Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)

Whatever You Do, Don’t Eat the Fuckin’ Candy

It had started to occur to me that I had not actually made it to the theaters this year.  There were movies out that I wanted to see, but I either never had the time or it just slipped my mind.  There’s also a chance that I was too busy making love to beautiful women all month to get to the theaters.  That one seems like it’s the most likely.  Having pleased enough beautiful women to meet most men’s lifetime quota, I finally decided to take a little me time and go to the cinemas.  I was shocked to find that the cinema I usually go to had been purchased by another theater company, but thankfully they still do movies for $5, enabling me to make a double feature out of my day.  Unfortunately, the two movies that I was able to catch in the time I had allotted were not Zero Dark Thirty.  That will have to wait.  For now, let’s talk about Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, co-written and directed by Tommy Wirkola, co-written by Dante Harper, and starring Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Pihla Viitala, Cedric Eich, Alea Sophia Boudodimos, Thomas Mann, Robin Atkin Downes, Derek Mears, Peter Stormare, and Rainer Bock.

Two children named Hansel (Cedric Eich) and Gretel (Alea Sophia Boudodimos) are abandoned by their father in the woods.  They make their way to a gingerbread house where they are captured by a witch who intends to eat them.  They manage to throw her into the oven.  But we all knew that part.  What we may not know is what happens later.  Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) grow up to be famous, witch-specializing bounty hunters.  They are hired by a town called Augsburg, and arrive just in time to prevent Sheriff Berringer (Peter Stormare) from wrongly executing a woman he believes to be a dark witch.  Hansel and Gretel then set about discovering the reason behind the disappearance of six boys and five girls, and sightings of a Grand Witch named Muriel (Famke Janssen).  Also, I’m not positive, but I think a Grand Witch is the female version of a Grand Wizard.

Can I paste my review for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter here and call this a day?  Truthfully, this movie was much better than AL:VH, and much less crazy of an idea, but they do seem comparable to each other in title at least.  I guess the premise of the movie isn’t nearly as crazy since it seems to be a possible future for Hansel and Gretel to grow up to hunt witches and no one in their right mind would make the leap from Abraham Lincoln to vampires.  And just as it wasn’t a difficult leap to make to have Hansel and Gretel grow up to be witch hunters, the story of this movie made no difficult jumps.  It was all pretty standard.  The story serves mostly as a way to get from one silly situation to another bloody fight until the filmmakers have blown their load and lit a cigarette in celebration of their mediocre performance.  I can relate to that.  But, even though the experience is relatively unsatisfying either way, at least with me it can be a little bit of fun.   It had a bit of laughs to it, but nothing worth watching it for.  Now I’m not sure whether I’m still talking about my penis or not…

The look and the action were altogether unimpressive.  They had a lot of blood, but nothing interesting making it come out of the bodies.  Fist fights were really average and the gun stuff was simply aim and shoot with no flare.  The troll in the movie looked pretty goofy in daylight, but it also was the only thing in the movie that had a good fight in daylight, so I’ll call the troll a “push.”  There was a broom race through the forest at the end of the movie that reminded me of the scene on Endor from Return of the Jedi.  Also, the music that opened the movie seemed like it was ripped straight out of Sherlock Holmes.

The performances were mostly okay.  No one blew me away, but they didn’t suck.  I did think of questionable things about them though.  First off, Jeremy Renner as Hansel is a diabetic?  Is that really going to be a pointless subplot?  They don’t say he’s a diabetic, but he got it from eating too much candy and he has to inject himself whenever the movie realizes that it forgot about that subplot or else his foot falls off or whatever happens.  Also, you’ll come to find pretty quickly that Jeremy Renner loves to pose with his gun resting on his shoulder.  It’s like his favorite thing.  Gemma Arterton is fine, it’s true, but she perhaps needs some more practice before playing an action character in the future.  She threw some pretty unconvincing punches.  I also thought Famke Janssen was a pretty useless addition to this movie.  She also did a fine enough job, but why make her a witch?  I’m sure there are people that are cheaper to get into your movie than Famke and, when you get her, she spends the greater majority of the movie all uglied up and witchy, completely unrecognizable.

I felt like this movie was either going to be nothing to write home about, extremely lame, or fun and awesome.  Unfortunately they chose the former.  It’s okay.  It has a super basic story, limited amount of laughs, and unimpressive action.  This movie could’ve been more fun with a little more comedy and some better choreographed action.  It’s not a bad movie, and one you wouldn’t be too bad off if you rented, but there’s not really any good reason to go to a theater for it.  Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters gets “I say burn them all!” out of “Cutting off her head tends to work.”

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Fargo (1996)

The Little Guy Was Kinda Funny-Lookin’

Acting as both a review request and a movie I should’ve seen earlier comes today’s movie. Requested by Sam, today’s movie is a dark comedy, something that generally turns me off. I don’t like my comedies to be demented, with lots of death and sadness to them. On the other hand, this movie is by the Coen Brothers, and they gave me True Grit. On top of that, it’s a classic. How could I not watch it? This is how! This review is over! … Oh, you’re still here. Okay, I’ll review it. Today’s movie is Fargo, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring William H. Macy, Kristin Rudrud, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, Harve Presnell, Frances McDormand, John Carroll Lynch, Steve Reevis, Steve Park, and Bruce Campbell.

Car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) has gotten himself into a bit of a financial pickle. The most obvious solution to his (and, let’s face it, ANYONE’s) problem is to hire two guys to kidnap your wife for the ransom. Through a Native American ex-con named Shep Proudfoot (Steve Reevis), Jerry is introduced to the two men who will do the deed, Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare). They kidnap Jerry’s wife, Jean (Kristin Rudrud), but things start to go sour for them as they drive to their safe house. First, they get pulled over for not having tags, then Jean’s bitching from the backseat gets the cop killed. Then, Carl’s lack of upper body strength gets them seen as he tries to drag the cop’s body off the street, making Gaear kill two more people. This gets the local police chief, Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), involved. From here, the plan hits a few speed bumps.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise to the greater majority of you, but this is a good ass movie. Hell, it didn’t even come as a surprise to me. I don’t know why it took me so long to watch this thing. I loved True Grit. I loved No Country for Old Men. I’ve already written of my affection for the Big Lebowski. And yet, foolishly, I refrained from this movie. But that problem is now solved. Dark comedies have never really worked for me in the past, but this movie combines a few solid laughs with all their dark subject matter, and ties it all together with an excellent story. I found that the accents wore on me in this movie, though. I was already a little bit prepared for them, having tolerated Sam’s accent for so long, but Jesus they say “Oh yeah” a lot. It kind of gave me the impression that the Coen’s did not care for the people of Minnesota that much, as most of them came off as not that bright. The story of the movie made up for it though. Shit just kept getting worse and worse in this movie. It’s like the Shield or something. You would be saying “Alright, give us a break and let something go right for a change” were the story not so well done. Instead you just sit back and enjoy. I don’t know if I’d call it a negative, but one part I had a bit of an issue with was the part between McDormand and Steve Park in the restaurant. This scene served no purpose whatsoever as far as I could tell, but it was a good scene, so I don’t know if I can say I’d want it gone. The story is put on pause by it, but the performances in the scene were good and it was interesting watching it be funny, then plunge into depressing, and back up again.

The performances in this movie were even better than the story somehow. I started wondering as I started listing the cast about who the hero was in this movie. William H. Macy is the driving force of the movie because he sets everything moving. Buscemi did the majority of the legwork in the movie while Stormare spent his time watching TV’s. Frances McDormand would probably have to be the hero of the movie because she was the only one that was a good person, she solved the thing, but she also didn’t have that much to do with the overall story until the very end. She did make me laugh the most, though. That accent amused me no matter who’s mouth it was coming out of, but it was even funnier when she was saying intelligent things and working out exactly what happened from very little evidence, but all of it was being said with that accent that would make me not take it seriously. Then again, she didn’t seem able to see through William H. Macy’s horrible poker face in their first interview, so who’s to say how bright she is? I did laugh at the joke she told about the personalized license plates, but only because the other cop’s response was “Oh yeah, that’s a good one”. But easily the most awesome thing about this movie is that Bruce Campbell was in it. Sure, he was only in about a minute of the movie, and that minute was on the soap opera Stormare was watching with horrible reception, but I recognized him! That dude rules.

I couldn’t really find a lot to say about this movie. Sometimes, movie’s are just great and I can’t make fun of them. I have let you all down and will now perform ritualistic suicide to punish myself, while simultaneously saving my honor. Probably the only dark comedy that has ever worked for me, the film delivers plenty of dark, plenty of comedy, and a fantastic story, all supported by great acting. No complaints. Go watch this movie and enjoy it, even if you have already. Fargo gets “You’re darned tootin’!” out of “So, I called it in. …End o’ story…”

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The Lost World – Jurassic Park (1997)

Taking Dinosaurs Off This Island is the Worst Idea in the Long, Sad History of Bad Ideas

According to Rotten Tomatoes, the trilogy I’m currently reviewing is about to take a turn for the worse. We drop down from yesterday’s 89% to today’s 52%, and tomorrow to something apparently even worse. But, being a completionist, I journey onward into the sequel. Going into the movie, I really don’t remember what I originally thought of it. I know I loved the first movie, but I only remember the basic story of the two sequels and not what I think about it. We’ll find out together in my review of The Lost World – Jurassic Park, written by David Koepp, directed by Steven Spielberg, and starring Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vanessa Lee Chester, Pete Postlethwaite, Arliss Howard, Vince Vaughn, Richard Schiff, Richard Attenborough, Peter Stormare, Harvey Jason, Thomas F. Duffy, Joseph Mazzello, and Ariana Richards.

Four years after the first movie, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) has fallen on some harsh times, having broken his contractual obligation to not talk about what happened on Jurassic Park. Talking about it got him in trouble and discredited as everyone didn’t really believe his tales of dinosaurs on an island. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has not fared much better, having lost control of InGen in the wake of the disaster, having his douche nozzle of a nephew, Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), take over. Hammond summons Malcolm and asks that he join a team to document the dinosaurs living on a second island, Isla Sorna, in order to get it named a nature preserve and kept from the exploitative hands of man. Malcolm is not down…until he finds out that Hammond recruited Malcolm’s girlfriend, Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), and that she is already on the island. Malcolm agrees to go, but only to get his girlfriend to leave. He joins up with engineer Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff) and documentary producer Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn) and heads to Isla Sorna. Soon after they meet up with Sarah, they find out that Ludlow has sent a big crew to the island, not to watch, but to capture the dinosaurs because, even though Hammond showed that this idea wouldn’t work, they’re different and will totally make it work and there’s nothing that could go wrong ever. They bring hunters Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite) and Dieter Stark (Peter Stormare). Also, it turns out that Dr. Malcolm’s daughter, Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester), has stowed away and is now on the island with them.

Rotten Tomatoes was pretty on the money with this movie. I wouldn’t say the movie was bad, but it was mediocre. And when you make a sequel to a fantastic movie and it turns out mediocre, that tends to make people pretty resentful. The story was okay, but sometimes didn’t really make sense. Some of the graphics take a step forward, but some of them also take a big step back. I can kind of get on board with people going back to the islands because no one believed Malcolm in the first place. And most people could believe the rich corporation trying to take another shot at trying to make money off of the dinosaurs. But when Goldblum says “You’re not making the same old mistakes, you’re making brand new ones,” I feel like most of us were probably thinking the same thing. I love Julianne Moore too, but if she chose to go to that island of her own free will, then fuck her. She’ll either come back or she won’t, but my hands are clean. When early on, Kelly is talking with her dad about the gymnastics competition, it’s inserted into the conversation and movie so fluidly that we just know that this wasn’t just setting up something retarded later on in the movie. And then, when some conveniently placed bars allow Kelly to gymnasticize over to a Velociraptor and kick him through a window, you think to yourself “This was in no way stupid and retarded and predictable and unlikely.” It was, in fact, brilliant. Or I’m very facetious. I also found it a little strange that Sarah – a character who was mostly portrayed as intelligent – took the greater majority of the movie to figure out that the Tyrannosaurus – a creature she at one point explained had the largest Olfactory glands and thus the best sense of smell of any animal – may have been following the team because it could smell the blood of it’s child on her shirt from when she had to fix it’s broken leg. Of course, dumber than her is the Paleontologist that Ludlow brings along. He’s so dumb that, while a number of them are trapped with their backs against the wall in a cave, separated from a Tyrannosaurus by only a waterfall, the fact that he gets a harmless coral snake down his shirt makes him spaz out enough to get his arm grabbed by the T-Rex. That shit could be a King Cobra down my shirt, but I’ll take my chances with him over getting any closer to a T-Rex. I imagine that decision is only stronger had I the education of a Paleontologist. The biggest problem I had was towards the end of the movie, when they have a Tyrannosaurus in the cargo hold of a ship heading towards California, how the hell did that big ass T-Rex kill everyone on the ship when he was trapped in the cargo hold? That doesn’t make any sense. But what makes less sense is the fact that the T-Rex is running around San Diego, with cops all around, and not a single person shot at it. I know cops have guns, and I’m sure regular home owners have a few. I don’t expect the thing to go down with one bullet, but enough of them will probably do the trick.

The dialogue in the movie is pretty much what you’d expect. Not too much of it was very clever, but there were a couple of good lines dropped in situations that I felt they probably should have been too afraid to come up with a good zing. My favorite example happened when Goldblum, Moore, and Vaughn were in the RV that was dangling off a cliff. Richard Schiff is up top yelling down to see if they need anything and they ask him for rope. He then asks if they need anything else and Goldblum says, “Yeah, three double cheeseburgers with everything,” then Vaughn says, “No onions on mine,” and Moore tops it off with, “And an apple turnover.” I grant that, in their current predicament, they probably would have other things going through their mind than clever things to say, so it doesn’t feel realistic that they’d come up with one, but that interaction made me laugh. Graphically, I found the movie to be hit and miss. The animatronic dinosaurs really seemed to work well again. Most of the dinosaurs had a lot of personality to them and allowed you to kind of figure out what they were probably thinking, but some of the computer generated ones sucked out loud. Right before that fantastic gymnastics scene, the Velociraptor was really not convincing. It was the kind of CG that was inexplicably well lit for being in the middle of a completely dark environment and really stuck out as bad. Back to the part with the RV, I did like the part where the three people were on the rope and the RV fell down around them. I also liked the door on the vehicle that Stormare was in that extended out so that he could shoot a dinosaur before reeling him back in. Another thing that occurred to me graphically was that they really overused the water rippling effect that was made famous in the first film. It was almost like they thought, “People loved this in the first movie, so let’s do it every single time a T-Rex is coming!”

The performances were pretty good, but some of the characters didn’t work for me. Jeff Goldblum plays this in much the same way he’s played every role I’ve ever seen him in. Julianne Moore was a pretty likeable character, but they wrote her in a confusing way. I think she was just supposed to be a documentary film person with a lot of experience living around predators, but she inexplicably knew how to set a Tyrannosaurus bone for the baby T-Rex. Medical training does not necessarily come with the territory of a documentarian. What actually goes against it is the fact that she pets a baby Stegosaurus after hearing her talk about how you have to observe and not interact with these things. Vaughn’s character was pretty likeable and had a couple of funny moments. Pete Postlethwaite’s hunter character was pretty great. He just wanted to hunt a T-Rex throughout the movie and seems like a bit of an asshole, but kind of a badass as well. After catching a T-Rex, he sets himself apart from the overly douchey Ludlow by resenting the fact that his associate didn’t make it. Also, I found Vanessa Lee Chester to be a pretty annoying and unnecessary addition to the cast.

This movie, if it stood alone, would probably be considered a pretty decent, but not great, movie. It’s story is fine, but doesn’t make sense sometimes. Some of the dialogue is good, and most of the graphics are amazing, but some of the graphics are just bad. The performances are even pretty good. The thing that hurts this movie most of all is the fact that Jurassic Park is in the title. Were it not for being so far inferior to it’s much better predecessor, this movie could have been ranked in the 70’s. It’s okay and worth seeing at least once, but only really worth owning because it usually comes with the first movie. The Lost World – Jurassic Park gets “I just found the parts they didn’t like” out of “Violence and technology: not good bedfellows.”

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8mm (1999)

If There Was No Honor Among Perverts and Pornographers, the Whole Fucking Business Would Fall Apart

I’ve been informed that a lot of the people that read my reviews prefer that I make fun of a bad movie to when I rave about a good movie.  But I could not abide watching a bad movie EVERY day, so I feel I should try to split up the bad and the good.  While trying to think of a bad movie I could watch, my mind instantly went to one place: Nicholas Cage.  The man barely ever lets you down … or up, I guess.  Either way, today I watched 8mm, written by Andrew Kevin Walker, directed by Joel Schumacher, and starring Nicholas Cage, Catherine Keener, Myra Carter, Amy Morton, Joaquin Phoenix, James Gandolfini, Peter Stormare, and Christopher Bauer.

Tom Welles (Nicholas Cage) is a private investigator with a wife, Amy (Catherine Keener), and a little daughter.  He’s contacted by recently widowed Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter) who found a film in the possessions of her recently deceased husband.  She asks Tom to watch this movie and tell her if it’s real.  The film turns out to be a snuff film.  Now, if you’re not a member of the violent pornography culture as I am (please don’t believe that), I’ll explain.  A snuff film is a sex film where a person gets killed.  Most are fake, but Sister Christian wants to be sure.  She pays Tom to look in to it.  The rest of the movie follows Tom into the seedy underbelly of the pornography community, introducing him to adult video store employee Max California (Joaquin Phoenix) who helps him go further down the rabbit hole.

YAY!  I was right.  This wasn’t a very good movie.  It set it’s intentions towards some thrills and suspense I never really felt it accomplished, but what really made it bad was the subject matter and the look.  It should be expected out of a movie about snuff films that it would be gross and dark but, on the other hand, no one really needed a movie about snuff films.  The subject matter takes us to all the icky places that none of us want to go into in real life, so I don’t really want to go there in a movie either.  The story itself plays out like a mystery without a great deal of mystery.  It pretty much goes in a linear fashion with no surprises at all.  It’s not like there’s some guy that’s been in the movie since the beginning that we find out is the bad guy at the very end.  We pretty much find out who the bad people are once they’re introduced.  The biggest mystery in the movie is why no one in this movie owns a man-sized gun.  Everyone used James Bond-size baby guns.  The most interesting side of the story is Cage’s dilemma over punishing the guys that did it, although, to me, if jail wasn’t really a concern, there wouldn’t really be much of a moral dilemma.  The world may be a little better off without the 3 people Cage had to take out.  Now, the person hanging on the wall in the background of one of the climactic scenes, I don’t know.  There was a body hanging off the wall in the big scene with Gandolfini, Joaquin, Stormare, and Cage that was never explained, never mentioned, and just hung there.

I’m pointing out the music now, so you know there was something interesting about it.  The most interesting thing about it was how little it fit the scene.  For some reason, they decided that the best music for a murder mystery, dark, icky movie was the same music they use in Bollywood.  One scene of Cage looking through a bunch of missing person’s files was music I would expect to instead be playing as someone rode a camel through the Serengeti.  It was mostly music for Bollywood, not Hollywood.

The performances were off-putting, but usually in a way that seemed to serve the purpose of the movie.  To that end, the actors should not be blamed for this movie; just the writers.  Cage was pretty low key for most of the movie but broke into the classic Nick Cage overact near the end of the movie.  His movie-wife, Catherine Keener, performed her part well, but I hated her character.  She made no damned sense!  In the beginning, she see’s Cage packing his gun for this investigation, but he assures her he won’t need it, so she says “So leave it here.”  What kind of a wife is that, writers?  You predict that you won’t need it but, if the event arises that you are in a life-threatening situation and you DO need it, I’d rather it was here being useless.  Also, she doesn’t know what he’s investigating and she gets all pissed at him for endangering the family.  Look, I understand not wanting to endanger your family, but is that Cage’s fault?  It’s his job and it just went too far in a way Cage couldn’t really stop.  It’s like if I went in to work and the building burnt down.  Should I have known better than to get involved?  Technically, he was more interested in finding closure for the mother of the murdered girl.  That’s noble, bitch!  Gandolfini is in the movie as well, and he plays a version of the same character I’ve seen him play many times: quasi-Italian scum bag.  The same could be said for Peter Stormare, exchanging “quasi-Italian” for “indiscriminate Eastern European” and “scum bag” for “creepy person”.

This movie will, very likely, either make you feel dirty or horny.  I don’t claim to know what you’re in to.  The performances are mostly fine, but they act in support of a movie nobody should want to watch about ickiness and badness.  Also, I’m pretty sure whoever put the music in this was watching the wrong movie.  Either way, skip it.  It’s not the worst movie ever, but it doesn’t have many redeemable qualities either.  8mm gets “All I’m saying is … it can get to you” out of “There are some things that you see, and you can’t unsee them.”

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