for them.  I don’t even have that much to say to shit on this movie.  You can totally skip this movie.

CHERNOBYL DIARIES

A decent portion of this movie was good.  It had some creepiness, and even had a few funny moments to be found in some of the clever dialogue, but near the middle of the movie it started to unfurl and the ending took it down a few notches.  It wasn’t a bad movie, and worth a watch if you’re in the mood for it, but I feel fairly confident that your life will continue without it.

MEN IN BLACK 3

It’s another Men in Black movie, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.  I would be comfortable arguing that this one was possibly the best in the series.  It has lots of funny moments, plenty of interesting moments, and even some surprisingly heartfelt moments that were unexpected, but appreciated.  Worth watching for sure, and probably even worth owning.

JUNE

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN

This movie wasn’t bad.  Just Kristen Stewart was.  But she always is, and I went in knowing that.  I’ve seen her worse than she was in this movie, but I could not get over my irritation over the fact that everyone in this movie kept acting like there was some definition of the word “fair” that would have Kristen Stewart winning out over Charlize Theron.  This movie wasn’t the fairest of them all, but it was fair.  Still skippable, but certainly not as bad as I thought it might be knowing that Kristen Stewart was in it.

PROMETHEUS

My own uncontrollable expectations caused this movie to fail in my eyes.  Well, the movie had something to do with it too.  The story was fine, but had a really slow start.  The performances were fine, but none were too fantastic, and the female lead could’ve done with a little bit more of that Ellen Ripley moxie.  One thing that was inarguable about this movie was that it looked amazing.  It’s definitely worth a watch, but I haven’t yet felt inspired to purchase the movie.  I don’t resent having watched it though.

ROCK OF AGES

Unimpressive, but it still managed to be entirely watchable.  Was it the story?  Nah, that was pretty much just a love story with some Footloose going on in the background.  Was it the performances?  Kinda.  Tom Cruise did a solid job, and I am always down to watch Julianne Hough and Malin Ákerman be super-hot.  It was mainly the music, which was right in my wheelhouse.  I suppose there are people in the world whose taste in music is wrong (aka does not match mine), which would make this movie less interesting to you, but ultimately it’s a fine enough rental.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER

Buried within the deep recesses of my brain was a profound interest in this movie based on the crazy idea it was based on.  One of our greatest presidents fighting vampires on the side?  WACKY!  It didn’t work out quite like that.  I blame part of my annoyance with this movie on the quality of the theater and the theater goers, but the story never lived up to their own interesting idea, the graphics were lackluster, and the performances didn’t do anything for me.  Not the worst thing ever, but it has nothing that requires your viewing.  Skip it.

MAGIC MIKE

I had just started to feel like I hadn’t seen this movie.  Thanks for opening old wounds, calendar!  In all surprising actuality, this movie was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be.  It was a kind of basic story with dicks and man-meat thrown into it, and was probably pretty heavily based on Channing Tatum’s life.  The dialogue was sometimes annoying because it seemed like parts of it were improvised to come off as unpracticed, but it was not improvised well.  But there were some funny moments in the movie and overall was a fairly enjoyable experience, and probably much more enjoyable if you are a gay man or a straight woman who just wants to see your own version of mainstream pornography.  Olivia Munn’s boobs are in the first 5 minutes of it if you’re not as into man-meat, but you can Google that too.

JULY

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

I know this movie took a lot of heat, but I feel that people were a bit too harsh with it.  Sure, there was no need to give the series a complete reboot when everyone going to see it already knows the story of how Peter Parker became Spider-Man, but they changed it just enough to keep it mildly interesting, and they had some solid enough action.  Some of the dialogue was crap, but overall the movie was entirely watchable, at least for a comic book nerd like myself.  I’ve been wanting to watch it again recently, but not enough to buy it.  I guess that means I recommend this movie for a rental.

KATY PERRY: PART OF ME

Of course I wouldn’t have watched this movie unless it was requested.  I don’t give a good gangnam about Katy Perry, and I’d rather sit on a rusty pipe than sit through a movie about her.  I had to listen to her music, I had been forced into her life, and when I left I knew that this movie wasn’t meant for me.  I know that the right groups would be really interested in this thing, but I was not one of those people.  It wasn’t painful to watch, and Katy Perry came off very likeable, but I’d much rather have not been involved in this movie whatsoever.

AUGUST

TOTAL RECALL

I went into this movie with a very sour face on.  I staunchly expected this movie to suck.  Remakes tend to be pretty bad, and this was a remake of a movie that a lot of people love for some reason, but I don’t even think anything was all that great about the original.  Unless you mean from a comedy standpoint.  But this movie was actually pretty good.  I wouldn’t call it great by any stretch of the imagination, but the plot made a little more sense than the original, the action was really good, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel are really hot (Hell, I’d even say Colin Farrell is hot), and the look of the movie was fantastic.  And, most importantly, they included the three-boobed lady.  What more could you ask for?  Rent it.

THE BOURNE LEGACY

Sometimes it can be detrimental to a movie to associate itself with a preexisting property.  I understand that the studios know that putting Bourne in their title will draw in fans of the first three movies, but I also saw this movie.  I know that this movie would’ve been pretty cool if I hadn’t already seen the first three, which were way better.  The story was fairly typical of the Bourne series, but what they forgot to capture was that the Bourne movies are action movies.  They get around to it, but unless you consider Jeremy Renner walking through the snow “action”, then they take their sweet time getting there.  I’d say you could do worse than renting it, especially if you have the ability to skip in a little to when it starts getting good.

THE CAMPAIGN

Until I was corrected, I had the opposite response to this movie from the one I had with Ted.  I went in with inexplicably high expectations for the movie that could not be met.  But Friendboss Josh reminded me afterwards that I had laughed many times in the movie, and comedies would be exhausting if I was laughing nonstop through the entire movie.  With that realization, I also realized that I enjoyed the movie.  Basic story, but enough laughs to be worth a watch.  Check it out for a rental.

THE EXPENDABLES 2

This movie was exactly what I expect it to be.  Mediocre story, decent action, and overall completely meh.  The action in this movie wasn’t nearly good enough to overcome the horrible dialogue, and the vaguely depressing tone they go for even lessens the potential fun of the movie.  But it’s not bad and, if you’re in the mood for a big dumb action movie, you could do worse than to rent this movie.

PARANORMAN

I kind of watched this movie on a whim when I saw it in a RedBox.  I didn’t really regret it.  The artistic style of the movie was a little odd but interesting as they went for stop-motion animation instead of the tried and true CG style, and I respect that.  The story wasn’t anything special, and was mostly just a pretty overblown anti-bullying message.  But that’s appropriate because this movie is for kids … or is it?  It’s hard to say, because some of the things in the movie seemed a little dark and mature for kids, like the fat kid’s ghost dog that was cut in half.  I’m not really sure who the audience was for this movie, but neither adults nor kids should find it painful to watch.  It’s at least worth a rental.

THE POSSESSION

It’s like the Apparition, but slightly better.  At least this movie had some decent performances, though it also had some annoying ones.  It adds nothing new beyond making the demons Jewish, but at least it was able to keep a certain degree of suspense in the movie.  It was a well-realized movie, but one that could easily be skipped.

SEPTEMBER

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION

Spoilers!  I haven’t written a review for this one yet.  But I did watch it and it was crap.  But I would give it credit for not being as bad as the last movie, as well as seeming to be fully aware of its dumbness.  The story is barely anything more than Alice trying to escape a facility, but the movie was almost entirely action so as to leave no room for a mediocre story.  We’ve got things to blow up!  The performances in it were either bad or average, but the movie itself never becomes unwatchable.  Does that mean you should watch it?  No, not really.  But it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.

HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET

It’s probably appropriate that the title of this movie can be broken down to HATE … of the Street.  I guess I can’t really say that I HATED the movie, but I also did not necessarily enjoy the movie in any way.  The look of the movie was interesting enough, but nothing happens for the bulk of the movie, and the psychology of the killer doesn’t really hold up to me.  As with most horror movies, the characters in the movie were all completely incompetent, but since this movie was set in a more real world situation, it seemed out of place and unbelievable.  Ultimately, it just wasn’t interesting.  Skip it.

OCTOBER

SINISTER

Sinister was partially able to do well with me because I went in with a blank slate about the potential for the movie.  As with most horror movies that I watch these days, I felt like they took a lot from other horror movies, but the movie was not without a few startles and its own set of charms.  It was full of good performances, but ended with a whimper.  It’s at least worth renting, but there’s not a whole lot of reason to purchase this thing.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4

Sure, these movies are beginning to beat a dead horse with the frequency of their releases, but I would say that Paranormal Activity 4 actually has the potential of being the best in the series thus far, or at least of having the best ending.  It was slow going in the start, and I spent that time picking out logic loopholes.  But ending on a strong note always leaves the audience with a better taste in their mouth than does opening strong, and this movie proves that.  I liked it, and I will probably buy the movie.  If you haven’t liked the other movies in this series, this probably won’t change your mind.

NOVEMBER

SKYFALL

Skyfall didn’t blow my mind or anything, but I did like it.  It was the first Bond movie that I can recall that had a fairly emotional story and I liked it for that.  It also had a pretty good amount of action, even though part of the action was Bond pulling a Kevin McCallister on his childhood home.  They at least pulled a good amount of action out of that goofiness.  I’ve always liked Daniel Craig as Bond, but I thought Javier Bardem was a bit of a strange character choice.  He did manage to be fairly intimidating while also seeming entirely gay.  Overall, I thought it was good.  Definitely worth checking out in theaters.  I’ll probably buy it when it comes out on BluRay.

DECEMBER

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

I still have a bad taste in my mouth about this movie, but I have calmed myself somewhat since I saw it.  When I saw it in theaters, I got very mad at the fact that Peter Jackson split one book (that was already turned into one cartoon movie) into three movies, and that he didn’t even feel the need to include the dragon (which was the only thing I remembered about the Hobbit) in this movie.  And it wasn’t even a short movie!  It was 3 hours long and filled with lots of time-wasters, like scenes of people walking.  But people more patient than me (and more forgiving of directors who overblow their movies) will like this movie.  In fact, I liked it.  It was a good movie with some funniness and some decent action, but I was also made pretty angry about it.  I would say you can wait to rent it so that you can control the pace of the movie.

THE WORST FILMS OF 2012

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: For not bothering to live up to a vaguely interesting idea.  Dark Shadows: For existing without reason.  John Carter: For spending so much money being so boring.

FIFTH WORST

THE HUNGER GAMES

Watching this movie and the Twilight series has brought me to the conclusion that women need to raise their standards in movies.  The story was predictable and slow, and not nearly as innovative as some people (who had not seen Battle Royale or Running Man) acted like it was.  Also, much as with my reaction to the second Ghost Rider movie, I would like to remind filmmakers that close-up, shaky camera movements walk a fine line between getting the audience involved in the scene and nauseating and annoying them.  There were parts of this movie that were downright unwatchable.  In fact, I’d say the entire movie was unwatchable.  If you’re really into prolonged scenes of a chick named Katniss sitting in a tree, this is the movie for you.  Everyone else need not bother.

FOURTH WORST

BATTLESHIP

I think there was a time when people only joked about Hollywood being so at a loss for ideas that they would do something as crazy as turning a board game into a movie.  That joke became a reality when they turned Battleship into a movie … and added aliens for some reason.  The story redefined the “dumb” part of “big dumb action movie” and the greater majority of the performances were underwhelming.  Some fairly decent action scenes could not make up for the goofy choices that they made in making (and in choosing to make) this movie.  Skip this thing.

THIRD WORST

THE DEVIL INSIDE

Fuck this movie out loud.  I got really into this movie for a while because of my crazy obsession with movies about ghosts and possessions, but the ending of this movie was so abysmally anticlimactic that it ruined the entire movie for me.  I suppose I could say that the movie is enjoyable because they pull off a fairly good amount of creepiness, but it remains good only if you throw a chair at your TV and destroy it 15 minutes before it ends.  Don’t bother.  That could get expensive.

RUNNER UP

THE APPARITION

This movie was the testicles.  I can understand a movie getting the idea in their head that there are no new ideas in the world so we’ll just steal ideas from other people, but you could at least try to make your horror movie scary.  Part of me feels like that’s essential.  I also felt like I spent the bulk of the movie not knowing what was going on, not knowing why the ghosts were a spore of some kind, and not knowing how playing a video backwards was supposed to help defeat them.  And then I started wondering why I was watching this movie.  You should probably skip it.

THE LOSER

GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE

What’s that?  You say that they couldn’t possibly make a worse Ghost Rider movie than the first one?  Well we’ll show you!  They picked up that challenge and not only ran with it, but filmed it while hanging onto the back of a truck while wearing rollerblades and called it, “Intense.”  I called it “Annoying” and “Nauseating.”  It had one or two moments of awesomeness, but then there was another hour and a half or more of movie that was just shit.  It’s Crank if Chev Chelios’ head was on fire, and if he was overacting in a way that only Nick Cage could do and still have a career.  I recommend you buy this movie so that you can pee on it.  I’m kidding … don’t buy this movie.

THE BEST FILMS OF 2012

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Men in Black 3: For being a great, emotional, and funny addition to an already quality series.  Skyfall: For action as sweet as Daniel Craig’s abs.  Looper: For blowing my expectations out of the water, just not quite enough.

FIFTH BEST

TED

I made the rare, good decision to keep my expectations for this movie inexplicably low.  It wasn’t a good decision because the movie was bad; quite the opposite.  The movie was really good and really funny, and it was able to be that because I strangely didn’t expect it to be.  I don’t know why either.  I love Seth MacFarlane and have found a good portion of everything he’s ever done amusing, but I still strangely had no interest in this movie.  I’m glad I overcame that because Ted had plenty of laugh out loud moments, and maintained a steady pace of amusing throughout.  Definitely worth a watch.  Probably worth buying.

FOURTH BEST

THE RAID: REDEMPTION

It’s a little difficult to put this movie at the top of my list of movie just because the story and the performances of this movie really don’t offer much.  What puts it up there for me is that this is one of the best action movies I’ve seen in a very long time.  It had all the great, long, martial arts scenes of the orient tied in with Western gun battles.  What it winds up as is some super badass action with plenty of “OH SHIT!” moments that just demand to be watched.  And purchased.  I bought this movie on BluRay the day after I watched it.  I don’t think I had even returned my rental before I purchased this movie.  You must check it out if you have any love whatsoever of martial arts films.

THIRD BEST

DJANGO UNCHAINED

I caught this movie during the writing of this review and I’m so happy I did.  I didn’t find myself too interested in seeing it even though I typically like the things the Quentin Tarantino does, and I don’t know why.  It’s like the awesome version of Ted in that respect.  But the story of this movie was very interesting, the dialogue was typically hilarious – as with most things that Tarantino does – and the action was over the top and great.  But the best part of this movie by far was the people that Tarantino got involved in it.  Every performance in this movie was sublime.  Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, and everyone else put on a clinic for interesting performances.  Definitely check this movie out in theaters.

RUNNER UP

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

I had my problems with this movie, and I argued vehemently in support of my ideas.  But the truth of the matter was that this movie was very good and I loved it.  I just hated certain things about it.  I hated that it was a Batman movie that quite frankly barely involved Batman, but the additions of Anne Hathaway and Tom Hardy really did a lot of work saving the movie from that shortcoming.  Also, fans of the Batman comic books could see a few things coming, such as the outcome of a fight between Batman and Bane and the reveal of the child of Ra’s al Ghul, but it didn’t really take me out of the movie in general.  It was still a great accomplishment in filmmaking that, in my opinion, suffered from the high bar set by its predecessor.  Still very much worth buying.

THE WINNER

THE AVENGERS

I loved the balls right off of this movie.  I know there’s been much argument since the movie was put head to head with Dark Knight Rises over which one was better.  I was much more fond of Avengers.  I realize that the Dark Knight Rises was a much deeper story, but Avengers was pure, unadulterated fun, and since one goes to see such a movie to be entertained, this movie accomplishes its goals exquisitely.  It was a nerd-boner smeared across film and shown to me specifically for masturbation purposes.  That is probably the grossest description of The Avengers you will ever see.  Enjoy it!  And buy this movie.  I cannot fathom a person that would not enjoy the experience.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your idea of what the best and worst movies of 2012 were!

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Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)

You Were the Worst Fucking Deal I Ever Made!

I finally managed to get to a theater to see a movie followup of a movie I reviewed last month.  After how badly I felt they ruined one of the most compelling comic book characters last time, I went into today’s movie hoping for the best.  I mean, why wouldn’t it be a winning combination to take the stuff from the first movie and add two directors that I feel are completely overrated?  Who knows?  Maybe the different take on things will improve things.  We’ll find out right now in my review of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, written by David S. Goyer, directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (or Neveldine/Taylor as it was in the credits), and starring Nicolas Cage, Fergus Riordan, Ciaran Hinds, Violante Placido, Idris Elba, Johnny Whitworth, and Christopher Lambert.

Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) is still under the curse of the Ghost Rider.  At night, or in the presence of evil, he turns into a badass with a fiery skull and prehensile chains.  All the rest of the time, it causes him to overact.  He’s now hanging out in Europe until he gets approached by Moreau (Idris Elba) and is asked to use his overacting powers to rescue a little boy named Danny (Fergus Riordan) who the Devil, or Roarke (Ciaran Hinds), wants to possess the body of.  At first, Johnny doesn’t want to get involved, but when Moreau promises him some sweet, sweet freedom from the curse of the Ghost Rider, Johnny jumps on board.  But he also does a pretty shitty job because he comes across Danny and his mother, Nadya (Violante Placido), gets his ass kicked by the Devil’s henchman, Ray Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth), and lets Danny get abducted.  The rest of the movie is the Ghost Rider playing tug of war with the Devil, with Danny as the rope.

This movie sucked out loud.  Though the story is much improved from the original movie, the way it’s told is stupid, annoying, and lackluster.  For some reason, people seem to enjoy the work of these two shitty directors, Neveldine/Taylor.  Yes, it is interesting that they film while riding on Rollerblades to make us feel like we’re closer to the action.  What it isn’t is enjoyable to watch.  The camera is constantly shaking, whipping back and forth for no reason, and doing whatever it can to make me give my popcorn back to the nice people at the movie theater in a slightly more digested form.  If I wanted to watch Crank again (and I don’t), I would go watch Crank.  Get a new trick, guys.  Your current one sucks.  Some of the visuals in this movie were really awesome.  Some of them were less than that.  The Ghost Rider looks so much more badass in this movie.  Something about the new way they did the skull is really awesome looking.  But the Ghost Rider is a worse actor than Nicolas Cage.  Instead of being a hardcore badass, his body movements are more like the little girl from the Ring.  He oddly darts around the field of battle and often chooses to try to win a staring contest with an enemy while the enemies around him are reloading.  And I don’t mean that he’s killing them with the Penance Stare.  They forgot about that for this movie.  He just runs up to guys, gets face to face with them, and stares.  Then gets hit by a grenade.  One new trick that he has is that whatever the Rider rides turns all firey and badass like his bike, and this is pretty cool.  He does it to some gigantic digging machine and a big truck.  At one point, Ghost Rider was knocked into the air where he stopped in midair and started spinning around in circles, parallel to the ground that he was about 5 feet off of.  What the fuck are you doing?!  The only logical assumption to be made is that the directors were riding their Rollerblades behind a truck when it stopped abruptly, causing them to smash their faces into the vehicle causing them brain damage.  And, though I still had to sit through the movie, at least they’re brain damaged now.

The basic story of Ghost Rider is good enough, but the dialogue and other ideas ruin that.  The basic premise of the movie is like End of Days, the Arnold Swasserhassermcgoo movie.  Something going to be inhabited by the Devil, there’s a good cult and a bad cult, and there’s only one person that can stop them.  Well, three people, but only one is really effective at it.  The dialogue, however, is generally pretty awful.  The entire opening narration by Cage is really blase about the whole situation.  Like “Yeah, that’s me.  I sold my soul to the Devil.  Whatev’s, bro.”  Part of that is Cage’s delivery, but I assume it was written, and written poorly.  As a plus though, in the recap of his past in the narration, Blaze actually intentionally puts his blood on the contract so that it’s not complete bullshit like the last movie.  But then I started wondering: Why would anyone WANT this “curse” lifted?  The only way it really affects you is by keeping people that are evil away from you, and part of your life you get to be a badass.  There’s also a part when one of the bad guys turns into a creature that can cause things to decay with a mere touch, but they also decided this would be a good point to have him digging through a guy’s lunch for something to eat.  He grabs a sandwich; it turns moldy.  He picks up an apple, but it also decays.  Then he picks up a Twinkie, and that stays fresh.  OH, I get it!  You’re retarded!  Thanks for wasting 5 minutes of my life for that gem.  The worst part in the movie for me was when Cage was talking with the little kid, and the kid asks what he has to do if he has to pee when he’s the Ghost Rider.  Blaze responds “Oh, it’s great.  It’s like a flamethrower.”  This joke wouldn’t be particularly funny, but it was just something throw out there … until Cage jumps up and starts mimicking a flamethrower with his wang, and the kid visualizes the Ghost Rider doing it.  Personally, I think it would’ve been more appropriate if the kid imagined the writer of the movie standing over the Ghost Rider, peeing on him.  It’s pretty much what you’re doing anyway.

Some of the performances in this movie were fine, but not too many.  Nick Cage … I suppose I don’t really need to say it, do I?  For the first 20 minutes of the movie, I was thinking he toned it down and was not annoyingly overacting the entire time, but then he started doing it again.  Idris Elba did a good enough job with the performance, but his French accent made him go over the top on occasion.  He’s not really French, he’s English.  But he literally kills two guys by throwing a bottle of wine at them, shooting them, and then berating them for wasting good wine.  It’s a shame they cut out the part where he choked someone with cheese and snails.  Ciaran Hinds and Violante Placido do solid jobs in the movie, and Johnny Whitworth and Fergus Riordan made no impact whatsoever.  I was really happy to see Christopher Lambert in the movie, but he didn’t have a very big role.

I must say, easily the best part of this movie is the trailer for the new Spider-Man that preceded it.  As for this movie, they somehow managed to made a movie worse than the original Ghost Rider.  And we thought it couldn’t be done…  There were a couple of parts in the action scenes that were bona fide badasslery, but the rest of it was crap.  Neveldine/Taylor continue to beat the shit out of the dead horse that is their Rollerblade riding style of directing, making most of the scenes shaky and nauseating.  If you wanted to see what Crank would look like if Chev Chelios’ head was on fire, this might be the movie for you.  Also, you might enjoy this box of Crayons and a padded room, but you can always keep drawing with your own feces.  The Ghost Rider himself looks better, but acts worse.  And so does Nick Cage.  I can’t recommend you watch this movie in the theaters.  It’s too expensive and I’m pretty sure they won’t give me my money back if I call and complain.  If you REALLY want to see this, it’ll probably be on RedBox in no time.  I’m looking out for you.  Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance gets “Roadkill” out of “I will eat your stinking soul!”

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Ghost Rider (2007)

Morning, Bonehead

I consider today’s review to be a preamble (of sorts) to a review from the near future.  I plan to see the recently released sequel to this movie in theaters, but I really have no idea why.  I’ve seen today’s movie before and (though I have purchased it 3 times) do not actually like it.  I’m an enigma.  Besides that fact, I have never been that big of a fan of the comic books this movie is based on, so far having only read a 6 issue story arc and one other comic this character made a cameo in.  And yet, I remain hopeful that the sequel I intend to see would be the awesome movie to fix the pile of shit today’s movie was … even though Rotten Tomatoes actually rates the sequel lower than this one.  It makes me very afraid to see the sequel, having just found that out.  But I remain resolute and won’t be swayed.  Today’s movie is the first part, a movie so mockable that I’ve taken more notes on this movie than any other movie I’ve reviewed, totally one and a half pages of mostly angry nerd thoughts.  But, since it would be too easy and lame to simply post my notes as a review, I am forced to write a full review of Ghost Rider, written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson, and starring Nicholas Cage, Wes Bentley, Peter Fonda, Sam Elliott, Eva Mendes, Matt Long, Raquel Alessi, Brett Cullen, Donal Logue, Lawrence Breuls, Matt Wilkinson, Daniel Frederiksen, and Rebel Wilson.

In the old Westie times, the Devil himself, Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) tasks his bounty hunter, the Ghost Rider, with retrieving a contract worth thousands of corrupt souls from a town called San Venganza.  Knowing it would give the Devil too much power, the Ghost Rider runs away and hides the contract.  150 years later, Mephistopheles has not yet learned from his mistakes and decides he would like to make another Ghost Rider, choosing a 17-year-old motorcycle stunt rider, incredulously named Johnny Blaze (Matt Long).  Blaze sells his soul (kinda) to the Devil in exchange for curing his father of cancer.  Apparently, no one ever told him to be very careful with his words when making deals with the Devil, because he just gets the Devil to agree to cure his dad’s cancer, saying nothing about him living a long, full life.  Johnny’s dad dies that same day in a motorcycle crash.  Lesson: always read the fine print.  Johnny’s curse makes him decide to ditch his girlfriend, Roxanne (Raquel Alessi), not wanting her to get caught in some loophole he was too dumb to pay attention to.  As he tears off down the road on his dad’s motorcycle, he (unfortunately) turns into Nicholas Cage.  Nowadays, Johnny’s a somehow successful daredevil stunt man who practically never lands his jumps, but survives anyways.  One day, he gets interviewed by a reporter who turns out to be Roxanne, now (very VERY fortunately) turned into Eva Mendes.  He manages to talk her into a date, but ends up standing her up again because Mephisto comes back and tells Johnny he needs to kill Mephisto’s own son, Blackheart (Wes Bentley), who has come to Earth to find the contract of San Venganza in order to overtake his father with it’s power.  Johnny turns into the new Ghost Rider to do it, and away we go.

I feel so conflicted about this movie.  Not about my opinion of the movie, mind you.  It’s crap.  But it’s crap that looks good at times, like one of those diamond encrusted craps that I’m sure we’ve all seen at one time or another.  Let’s talk story, since the people that wrote this movie obviously didn’t.  The story of the Ghost Rider is a dark and badass one.  They got the main story points in here, including the selling of the soul, the Devil’s betrayal and the death of Johnny’s father, the guy with his head on fire, it’s all here.  What they apparently decided to do with their dark story of the Devil was to try to make it light-hearted and funny whenever they could, failing on the funny, of course.  The only way for me to do this in any coherent fashion is to just go through the movie chronologically.  First, the premise is good.  I like the idea of the contract with all of the souls that would make the Devil come to Earth to claim it.  That’s all well and good.  But when we jump into Johnny’s story (mind you, this happens 5 minutes in) it goes to Hell.  Not literally, that would be too awesome.  It just starts with the sucking.  One thing I noticed was, as a smoker myself, I would recommend that Johnny’s dad not think that the answer to a coughing fit is to grab a cigarette.  Next, the contract thing is complete bullshit!  Sadly, this is the foundation that the movie sits on.  Johnny NEVER AGREED TO THIS CONTRACT!  Since when does holding a contract and getting a papercut count as a legally binding contract?!  I know we shouldn’t expect the Devil to play fair, but if this is within his power he can go up to anyone and say “Sell me your soul.  Oh, you didn’t say no, GIMME!”  Speaking of which, how the Hell is Johnny so surprised when the Devil fucks him over?  I have a very good friend that’s an Athiest, but I’m sure even he’d agree that (if there was a Devil) one would not give him your trust lightly.  When we jump into Nicholas Cage as Johnny, it somehow gets worse.  What’s lower than Hell?  ‘Cause I kind of already blew my load preemptively with that …  Either way, it gets retarded pretty quick.  The first thing that started to piss me off was the fact that Johnny Blaze was a super popular and famous daredevil who apparently made a habit of never landing his fucking jumps.  I understand that there’s a certain level of hoping to see a cool crash and all, but if I go to see a daredevil jump something, that’s what I want to see.  If all he does is fail, I’m out.  I don’t think the Faces of Death videos are so popular with people that he could get that large of a crowd that only want to see him die.  And, if the chances were high that he was only going to fail anyways, why not just have him jump his motorcycle into a wall instead of wasting money to get cars and helicopters for him to jump over?  Also, it’s a bit contradictory of me to say this since I’ve complained about movies setting up obvious and stupid things early in the movie that pay off with obvious and stupid things later, but this movie sets up those things to no effect whatsoever.  Why does Johnny drink Jelly Beans out of a martini glass?  What is his fascination with monkey movies?  Why does this movie have such a strong anti-smoking and anti-drinking message but they’ll have Johnny Blaze riding, and doing tricks on, his motorcycle without a helmet?  Later on, another thing occurred to me: shouldn’t we get on top of making better body bags?  Every time someone is being wheeled away in a body bag in a movie, their arm falls out of the side.  Those are some shoddy zippers.  When Roxanne comes back to Johnny, one should think that there should be SOME reason for her to do so.  He stands her up as a teenager (a grudge she is still holding), but he manages to talk her into going on a date where she gets stood up again.  She tells him off (as he rightly deserves), but then shows up at his house and starts making out with him.  He’s done nothing to deserve that!  ::SPOILER ALERT::  Near the end of the movie, when it’s revealed that Sam Elliott was the previous Ghost Rider, he apparently has only one more transformation into the Ghost Rider left in him.  How does he use it?  He transforms to ride side by side with Johnny Blaze through the desert in some Ghost Rider money shot, then tosses him a shotgun and leaves.  That’s how you use it?  Also, what the Hell were the sins of that little lizard you barbecued when you were riding through the desert, Ghost Rider, protector of the innocent?  I’ll say only one nice thing about the story: I actually liked the way they beat Blackheart.  At first, Ghost Rider’s Penance Stare was ineffectual on Blackheart because he had no soul.  Once he’s absorbed the souls from the contract of San Venganza, he’s got plenty to go around, and Ghost Rider burns him to death with those.  That was actually fairly clever.  Granted, the did kind of piss on that by having Cage deliver some soliloquy reminiscent of Mighty Mouse (something like “Wherever innocents are suffering, wherever evil does bad things, Hercules will be there with his Legendary Journies”).  ::END SPOILERS::

This is probably going to go a little long, people, ’cause now we’re talking dialogue.  SHIT!  The only thing muttered during any action scene in this movie was one-liners so bad that you could only see them coming if you had just taken a tire iron upside the head.  These phrases were along the lines of, or downright verbatim, “You’re going down”, “I don’t think so”, “I’m all out of mercy”, and “You not do bad things no more.”  That last one might have been residual brain damage from the tire iron.  In the few comics I read of the Ghost Rider, he barely ever spoke, and when he did, it was some pretty awesome version of “I’m going to kill the shit out of you right now.”  He’s a demon, and should most certainly never be heard to mutter “YEEHAW” while he’s roping a helicopter out of the air with one of his chains.  Of course, a lot of the things Nicholas Cage said, if they weren’t awful already, were made so by the country accent he decided to use.  Take, for instance, when he asks Roxanne if she “still likes Eye-Talian” food.  Some of the lines in the movie may have been made worse by the editing, though, like when Johnny was psyching himself up for his date with Roxanne.  He’s in the mirror saying “You deserve a second chance” to himself, but the editing is cutting to scenes of Roxanne sitting in the restaurant waiting.  I don’t know if you know this, movie, but that KINDA indicates to the audience that these events are happening simultaneously, and if Johnny is still psyching himself up for the date that he’s already 20 minutes late for and he hasn’t even left his house, then I would argue that he does not, in fact, deserve a second chance.  Of course, I think the pinnacle of awful lines in movies has to be one that the writers were apparently so proud of they actually used it in the trailer: when Nicholas Cage says “I feel like my skull’s on fire, but I’m good.”  When I saw this movie in theaters and this line was excreted, it made my testicles hurt.  I can’t remember the occasion that well, but I’m sure one of my friends would tell me that I yelled “OOOOOOoooooooWWW” when this happened.  That is not a common phrase, movie!  I have never heard ANYONE say (unironically) that they felt like their skull was on fire.

I’ll give you guys a bit of a respite and talk about something I liked … briefly.  The look of the movie.  The Ghost Rider looked appropriately badass.  At first, he looked pretty awesome with Johnny Blaze’s normal attire, but when he upgraded his leather jacket to one with spikes all over it – and a matching gauntlet – he became pretty epically badass.  I thought it was strange, though, that when a cop runs up to the guy who is a skeleton with a flaming head and cracks him in the face with a nightstick, he seems to only get shocked when the flaming skull head guy puts his dislocated jaw back in place.  Cops see flaming skull head dudes every day, but ones that can relocated their jaws?  UNHEARD OF!  His motorcycle was also the tits.  I cannot really bring myself to complain about any aspect of the Ghost Rider himself.  Blackheart, on the other hand, just looked like a pasty emo boy that occasionally had a little demon face peak through.  He was never that intimidating.  Mephisto was a little better, but not much.  When Blackheart became “Legion” after absorbing the souls from San Venganza, he actually looked LESS cool, just having glowing red eyes and shitty dark-elf-from-World-of-Warcraft makeup.  I confused myself a little bit when I took great issue with the stupidity of the Ghost Rider riding on water, yet when he rides up and down the sides of a skyscraper, I said to myself “I’m with you.”  I don’t think I’ve ever made the claim that I make sense.  I didn’t like a couple of things in the fights, either.  First, when Ghost Rider defeats the air elemental demon by creating some silly vortex of fire with his chains, that wasn’t really interesting.  Even worse was what happened to the water demon, who just pulled Cage into the water, struggled with him for a bit, and then died when Cage turned into Ghost Rider and yelled at him underwater.  It seemed as if they finished the movie and realized “Ooops, we forgot about the water dude.  Just toss something in.  Who’s gonna care?  Have you seen the rest of this crap?!”  Then, in the final battle, Cage unloads on Blackheart about 8 times with the shotgun, never doing any significant damage.  When Eva picks up the gun, she shoots his head off by the second shot.  Should the damsel in distress really be a better shot than our hero?  I guess, since his big move a little earlier was to peg Blackheart with snowballs made of fire like a schoolyard bully in A Christmas Story.

One more description paragraph to go.  I still need to talk about the performances … unfortunately.  It occurs to me that I really should try to watch a Nicholas Cage movie that isn’t shit, but that could take a lot of looking that I don’t feel like I have the energy for right now.  He was pretty shitty in this movie.  He was apparently going for a horror movie style performance, but he landed at a horrible movie style performance.  That’s why you read these things, people: my stunning mastery of wit.  His transformations into the Ghost Rider start off good, but then go way overboard into him laughing maniacally like a demented little boy torturing a cat.  But later, he gets possessed by that cat as he’s transforming in a jail cell and starts almost hissing and lashing at the other criminals like he was trying to fend off a big dog.  I’d say the first transformation was reminiscent of him burning alive in The Wicker Man, but my brain won’t allow me to recall that movie.  Eva Mendes was a breath of fresh air that I needed in this movie.  Her performance wasn’t anything special, but she was smokin’ hot, so I at least had that going for me.  Even her younger self, Raquel Alessi, was smokin’ hot AND very reminiscent of Eva.  A lot of the bad things to Eva’s character probably weren’t her fault.  She just played it regular, but things were probably just written stupidly.  First off, who brings a Magic 8 Ball on a date?  Secondly, how fuckin’ gay was the waiter that she asked “You think I’m pretty, right?” and got “Meh” out of?  I remember her saying that she put on a little weight to make Roxanne more of a “real girl”, but if that’s true it just made her look better.  Also, how the Hell does she look at the Ghost Rider and automatically think “…Johnny?”  Eh, that’s just nitpicky.  Easily the worst part of the cast was Rebel Wilson.  I know my friend Mike fell in love with her fat, goth girl character, but I wanted to punch her in the face.  Yeah, she was only in it for a minute, but it made me angry.  I have not the words to express how I feel about this pointless little character.

Wow.  I just did a Harry Potter-length review on this movie.  I grant you that this movie is much more tolerable than Thankskilling or Transmorphers, but when you shit on comic books it just hurts me that much more.  This movie took a great, dark ass-kicker of a character and made him into a backwoods hick of a joke.  The story is good when they stole it from the comic books, and there is a vaguely clever part to the ending, but the rest of the story is just awful and the dialogue just matches it.  If nothing else, the Ghost Rider himself looks pretty awesome, but it’s hard to notice when he’s spitting out shitty lines.  Even though I purchased it three times, I recommend you purchase it three times less.  You don’t even really need to concern yourself with viewing it at all.  Fingers crossed for part two, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.  Speaking of which, Ghost Rider gets “I feel like my skull’s on fire” out of “I’m the only one who can walk in both worlds.”  By the way, I probably could’ve done at least one more paragraph, so I’ve actually used some degree of restraint.

Hey, peeps. Why not rate and comment on this as a favor to good ole Robert, eh? And tell your friends! Let’s make me famous!