I shall be analysing Into the Storm by degrees, taking its temperature and forecasting what precipitates to see if it’s sizzling hot or will leave you cold. So read on only if you’ve already seen Into the Storm, or don’t plan to.
Tornadoes Suck
0:02:02 A car full of obnoxious teens is killed by a sympathetic tornado. The tornado is not only propitious, it’s also well designed – the teens aren’t the only ones swept away. I just hope the film doesn’t rain on my parade later.
0:02:09 Aerial shot of the countryside. Two minutes into the film and they’ve already abandoned the concept of a found footage film.
0:04:18 We meet a team of 4 documentary making storm chasers. I know Allison from somewhere. The wife in The Walking Dead, maybe? [Yes, Sarah Wayne Callies is Lori Grimes on The Walking Dead and began as Dr. Sara Tancredi in Prison Break]. The boss (Matt Walsh as Pete) is unhappy they haven’t filmed a tornado in a year, but the employees don’t insist about being paid, so he’s in a low pressure zone.
Trying to escape the sunshine flooding the streets
0:04:25 Max Deacon is Donnie – supposedly 16 but looks old enough for me to legally get behind — making a time capsule video for his future self. If he doesn’t commit suicide before he watches it in the future, he will when he watches it in the future.
0:06:48 His father, Gary (Richard Armitage), is the vice principal at the local high school. Sadly, he’s more principle than vice.
0:09:46
Donk
Amateur Daredevil
302 YouTube hits
Here’s the video. Let’s see if we can get over 302 hits.
0:17:18 Donnie’s crush Kaitlyn (Alycia Debnam Carey) tells him that she wants to make a video about an abandoned factory. Donnie offers to film it for her, because he wants to make a video about a young girl with huge bosoms.
“Relax, it’s just a hurricane. Take off the next layer.”
0:23:02 A small taste of a storm. Hail, yes.
0:24:04 WTF!? Teenagers at the graduation ceremony are filming their head master’s speech on their mobile phones!? The difference between them and me is purely academic. 0:29:44 The storm chasers tried to park in the path of the tornado, but it turned at the last moment to avoid them. It must’ve spotted a mobile home.
Whirl Whim
0:31:32 Good suspense and the storm hitting the school is well filmed. The movie needs more of this and less of everything else.
0:33:34 The roof comes off the abandoned factory, but Donnie and Kaitlyn fall into a magic hole for protection. Bloody American PG-13. Rather, NOT bloody American PG-13.
0:43:47 Donnie bandages Kaitlyn’s hurt leg.
Kaitlyn: How’d you learn that? Donnie: My mum was a nurse, so when we were kids, instead of story time, we had, like, CPR lessons.
WTF!?
“I’l have you know I’m just as big a star as they are.”
0:46:07
Lucas (Arlen ‘Token’ Escarpeta): It’s a freak occurrence. Two different storm fronts taking the same path. Allison: It’s not a freak anymore. Not after Katrina.
Well, at least this film has the science to back it up.
0:50:02
Multiple vortices touching down…
Their scientific jargon cannot disguise the fact that 5 tornadoes surrounding them at the same moment is closer to Airplane vs Volcano than reality.
0:50:14 What’s more stupid? This guy or the scene?
No Brainer
0:51:12 Rear-ended by the tornado. When a storm chases the storm chasers.
0:52:38 The next best thing to a Sharknado? A Firenado.
There goes the neighbourhood
0:52:48 WTF!? Jacob (Jeremy Sumpter), the young chap who only moments ago wanted to leave the team, is now disobeying orders and filming the Firenado up close? Please let him die. If not for the story, then at least for some action.
0:53:21 That’ll teach him to listen to his friends and ignore his instincts.
0:56:27
Kaitlyn: My phone’s not working.
Says the girl standing in water up to her overly highlighted bosom.
Must be an iPhone.
“I can’t get a signal…in my brain.”
Also, where are they that a broken pipe can fill the space and create a drowning risk? They’re in a factory basement, not a well.
0:57:34 In a moment of comic relief, Kaitlyn and Donnie film goodbye messages to their parents because the water in the tiny, watertight room they’re in is filling up faster than a red solo cup at a barbecue.
1:08:43
Cloudy Outlook
1:10:22 LOL, for the sake of suspense, an entire school bus of people must go down the manhole one at a time. Oh, but wait, it won’t be suspenseful because we know no one dies in this movie. The safest alternative for everyone in this film would be to simply stay away from the storm chasers and Donnie’s family, as the storm seems to be following them personally.
1:11:28 This is the best bit. Watch this and you won’t need to watch the film.
1:17:08 While he’s in the eye of the tornado (WTF!?), I’m going to predict Pete will die because 1) he’s always wanted to see the inside of a tornado, so his bucket list is empty, 2) throughout the film he’s put the storm before everyone’s safety, so he needs to be punished and 3) his last act is the selfless deed of parking the Titus van beside the sewer grate to protect the others, so he can die a hero. His death is also a lesson that altruism will get you killed, and it’s safer to be a money grabbing adrenaline junkie than a caregiver.
Just soiled his Titus Whitus
1:19:40 Didn’t take me long to be right.
1:21:54 Back to the time capsule recordings and people who were arses before the tornado are now intellectual philosophers. Oh goodie, a woman makes references to how this movie is supposed to be all found footage. It is, however, a “Found Film”, in the sense I found it silly.
MRW I get caught stealing someone’s dog to make a kebab
1:22:38 The jack asses are in a tree and still stupid. Like this ending. Roll credits
1:28:26 OST WTF!? Did they really play all these songs?
[Note: the playlist is missing The CO – This Time Is Yours and C. Todd Nielsen & Jonathan Mead – Stay Young]Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: 12 violent ones.
When to Follow: Good for a Saturday afternoon after lunch if it’s raining.
Where’s This Found: No matter how bad this storm was meant to be, only 2 people died, so it wasn’t all that. This eliminates all of the suspense and there’s not enough action or special effects to compensate. Bottom line: This film doesn’t spend enough time doing what it does best and wastes our time doing what it does worst. Out of a possible 10, I have 4 F’s to give
I shall be digging deep into As Above, So Below, delving into its mysteries and uncovering it’s plot holes to determine if it’s deep or just a trap. So read on only if you’ve already seen As Above, So Below, or don’t plan to.
Synopsis (AKA One MASSIVE Spoiler): Basically, the film is about an underground world which resembles Dante’s Inferno and which mirrors ours. The young explorers who discover this region beneath Paris have to own up to their past regrets or die from them. There’s also a random bit about the Philosopher’s Stone, apparently to transmute this film into pure gold from a steaming pile of WTF!?
Medieval Simon
0:01:21 A young lass (Perdita Weeks as Scarlett) sneaks into Iran to secretly film caves that reveal a critical, missing piece of history. She’s undercover, or at least under veil.
0:04:38 Inside a cave she finds a giant, onyx bull head she calls the ‘Rose Key’, and not the ‘Italian man’s horn pendant’.
0:06:17 She miraculously survives the explosion in the condemned caves. The dead bloke she found hanging in a noose doesn’t fare as well.
0:08:04 Scarlett is now in Paris at some inner-city excavation, boasting about her degrees. The bad news is, this is a found-footage film. There’s been a plethora of these recently and most of them – like Into the Storm – should have stayed lost.
“A bloke taking a what behind me?”
0:08:53 She’s now following in the literal footsteps of her father who killed himself while looking for the alchemist’s Philosopher’s Stone. The Philosopher’s Stone is a magic rock that can turn metal into gold. She states Nicolas Flamel was ‘widely believed’ to have accomplished this. I am well aware of Nicolas Flamel and the only way he is ‘widely’ believed is if he’s believed by obese people.
0:13:17 Scarlett finds an old friend (Ben Feldman as George) who will help her translate the symbols on Nicolas Flamel’s tombstone using the Aramaic from the bull head as a key. He knows a lot of bull.
“Look, it’s a diving eagle with an erection.”
0:16:04 On the back of Flamel’s tombstone, they find a secret poem that rhymes when translated into English. WTF!?
Does ‡ really rhyme with § ?
0:20:33 Why, hello there weird ostrich chick!
Cuckoo, Cuckoo, Cuckoo
Benji (Edwin Hodge as the camera man), George and Scarlett enter a club to find a bloke called Papillion (a very sexy François Civil), because some young rocker who hangs out in the Catacombs [see 1:11:11] told her he was the one who could find her secret passage. Ah, those Frenchmen.
0:26:34 LOL! French five.
Give me cinq!
Here, then, is the team descending into the pits of this film:
Scarlett: Leader of the pack. Named after her hair — or, perhaps ‘little scar’
George: Her ex. A claustrophobic bloke trapped in this film
Benji: Token black cameraman in a film that needs bodies more than blacks and cameramen
Papillon: Attractive French urban explorer who leads the descent because he knows his way around in the dark
Souxie: Quiet française, only along for the body count
Zed: The third Frenchie and porter of the emotional baggage
0:28:02
Scarlett: His [George’s] little brother drowned in a cave when they were young.
I hope there was water in it.
Head Lights
0:30:52 Al K Hall nudity alert: Random loony bird is leading a choir of topless women in long skirts chanting in a cavern.
034:38 The crazy chanting reaches its climax just as Benji has a claustrophobic attack. Honestly? The crazy music is overkill. Which could explain why I feel overdead – tired.
0:37:36 The entire group has to go down the passage Papillon says is haunted. These Catacombs will be the death of him, or somebody less attractive than him.
The tunnel is like Thai food: easier going in than coming out
0:40:16 In one tunnel, George finds a piano like the one he and his brother used to play. This piano is crap just like his old one, so everybody is afraid. Maybe because none of them know how to repair a piano.
0:41:24
Why won’t you talk to me, Scarlett?
Voice on the phone when Scarlett speaks
She is talking to you, deaf bloke.
[We will later learn the voice is that of her father, who telephoned her the night he committed suicide, but she didn’t pick up]
0:41:46 La Taupe (The Mole in English), a French lad who’s been lost for ages and was friends with Papillon, shows up out of the blue black. He says he can show them a way out, though the way he says it, he makes it sound like suicide.
[La Taupe represents a soul lost in Purgatory / Limbo in the first circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.]
Mid-evil map
0:43:34
The only way out is down.
La Taupe
Their friend quotes Dante directly. In the Inferno, Dante and his mate, Virgil, continue to wind down the nine concentric circles of Hell until gravity flips and the duo pop out in the same place they entered Hell. Sound familiar? If not, it will when you see the end of this film.
0:44:57 The group follow their flat mate and rappel down a deep hole.
Scarlett: If we find the chamber, then that’s the way out. We’ll find a way out.
Souxie: Are you sure?
Scarlett: I think I’m sure.
What an oxymoron.
0:46:40 The group step in a puddle which makes the sound go numb. When the angry phantoms scream, the ghost of Jean Paul Gauthier as a wee lad appears.
“Have you seen my Mummy?”
[The little boy isn’t a child some English family abandoned in the Catacombs, but is the ghost of George’s brother, Danny.]
0:50:06 The team open a secret door and everybody’s happy because they don’t know the film is only half over.
0:50:51
V.I.T.R.I.O.L.
This is motto of alchemy and the entire point to this film. Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem is a Latin expression that George translates as, “Visit the earth’s interior parts – by rectification you shall find the hidden stone.” ‘Vitriol’ is also what I spew a lot of on this site.
The ancient way of writing W.T.F.
[The theme of this film is descending into the Catacombs and rectifying past wrongs to reach the Philosopher’s Stone, which is reflected in the slogan.]
0:52:38 Scarlett discovers a hidden treasure room with an eternal flame that hasn’t burnt out in 5 centuries. They don’t make flames like that any more.
0:55:14 Next to the treasure is the Philosopher’s Stone, but the Frenchies don’t care about philosophy (WTF!? – plot hole) only the gold. The gold, however, is a trap, meant to distract treasure hunters from the real wealth: the stone. Which makes Scarlett a Stoner.
0:55:57 The ceiling collapses and hits Souxie and La Taupe like a ton of bricks. Because it’s a ton of bricks. The Mole’s a decent enough chap to stop screaming so the group can heal Souxie’s arm with the Philosopher’s Stone and forget about him.
In the bargain basement
0:59:36 While there’s not much scary in this film, The Da Vinci Code / Myst aspect is as entertaining as…well, Myst and The Da Vinci Code, I guess.
1:00:26
George (reading an inscription on the wall): ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’
Scarlett: Oh.
Papillon: What?
Scarlett: According to mythology, that’s the inscription over the gates of hell.
Papillon: What!? I’m… I’m not going in there.
Lol. Papillon is so French!
“One does not simply walk into the MORT door.”
1:02:10 They all crawl through a small space and wind up in a reverse replica of the room they were just in. It’s not hell, but it’s as boring as.
1:03:38 After hearing screaming sounds in an underwater passageway, the find Le Taupe – the Frenchman they left for dead – sitting there. Awk-ward.
1:04:28 Souxie goes to him, but he looks like a zombie of his former self. Despite everyone warning her to leave him alone, she continues to approach him. He snaps and kills her by beating her head on the ground. No real explanation is given of the sin she hasn’t rectified. Maybe it’s because she spoke English to him and they’re both French.
1:07:02
Phantombomb
1:07:29 Bloody brilliant ending to Benji. Crazy bird appears out of nowhere, then we hear Benji scream before we see his dead body fall to the bottom of the plot hole they’re descending.
[The ‘sin’ Benji refuses to rectify and thus has to die for is not clearly spelled out. Many viewers seem to think it’s linked to his perceived lust, or linked to the baby thrust upon him by the crazy bird before she does him in.]
1:08:42 George’s drowned brother makes an appearance here, drowning under a pile of bones, calling out to his brother. The last third of the film is really taking off like a stripper’s knickers.
1:11:11 There’s a burning car with a white in an afro burning in the back seat and he slowly turns his head towards the Papillon, who keeps repeating, “It wasn’t my fault.” He may be talking about this film.
“This burns me up.”
[The man in the car is the same one in the note at 0:20:33, who told the group to find Papillon. Which means he, like The Mole, is able to walk back and forth between the two worlds much more easily than everybody else in the film. Dead has it’s privileges.]
Brilliant image of Papillon’s legs sticking out of the sand after the car is crumpled up into another dimension. #FootGarden
Click on the image for the Video
[Because Papillon refuses to acknowledge / atone for his part in the lad’s death, he is put to death exactly as is described in Dante’s Eighth Circle of Hell:
Out of the mouth of each one [baptismal font] there protruded The feet of a transgressor, and the legs Up to the calf, the rest within remained.]
1:15:21 An evil looking chap in a black, cowl-like robe [the devil] turns his pale face to the trio (Scarlett, George and Zed), while the agonizing faces frozen in the wall fill the cave with screams. The walls have more than ears.
1:17:22 Scarlett tries to save George who’s been attacked by a wall monster, but the Philosopher’s Stone doesn’t work, she realizes, because it’s the wrong stone. She must return to the first room and replace the stone to be able to heal him. Zed thinks they should just abandon George and run away. Oh, those French!
Madonna’s gynaecologists
1:17:51 Lol, as she runs back, she bitch slaps a rock monster that gets in her way.
1:18:32 The fact all of the action is now filmed with only her GoPro makes the suspense better because the frame of vision is so restricted.
1:19:24 Scarlett finds a hanging figure with a towel over his head in a chamber. It’s meant to be her father, so she decides to forget about rescuing her beau in order to pull the pillowcase off the head. When she does, the figure beneath seems to be her own. She should stop hanging around.
Not a beauty spot, but a mole
1:20:51
As above, so below. As I believe the world to be, so it is.
After she replaces the wrong Philosopher’s Stone, she sees her reflection in a mirror and understands that the Philosopher’s Stone is really just the power of belief (hence, the quote) – If you believe it, it will come true. She should have believed this would be a good film choice for her.
1:21:11 Back in the hanging room, she hugs the dead body of her father and apologizes for not picking up the phone on the night he killed himself. By apologizing for not taking his call on the night he killed himself, she’s off Satan’s To-do list.
1:21:27 There is no camera here that could’ve recorded the angles we’re seeing. Just saying. #ThatGuy
“Make sure you get to the bottom of this, even if you have to force yourself.”
1:22:22 Scarlett places her hand on the wound on George’s neck and kisses him. The wound is healed. The French chap doesn’t ask her to do the same to him. I’m no longer sure he’s French.
1:23:12 George admits he got lost while looking for help to save his brother. By confessing his error to Scarlett, he’s no longer doomed. By confessing to Scarlett, he also has a good idea of what it feels like to be married.
1:23:38
I have a child I’ve never seen. I know it’s mine, but I deny it.
It would seem Zed is French after all.
“Have a baby!”
1:24:28 The three of them must fall up a deep hole.
[The well signifies Purgatory in Dante’s Inferno.]
1:26:04 Because they’re in the mirror reflection world, they have to push down on a manhole cover on the ground, and when they look through it, they see upside down trees blowing in the wind. They climb out of the hole, the world rotates 180°, and they’ve returned to Paris. Which is still a little backwards, but not physically upside down.
Roll credits
1:28:02 What sounds like a hipster version of a Serge Gainsbourg song for the credits.
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: 6 deep ones
When to Follow: When you feel like watching a film more intellectual than intelligent. Not scary enough to be fun, and not fun enough to be interesting.
Where’s This Found: I must admit to being slightly disappointed by this film. I was very impressed by director John Erick Dowdle‘s film The Poughkeepsie Tapes, which established him as the new King of found-footage films for me. Unfortunately, the acting in that film was at times insufferable… If only he could’ve had this cast in that film. As it stands, I enjoyed the mystery aspect of As Above, So Below, but was hoping for more thrills. Out of a possible 10, I have 5 F’s to give
What To Feedback: What is your favourite found-footage film? Let us know in the comments!
I shall be researching The Interview in depth, asking the hard questions and demanding straight answers to determine if it’s the solution or an inquisition. So read on only if you’ve already seen The Interview, or don’t plan to.
“Your ‘North Korea Hack’ marketing campaign was brilliant!”
0:01:14 Adorable wee North Korean girl singing a capella sweetly to the camera before a large crowd and missile launch …
Die, America, die!
Oh please won’t you die?
It would fill my tiny heart with joy.
May your women all be raped by beasts of the jungle,
While your children are forrced toooo waaaatch!
I’m fairly certain this is the North Korean national anthem.
0:02:38 Dave Skylark (James Franco) is a Larry King-style chat show host. Think ‘Larry Prince’.
0:05:48 Eminem coming out as gay on Dave Skylark’s chat show is the funniest thing I’ve seen on Christmas. This exchange takes place during a live interview between Dave and Eminem. Skylark Tonight‘s producer (Seth Rogen as Aaron Rapaport) is talking to Dave through an earpiece.
Aaron (through Dave’s earpiece): Dave, I’ve got the lyrics. Say what I say…
Dave (to Eminem, echoing Aaron): What did you mean when you rapped…
Aaron: “I said, ‘Nice rectum’ / I had a…”
Dave: “… a vasectomy, Hector. / So you can’t get pregnant / if I bisexually wreck ya.”?
Eminem: I’ve pretty much just been leaving a bread crumb trail of gayness.
Pretty deep
0:09:47 Aaron is snubbed by an ex-classmate who produces news on 60 Minutes (US version of Panorama), thus ‘real’ news. This is why I will never attend class reunions, or work for Piers Morgan.
0:10:12 Speaking of real news…
“His head looks like somebody’s t’aint.”
0:11:01 That hair raising story was interrupted by a live news flash explaining North Korea has just blown up a tiny, uninhabited island in the South Pacific. Aaron looks on wistfully, and not because he wants to live in the South Pacific.
0:11:28
Aaron: Dude, I want to cover actual news, not Nicki Minaj’s vagina flopping out at the Grammys.
This film is rife with one-liners of this nature. It’s the kind of funny we all think we are.
Laughing on their way to the bank
0:12:12
Dave (showing an article to Aaron): The Times printed it about North Korea. Read the bottom, after all the ‘death camp’ shit.
Kim Jong-un is a fan of Skylark Tonight, which is how they’ll be able to score the interview.
0:16:10 This film has an marvellous soundtrack. Niu Zai Hen Mang by Jay Chou
0:18:48 At the agreed upon rendez-vous point in China, a North Korean helicopter lands and Sook (Diana Bang as a female soldier that will provide Aaron’s love interest) descends to the tune of “Conquest” by The White Stripes and presents the terms of the deal.
1-hour interview
Kim Jong-un will provide the questions
It must take place in North Korea
Aaron: Why didn’t you guys tell me this over the phone? Or Skype ? Do you guys have Skype. Do you have Skype here?
I’m sure this film is funny because we make the same jokes.
0:19:35
Dave: It’s the first rule of journalism: give the people what they want.
Sadly, this is not as much of a joke as it’s meant to be.
It frequently takes Seth longer to understand the jokes
0:21:13
Bill Maher: One hundred bucks, Skylark thinks [Kim Jong-un] is the guy from “Gangnam Style”.
0:21:38
Dave: He’s motherfucking peanut butter and jealous.
Aaron: He’s not jealous.
Dave: He’s putting KY jealous all over his dick.
Aaron: What is there to be jealous of?
Dave: Fuckers hate us ’cause they ain’t us.
Aaron: “They hate us ’cause we anus“? What the fuck does an anus have to do with it?
Dave: They hate us ’cause they ain’t us.
0:24:32 The CIA and her cleavage (Agent Lacey, played by Lizzy Caplan) ask Dave and Aaron to eliminate Kim Jong-un while they interview him. In which case, it literally would be a killer interview.
0:26:17
Aaron: They’re honey-potting us.
Dave: What?
Aaron: It’s an attractive spy woman they send to lure men into doing shit they’re not supposed to do. How can you not see that?
I’m leaving this here because you’ll need it for later.
0:26:58
James finds this role particularly hard
0:28:32 Dave explains that using ricin to poison Kim Jong-un so that he dies twelve hours after the interview is like fading to black before the “money shot” in a pornographic film. Which, according to Dave and many a gay male fantasy, looks like this.
James is really excited about this part
0:33:48 Apparently, the CIA train their agents to David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans“. “It’s like Spike Lee saying he’s white!”
0:39:38 The North Korean guard searching their bags at the Royal Palace (or whatever) eats the ricin strip, believing it to be chewing gum, Blue-Buried flavour.
0:48:28 The scene where Aaron has to hide the cannister containing the replacement ricin in his arse will either make you laugh or cringe or both.
0:49:48 There are two ricin strips in case there’s another error. Like a sponge left in a body after surgery, I imagine this will be important later.
0:51:23 Kim Jong-un (Randall Park) pops by for a surprise visit, bearing gifts. You might say Dave is ‘busted’.
Say ‘Cheesy’
0:52:56 Discussing a tank in the garage…
Kim Jong-un: It was a gift to my grandfather from Stalin.
Dave: In my country, it’s pronounced ‘Stallone’.
0:54:26
Dave: If liking Katy Perry and drinking margaritas is gay, who wants to be straight?
Kim Jong-un: Not me!
This is the real interview.
0:59:55 Dave parties with Kim Jong-un and scantily clad young Asian women. I’m beginning to understand why Dennis Rodman spent so much time with him.
Al K Hall Nudity Alert: This video contains scenes of nudity: NSFW! Yoonmi-rae, Tiger JK & Ann One – Pay Day (May Day Remix)
1:01:28 After a wonderful day in the company of Kim Jong-un, Dave has changed his mind about killing the leader. I’m beginning to realize I haven’t laughed in a while.
1:04:12 I needn’t have worried. The death scene of the guard who ate the poison is fairly hilarious.
It’s raining man
1:06:32 FWIW, there are a slew of Lord of the Rings references in this film.
Dave: “I don’t know who Boromir is.” That’s such a Boromir thing to say!
1:07:44 Aaron places a ricin tab in his palm to shake hands with the Supreme Leader, but Dave intervenes by telling Kim he can’t shake hands with Aaron because Aaron is a Jew. Aaron is still wearing the tab when Sook pops by for a surprise visit.
1:09:52 Depressed over the death of his personal guards (the poisoned guard accidentally shot his partner in his death throes), Kim goes off on a tirade where he says he will burn all his population and destroy the world to assert his power. This throws a damper over the mood at the dinner.
Not so tough when you remember his name is ‘Kim’
1:11:28 Aaron begins snogging Sook, but WTF!? he can’t touch her with his palm because he still hasn’t taken off the ricin tab. If he touched her… she might come, but she’d definitely go.
1:13:04 Dave learns Kim played him, and that the prosperity Dave believed existed is, in fact, a sham. So, after his change of heart, he has a change of heart.
1:14:04 Aaron takes off his shirt, but not the ricin patch. They’re choking on this gag.
Charades: The Nutcracker Suite
1:15:37 WTF!? Why must Sook hide when Dave enters Aaron’s room? Certainly Aaron could tell Dave he’s with Sook. The entire routine of “Oh my, Dave is pounding on the bed in anger and I hope he doesn’t pound Sook who’s hiding under the sheet (WTF!?)” is beneath the first half of this film.
1:17:32 Rather than assassinate Kim, Sook says a more efficient strategy would be to make him cry in the interview, that way the people will realize he isn’t a God. They want to put the ‘dick’ in ‘dictator’.
1:18:16 Zion – The Moon Which Loves the Sun
1:29:36 While Dave struggles to ask pointed questions during the interview, there’s a more physical struggle in the control room with Aaron and Sook fighting the North Korean technicians. I don’t want to give away too much, so let me just say ‘finger food’.
1:32:42 Dave makes Kim break down in tears on telly by singing ‘Fireworks’. The song makes me want to cry…and beg to turn it off.
1:33:02 Kim Jong-un also sharts live, thus proving he is not a deity because has a butt-hole. Icing on the cake, so to speak.
1:35:16 Kim shoots Dave in the bullet proof vest (I’m guessing, as Dave referenced one at the beginning of the film). In the meantime, some of his soldiers feel betrayed that Kim Jong-un is just a man and are going to the studio to express their displeasure at gun point.
1:38:06 To make their getaway, the trio (Aaron, Dave and Sook) commandeer the Stalin tank and drive it Stallone.
Seth, James and their dates
1:40:38 They shoot down Kim’s helicopter before he can launch his nukes, in a pre-emptive strike. Destruction always looks so good in slo-mo.
Fire work
1:42:52 The lads make a break for the coast in a secret tunnel while Sook stays behind to ensure the future of her country. Perhaps by hacking any writer who criticizes this film.
1:47:27 While Aaron Skypes with Sook, Dave reads the last page of his book at a launch party. WTF!?
Asian take away
Roll credits
Credit Cookie for Digby
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: 4 questionable ones
When to Follow: A great film to get drunk to, because the humour will start to wane just when your inebriation kicks in.
Where’s This Found: The humour in The Interview is certainly low brow and flags towards the middle, but you will laugh out loud at least once in the film. Intended to be a silly ditty and not a political satire, this is the funniest movie I’ve seen since Tropic Thunder. Beyond all the hoopla, this is a solid comedy that you’ll need to watch if you want to understand any joke in 2015. Out of a possible 10, I have 8 F’s to give
Note: As two readers voted for “That’s such a Boromir thing to say!” in ‘Other’, I’ve added it to the list.
I shall be peering into the soul of Left Behind, examining its motivations, then weighing the good and the bad aspects to determine if it deserves to be saved or is god damned. So read on only if you’ve already seen Left Behind, or don’t plan to.
0:02:14 Family photo. I’d love to say I tweaked it to make it look this silly but, no, I’m not that funny and this is the way it actually appeared in the film. Interesting that even not-so-bad actors like Lea Thompson automatically lose a little talent when filming religious propaganda. Imagine Shakespeare writing church newsletters… Heaven help us!
0:02:46 WTF!? Less than 3 minutes into the film and they’re already quoting the Bible. #Over-zealous film making
0:04:16 Lol, Nicolas Cage is Rayford ‘Ray’ Steele, a pilot, who takes off his wedding ring before getting on board his flight attendant. Full disclosure here: I’m a believer. Like I believe Nicolas Cage in a religious film is one of the harbingers of the apocalypse.
0:06:28 Chloe Steele (Cassi Thomson) talks to a GI Joe action figure (Chad Michael Murray as Cameron ‘Buck’ Williams, renowned international journalist and underwear model). She sins so bad she uses the name ‘Gosh’ in vain while talking about a chance meeting with her father and his mistress in the airport.
I flew home to surprise him for his birthday, but something came up.
Well, it may not have come up yet, but he is definitely surprised to see you.
The blind kissing the blind
0:07:08
You’re Cameron Williams. Holy cow!
Ooh, Cage’s language is as bad as his acting.
0:09:02
I just feel like she’s always trying to shove it down my throat.
Chloe about her mum
Dear Lord! I hope she’s talking about religion.
Mrs Steele is so religious, she uses hand condoms for hugs
0:15:02 We learn that the flight attendant Hattie Durham (Nicky Whelan) doesn’t know Ray Steele yet – bliblically. After all, this film expects the pious to get behind Captain Steele. #NotBiblically
0:15:51 WTF!? Ray’s colleague gives Chloe two tickets for her father? Was this Ray’s plan?
Ray: OK Jim, get two tickets to U2 in London. On the day before the concert, randomly bump into my daughter who is flying down to surprise me so I don’t even know she’s going to be at the airport and give her the tickets. We’ll hope she’s just befriended a bloke who happens to be flying to London on my flight, and he’ll be late in boarding because he’s chatting her up and she can then give them to this complete stranger to give to me in my cockpit. (Not a euphemism).
Jim: Great plan.
It’s a birthday miracle!
“‘I’m all ears’ is an expression, Doofus.”
0:16:44 All Buck has to do is knock on the cockpit door and stroll inside? WTF!? Is it a flight cabin or a public toilet?
0:17:57 There are so many children in economy class that it looks like Mormon daycare. Rapture for everyone.
0:19:38 No rapture, however, for the Muslim lecher. Interesting that he’s the only one ogling a mysterious blonde who embarks on the aircraft. Interesting and #racist.
“Let’s take it to the next plane.”
0:19:16
[Seat belt tone before take-off]
Elderly woman: Listen, George, we’re home!
Elderly man (looking out the window first – WTF!?): Home? We’re not home.
Elderly woman (to Cameron): Sometimes he gets a bit confused.
Elderly couple with Alzheimers? They’ll be raptured for sure.
0:19:57 No rapture for the business man who refuses to turn off his phone before take-off, though he’s asked twice. God’s got his number.
0:26:58 Well-behaved minority child in business class? One-way ticket to Heaven.
0:27:24 Dwarf on the plane (#Grumpy) is a betting man. No rapture for him, I’d wager.
Short temper
0:32:58 The rapture hits and, like a creep with a bag of candy in a white van, takes all the children. A few adult passengers make it as well, like the Air Marshal, but he had to leave his gun behind. Heaven has more gun control than the U.S. apparently.
0:33:44 Lol, the co-pilot was raptured as well. God is my co-pilot, or close enough. Good thing for the other passengers that Ray Steele sinned religiously.
0:34:58 Funny that God took people but left their clothes behind. He wants us to bare more than just our souls.
0:40:31
0:41:24
MRW I have to act with Nicolas Cage
0:45:09 – 0:45:16 The British slapper’s milk sacks come out when she suspects she’s experiencing an overdose. Seems like this flight isn’t the only bad trip.
Talent or bust
0:46:14 The Muslim man is praying, but no one will answer. Heaven forbid!
0:51:54 An aeroplane with no pilots heads straight at Ray Steel’s plane and he waits until the last moment to take evasive action. The bad news is the planes do collide. The good news is, his plane only gets a scratch. WTF!?
0:56:58 There are a lot of hospital staff remaining. Apparently there are far fewer saintly medical practitioners than air traffic controllers. Do air traffic controllers know about Heaven through their jobs? This could explain why the skies are friendly.
“If God is merciful, how could he let this film happen to good people?”
1:01:51 WTF!? This is the second old woman left behind with her elderly husband who has moved on. What is the writer trying to tell us? Nana is a hellion? #GrandfatherClause
1:03:06 For those keeping score, elderly women don’t get into heaven and neither do loyal pets.
Eternal damnation is for the dogs
1:06:28 Mrs Steele was taken from her shower, with her jewellery left behind on the shower floor. Turns out you really can’t take it with you.
1:07:46 The co-pilot’s watch has ‘John 3:16′ inscribed on it.
1:08:24 Ray Steele’s phone pocket dialled his wife just before the mid-air collision and magically rang off immediately afterwards, so now Chloe believes her father to be dead. On the day of the rapture, God isn’t too busy to play a few practical jokes. #Comediety
1:09:44 Ray Steele understands that it’s the apocalypse. You know the world is in trouble when Nicolas Cage is the smartest man sitting.
“Well, I’ll be damned – literally.”
1:10:47 WTF!? The angry white dwarf sits beside the handgun left behind by the raptured marshal and doesn’t even think about taking it, but the black woman steals it and points it at the Asian, accusing him off kidnapping her daughter. TIL God is extremely racist.
1:14:02 WTF!? Chloe goes to church to worship all the WTF and finds her pastor there (Lance E. Nichols as Pastor Bruce Barnes). This certainly looks worse for him than for her. You better believe it!
Altar Ego
1:14:32 Back on the aeroplane, the junkie is the first one in first class to figure out the cause of the mass exodus.
Venice Baxter: It’s in the Bible. My parents sent me to camp one summer and everyone was talking about this. They said that one day, millions of people were going to just… just disappear.
At least now we understand why she became a junkie.
[FYI, ‘Venice Baxter’ is played by Georgina Rawlings, née Armstrong, daughter to Vic Armstrong, the director of this apocalypse.]
1:15:47
Shasta Carvell: Do you have children, Mr Williams?
Buck: No, I don’t. But I did have a mom.
WTF!?
1:23:32 WTF!? The Texan businessman knew the English junkie when she was a preacher’s toddler? How does geography work again? The Lord isn’t the only one who moves in mysterious ways.
1:26:42
1:28:27 Just as Chloe is about to jump off of bridge, Buck calls her. She won’t commit suicide now because she got the calling.
1:35:32 Communication is tricky after the apocalypse. When Ray is over the ocean he can have a conversation with the tower in New York, but the closer he gets, he can no longer reach them. Also, Buck can’t call Chloe but she can call him after she crosses the State in a run to clear an abandoned road with a pick-up truck and create a fireball so that her father has a landing strip. #Science-faction
Holy Shit! Jesus is really coming!
1:42:55 Lol, Ray Steele safely lands the plane but his daughter runs directly to Buck for some love. #God-com
I shall be closely covering Guardians of the Galaxy, overseeing its action and observing its worth to determine if it’s safe or cracked. So read on only if you’ve already seen Guardians of the Galaxy, or don’t plan to.
Young Quill (Wyatt Oleff) is ushered into a hospital room where a bald woman (his mother dying of cancer and not in a Patrick Stewart disguise) tells him goodbye and that he’ll stay with his grandfather until his father comes back to get him. I’ll just drop this reference here, because you’ll be needing it for this and future films.
0:03:32 Young Peter gets picked up a lot sooner than anyone expected.
A Little Pick Me Up
0:04:12 26 years later, on an abandoned planet called Morag, an older Pete (Chris Pratt) disembarks and listens to “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone from the same cassette in the same Walkman as he struts through the ruins of a once great building, kicking local fauna in their Sci-fi arses along the way.
0:08:51 Pete retrieves a fancy metal ball from a sort of light cage when bad aliens interrupt him using their words and some guns.
Pete: My name is Peter Quill, OK? Dude, chill out.
Korath: Move!
Pete: Why?
Korath: Ronan may have questions for you.
Pete: Hey, you know what? There’s another name you may know me by… Star-Lord.
Korath: Who?
Pete: Star-Lord, man. The legendary outlaw?
“I’m gonna have a ball!”
0:10:22 Pete is able to escape using his wiles and his luck…and more than a little help from the scenarist, who decided the enemies have ‘screenwriter aim’, which means they can’t hit anything resembling a leading man.
0:11:22 Pete meets the alien he slept with last night.
Pete: Hey, Bereet, I gotta be totally honest with you. I forgot you were here.
I laugh because of how badly I know this feeling.
The Raspberries – Go All The Way
0:11:39 That tape deck is a throwback to a time when wood was wood and music was everything…
Before Wi-fi? Hi-fi!
0:12:34 Merle from The Walking Dead (Michael Rooker as Yondu Udonta) is blue, and not in the sad way. He calls Pete, who refuses to tell Yondu where he is, so Yondu tells his posse to put a bounty on Pete’s head, which isn’t much worse than the protuberance Yondu has on his own head.
0:12:46
I told you when we picked that kid up, we should have delivered him like we’s hired to do. He was cargo. You have always been soft on him.
Yondu’s assistant
This refers to the beginning of the film when young Pete is beamed into the spaceship. We now know it wasn’t simply a tabloid alien abduction.
He’s got something heavy on his mind
0:13:28 We meet Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), an angry sort of alien who is against the peace treaty between his own Kree Empire and Xandar. He’s got a face only a mother could scrub.
0:14:46 Ronan instructs a very green Gamora (Zoe Saldana) to go to Xandar and retrieve the orb. And to make him a sammich.
0:15:32
Rocket (Bradley Cooper voicing a raccoon) espies a Stan Lee cameo.
Look at Mr Smiles over here. Where’s your wife, old man? What a class a pre-vert.
“‘Ghost Rider’ looked good on paper.”
0:17:04 Pete arrives at The Broker’s, who throws Pete out when he learns an agent of Ronan also was interested in the orb.
Pete: Who’s Ronan?
The Broker (Christopher Fairbank): A Kree fanatic, outraged by the peace treaty, who will not rest until Xandar culture – my culture – is wiped from existence. He’s someone who’s bad side I’d rather not be on.
#Talibronan
Are you a manicure or a mouse?
0:18:06 Outside the Broker’s shop.
Gamora: You have the bearing of a man of honour.
Pete: I wouldn’t say that. People say it about me… all the time, but it’s not something I’d say about myself.
Then Gamora steals the orb and the best fight scene of the film ensues.
0:21:45 The Nova Corps police arrest Groot the Tree, Rocket the Raccoon, Gamora and Pete.
Corpsman Dey (John C. Reilly): Gamora: surgically modified and trained as a living weapon. The adopted daughter of the Mad Titan, Thanos. Recently, Thanos lent her and her sister, Nebula, out to Ronan, which leads us to believe that Thanos and Ronan are working together.
Really Illegal Alien
Corpsman Dey: Subject 89P13. It calls itself Rocket. The result of a legal generic and cybernetic experiments on lower life forms.
Natural Wild Life
Agent: What the hell?
Corpsman Dey: They call it ‘Groot’, a humanoid plant that’s been travelling recently as 89P13’s personal houseplant / muscle.
Hard wood
Corpsman Dey: Peter Jason Quill, from Terra. Raised from youth by a band of mercenaries called the Ravagers, led by Yondu Udonta.
A Sex Machine
0:22:38
0:23:09
Pete: I ain’t about to be brought down by a tree and a talking raccoon.
Rocket: What’s a raccoon?
Pete: What’s a raccoon? It’s what you are, stupid.
Rocket: Ain’t no thing like me, ‘cept me.
Truest line in the film.
0:23:44
Gamora: I wasn’t retrieving the orb for Ronan, I was betraying him. I had an agreement to sell it to a third party.
That would be a surprise party for Ronan.
“This disease is growing on me.”
0:24:34 The prison guard steals Pete’s mix tape. #MusicPiracy.
0:27:20 In a slight WTF!?, the prisoners threaten to destroy Gamora because of what Ronan has done to their families and Rocket says the guards won’t protect her. So what are the inmates waiting for? ‘Break’ time?
0:29:08 Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) threatens to kill Gamora because Ronan killed his wife and daughter. None of this makes as much of an impression as his tattoos.
It’s written all over his face..and arms and chest and back
0:31:02 Pete tells Drax to keep Gamora alive because Ronan will come looking for her, and when he does, Drax can kill him. In other words, she’s the bait and Pete is the Master Baiter.
0:31:54 The group make a deal to escape the prison and take the orb to Gamora’s buyer and split the money four ways. This could be the first foursome in an American PG-13 film.
0:32:34
0:33:54 Thanos (an uncredited Josh Brolin) tells Ronan to bring him the orb, or else. Thanos is also upset Ronan didn’t send Gamora’s sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) to fetch it originally. They’re both his adopted daughters, but it seems Thanos prefers blue to green. Wait, if they get together, do they make yellow?
0:34:36 Back in The Kyln, planning the escape.
Gomora: How are we supposed to do that [get a battery from a watch tower]?
Rocket: Apparently some of these bald bodies find you attractive, so maybe you can work out some kind of trade.
Gomora: You must be joking.
Rocket: No, I really heard they find you attractive.
0:35:52 While the group make their escape, hovering machine gun spheres fire in every direction into the crowd of prisoners. Judging from the lack of injuries, the automatic weapons only shoot sparks.
“Let’s make like a teen and break out!”
0:36:28 WTF!? Future guards quashing a riot in a prison containing every variety of alien unknown to man wear less protective gear than dentists in Feckenham.
0:41:16 To escape, Rocket turns off the artificial gravity in the prison so the guards float away. The guards don’t like the plan, but they are heads over heels.
0:45:01 Rocket and Gamora discussing Rocket’s toolbox.
Rocket: That’s for if things get really hard-core. Or if you wanna blow up moons.
Gomora: No one’s blowing up moons.
Rocket: You just wanna suck the joy of everything.
0:48:26 David Bowie – Moonage Daydream
0:55:51 Benicio Del Toro as The Collector (Taneleer Tivan), buyer of the orb. He’s looking better than he has in a very long while. The only thing Benicio usually collects is bad roles and cold sores.
0:56:50
Just drop it
0:57:48 Inside the orb is an Infinity Stone. Interested in the origin of the Infinity Stone? The Collector provides a You-niverseTube explanation.
The Collector: Oh, my new friends, before creation itself there were six individualties. Then the universe exploded into existence and the remnants of these systems were forged into concentrated ingots: Infinity Stones. These stones, it seems, can only be brandished by beings of extraordinary strength. Observe. These carriers can use the stone to mow down entire civilizations like wheat in a field.
Pete: There’s a little pee coming out of me right now.
0:59:12 Carina (Ophelia Lovibond), the red headed (literally — she has a red head) assistant, grabs the stone in the centre of the orb and goes to pieces. #Literally
“How much is that albino in the window?”
0:59:58 In the huge explosion, Gamora decides to recover the Infinity Stone and take it to the Nova Corp because of its destructive power, and because it’s too early for the film to end.
1:02:11 Gamora escapes in a pod with the orb. Like two peas…in a pod.
The Space Race
1:05:26 Nebula destroys the pod Gamora was in and leaves Gamora free floating in space. Proof that sibling rivalry is not dead. Though Gamora might be.
1:07:01 To save Gamora, Peter calls Yondu, gives Yondu his coordinates and then drifts out of his pod to hold Gamora. That way, when Yondu picks him up, he will also have to take Gamora. Like a friend asking if he can stay with you and then he brings his wife.
1:08:59 Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) saves Drax by jabbing him in the chest with a branch. As Groot is a tree, I’m thinking this is a ‘Pulp’ Fiction reference. I’m not sure if I wrote this joke, or if they did.
“I’m branching out.”
1:12:03
Ronan: I will unfurl 1000 years of Kree justice on Xandar and burn it to its core. Then, Thanos, I’m coming for you.
Ronan decides to become new king of the universe by betraying Thanos and opening the orb to get the Infinity Stone and absorb its energy. #GetStoned
1:17:21
Peter: I look around at us and you know what I see? Losers. I mean, like, folks who have lost stuff.
1:21:45 The Runaways – Cherry Bomb
1:22:41 Meanwhile, on Xandar:
Corpsman Dey: He says that he’s an… a-hole, but he’s not — and I’m quoting him here — 100% a dick.
Corpsman Dey: I don’t know that I believe anyone’s 100% a dick, ma’am.
Nova Prime: I mean, do you believe that he’s here to help.
1:25:48 At the last moment, Nova Corps comes like the cavalry to our team’s assistance.
Peter: They got my dick message!
1:28:31 A tree that sheds light? Or a desperate attempt to include some 3D effects?
A Golden Shower
1:36:44 After Gamora defeats her sister, she opens the door to Ronan’s special place and our team penetrate it. Then, Peter shoots Ronan with a special gun whose speciality is that it has no effect on Ronan.
1:37:21 So Rocket flies through the enemy craft and runs Ronan over with his ship like a dog on the motorway.
1:38:51 This destroys Ronan’s ship (which, btw, is by far the coolest spacecraft in the film) and as it falls slowly from the sky, Groot creates a kind of protective shell around the group with his arms. Thus making him a tree hugger.
“That better be a twig, Groot.”
1:40:28 The spaceship crashes to earth and nobody dies but Groot, for the moment, at least. Even Ronan walks away unscathed. I’ve been led to believe spacecrafts plummeting to earth is a more serious affair.
1:41:52
Putting the Moves on Ronan
1:42:28 Peter distracts Ronan long enough for Drax to destroy Ronan’s hammer so that Peter can grab the Infinity Stone from it. It’s shocking. Not Peter’s dancing, but the effect the stone has on him. And his dancing.
1:44:32
Face Off
You said it yourself, bitch. We’re the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Because the team link hands, the power of the stone is distributed amongst them, they all become invincible, and are able to destroy Ronan. In other words, they stay together so they don’t go to pieces.
1:46:24
Yondu’s henchman: Yeah, Quill turned out OK. Probably good we didn’t deliver him to his dad, like we was hired to do.
Yondu: That guy was a jackass.
We learn that Yondu kidnapped Peter at the beginning of the film to take him to his real father, thus setting up a plot line for the sequel. And there was much not caring.
1:47:38 Aww.
Heavy petting
1:48:01 Nova Prime explains Peter is only half earthling. That his father is something they’ve never seen before. Like fathers in Liverpool or Detroit.
1:50:58 Peter opens the present his mother have him in her death bed (a second mix tape) that he never opened before because it was wrapped in all the WTF!?
1:52:46 Remember how none of us believed Groot really dead? We were right.
1:53:23
Wood Grooves
1:59:59
No raccoons or tree creatures were harmed during the making of this film.
2:00:15 Credit cookie where The Collector gets licked by a space dog when Howard the Duck says:
What do you let it lick you like that for? Gross. [Sip. Cough.] It really burns going down.
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: 4 guarded ones.
When to Follow: See GotG before anyone tells you how much they loved it, so you don’t get your expectations too high. Either that, or see this after you’ve already seen all the good Marvel films and don’t want to watch Ghost Rider, the first Captain America or either IronMan after the first one.
Where’s This Found: I honestly don’t see why everyone became so enamoured with this film. Frankly, I had the impression all the hoopla was just a huge sigh of relief that the film didn’t reek too badly. GotG looked good, but had no soul and the jokes were nowhere near as funny as everyone claimed. Out of a possible 10, I have 6 F’s to give
I shall be lighting a fire under John Wick, examining it in a new light and waxing on about its darkness to see if it glows or is just a smokescreen. So read on only if you’ve already seen John Wick, or don’t plan to.
0:01:21 OMFG, in the tradition of Behaving Badly and other films with a boring starting point, John Wick begins with a flash forward. The good news is, it seems John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is dying. Would it kill anyone — other than John — if this was the actual beginning of the film and not just a cheap short-cut to inject a modicum of action?
0:01:51 On his death bed pavement, he watches a selfie video he made of himself kissing his own girlfriend. WTF!?
0:02:17 The opening that was too boring to open with now begins in earnest and, they were right, it is boring.
0:03:16 His Significant Other (Bridget Moynahan as Helen) collapses for no reason. Maybe she’s allergic to wooden things. Like Keanu’s acting.
0:03:22 In the hospital, the doctor unplugs Helen’s life support, making of her a truly ex-wife. That said, she’s not the only one who’s turned off.
0:07:34 WTF!? Helen sends him a puppy from beyond the grave? He should name it ‘Jesus’.
Keanu about to demonstrate ‘Dog eat dog’ world
0:11:16 Russians at a petrol station insult him in Russian, but he speaks Russian so he gets the last смеяться.
0:13:28 He drives a motorcar I’m meant to be impressed with on an airport runway. This film though, like his car, refuses to take off.
0:14:42 The Russians show up at his house in the middle of the night and beat him and his dog up. WTF!? It is at this precise moment I start praying the intrigue of this film is not based on a man’s love for his dog and a bloody car.
“Don’t smoke cigarettes…or my dog.”
0:24:14 Apparently John Wick was in the Russian Mafia but the Don’s son and car thief / puppy murderer (Alfie Allen as Iosef Tarasov) didn’t know this because of all the wiseguy WTF!? The Don’s son just happened to steal a car from the most dangerous hired gun the Mafia has ever known!? It’s a small underworld.
Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist): John wasn’t exactly the bogeyman. He was the one you sent to kill the fucking bogeyman.
0:29:54 John wants to kill Iosef, the Don’s son, so a plethora of Russian enforcers descend on John’s house and he eliminates them all. He should’ve fought this hard the first time they came to his house.
0:31:32 As a hitman, he’d make a killing.
Taking a stab at it
0:32:51
John [on the telephone]: This is Wick. John Wick, yes, that’s right. I’d like to make a dinner reservation for twelve.
This is the code used in the film to order a clean up crew at a location. “Dinner reservation for twelve” means there are twelve bodies to be disposed of. John’s not the only one with reservations, I’ve got some and they’re quite serious.
0:36:23 Marcus (Willem Dafoe) agrees to kill John Wick for 2,000,000 dollars. It would seem they have history, but that chapter is over.
0:36:40 Marilyn Manson – Killing Strangers
0:44:26 Le Castle Vania – The Red Circle
0:53:41 John kills every Mafioso in a Russian club. BTW, guess what colour the Mafia lackeys’ shirts are. #Red
0:54:38 John gets shot and beaten in the club much worse than he ever did in his house, yet now he can still fight and he bounces right back. Perhaps he cares more about Russian dogs than his dead one.
0:56:42 The doctor makes a house call to the hotel room he’s staying in and offers pain medication. John has a bottle of medicine already, and it starts with the letter ‘whiskey’.
Fill ‘er up
0:58:03 Ms Perkins (Adrianne Palicki), a hit-woman, interrupts John during his quiet time by shooting his bed and his walls and his floors. She’s not very good at this business, unless her business is nailing furniture.
1:02:28 John goes into a church and, before he burns all the mob’s money, he makes everyone holey.
1:04:36 Ms Perkins has a message for Directors the world over.
Take a meme, Ms Perkins
1:06:04 John kills Viggo’s entourage until his other son gives him a lift with his car.
Can you pick me up?
1:06:32 After capturing John, do the Mafia then kill him, which is what they’ve been trying to do for the last half an hour? No, they take him prisoner and ransom him for a stack of WTF!?
1:09:57 Viggo speaking to John Wick.
I’ve been saying this to myself over and over for the past hour.
1:11:08 Marcus takes out the only two guards on John after Viggo leaves. Marcus has only seemingly been hunting John; in fact, he’s been watching over him. I wager Viggo will resent not seeing the killing through to Wick’s end.
“Ok, one more time. Pay attention. When the music plays you walk around the chairs, and when it stops you hurry…”
1:13:36
Viggo: SHIT!
Let the regretting commence.
1:14:11 Viggo exchanges his life for his son Iosef’s location and cancelling the contract on John’s life. John could call this an escape clause.
Viggo (to Marcus): While it [the contract] was open you had every chance, every opportunity to kill John Wick and if you had done your job my son would be still alive.
You could say the same thing to the mirror, you knob.
“About those nose hairs…”
1:22:28 Viggo and Ms Perkins kill Marcus. At least this time Viggo actually killed someone rather than let him escape to exact revenge. It can learn.
1:24:12 Ms Perkins is executed in an idiot’s firing squad for having broken the cardinal rule of the Continental Hotel, which is no fighting. She made her coffin, now she’ll lie in it.
Pray the chap across from you doesn’t miss
1:25:14 John absolutely has to return to rub out Viggo. After getting revenge for his dog and his car, of course he must have revenge for his friend. He can’t let a good revenge go to waste.
1:31:53 Viggo dies and John walks off to the scene that began the film, way back when we were still awake.
1:33:51 Lol, he goes to the veterinary hospital (at the Docks!?) to lick his wounds because it hurts like a bitch.
1:34:26 Then he steals a puppy because it reminds him of his wife.
Who taught that bitch to drive?
Roll credits
1:34:53
Produced by Eva Longoria.
Well, that explains the ‘desperate’ part.
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: 9 burning ones
When to Follow: A lot to do around the house but you still would like to watch a film? John Wick is the prefect background movie: it’s at its best when you listen to the soundtrack and can’t concentrate on the story.
Where’s This Found: I’m gobsmacked this film received as much positive attention as it did. The action is like Keanu’s acting: there’s a lot of it, but it’s repetitive and limited in range. Out of a possible 10, I have 5 F’s to give
I shall be writing an in depth review forEverly, probing in depth whoEverly really is and analysing each action whatEverly does to determine if it’s Everly so good or like Everly other film out there. So read on only if you’ve already seen Everly, or don’t plan to.
Synopsis: Everly is a prostitute, property of the Mob boss who fell for her. He learns she’s turning State’s evidence to escape him, so he sends a goon squad to her flat for mayhem and murder. She fights them off, all the while trying to give a bagful of money that magically appeared in her floor to her mother and daughter.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move on to the good stuff, shall we?
0:04:12 A naked, tattooed and much beaten Everly (Salma Hayek) runs into the toilets and takes a phone and a gun from a plastic bag in the toilet reservoir. She leaves a message (“He knows”) on a police detective’ s voice mail, looks at a picture of her infant daughter and nails the group of men who were nailing her.
0:06:59 There is no way this tummy belongs to a 48-year-old mother. #BellyDouble
Can’t stomach the truth
0:07:38 All of the mobiles owned by the criminals ring simultaneously. A logo is calling. Everly recognizes it as a bad sign.
0:09:37 The boss of all the dead men calls and tells Everly to open her Christmas present. It’s the head of the detective she was trying to contact in a box. She needs to ask about return policies.
0:10:21 During the exposition call, we learn the evil boss Taiko (Hiroyuki Watanabe) fell in love with his prostitute (Everly) but she betrayed him. People with jealousy issues should not date hookers.
0:11:08 Taiko says he’ll let Maisey (Aisha Ayamah as Everly’s daughter) live long enough to be a prostitute and earn back the money her mother made him lose. Is he forgetting about child labour laws?
“I’m going to call him ‘Pedo’!”
0:11:36 BTW, the bullet wound Everly received when she was shot in the side doesn’t seem to affect her in the least. It must be on her good side.
0:14:28 Everly calls and warns her mother in time for her mother and daughter to leave their house before the Mafia arrive. As she leaves to meet them, Everly takes a bug-out bag full of money from beneath the floorboards, slips on a pair of tacky high heels and puts a light jacket on over her low cut and bloody négligé. She’s dressed to kill.
Chose her trainers to match her scabs
0:14:57 A prostitute in the next room (Caroline Chikezie as Zelda) agrees to become a professional hit woman and kill Everly. WTF!? She walked the streets and now she’s cleaning then up? She worked on her back and now she’s stabbing people in it? From the oldest profession to the coldest profession?
0:16:52 Cat fight (Everly fights remarkably well for a woman who’s just been shot) that ends with Everly shooting the other pussy…cat. #EscapeClaws
Keeping abreasts of the situation
0:17:34 A hooker with blue hair arrives and is shot by a hooker with fuchsia hair who only wants to kill Everly for herself. This is a first for Everly: people are getting paid to screw her and not the other way around.
0:18:42 A blonde hooker arrives to kill Everly as well. It’s a whore rainbow in there.
0:19:06 Fuchsia and Blondie shoot each other. Pink and blonde make red.
0:19:31 Lol, now a brunette in a schoolgirl’s uniform arrives (Gabriella Wright as Anna). It’s a fucking parade. #literally
Trying to get some more class
0:20:45 After she takes care of her daughter, Everly promises to come back and let the dirty schoolgirl kill her for the reward. Now she’s helping two schoolgirls.
0:21:54
Birds Hunting
0:26:32 The cops arrive and they are more crooked than a bent man’s penis.
0:28:38 A nerdy looking Asian who was shot in the initial shoot-out asks Everly to kill him quickly, before his boss arrives and punishes him. He says he doesn’t enjoy raping and pillaging, but Everly verifies the video the goons were making and sees the Asian is a perv in disguise. She burns the video and leaves the perv to be tortured by the evil boss. I can’t help thinking the film she burned would be more interesting than this one…
“Stop looking down my cleavage!”
0:30:14 Before Everly can escape the building, the police capture her and throw her back in her flat. I’d suspected all of the action takes place in her flat, and now I see it’s true. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s an interesting concept for an action film, and a prostitute’s room probably sees a lot of action.
0:30:26
There’s no point in squeezing your ass after passing wind.
Nerd perv
WTF!?
0:32:18 Everly has to clean up before her mother comes to pick up the dosh. Reminds me of when I was in uni, minus the dead whores.
I’d love an explanation as to why this film is set at Christmas (Try Hard much?) and why she decides not to clean the blood off the face of the bloke sitting on her sofa: Akie Kotabe as a Dead Man. (Seriously, his character’s name is ‘Dead Man’.)
0:38:56 Dead Man’s face cleaned itself. I wish I had a face like that.
0:46:36 The original gang brought the police detective’s head in a Christmas box, and now Maisey is wandering the flat because Everly placed her in the care of a person who goes by ‘Dead Man’. Guess who finds the package. On the bright side, this is a way for Maisey to get a head in life.
“I told you not to play in the blood bath!”
0:47:54 Dead Man lives up to the part and, judging from the music, we’re meant to feel sorry for him!? Evidently, I’m more offended that he raped and tortured Everly than she is. That’s awkward.
0:48:16 WTF!? Everly and Edith (who never even knew Dead Man) are so distraught they don’t notice Maisey walking away from where she was standing right beside them, through the front door and into the corridor where an evil dog awaits? It would seem mourning is the most important part of the day.
0:49:08 In a clever move, Everly throws a live grenade and tells Bonsai to fetch the ball. What’s WTF!? is that the goon handling the German shepherd runs after it saying, “No, Bonsai, it’s not a ball!” If he knew it was a grenade and not a ball, why would he chase the dog running to it?
0:51:01 After leaving her daughter and mother with Anna (the whore across the hall), Everly kills all the remaining bad gang.
They’re going down
0:52:22 An Asian Colonel Sanders with a propeller cap dyed into his white hair introduces himself as The Sadist (Togo Igawa). He proceeds to release a bloke who resembles a turkey – The Masochist – from a cage. WTF!? Everly only shoots The Masochist (Masashi Fujimoto). I’m thinking someone who calls himself the Sadist might be a threat as well.
0:53:24 Sure enough, the Sadist blows white smoke on Everly and places her in the Masochist’s cage. This cage seems to cause a great deal of pain, though obviously not as much as a Nicolas Cage.
“A little lower and to the right!”
0:55:28 The Sadist unpacks his bag of magic potions.
Sulfuric acid
Gasoline
Battery acid
Sodium hydroxide
And this one…
He approaches her menacingly, takes his time using the eyedropper to deposit a drop in her eye and says,
H2O.
If it’s from London, it still could be quite dangerous.
Raising the bar
0:58:24 Before burning Everly with acid in the thigh, he’s thoughtful enough to pour some on the ropes binding her hands. WTF!? This scene is proof that no one should ever drop acid.
0:58:42 Before he can drop it on her face, Edith (Everly’s mother) comes and shoots one of the assistants. She’s one bad mother.
0:59:51 The Sadist captures Edith and ties her to a chair, where he pours acid down her throat, which causes her to puke her guts out. #literally
Burns going down
0:59:57 Remember way back in 0:58:24, when I said the Sadist was stupid to put acid in the ropes that bound Everly? It only took this long to validate my WTF!?
1:01:22 The Sadist isn’t really dead because bullets in this film don’t hurt much. He beats on Everly, then turns to Edith. Edith didn’t die from swallowing acid because she spit it out, but swallowed the WTF!? Then she forces the Sadist to drink the acid as well.
Cheers, mother fucker.
Hopefully, it’ll be more fatal for him than the mother.
“As we say in the brothel, ‘Bottoms up!'”
1:03:40 Taiko has been watching the scene from a flat across the street. He has a sniper take out Everly’s mum for real, and not on a date. He’s not that kind of mother fucker.
1:04:32 Now Everly is as mad as Jell-o.
This scene sponsored by jelly
1:04:45
This scene sponsored by Santa’s belly
1:05:37 Taiko’s gunman shoots a rocket launcher into Everly’s flat. Taiko doesn’t want her dead so soon, so when Taiko loses his head, so does the sniper. With a sabre.
1:07:48 Everly kills 7 Taiko soldiers in riot gear before getting captured. At least now she’ll be able to take a breather.
1:12:12 There’s a great deal of speeching going on between Taiko and Everly and frankly, I’m dozing a tad. The suspense is spurious because we know Taiko isn’t going to kill Everly. Also, she was tied to a post but Taiko just cut the rope with his sabre. He obviously didn’t learn anything from the Sadist.
50 Shades of Gay
1:13:28
Taiko: It’s infinitely more painful to remove a tattoo than it is to receive one. And the same is true for love.
WTF!?
1:16:26 Everly runs a Samurai sword through Taiko. #SheeshKabab
1:19:34 LOL, the Masochist isn’t dead because he was shot with bullets from this film. He kills Anna the prostitute who was looking after Maisey and Maisey isn’t like John Travolta because she actually comes out of the closet. Then the Masochist stalks her with a cleaver. Considering all of the pain he’s trying to inflict, he’s a terrible Masochist.
“Please move, you’re blocking the corridor.”
1:20:16 For the third time in this film, someone off-camera suddenly shoots an imminent threat. This time Everly shoots the Masochist. Which, I guess, means he dies happy.
1:23:57
1:26:26 The real SWAT team arrives and take Maisey while the EMTs save Everly, but not the time I spent on this film. That’s gone forever.
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: 15 Everly so special ones
When to Follow: Friday night first film, as a warm up to the main event.
Where’s This Found: The idea of a huis clos action film is unique, and there is a great deal of action. Unfortunately, much of it is repetitive (how many dead prostitutes does it take to fill a flat?) and the enormous quantity of WTFs!? (Where did she acquire the bag of money? Who is Maisey’s father?) distract from the gratuitous filming of Salma Hayek’s cleavage. Out of a possible 10, I have # 6 F’s to give
I shall be unearthing 28 Days Later‘s body of work, digging up its grave secrets and excavating its plot to see if it’s lively or mortifying. So read on only if you’ve already seen 28 Days Later, or don’t plan to.
0:00:38 If you’re going to begin a film, begin it like this. Begin it completely. There are many apes – besides us – who watch violence on the telly.
0:02:02 Animal rights activists break into the lab to document torture while a chimp on an operating table just lies there, his guts exposed. Would seem the monkey isn’t the only organ grinder.
Luncheon of the Apes
0:04:04 The group catch a lab technician who tells them the monkeys have been infected with “Rage”. I think “infected with ‘Rage'” means the techs hid the TV remotes.
0:04:28 As soon as they’re freed, the chimps attack their rescuers. The infected activists infect the others while the monkeys applaud. Their grass roots movement is spreading.
0:05:32
28 Days Later
0:05:57 Al K Hall nudity alert (if Al was gay): A naked bloke (Cillian Murphy as Jim) wakes up in a hospital bed. He’s a little thin, but I could fill him up.
Charles Dick-ends
Then they make the same kind of jump that The Walking Dead aped: a man in a hospital wakes up after the infection has already decimated the population. What would be more impressive is a film about what happens during the 28 Days before.
0:08:23 As Jim leaves the hospital, he finds full cans of Pepsi cola strewn about the reception. Note to self: Zombies do not like Pepsi.
0:09:32 He’s been walking around central London for hours and not seen even one zombie? WTF!? Have they all gone to Oxford for some brains?
Parliament is full of zombies. So, no different than usual.
0:10:46 Brilliant music (Godspeed You! Black Emperor – East Hastings) while he’s picking up dosh on the steps. Making a great deal of money with no effort leads me to suspect it’s a government building.
0:13:32 Now he goes to the one place he’s sure to find zombies: A church. Don’t believe me? Go yourself next Sunday. You’ll see.
0:15:46 He sees a priest who runs at him zombie style, so he panics and swings at the Father with his sack full of cans. Now I see why zombies don’t like Pepsi.
A church full of zombies…So, no different from a normal church
0:16:11 WTF!? Jim runs extremely well and is in great physical shape for someone who hasn’t eaten in a month.
0:17:28 He’s rescued by 2 people in pre-stream punk attire wielding Molotov cocktails. #DeadDrunk
0:19:22 Selena (Naomie Harris) tells Jim the back story and, like her hair, she keeps it short.
How sad is it that even the gay knows she’s holding the machete backwards?
0:23:37 Jim finds his emaciated parents overdosed and lying together in the bed, clutching a photo of him as a little lad. “They grow up so fast…when they’re not zombies.”
0:28:36 While in the kitchen with the others sleeping upstairs, Jim lights a candle and reminisces. A zombie espies the candlelight through a window and, as suddenly as a zombie can, storms through the glass to attack Jim. If Jim doesn’t soil himself, I do for him.
0:29:32
Selena: Were you bitten? Mark?
[Mark (Noah Huntley) displays a wound on his arm.]
Mark: Wait…
Before he can finish that sentence, Selena Fruit Ninjas him
Looks like Jim moves up a rung on the dating ladder.
“I got your back.”
0:31:38 Walking the city streets late at night, they see a high rise with blinking fairy lights on the balcony and go to investigate. WTF!? How can the lights work without electricity? Also, what’s a zombie’s favourite question? A no brainer.
0:34:14 They run up the steps in the flat block until they reach a chap in riot gear who lets them pass and then blocks the zombies behind them. Zombies must feel like I do at the entrances to Soho clubs.
0:35:29 An actor I recognize (Brendan Gleeson as Frank) removes his gear. His name is Frank and he’s there with his teenage daughter Hannah (Megan Burns) who’s so quiet she couldn’t hurt an undead fly.
Hannah always looked up to her Pa’s underarm odour
0:38:14 Ooh, Jim freshly shorn… He’s so handsome I could overlook his nicks. He looks as though he forgot he was left handed when shaving.
0:44:20 William H Monk – Abide with me (performed by Hayley Westenra)
[To be completely honest, I’m mostly posting the above music video out of spite that Fox refuses to let me post any excerpt of any length from this film.]
0:44:20
Ah, no. See, this is a really shit idea. You know why? Because it’s really obviously a shit idea.
Jim as they drive through a blocked tunnel to reach the army camp on the other side
0:45:08 This shit idea earns them a flat tyre. Hannah hides under the car until the stampede of rats changes her mind.
The Rat Race
Ah, the pitter patter of little feet.
0:46:16
Selena: They’re running from the infected.
Now comes the pitter patter of larger feet and an intense scene where she tries to change the tyre while the men hold the side of the car up because they haven’t got the time for the jack shite.
0:47:50 They find an abandoned supermarket with the front door unlocked that’s been untouched by any riot other than the hordes of WTF!?. Their shopping spree reminds me of the one in the shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead, only less goods…
Jim was illiterate so he didn’t know he was looking at ‘Beans’ and not ‘Beer’
0:50:39 WTF!? While the group is siphoning petrol from a truck in the middle of nowhere, Jim decides the lack of zombies is annoying so walks into a dark restaurant because some trouble is in order. That he’s seen how the zombies act and was against taking the dangerous route in the tunnel, yet then decides to walk alone in an abandoned building against the advice of his companions, makes me think either he’s stupid or the script is. And he’s too beautiful to be stupid.
0:52:36 Good building of tension. The camera angles tell me something S&M [is bound to happen], and the tension gets tauter and I feel I’m going to snap until…nothing happens! Brilliant.
“I. Am. Batsman.”
0:54:41 They stop at the Lake District (I’m fairly certain) for a picnic lunch.
Jim: Do you know what I was thinking?
Selena: You were thinking you’d never hear another piece of original music ever again. You’ll never read another book that hasn’t already been written, or see a film that hasn’t already been shot.
Jim: Uhm, that’s what you were thinking.
Selena: I was thinking I was wrong.
Jim: About what?
Selena: All the death. All the shit. It doesn’t really mean anything to Frank and Hannah because she’s got her dad and he’s got his daughter so… I was wrong when I said staying alive was as good as it gets.
Jim: See, that’s what I was thinking.
Selena: Was it?
Jim: Hmm, you stole my thought.
[Selena quickly kisses Jim’s cheek]
Selena: Sorry.
Jim: That’s OK. You can keep it.
You know how I know this film wasn’t written by zombies? It has too much heart.
Selena’s going to try and raise the dead
1:02:24 They arrive at the military blockade announced on the radio, but the city on the other side of the barbed wire has been gutted by flames. The city isn’t the only thing that will be gutted.
1:04:11 The area is desolate, but it’s hard to tell if it’s been abandoned or if it’s just Manchester on the weekend.
1:05:20 A drop of zombie blood falls into Frank’s eye. Here’s a real eyesore.
Eye Drop
1:06:22 He turns into a zombie and, just as Jim is about to kill it with a baseball bat, the soldiers decide they’ve been hiding long enough and shoot Frank. Still, it seems the army needn’t have waited for someone to become infected before coming out of hiding. Like an insensitive John Thomas, the cavalry came late.
1:07:42 The three remaining members of our group arrive at a manor kept by the army. I saw the actor who portrays Head Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston) in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. So, for him, this film is a Major upgrade in a Manor of speaking.
1:08:29 Jim’s bare arse in the shower. The water’s not the only thing that’s hot.
1:12:37 They keep one of their infected as a pet on a leash to see how long it takes for a zombie to starve to death. Soon he’ll be a model zombie.
“No, you’re an outdoor Zombie.”
1:19:26 One of the soldiers makes unwanted advances to Selena, but is beaten by a Sargent who is reprimanded by the Major, who whispers to the boys to “Slow down”. This is the daisy chain of command.
1:20:58
I promised them women.
Major West to Jim, in secret
He claims it’s survival, not rape, like every post apocalyptic rapist.
1:26:24 Because Jim is anti-rape, he’s taken out to be executed. Before that happens, he hides in a pile of dead bodies, then escapes over the wall. Good news for him. Good news for us is that he loses his shirt.
I’ve woken up with worse
1:27:28 In the midst of all the ‘we have to rape and kill to ensure humanity in the new world order’ speech, a jet plane flies overhead, proving the new world order is belayed.
1:34:02 Jim releases the pet soldier zombie. This will make the commander a Major Disappointment as he’ll have to start the count all over again of days it takes to starve a zombie.
1:41:56 Jim gets satisfying revenge on the cruellest soldier by jamming his thumbs into the chap’s eye sockets, thusly.
Eye Sore
1:43:57 Major Arsehole is hiding in the back seat of the getaway vehicle and shoots Jim when the trio enter the Jeep. Hannah, at the driver’s seat, throws the Jeep in reverse and backs it up to a zombie, who breaks in through the rear window and pulls the Major out. Either Hannah’s on drugs, or she’s a woman driving.
“Eat all the Tapioca!!!”
1:44:40 Hannah has to ram the gates and then we’re shown another 28 Days Later card and Jim wakes up, still sexy in a sunlit Utopia. So probably not England.
1:46:15 BTW, the zombies are starving to death and I’m reminded I didn’t eat much for dinner. Like the zombies, I could go for a little bite.
1:47:54 The fighter plane sees the giant Hello sign spelled out with sheets so our trio is saved. It would’ve been funnier truer if the ‘O’ blew away.
Roll credits
1:48:10 I’d forgotten Danny Boyle directed this. This goes a long way towards explaining its brilliance.
28 Days Later Soundtrack
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: 4 particularly brain dead ones
When to Follow: This is a strong film that’s good enough to watch on a Saturday night. It’s even worth paying for. Even splurging for the Blu-Ray.
Where’s This Found: Danny Boyle is a hit & miss with director with a lot more hits (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) than misses (The Beach). While 28 Days Later is not on a par with Trainspotting, it’s definitely a tick in the ‘Hit’ column. Out of a possible 10, I have 8 F’s to give
I shall be looking ahead to Predestination, telling its future and poring over its history to see if it’s worth looking forward to or better in hindsight. So read on only if you’ve already seen Predestination, or don’t plan to.
“Wait, you’re telling me every character is the same person in this film!?”
Synopsis (AKA one very long spoiler): A baby hermaphrodite is raised as a girl (Jane) who then meets a man from the future (John), who is in fact herself after a sex change. They make love and their baby is taken back in the past to be the little baby hermaphrodite (Jane). The one who takes her into the past is the man John becomes (the Barkeep) after his face is reconstructed following an explosion. This man then confronts a mad bomber (the Fizzle Bomber), who is in fact the Barkeep after his mind disintegrates from too many time trips.
TL;DR Baby Jane, Jane, John, Jane & John’s baby, the Barkeep and the Fizzle Bomber are all the same person whose paths intersect during time travels.
Dear God, may this whiskey help me understand this script
0:00:34
What if I could put him in front of you? The man that ruined your life… If I could guarantee that you’d get away with it… Would you kill him?
Let’s take this to the public, shall we?
02 Mar 1970
0:02:29 In the boiler room of a large building, a man puts a bomb into a special metal case, is shot at, and then his face catches fire because he can’t close the case before the cylinder explodes. #defaced
MFW I get burned
21 Feb 1992
0:02:54 He reaches for his violin case and wakes up with his face in bandages, reading memes nowhere near as funny as mine.
Stumblr
0:04:44 The Barkeep (Ethan Hawke, the man who was de-faced) is a temporal agent looking to nab a bomber who will blow up ten blocks of New York City in 1975. As he has photographs of the explosion he’s trying to prevent, time travel is in our future.
0:06:21
By the time you listen to this, seven years will have passed.
Future Barkeep is making a mini-cassette recording for past Barkeep. I don’t know what I’d prefer, avoiding the worst mistakes I’ve made, or the thrill of making them.
06 Nov 1970
0:07:44 Speaking of time travel, can you tell which is which? One of these GIFs is from Predestination, the other is from John Wick.
0:08:18 The Barkeep’s watch reads “06 Nov 1970″. Telling time for dummies.
Ethan’s slower than his watch
[Trivia: November 6, 1970, is also the precise day actor Ethan Hawke was born.]
0:10:31
Barkeep: What came first, the chicken or the egg?
John: The rooster.
Barkeep: See? I’m terrible.
John: That’s the best you got? That wasn’t funny.
Barkeep: You ever think about that, though?
John: ‘Bout what?
Barkeep: About what comes first?
[This joke is foreshadowing, considering John and the Barkeep are one and the same person.]
I’ll be the cock, if you bring the eggs.
He’s kidding himself
0:12:42 I thought the bloke at the bar was a little strange looking, but now I realize it’s a woman dressed as a man. I hope this isn’t the big reveal, although it might be fun to see what he reveals. #LGBT #TheCryingGame
[Note that at this point, John tries to light a cigarette but his lighter doesn’t work. The Barkeep lights it for him with the same lighter because, we will eventually learn, they are the same person.]
0:14:00
John: Stupid name. ‘The Fizzle Bomber’. The guy makes compressed RDX-based explosive compounds. It’s not easy.
Barkeep: ‘Fizzle Bomber’ is easier to remember.
John: I hate that name. Makes it sound like his bombs just fizzle. Like they don’t do any real damage.
I couldn’t agree more. ‘Fizzle Bomber’ is right up there with Diddle Rapist and Tickle Killer.
The good news is, her sexuality isn’t the big reveal. The bad news is, I twist my arm patting myself on the back.
Trying to get his feminine side drunk so he can get in touch with it
13 Sep 1945
0:16:12 In a flashback, we see John as an infant girl (Jane) being left on the doorstep of an orphanage in the city of Cleveland, Ohio. ‘Ohio’ sounds more like a yawn than a municipality, a state of being more than a state.
0:21:48 Noah Taylor as Mr. Robertson, a government representative who solicits Jane to join in the service of her government because she’s too homely to become adopted or bedded.
[Note: Mr. Robertson is the man behind the government, the puppet master pulling the strings. ‘Tis he who manipulates Jane (whom he knew to be a hermaphrodite from her medical exam at Space Corp.) to have a baby with herself so that he could have a perfect Temporal Agent: a closed loop (mother, father, baby) with no outside family.]
“Thanks, but I didn’t ask for your autograph, Noah Wilder.”
0:22:42
Jane [voice off]: This is around the time the suits finally admitted you can’t send a man into space for months or years and not do something to relieve the tension. They were looking for respectable types, preferably virgins — they like to train them from scratch — above average mentally, stable emotionally.
TIL, Space Corp. and I have the same taste.
0:23:54
Panel leader: Have you ever been with a man?
Jane: Have you?
If I had a pound for every time, I’d be obese. #ThoughtJoke
0:27:13 There’s a rigorous testing period which lasts several months to select which woman will serve as semen receptacle in the space ship. Sometimes the best woman for the job is a man, or at least will become one.
Toilet Cams, for shit TV
0:27:24
Jane: Sometimes I get the feeling there’s something out of balance. Like I’m living in someone else’s body. I don’t know how to describe it.
Try, “It’s like having sex with yourself.”
[This scene shows us Jane has, indeed, two genders living in her body.]
0:29:26 Jane is eliminated from the program.
Doctor [to Mr. Robertson]: You do know that this will disqualify her.
He found the the missile deep inside her silo / the torpedo tucked up in her tube / the rocket she doesn’t know is hiding in her pad.
Thinking about the orals to come
03 Apr 1963
0:32:39 She falls in love with a man and gives her virtue to him, without noticing the scars from his hysterectomy and double mastectomy.
[We will later learn that the man she meets is herself as a man, from the future. WTF!? She doesn’t recognize herself as a man? Seriously!?]
0:34:54 Later, Mr. Robertson reappears and tells Jane he wants her to be a part of some secret organization that rights wrongs. However, he absconds when he learns Jane is pregnant. That being said, Mr. Robertson is nowhere near the first bloke to high tail it when a girl gets pregnant. The father already has, for example.
“Be myself? Which one!?”
Feb 1964
0:36:41 After she gives birth, a doctor sits at her bedside to talk to her. You know you’re in trouble when the doctor needs a cigarette to break the news to you.
0:37:34
Doctor: You had two full sets of organs, Jane, female and male. Both immature, but the female set well enough developed for you to have a baby. I’m afraid, my dear, the excessive bleeding from the birth forced us to perform a hysterectomy. We had to remove your ovaries and uterus.
Jane: What are you saying?
Doctor: But the reconstruction allowed us to create a male urinary tract. Further surgeries will be required…
0:39:18 Two weeks after the birth, someone [i.e. the Barkeep] ‘snatched’ her baby from the hospital nursery. I’m not 100% sure a transsexual male is allowed to use the word ‘snatch’.
06 Nov 1970
0:39:28
John: When the nurse had her back turned someone walked in and walked her .
Barkeep: Were there any clues? Any description?
John: Just a man with a face shaped face.
“A face shaped face”? WTF!?
Late 1964
0:42:21 After the operation, John can’t even look at herself in the mirror. And when he does, he doesn’t recognize himself as the man with all the surgery scars that got him pregnant!? WTF!? WTF! WTF!? WTF!? WTF!?
Man up, Jane!
0:42:35 Lol, at least he gets to pee standing up.
06 Nov 1970
0:43:48
John: I just found out this morning that I’m not shooting blanks any more.
Barkeep: Well, all right!
John: I’m a fully fertile male specimen.
Things men talk about in bars…
Early 1965
0:45:36 John attempts to re-enlist in Space Corp. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again as a different gender.
[Note: the Doctor who examines him here is a look-a-like for Robert Heinlein, the author of the short story “All You Zombies” on which this film is based. In the credits, the Doctor’s name is listed as Dr. Heinlein.]
0:48:04
Write On
[Note: The book in this screen cap, ‘Stranger in a strange land’, was written by Robert Heinlein.]
06 Nov 1970
0:50:05
Jane: You son of a bitch. You’ve been following me?
Barkeep: ‘Son of a bitch’. That’s funny.
It is when you realize John and the Barkeep both have the same mother (Jane).
0:50:28
Barkeep: I can put this guy in your lap. You can do whatever you want and I guarantee you’ll get away with it.
John: All right, where is he?
Barkeep: I do something for you and you do something for me.
John: Fuck you.
Barkeep: OK, enjoy your prize. [The bottle of whisky he won for his story.]
Barkeep: You like your job?
John: Hell, no.
Barkeep: No one’s ever given you a break, right?
John: Did you listen to my story?
Barkeep: Yeah, and you excelled during your service training. Excelled. You have skills you’ve never had the chance to use, and I can give you that chance. Let me put it this way: I hand him to you and you do whatever you like. And when you’re done? You try my job. You don’t like it, you walk away.
John: You’re not talking about bar tending, are you?
No, he’s talking about being the same person you are.
0:52:47 Barkeep sings along with the song, ‘I’m my own grandpa’, because it’s probably true.
0:53:38 The violin case is a time machine. Good for playing oldies.
03 Apr 1963
0:55:38
Jane: Where’s Robertson?
Barkeep: He’s in 1985.
Jane: What?
Barkeep: Bureau headquarters.
“When’s Robertson?” FTFY
0:55:46 The Barkeep says he’s a Temporal Agent, “one of eleven.” This implies that, due to his ‘illegal’ jumps, he has created 11 alternate Barkeeps. 11 barmen and yet I still wait forever to get served at my local pub on a Friday night.
0:55:46
Not your typical job interview.
0:56:27
Jane: How far can you travel, then?
Barkeep: Travel 53 years beyond zero point, either direction, will result in the temporal wake disintegrating.
Jane: Zero point?
Barkeep: The invention of time travel.
Jane: When’s that?
Barkeep: It will be in 1981.
1981 is also the year that Christopher Cross made a big splash with “Sailing”. Time travel was no doubt created to get away from this.
1:00:22 John goes off to intercept the man that will meet Jane and destroy her life. Little does he know, he himself is the chap who will meet Jane and destroy her life. The man Jane falls in love with is herself, as a man, from the future. This a very roundabout way of saying ‘masturbation’.
Trying to pick himself up
March 2, 1970
1:01:39 The Barkeep makes an unauthorized jump to the beginning of this film and exchanges fisticuffs with the Fizzle Bomber, who has a long, grey pony tail under his baseball cap. This fashion choice will have more meaning later. Let me simply state here that there’s no call for him to beat himself up.
1:03:26 The Barkeep witnesses John (who’s arrived from 1985) getting burnt up by the Fizzle Bomber. Burned John sets the violin case / time travel machine for 21 February, 1992, where he will go and get faced. The Barkeep goes to March 2, 1964, where he records a note to bring a hat and coat because it’s cold in New York in 1964. These blokes have a lot of times on their hands.
03 Apr 1963
1:12:56 Jane as John is on a date with himself as a young woman, and later (1:13:02) they have their first kiss. The truth? I wouldn’t want to do this. I’d be afraid of finding out I was a terrible kisser.
1985 (?)
1:10:14 At HQ.
Robertson [to Barkeep about illegal jumps]: The fragments of matter you leave behind after each jump…we can only repair so much. The onset of psychosis, dementia, it can be serious.
The Barkeep is losing his mind, a little piece at a time.
02 Mar 1964 v.2
1:13:38 Holding the baby and listening to the tape (it’s March 2, 1964 v.2 because this time Barkeep is wearing the coat and hat that Barkeep v.1 mentioned on the tape), the Barkeep jumps back to 13 September, 1945. A blast to the past.
1:14:16 The Barkeep leaves the baby on the doorstep of the orphanage, meaning Jane was a baby that grew up to be a woman who meets herself as a man and they have a baby that gets taken back in time and grows up to be her. She is her own mother and father. Möbius stripper.
24 Jun 1963
1:14:58 Barkeep then time travels to pick up John. This is when John leaves pregnant Jane (see my note at 0:34:54). Men are so predictable…emphasis on ‘dick’.
August 12, 1985
1:18:01 The Barkeep takes John to HQ.
Barkeep: You’re home. Your troubles are over. You’re going to save millions of lives. You’re about to embark on the most important job a man has ever had.
Because having sex with yourself so you can give birth to yourself is not the most important job?
The Barkeep has to hand it to himself
1:19:48 Barkeep leaves the tape recorder with the notes on John’s night stand in the hospital where John recovers from the long jump (he’s sick because of the huge time difference). This means that the Barkeep is also Jane and John, only with a different face because of the explosion. If this trend continues, we’ll discover the film is really just a one-man show.
06 Nov 1970
1:19:52 The song in the bar when Barkeep returns is still “I’m my own grandpa”.
7 Jan 1975
1:20:28 Barkeep lands in New York and his case reads ‘decommission’ and then ‘Fail – Error – fail’. Like the minority of my jokes.
My typical Annual Report Card
1985
1:21:42 John is listening to the tape in 1985, at HQ, preparing to go back to the beginning of the film to confront the Fizzle Bomber. He will only succeed in getting his face burned off. #LosingFace
John got the third degree
7 Jan 1975
1:23:56 The Barkeep types out a novel called Time, Love, and an Unmarried Mother. by Jane John Doe. I think I’ll wait for the film. Hold on, this is it. Ooh, I think I’ve just time travelled.
[A commenter on another blog postulates that this book is a tell-all book written by Barkeep to expose his entire history of time travel. Mr. Robertson (who is another version of Jane / John / Barkeep / Fizzle Bomber) creates the Fizzle Bomber to destroy the book and protect the future of time travel.]
1:25:38 The Barkeep realizes he’s been looking for himself, and not in the religious sense, but in the ‘I am the bloody Fizzle Bomber myself’ sense. We’re led to believe it’s because he’s time travelled so much, but he only time travelled to find the Fizzle Bomber, so I call WTF!? This isn’t a case of the chicken and the egg. Because I’m not chicken and the egg is on the screenwriter’s face.
A hopeless case
1:26:14 The Fizzle Bomber explains to his younger self that he was blowing up other bombers as a way to stop their bomb attacks. He doesn’t consider the civilian casualties that die along with the targeted terrorist because his brain is softer than a straight man at a John Newman concert.
1:29:24 Barkeep empties his gun into himself as the Fizzle Bomber. Like a selfie, only not shot with a camera.
Killing himself
1:30:42 Here’s the punchline of the film.
[As kind of a summary, John is in love with Jane. As John is the Barkeep, the Barkeep also loves Jane. This means the Fizzle Bomber is also in love with Jane, and by extension with the Barkeep and John, because they are extensions of Jane. The Fizzle Bomber leaves clues so that Barkeep can find him in the future and he hopes that he can spend time with his younger self. But by taking illegal trips to find and kill the Fizzle Bomber, the Barkeep ensures he will go mad and evolve into the Fizzle Bomber. Mr. Robertson has manipulated Jane and orchestrated events to create this loop where Jane / John / the Barkeep hunt the Fizzle Bomber so much they become him. Mr. Robertson’s job is keeping the loop in tact to learn about the limitations and possibilities of time travel, probably for ‘the government’.]
He’s talking to himself
Roll credits
Note: I referred to three sources while preparing this review…
An excellent article about the Predestination Paradox at Astronomy Trek
A thorough review, excellent time graph, and a trove of treasures in the comment section of Digestive Pyrotechnics
When to Follow: When you’re in the mood to watch Terminatorbut want less action and more intellectual leaps.
Where’s This Found: Ethan Hawke outdoes himself here, which is nice after a recent streak of less than impressive performances. The story is complex but you don’t need a film review to follow the general outline. If you prefer to dig a little deeper, however, prepare yourself for disappointment as this film just isn’t worth the effort. Out of a possible 10, I have 6 F’s to give
What To Feedback: If the person who ruined your life was put before you, and you were guaranteed to get away with murdering that person, would you? See the poll at the top of the post!
What were your impressions of the film? Do you have any questions? Any alternate theories? Be sure to let us know in the comments!
I shall be performing an autopsy on Life After Beth, X-raying its images and probing the body of work to see if it is lively or brain-dead. So read on only if you’ve already seen Life After Beth, or don’t plan to.
0:01:42 The customer (Dane DeHaan as Zach Orfman) and the employee of the supermarket act they’re already zombies. Check out the social satire.
[Note the smooth jazz playing on the store’s speakers – this will become important later]
0:02:04 At a wake for Zach’s dead girlfriend (Beth Slocum – Aubrey Plaza), Beth’s mother is Molly Shannon and her father is John C. Reilly (Geenie & Maury Slocum). FWIW, someone is Jewish because there are enough yamakas for an ultimate Frisbee tournament.
Wishes he could afford a whole hat
0:10:28 The cast is certainly impressive. That’s American comic Paul Reiser as Noah Orfman (Zach’s father) and Matthew Gray Gubler as Zach’s brother, Kyle. I first fell in crush with Matthew when I saw him in Excision, then confirmed my feelings when I followed him on Twitter. His love for indie cinema is as infectious as my crush on him, and crabs.
0:11:20 Lol! Kyle bursts in on Zach who’s lying on the bed, preparing to make love to the scarf of Beth’s that Geenie gave him.
Warming Up
0:13:12 At the Slocum house, Zach espies Beth walking around inside, which surprises him as she’s been dead for a week.
0:14:14 The scene where Kyle (a security guard for the suburb) comes to stop his frantic brother from annoying the neighbours is spot on. Matthew Gray Gubler is pure genius. I haven’t wasted my crush!
0:15:06 Obligatory hipster soundtrack – but at least it’s hip.
0:16:52 Zach breaks into the Slocum’s house and finds Beth alive and well. Or, not dead and well .
0:18:55 Another nice song. This one has no name. That I could find on line.
[Can anyone lend a hand? Please tell me the name &/or title in the comment section. I’d be forever in your debt!]
0:20:14 Apparently late one night, Beth simply rang the doorbell after digging her way out of her own grave. The parents don’t know how it happened. Presumably they know why they keep this a secret, though. WTF!?
0:22:12
Your hair is so warm.
Beth to Zach in her attic
Things zombies say.
He’s dating the student Body
0:23:11 Beth thinks school’s still in session and doesn’t remember wanting to see people other than Zach before she died from a snake bite. It’s the latter that will make it easier for Zach to ignore she’s a zombie. You’d think dying would be a good way out of a relationship.
0:26:42 Mrs. Slocum takes pictures constantly as she regretted not taking enough pictures before. It’s cute. Cuter than Beth, who’s looks are beginning to fade, along with her skin colour.
In the zombie race, Beth was a-head
0:26:50 Zach notices the festering snake bite on Beth’s inner thigh that caused her death.
Zach: You don’t want to eat me, do you?
Beth: Zachs! Not right now! [Gestures to her parents inside the house] Remember?
Zach: I mean, like, really eat me.
Beth: Stop! Not with my parents around.
The Hole Story
0:27:19 Beth’s short term memory is shorter than Peter Dinklage before pay day.
0:29:58 The postman arrives, and it’s someone Zach hasn’t seen since uni. He hands Zach a stack of envelopes that isn’t Zach’s mail. The postman replies, “OK, see you tomorrow,” and drives of sloppily in an adorable American postal motorcar. What a send up!
0:32:27 Zach insists on taking Beth for a walk so he can get a little zombie action. It’s not necrophilia if she’s still moving.
0:34:08 Half of Beth’s face was sunburned and will now stay that way forever. In the ‘Pro’ column to being a zombie? You don’t need a tanning salon membership.
0:38:12 Zach sneaks out to perform a love song for Beth, where he tries to tell her she’s a zombie.
I lost my heart
And I lost my way
And you were cold, cold, cold
I was so full of pain…
In response, she violently destroys everything in her reach. She also likes smooth jazz now. I think we both know which is worse.
0:41:12
Beth: I don’t feel so good. I feel really dizzy.
Zach: Really? Is that all?
Beth: I feel really cold.
Zach: Are you…. hungry?
Things you ask zombies.
0:43:08
Beth: Come here.
[Kissing]
Zach: Ugh, sweetie… your breath.
Things you tell zombies. But, on a more philosophical level, do zombies breathe?
0:44:29 She rapes him and starts eating his face. Now’s a good time to eat him, and she wants to get piece.
When your boyfriend is girly
0:45:46 The always funny Anna Kendrick in the diner where Zach complains about the smooth jazz. I’m thinking that, like the beginning of the film, this is a reference to the fact that most people on this planet are already zombies.
0:46:34 Anna plays Erica Wexler, a childhood friend that’s just moved back to town, and their parents are attempting to fix up the duo. Erica and Zach seem to be hitting it off and, unlike with Beth, they’re doing it without sticks.
“Do you really want a girlfriend with a ‘Best Before’ tattoo?”
Zach: You have, like, really great skin.
Erica: Really?
Zach: Yeah, it’s like… it’s really great.
Erica: Oh my god, thank you.
Zach: Can I touch it?
Erica: Yeah, okay. You’re so interesting.
[Zach touches her cheek]
Zach: Wow, it’s like fog!
Erica: Thank you!
Zach: And I can breathe through my nose around you!
This is how you write a zombie film.
0:47:46 Uh-oh, it’s obvious from the way he’s behaving that the short order cook is a zombie. His brain is fried.
0:51:08 After Zach accidentally runs Beth over in the car park, Erica comes out to meet them before Beth scares Erica away in a jealous rage. Like a menstrual cycle, Beth comes back 28 days later.
“Yes, I am feeling run down.”
0:51:55 Zach takes Beth to her grave and explains the situation.
Beth: How can I be dead? My mom and dad would’ve told me if I was dead.
Zach: They didn’t want to hurt your feelings.
0:54:37 Zach runs home from the cemetery (Beth stole his car) to find Kyle shooting at their resurrected grandfather who has blue genes.
0:59:06 Maury comes by to collect Zach, to take him and tell Beth that she isn’t dead. That they’ll be together forever. Which is a long time if you’re a zombie.
0:59:38
Zach: Beth, we need to talk.
Beth: Shut up, I’m on the phone.
Zach: With who?
Beth: Andy.
Zach: Andy? Who the fuck is that?
Beth: Somebody that actually cares about me.
Also the man married to April Ludgate, the character Aubrey Plaza plays on the American sitcom Parks & Recreation.
1:07:24 Zach comes home to see his family are barbecuing. And still smoking.
1:08:17 The zombies have taken over and the town is destroyed. Zombies are revolting.
1:10:16 Zach goes to the Slocum residence to find Beth chained to a refrigerator and Geenie feeding her raw meat… and the food is finger eating good, judging from Geenie’s hands.
Restaurant chains
1:12:22 Kyle is still alive, patrolling the neighbourhood, dragging a dead zombie with him. At least he knows to shoot zombies in the head. If I’m ever in a zombie apocalypse, I want to be there with Matthew Gray Gubler.
1:12:48 BTW, we learn that the burnt bodies at Zach’s house weren’t his parents, who are still safe and hiding out. Like unused ketchup packs from McDonald’s, Kyle saved them.
1:13:42
How to walk your zombie
1:18:08 Zach takes Beth on a hike and says his heartfelt goodbyes and tells her he’ll love her forever just before he shoots her in the head. You can measure forever with an egg timer in this film.
1:2 Zach meets his parents and Kyle at a neighbours where Erica is traumatized after seeing her grandmother die.
Anna: I stuck a tent pole through my Nana’s head.
Zach’s mum: She’s a bit traumatized, but she’ll be OK. Doesn’t she look good?
1:21:11 The forces of law and order have retaken the town. The power comes back on and a bloody journalist announces the end of the crisis. The zombie outbreak has been remedied.
The open range
1:22:43 After leaving a chess knight on Maury’s grave, Zach asks Erica out to dinner. She timidly accepts. Strange, as Zach didn’t like it when Beth wanted a bite.
Roll credits
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: Only 1 drop dead one
When to Follow: You come home from work on a Tuesday night and want to watch something fun and quirky, something engaging and fresh — this is the perfect film for you.
Where’s This Found: While this zombie film doesn’t cover any new ground, even as regards indie-horror, it covers the same old ground efficiently and with elan. What Beth lacks in scares, it makes up for in tight performances from a solid cast. Out of a possible 10, I have 8 F’s to give.
What To Feedback: In each of these polls, one of the captions is mine, the other is the official tagline. Which one do you prefer?
I shall be psycho analysing The Voices, judging its tone and taking its message to see if it speaks to me or falls on deaf ears. So read on only if you’ve already seen The Voices, or don’t plan to.
0:01:32 I just love videos of small towns. They make me so glad I don’t live in one.
0:04:42 In his room above an abandoned bowling alley, a voice-off criticizes Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) for agreeing to help plan the company picnic. Picnics… Picnics are buffets for bugs and poor people.
0:08:16 Jerry meets with Dr. Warren (Jacki Weaver), his court appointed therapist, who asks him if he’s still on his medication. Like a gay athlete with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, Jerry avoids that issue.
[Why does he need a court appointed psychiatrist? See 56:22]
Psychological ties
0:08:26
Dr. Warren: Do you ever hear her voices?
Jerry: Voices? No… I mean… When someone’s talking to me.
Dr. Warren: You hesitated a little bit there.
Jerry: It just makes me think of my mother.
Dr. Warren: ‘Angels’ was what she called her voices.
Jerry: Yeah.
Dr. Warren: Angels were her coping strategy. The voices were real to her.
I’m not the one equating religion and mental illness. For once.
0:09052 Fiona (Gemma Arterton not trying to hide her accent) wants a conga line at the picnic. Conga is the last sort of line I’d do.
Suddenly, Jerry desired a milk shake
0:11:04 The critical voice in the earlier scene belonged to a pussy – cat (Mr. Whiskers, voiced by Ryan Reynolds). The dog (Bosco, also voiced by Ryan Reynolds) speaks as well, but more like a drunk and stupid best friend than the cat who is, well, catty.
0:12:52 Jerry stops by the accounting department of the company to pay a visit to Fiona, who is as cold as London in June. Lisa (Anna Kendrick), however, asks if he’d like to ‘chick out’ at the bar with some of the girls after work. I can’t help thinking he’d rather ‘chick in’.
Doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to give him head…hers
0:13:35 Lisa is obviously infatuated with Jerry. Is Anna Kendrick showing too much cleavage, or is it just my being overly gay?
Valley of the Shadow of Breasts
0:15:04 WTF!? Fiona accepts Jerry’s invitation to a romantic rendez-vous at a Chinese restaurant because…why? She already believes him to be dim sum what.
0:15:35
What every girls’ says
0:17:17 Fiona stood Jerry up, and not like a nurse with a legless man.
0:17:38 Why Fiona stood Jerry up:
Karaoke night: Fiona (Gemma Arterton) – Knock On Wood
0:18:02
Karaoke night: Fiona (Gemma Arterton) & Lisa (Anna Kendrick) – Knock On Wood
0:18:40
Karaoke night: Alison (Ella Smith) – Shimmy Shimmy Ya
0:20:46 The original songs in The Voices are well put together
0:22:58 Jerry happens upon Fiona, who was stranded in the rain with car trouble. She’s surprised he didn’t get the cancellation message she never sent and agrees to let him take her to a burger restaurant, making this a meat and greet.
I loathe animal photos so this is awww-some for me
0:24:32 Jerry asks Fiona a trivia question by saying that only four angels are named by name in the Bible. Three of them are Michael, Raphael and Gabriel. Who’s the fourth?
[I’m not going to answer here. If you think you know, or have seen this film, then leave the answer in the comments! BTW, how sad is it that I already knew the answer from my days as a Catholic school belle.]
025:06 You know how in movies the driver never looks at the road? Jerry does the same here. But to the film’s credit here’s what happens.
Oh Deer!
0:25:24 Lol, the deer head that’s come through the windscreen and is now on the dashboard asks Jerry to take a knife and slit its throat. The deer is also voiced by Ryan Reynolds. He’s such an animal.
0:26:01 As the deer’s blood sprays on Fiona, she panics and runs out of the car and into the woods. Trying to get her to come back, Jerry follows her, still holding the knife.
0:26:31
Jerry: I’m sorry if I hurt you.
Jerry to Fiona after he falls on top of her, knife first
Then he stabs her in the chest to put her out of her misery, the recently heartless wench.
He’s in love, no matter how you slice it
0:29:14 Bosco the dog tells Jerry he should go to the police and confess. Mr. Whiskers points out he took the knife with him when he ran after Fiona because he wanted to kill her and, indeed, the only time he feels truly alive is when he’s killing. Jerry agrees that killing is his living.
034:11
Jerry: The medication smooths things out, and that’s OK. But even though there were bad moments–
Dr. Warren: – – Very bad moments.
Jerry: – – very bad – – they’re also moments of inspiration and beauty, when all the world makes sense. And the elegant secret mechanics of man and God are revealed in their many dimensions, and the universe is laid out before mine eyes and it is a blessed place.
Dr. Warren: You totally stopped taking the pills, didn’t you?
Jerry: Totally.
I usually feel like that after I take the pills.
0:36:12 Jerry is in his room, sawing Fiona into bits and putting the pieces into Tupperware containers. TIL a hacksaw is the wrong tool for human bones, but at least he’s able to get a piece from Fiona.
0:37:10
How Fiona stacks up
0:37:42 He put her head in the ice box, as if she weren’t cold enough before she died.
0:39:32 Fiona’s head chastises Jerry into taking his anti-psychotic meds. As she’s just a severed head, it’s safe to say she lost her figure.
0:42:36 Waking up from a nap, his psychosis has lifted and he sees the harsh reality of what he’s done. So he promptly washes the rest of the medication down the drain and makes himself sick in the toilet to flush the drugs from his system.
Here are some comparison photos. The first / top image is how Jerry perceives life through the veil of his insanity. The second / bottom is what he sees through the reality of his drugs.
Two heads are better than one
My flat Saturday morning and Sunday morning
0:44:06
Fiona: Hey, Jerry. Jerry? Can you get me a friend?
Jerry: A friend?
Fiona: I get so lonely in the fridge.
How to speak British English (according to Americans)
0:46:56 Lol! Jerry and his pets are watching a compilation of animals making the beast with two backs.
0:48:31
Bosco: He is wrong. We’re not like the pussy, Jerry.
The dog is the angel on Jerry’s right shoulder and Mr. Whiskers is the devil on the other.
0:51:11 Jerry is going back with Lisa to her place. The music sounds like Jerry has chosen Mr. Whisker’s option.
“Anna Kendrick, you’re my favourite garden gnome.”
0:56:22 Jerry takes Lisa to an isolated house in the forest where he grew up and has a flashback of himself in his early teens killing his mother. She’s begging him to slice her throat, as she would rather die than return to the mental asylum. Either way, young Jerry is a pain in her neck and so is the shard of glass he’s wielding.
0:57:51 Jerry abandons the knife with which he intended to stab Lisa in the back. Instead of giving her eternity, he gives her one night.
1:02:38 Lisa asks Alison for Jerry’s address so she might get him a surprise. Her surprise will be nowhere near the surprise she’ll have seeing Tupperware containers of Fiona filling his room and finding her head in his fridge.
1:06:07 A 30-second summary of the film to this point.
1:06:58
Bosco: Ah, Jerry, I just need a whiff of her butt!
Things dogs say.
1:08:51 In a very WTFull moment, Jerry accidentally locks himself out of his room so he has to climb on the roof to access the skylight. In the meantime, Lisa decides she won’t leave like she promised but instead will pick the lock because this is part of an accountant’s skill set.
1:13:22 After Lisa discovers all the mess and the blood, she tries to escape but Jerry throws her into his bed where she breaks her neck on the headboard. Jerry then kills her with a knife, proving he’s bad in bed.
1:14:08 Jerry places Lisa’s head in the fridge beside Fiona’s. Because two heads are better than one.
Heads above the rest
1:14:16 Ryan Reynolds and The Voices.
1:16:56 Lisa’s officemate Alison goes to visit Jerry after neither Lisa nor Jerry show up for work. She decides to do this after reading an article on-line about how Jerry killed his mother as a boy (1:16:10). However, she decides not to ask either of the men reading the article with her to accompany her. WTF!? Has she lost her head? #NotYet
That escalated quickly
1:17:34
1:17:41
Bosco: Hey, Jer? You remember last week when you said there was an invisible line that separates good from evil and you thought you’d crossed it and I said, ‘No no no, you’re a good boy’?
Jerry: Yeah, I remember. So what?
Bosco: I’ve changed my opinion.
1:20:12 Jerry pays a visit to his psychologist and confesses to no longer taking his medication.
Jerry: Dr. Warren, I’m a bad person.
Dr. Warren: Don’t be so hard on yourself. I appreciate your honesty. I’m disappointed, but hey, it’s not like you killed someone.
Jerry: Uhm…
Dr. Warren: What, Jerry?
Jerry: It is kind of like that. Kind of like that times three.
1:24:08
Dr. Warren: Just because you have thoughts, doesn’t mean you have to act on them.
Such a simple concept, alien to so many.
Dr. Do Little
1:26:18 The two blokes from the office arrive at Jerry’s room over the bowling alley to investigate. One of the men waits in the truck as a guard and the other picks the lock. Apparently this is a skill everyone in America has mastered.
1:26:38 WTF!? The bloke who broke into Jerry’s place told his mate to call the police, but when Jerry arrives with his therapist hours later, the police aren’t there yet. Perhaps they’re too busy arresting all the lock pickers.
1:31:12 While escaping the police (who arrive eventually), Jerry breaks a pipe and creates a gas leak that will end the film with a bang.
1:35:02 The explosion starts a fire in the bowling alley and Jerry listens to Bosco and lays his life down, literally, on the floor, when he lets the smoke take him.
Couch vegetable
1:35:26 After the animals part ways, amicably, Jerry meets his mother, father, Lisa, Alison and Jesus. They’re dressed in cheap clothes either from the 70’s or Edinburgh.
Roll credits
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: 4 screaming ones.
When to Follow: A little more dark than comedy, The Voices is a good, Saturday night watch for couples who hate romantic comedies.
Where’s This Found: A well-put together film, solidly directed by Marjane Satrapi (best known for the animated Persepolis). In addition to the intriguing story line and nice pacing, Ryan Reynolds plays the goofy yet tortured Jerry with a finesse that will help us forgive him for R.I.P.D. and Green Lantern. Out of a possible 10, I have 8 F’s to give
What To Feedback: Answer Jerry’s riddle in the comment section: Only four angels are named by name in the Bible. Three of them are Michael, Raphael and Gabriel. Who’s the fourth?
I shall be dissecting Birdman, examining its guts and studying its structure to see if it soars or is for the birds, man. So read on only if you’ve already seen Birdman, or don’t plan to.
0:02:02 With the comet plunging to earth and a man in his tighty whities, two tails begin the film.
0:05:57 Michael Keaton is Riggan Thomson, the director (and lead actor and adapter) of a Broadway play. After Riggan looks up at the stage lights, one falls and strikes the actor Riggan doesn’t like. Both the actor and the light black out.
0:06:16 Riggan tells the producer (and attorney and best friend), Jake (Zach Galifianakis), that they have to cancel the first preview. The show must go on later.
“Come on! ‘The Hangover’! I’m sure you saw it.”
0:06:44 Riggan confesses to Jake that he made the light fall. Jake thinks Riggan is a little light in the head.
0:07:56 In Riggan’s dressing room, the poster behind him speaks to him. The poster is of himself as Birdman, a super hero in a film years earlier.
Birdman poster: That clown [Robert Downey Jr. as Ironman] doesn’t have half your talent and he’s making a fortune in that tin man getup. We were the real thing, Riggan. We had it all. We gave it away. We handed these poseurs the keys to the kingdom.
Especially ironic when Michael Keaton was Batman. Twice.
He’s pigeon toed
0:08:58
Wall Flowers
0:12:36 Lesley, Naomi Watts as an actress in the play, tells Riggan and Jake that Mike Shiner (“we share a vagina” – I’m assuming this is a hetero thing) is available as a replacement actor for the bloke who was knocked on the head.
Brandon: Ask me if he sells tickets.
Riggan: Fine, does he still tickets?
Brandon: He sells a shitload of tickets. Now ask me if the theatre critics love him.
Riggan: Do theatre critics love him?
Brandon: They want to spooge on him.
Riggan: Hey!
Brandon: Lesley?
Lesley: Right on his face.
It would seem as though I’ve missed my calling.
“Jake, Lesley has come between us.”
0:13:32 Edward Norton plays Mike, a theatre actor who is as serious as genital warts.
0:14:38 I like the idea of people with super powers who don’t want to become super heroes. Reminds me of me.
0:17:06 Emma Stone is Sam, Riggan’s daughter but also his secretary. Even I might consider spawning if it meant I could have a live-in assistant.
0:17:42 Mike compliments Sam’s ass-et. This could be problematic considering his girlfriend is in the play and Sam’s father is the director. #DumbAss
0:18:02 Al K Hall nudity alert (if Al was gay). Ed Norton isn’t an ass but he has one, and here’s the ass he rode in on.
Plot hole
0:18:06
Larry [Michael Siberry, talking about the wardrobe]: Everything’s too small.
Sam [watching Mike undress]: No kidding.
0:20:42 Andrea Riseborough is Laura, Riggan’s apparent GF. She’s missed her last two periods, and I don’t think she’s taking about a football match.
0:22:42 The play inside of the film is based on the short story “What we talk about when we talk about love”, by Raymond Carver, whom I admire hopelessly. (I’m not alone in my cult; Robert Altman made the film Short Cuts based on several of Carver’s works.) When I begin feeling superior whilst reading the Internet, I read Carver to humble back down.
“Are you memorizing my hairlines?”
0:25:04 In the middle of a performance, a drunk Mike goes off script and calls Riggan out for replacing the gin in his stage drink with water. Then he criticizes the audience for their disapproval. If this happened more in the theatre, I’d see more plays.
0:28:06 Riggan’s ex (Amy Ryan as Sylvia) arrives backstage. We learn that Sam was in rehab and that Riggan is meant to be watching over her somewhat. This is when super powers would come in handy.
0:29:14 Riggan wants to mortgage a house that’s intended for his daughter to finance the play. In case you were wondering where he stands on the old ‘being a good father’ thing.
“How did you fit your hand in the little red keg?”
0:35:23
Mike: I wanna know something. Why Raymond Carver?
Riggan: I was a kid in high school doing a play in Syracuse and he was in the audience. And he sent this back afterwards…
[Riggan unfolds a piece of paper he keeps in his wallet and hands it to Mike]
Mike [reading the note]: ‘Thank you for an honest performance, Ray Carver’. Yeah?
Riggan: That’s why I knew I was going to be an actor. Right there.
[Mike grunts]
Riggan: What’s so funny?
Mike: Nothing, it’s just on a cocktail napkin.
Riggan: Yeah, so?
Mike: He was fucking drunk, man.
Maybe I’m not alcoholic enough to be a good writer.
“No, it’s not beer, it’s Belgian mineral water.”
0:37:48 The soundtrack sounds like the soundtrack to Whiplash. Lots of jazz percussion. Maybe they couldn’t afford all of the instruments.
0:39:53 The tattoo on her left arm is “The wound is the place where the light enters you” by Rumi.
Teat for Tat?
0:39:08 Riggan and Sam fight because he discovers she’s been smoking marijuana. #EmmaStoner The dispute ends with her saying,
You hate bloggers, you mock Twitter, you don’t even have a Facebook page. You’re the one who doesn’t exist. You’re doing this [play] because you’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter. And you know what? You’re right, you don’t. It’s not important. You’re not important. Get used to it.
By this definition, I exist because, in addition to this website, I have a Twitter account and a Facebook page. I’m also on Tumblr, Imgur, Pinterest and Reddit, so I must super exist. #Existential
0:41:06 Emma Stone rocks.
Her face is a palette of emotions
0:43:33 When Mike and Leslie are in bed on stage, he nearly rapes her simulating a sex scene and then parades about on stage with a tent in his underpants.
Acting is Hard
0:46:22 Leslie breaks up with Mike after that stunt.
Leslie: Why don’t I have any self respect ?
Laura: You’re an actress, honey.
0:48:36 Laura and Leslie begin ‘lip syncing’ in the dressing room. #LGBT
0:54:44 Laura’s not pregnant and she’s upset because Riggan is superficial. Maybe, but at least he didn’t claim to be pregnant when he wasn’t.
0:56:41 Ed Norton in a speedo. Wow, I wish I had his body. In a box in my bedroom.
He looks like my Ken dolls
0:58:22 Mike and Riggan wrestle because Mike stole Riggan’s Carver story and gave it to the press as his own. #Play-gerism
Fight Club 2: Fight Like A Gran
1:00:26 The voice in his head is Birdman, telling him he should stop posing as an artist and do another superhero film.
Riggan: Look at me. I look like a turkey with leukaemia!
I don’t think I know what this means.
1:00:17 The year he mentions being Birdman is in 1992. Coincidentally, this is also the year Michael Keaton filmed his second and last Batman film: Batman Returns. Coincidentally.
1:00:54
Riggan: I’m Riggan fucking Thompson.!
Birdman: No, you’re Birdman, because without me, all that’s left is you.
1:01:05
Robot Chicken
1:05:34 Fair warning, if Mike and Sam sleep together, I’m deducting points for predictability.
1:06:22
Mike: Hey, tell me something. What is the worst thing that he did to you? Seriously.
Sam: He was never around.
Mike: Yeah…? I mean, so what? That was it?
Sam: No, it was how he tried to make up for it by constantly trying to convince me that I was special.
WTF!? First world daughters.
Like Time Magazine on Father’s Day, she has Daddy Issues
1:07:48 Sam continuously ridicules Mike and kisses him after telling him how bad his declaration of affection was. It’s so WTF and so normal that it’s trite. Why can’t this film have the magic that Riggan has?
1:09:56 Apparently Mike is not as impotent as he claims. Did Sam forget her lines? Because Mike is feeding her his cue.
1:14:14 Riggan gets locked out of the theatre during a cigarette break and has to walk down Broadway in his underwear. This is for those of you who don’t believe smoking is bad for you.
Riggan, Spiderman, Bumblebee, Drum major, Statue of Liberty, Ironman
[Note the cameos…Riggan will be meeting them all again later]
1:22:47 A pretentious New York intellectual theatre critic (Lindsay Duncan as Tabitha) informs Riggan that she will close his play by writing the harshest review she has ever written. She knows this even before she’s seen the play. I hate critics. #selfloathing
1:22:57
Riggan: Wow, what has to happen in a person’s life that they have to become a critic, anyway?
1:28:58 Riggan wakes up passed out on a stoop and Birdman appears, telling him to give up. More an arch-enemy play than a superhero save.
1:29:30
Snap Decision
1:32:05 Riggan atop a building takes the leap of faith and flies away. More magic than realism, yet not enough of either.
His career is taking off
1:37:54 Riggan reminisces with Sylvia (his ex wife) about a romantic story in which he bedded another woman the night of their anniversary party (WTF!?) and then he tells he loves her, tying in the name of the play (‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love ‘) to his life.
1:38:44 Keaton does a bang up job on his monologue but is one monologue enough for an Oscar? Here he talks about what a shit he was with his ex and his daughter, and one wonders why he uses the past tense: he was a shit with his daughter just a few hours ago.
1:39:54 He prepares a real, loaded gun for the final scene of the play and opens the door magically with one finger. I’m not impressed, I’ve met hundreds of people with magic fingers.
1:42:46
Worth a Shot
1:42:54 The standing ovation is such that the critic storms off in a huff, knowing she cannot pan the play, because it will be Number 1 with a bullet.
Riggan hallucinates the characters he passed in front of the theatre.
Riggan’s reunion is all in his head
1:45:16 In the hospital room:
Sylvia [to Brandon about a rave review from their nemesis]: You’re happy about this?
Brandon: Happy? I’m fucking euphoric! This is the kind of review that turns people into living legends.
Sylvia: He shot the nose off his face!
Brandon: He’s got a new nose! And if he doesn’t like that one, we’ll get him a new one. We’ll use Meg Ryan’s guy, who gives a shit?
Meg Ryan’s guy doesn’t give a shit
1:48:02 Sam visits and snaps a photo of him for the Twitter page she created for him that morning. How can it have taken so long for the Birdman to tweet?
1:51:02 After taking off the bandages and seeing his new nose, Riggan opens a hospital window in what is a very high room (WTF worthy, as hospital windows are blocked shut for safety).
Give him a beak
1:52:14 Sam returns with a vase and panics to find her father isn’t there. After first checking the ground, she looks up to find him flying about with the pigeons, perhaps taking a crap on the people below. Which might just be a perfect metaphor for this film.
When to Follow: When you enrol in film school and have to study the technical aspects of movie making.
Where’s This Found: Technically, this film is perfection. Alejandro González Iñárritu truly merited his Best Director Oscar. The style is engaging with only 16 cuts in the entire film – the longest scene being a full seven minutes – meaning the viewer is brought into the film as though we were following the characters about. Unfortunately, this extreme focus didn’t make it into the script. The film is like an acquaintance’s slide show of the Grand Canyon: it’s the story of uninteresting characters obsessed with their own trip. Out of a possible 10, I have 5 F’s to give
What To Feedback: How would you have voted if you were a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?
For those who are unfamiliar with the South Park reference in the parody poster: Click Here
Spoiler Alert:
I shall be tearing apart Fifty Shades of Grey, tying up its loose ends and plugging its plot holes to see if it hits home or is a pain in the ass. So read on only if you’ve already seen Fifty Shades of Grey, or don’t plan to.
“You really don’t want to watch this, trust me.”
In the spirit of total disclosure, I already detest this film and haven’t yet begun to watch it.
[Fair warning, I make a great deal of “Fifty Shades of Gay” jokes but as I’m a gay man, I plead “privilege” (like people of colour using the “N” word). You will also notice the term is not used in a derogatory, inflammatory way. My intention is to entertain, not to offend.]
0:04:52 A young woman (Dakota Johnson) with an emotional age of twelve replaces her ailing flatmate (Eloise Mumford as Kate, a journalism student) to interview a business mogul. He is also sick, just in a different way.
0:06:26 During the interview…
Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan): The key to my success has been in identifying talented individuals and harnessing their efforts.
Miss Steele: So you’re a control freak?
Since when does “identifying talented individuals and harnessing their efforts” equate to being a control freak?
Has his secretary colour coordinate with his surname (Fifty Shades of Gay)
0:07:20 Well, if you want something stiff, you’ll have to settle for the acting.
0:07:59 Oh dear lord, her name is Anastasia Steele!? Brilliant! I was afraid this film wouldn’t be laughably bad.
0:08:54
Grey: Tell me, was it Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy who first made you fall in love with literature?
It sure as bloody hell wasn’t E. L. James.
0:09:26 Because he sees she’s emotionally retarded, Grey tells Anastasia they have a special education program at his firm. And if your want something firm from the film, you’ll have to settle for his company.
Leaving the Bored Room
0:09:36
Anastasia [to Christian]: I don’t think I’d fit in here.
What about the other way around?
0:13:28 A vaguely ethnic looking chap (Victor Rasuk as José), who is apparently close to Anastasia, holds her car door open for her. As this film’s premise is that women only love men who treat them like shite, I think it’s safe to welcome José to the friend zone. Not to mention the vaguely racist undertones that a young woman prefers a rich white man to a middle class Hispanic artist.
0:14:14 Anastasia’s mother (Jennifer Ehle as Carla) can’t attend Anastasia’s graduation ceremony because her hypochondriac husband (Anastasia’s stepfather) hurt his foot. At least now we see where Anastasia gets her tendency to let men mistreat her.
0:16:04 Christian goes to buy his rape kit from the DIY shop where Ana works and this gets her excited. She’s bound to please.
“Sorry, I thought you wanted tape on the movie, not the movie on tape.”
Anastasia: Okay, rope, tape, cable ties… You’re the complete serial killer
Christian: Not today.
[Note: This is a reference to Jamie Dornan’s role in the telly series The Fall, in which he plays…a serial killer.]
0:18:47
Christian: You seem nervous.
Anastasia: I find you intimidating.
Christian: You should.
Anastasia: [Laughing] Not any more I don’t.
Is what a normal person would have said next.
0:20:27 While they’re having a coffee together, Christian realizes Anastasia is emotionally retarded, so cannot take advantage of her. For the moment. Anastasia runs off to cry to her teddy bear and write in her diary.
“This isn’t anything like the book!”
0:21:29 After telling Anastasia he has to let her go, he sends her first edition copies of Tess of the d’Ubervilles. Christian probably invented negging. He ain’t to proud to neg.
0:24:39 José makes his move on Ana outside a bar, but she’s too drunk to explain he’s too ethnic and poor for her.
0:25:02 Just as he tries to kiss her, Christian arrives too rescue her because she drunk dialled him from the lady’s toilets, and he hated the idea of her drunk without him. Ana responds by vomiting. I’ll soon follow suit.
0:28:04 How many nipples does he have, the sow?
I’d like the Grey ashtray, please.
0:28:08 Christian reprimands Anastasia for getting too drunk.
If you were mine, you wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.
Are you taking notes, boys? This is apparently what you need to say to bag a female.
0:29:04
Christian: I don’t do romance. My tastes are very singular. You wouldn’t understand.
Anastasia: Enlighten me, then.
Not a bright idea, dim wit.
‘Vice’ Grip
0:30:06
Christian: I’m not going to touch you. Not until I have your written consent.
Anastasia: What?
To be fair to the script, all of my best dates have involved this sentence.
0:32:44 Ana doesn’t tell Kate about Christian’s unusual behaviour and statements. The cycle of abuse has already begun. For us it began 35 minutes ago.
0:34:29 Christian flies Ana in his helicopter from Portland to Seattle. He just wants to get her high before he makes his move.
0:37:48 Ana signs a non-disclosure form.
Anastasia: Are you going to make love to me now?
Christian: Two things. First, I don’t make love. I fuck. Hard.
This is the second thing.
Red Rum
0:39:
Anastasia: You’d punish me, like you’d use this stuff on me?
Christian: Yes.
Anastasia: What would I get out of this?
Christian: Me.
I’m beginning to understand this film exists on a whole other level. The film-makers are the sadists and they are abusing us for their pleasure! And we’re paying them to do it.
0:41:28 Oh dear god! She’s a virgin? WTF!? She’s 22 years old, not religious and still a virgin? This might be because her parents kept her in the home due to her emotional retardation. But now she’ll agree to have her first sexual experience with a sadist? I’ve heard the first time hurts for women but this is ridiculous.
0:42:32 Let’s see how long I can keep it up, and by ‘it’ I of course mean ‘watching this film’.
Hair Raising Horror
0:43:18 He takes her virginity with apathy so that she’ll hate normal sex and want something more exciting.
0:46:02 Al K Hall nudity alert: Dakota Johnson’s bare buttocks. Reminds me how I feel watching this film. Like an ass.
His favourite part of the body (Fifty Shades of Gay)
A view of her bare bosoms when the couple take a bath together, but there’s no need – this film really isn’t that dirty.
0:47:52 With a great deal of female nudity, Christian initiates Ana into bondage by binding her wrists together with a tie and then telling her not to move when he kisses her. Judging from his passionless embrace, this shouldn’t be too hard (like those those of us unfortunate souls watching).
0:50:34 Christian’s mother stops by for a surprise visit.
Anastasia: I liked your mom.
Christian: She was excited. She’s never seen me with a woman before.
Now I understand why he abuses women! He’s a homosexual but cannot come out of the closet because it would damage his empire, so he finds girls too weak to fight him and he takes out his frustrations on them. Ha! #FiftyShadesOfGay
0:53:21 Christian tells Ana he was introduced into S&M through one of his mother’s friends. He was submissive to her for six years, from the time he was 15. #HisIQ
0:57:52 The terms of the contract…
Tied up in court [Click on the image to zoom in]
0:59:18 Ana researches submissive on the Internet. Here’s a side by side comparison of our search results (Ana’s page is on the left). Her internet is vastly different from mine.
Submit to Enter
1:00:21 When she texts him her rejection of the contract (“it was nice knowing you”), he breaks into her flat and throws her on the bed and has sex with her. Funny, when I do this with someone who rejects me, the police usually become involved.
1:05:28 Contract negotiations
Anastasia: Page 3, section 15-20: The submissive shall submit to any sexual activity demanded by the dominant and shall do so without hesitation or argument…
[She laughs. He sneers. She shuts up.]
Turn to page 5, appendix 3: Soft Limits.
Christian: With you.
Anastasia: Find anal fisting.
Christian: I’m all ears.
Anastasia: Strike it out. Strike out vaginal fisting, too.
Christian: Are you sure?
Anastasia. Yep. Same page. “Is the use of sex toys acceptable to the submissive?” Vibrators, OK. Dildos, fine. Genital clamps? Absolutely not.
Christian: Consider them gone.
Anastasia: What are butt plugs?
She’s not only a virgin but she’s also not heard of the Internet.
There’s one to the chap’s right [The still is from the WTF!? review of The Rite, click on the shot for the post]
1:07:55 Christian offers a date night a week, like a ‘normal’ couple. In a nutshell, this is just another business meeting where one party will end up getting screwed.
1:15:45 Christian spanks her after she rolls her eyes at him. He spanks her so hard she laughs. I think I’ve overestimated the power of bondage.
Cheeky
1:17:41 After Christian leaves, her mum calls and so Anastasia begins weeping. WTF!? Perhaps it’s for her future.
1:19:50 Dear god, with a version of “I’m on fire” that’s even more insipid than the original, they exchange mouth bumps with all of the passion of clams fucking.
1:20:24 Al K Hall nudity alert: Bondage scene in the red room.
What did one submissive say to the other?
I can’t come right now, I’m a little tied up.
Dancing with scars
1:29:28
Christian: You’re mine. All mine, understand?
Anastasia: Christian, you are so confusing.
WTF!? Where were you the first fifty times, up to and including a contract negotiation, when he told you how he was going to abuse you?
1:31:21 Christian tells Ana, who’s asleep, about his traumatic past with a crack addict birth mother who mistreated him. Ana isn’t the only one sleeping through this speech.
So she can sleep on the plane as well
1:33:19 Ana visits her mother in Georgia and lies awake in bed listening to her mum in the other room laughing with husband #4. Ana becomes sad, wishing she could have the same connection, but she can! She just has to wait until her fourth husband.
1:35:41 Christian surprises her with a stealth visit because she wouldn’t pick up the phone when he called the night before. He’s like a broken hearted spy. #JamesBondage
Lol Grae caught me slippin. Goodnight from us. ♥
1:37:31 Christian takes Ana on a surprise morning ride in a glider. Like a metaphor for this film, the plane has no power and makes me a little sick.
Just plane stupid
1:41:45 Al K Hall nudity alert: He has bondage sex with her to release his frustrations over difficult business dealings. He has a plug and she’s the outlet.
1:46:16
Anastasia: I need you to show me what you want to do to me. Punish me. Show me how bad it can be. I want you to show me the worst.
Girlfriend, he has been for one hour, forty-six minutes and sixteen seconds.
1:47:29 Al K Hall nudity alert: This bondage scene is more of a pain.
“I’ll whip something up.”
1:49:21 She becomes angry and spits at him to leave her alone. Apparently she was lying when she asked him to show her his worst. And frankly speaking, six half-arsed lashes with a belt? I’ve seen worse in the comment section of YouTube.
1:53:05 The next morning, she leaves him. Credit where it’s due, I did not expect the female lead to be as strong willed as she is. This doesn’t make the film any better, just less predictable. Fifty Shades of Grey is like those people on the bus who wear knickers on their heads and talk to their chutney: interesting, but not worth my time.
Roll credits
Soundtrack
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: 5 painful ones
When to Follow: When you’re a teenage boy and want to see Dakota Johnson’s milk sacks (and if that’s the case, you’re welcome for the nudity alerts). Or if you want to see bondage and you don’t like bondage.
Where’s This Found: To be fair, I have a brain and taste, so I’m not the target audience for this film. Nine 1/2 Weeks did it first and better in many ways. In fact, FSoG film is a very clever extended metaphor in suffering because we are submissive to the director’s dominance while she forces us to withstand gruelling pain for over two hours. Out of a possible 10, I have 3 F’s to give
I shall be fishing for clues to Outcast, examining its hooks and throwing out its lines to see if it’s a reel good catch or if it’s just fishy. So read on only if you’ve already seen Outcast, or don’t plan to.
0:01:16 I’d forgotten Hayden Christensen is in this! In this battle with Nicolas Cagefor worse actor, Hayden is off to a good start as he speaks ‘olde tyme English’…but only every other word.
0:01:39 The film begins in the Middle East in the 12th century, in a time before good acting and decent screen writing.
0:02:48 Slow motion scene of crusaders killing Middle Easterns. The filming is a tribute to 300, by which I mean stolen. This is Nicolas Cage’s second film to be set in the Crusades (the first being Season of the Witch). It’s as though he’s on a crusade against good taste.
[Note: At the end of this battle scene, passing reference is made to a pile of dead female locals. Gallain (Nicolas Cage) turns away in disgust, believing Jacob (Hayden Christensen) and his men are responsible. As a result, the two part ways and don’t speak again until the 1-hour mark of this film.]
“Hey, we have cross hairs on our chests!”
0:09:08 After defeating the heathens, the film jumps three years and lands in a steamy pile of WTF!? (Why The Far-east!?).
0:10:04 A dying king (Shi Liang as ‘The King’ – whose character name should give you an idea of the creativity that went into this piece of script) passes down the power to his youngest son (Ji Ke Jun Yi as ‘Mei’ – pronounced ‘Meh’), who’s an early Asian tween hippie. The old man does this behind the back of his older son (Andy On as ‘Shing’), who’s a psychopath and in charge of the army. No, I can’t see anything wrong with that plan. TIL everyone spoke English in 12th century China.
0:15:42 The warrior son kills his ailing father for refusing to give up the location of the royal seal.
Not a royal circus animal, but the stamp that signifies the bearer is the one, true King. The old king gave it to his little son, who ran away with his his sister (Yifei Liu as ‘Lian’). Like a youngster on a strict ovine diet, the boy is on the lam.
0:16:51 Shing tells everyone his young brother killed their father and absconded with the signet. #Sealnapping
022:49 In a remote inn, the warrior’s guards arrest the young king and princess and steal the seal. Jacob (Hayden Christensen) is there, somehow, high on opium and attacks the guards with his bad performance. They’re helpless and all succumb in a matter of minutes.
0:23:18
Pissed off and on
0:25:01 Jacob says he’ll leave if he can have his sword back. When the leader of the bad guards starts to hand it over, Hayden tosses a spear through his face.
Get my point?
0:25:22 WTF!? After defeating a dozen armed guards and killing the leader with a precision spear throw, Hayden returns to being stoned? Unfortunately for the director (Nick Powell), we’re not as high as Jacob is meant to be.
0:26:24 WTF!? WTF!? WTF!? WTF!? WTF!? Jacob abandons Lian and Mei in front of the Inn, literally at their enemy’s doorstep. All the Black Guard need do now is walk outside and end the film. Yet the evil army decide to wait in the inn – giving the siblings the time to escape – only to spend the rest of the film hunting them down. Maybe it’s a B&B: Bad & Bullshit.
0:28:22 Because of all the killing he did as a warrior, Hayden changes his mind and adopts the baby royalty to protect them. If all else fails, they’ll be able to use his haircut as a distraction.
“I wonder what George Lucas meant by, ‘Never again in a million light years’.”
0:33:26 Jacob saves a little girl and they adopt her like a puppy (Xiaoli, played by Coco Wang – which is also my favourite snack food).
Just horseing around
0:35:36 For those of you interested in the story line, if the little prince arrives at some village for some ceremony with the royal seal then he is automatically King and nothing can be done about it. Thus, Shing wants his brother killed before arriving at said town. Also for those of you interested in the story, I pity you.
0:36:43 Jacob has hash for dinner, and by hash I mean he eats opium.
0:39:32
Shing wants to have the big boy crown
0:41:28 While Jacob teaches Mei to shoot, there’s a flashback to Gallain (Nicolas Cage) teaching Jacob the bow and arrow. If Gallain also taught the little brat how to act, that would explain many of the issues I have with this film.
Hey, boy genius. You forgot the arrow.
0:44:34 The group find themselves in the middle of a desert, where Jacob gives his gold to an Asian Mata Hari (Anoja Dias Bolt as ‘Anika’) who agrees to let them travel with her caravan. No doubt because she’s curious about Jacob’s accent shifting from English to Irish with all the grinding of an American teen learning to drive a manual transmission.
0:48:22 The four stay with Anika and she offers Jacob a brick of opium as big as my ego. He starts in on it and some poisoned wine immediately. He must already be on drugs if he can’t see the conniving betrayal brimming in Anika’s eyes.
0:51:18 WTF!? Jacob wakes up with a hangover from the drugged wine and the opium and can barely stand unless he’s fighting the series guards throwing themselves at him.
“Just a little off the top,” said Jacob the barber-ian
0:55:24 He single-handedly defeats an entire regiment of Chinese guards. Apparently the only fighting they do is to stay awake.
0:56:46 The three younger escapees run through a forest at the edge of the desert (WTF!?) and suddenly their pursuers are set upon by a mysterious outbreak of arrows. Still, our heroes are eventually caught like a cold.
On a ganja run
0:58:51 After fighting and killing over a dozen men, running across town like the Prince of Persia, swimming across a river and rowing to the jungle at the edge of the desert, Jacob decides to start feeling his hangover. Then he meets a group of allies who give him a massage but we don’t know if it, like the film, has a happy ending.
1:00:32 The allied group (which also magically liberated the young trio) is led by Gallain (Nicolas Cage), who arrives just in time for the last third of the film. Apparently the director understood that the easiest way to make a good Nicolas Cage film is to have him in it as little as possible. [SeeKick Ass]
The sheer excitement of acting with rocks…and Nic Cage
1:08:12 Gallain learns he’s held a grudge against Jacob for no reason, as the heathen children he’d thought Jacob had killed were killed by their mothers, who then killed themselves. Pity Jacob waited a decade to explain this. Maybe he saw it as a way to avoid contact with Nicolas Cage.
1:09:47 Nicolas Cage and Hayden try to out bad-act each other. Hopefully sick bags will be delivered with the DVD.
1:11:02 Jacob and Lian finally consummate their puppy love with a kiss that looks like snails humping.
1:12:46 Acting isn’t for everyone, but especially not Nicolas Cage.
As bad as his hair
1:17:02 Gallain’s band and Jacob fight the Black Guard with bows and bombs. Frankly, an episode of Arrow is far better and the actors are hotter.
1:20:07 Gallain’s wife dies and he’s as upset as someone who paid to see this film.
1:21:29 WTF!? Look at all the Black Guards that are simply standing around waiting for their turn to be slaughtered. Why wouldn’t they all attack at once instead of standing in a death row?
“Kindly wait until your number’s up.”
1:22:25 Gallain’s death scene is not a minute too soon.
1:25:24 WTF!? Instead of killing his baby brother and ruling the world, Shing decides to fight Jacob for sport? Jacob just can’t lose, no matter how hard he tries.
1:26:54 When Jacob starts to get the upper hand, two of the Black Guard shoot him with arrows. The one general loyal to the king (Byron Lawson as ‘Captain Peng’), and only reluctantly part of Shing’s army, says he’ll kill the next soldier who fires an arrow. Shing shoots him the same look my readers do me when I lay to waste their favourite film.
“I’ll take a stab at this.”
1:27:28 Shing kills his sister because she begins stabbing him. This gives Jacob the energy he needs to kill Shing, because he slept with Lian the night before and wants to return to that hot oven. If he hurries, he might be able to get some warm leftovers.
1:27:47 Shing forgets he outranks General Peng, and so is killed by Jacob before telling his army to ignore what Peng said and shoot all the arrows they like into Jacob.
1:28:44 WTF!? Lian comes back from the dead and tells everyone she’ll be all right? She’s just one big hypochondriac, she is.
“Dear God, why do you let bad films happen to good people?”
1:29:18 Everyone kneels down before the boy emperor because he’s they only one left standing.
1:31:28 Jacob abandons Lian to all this WTF while her brother becomes the leader of the kingdom of WTF.
He’s finished reading this review…and he’s mad because of all the big words
Roll credits
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: 11 derelict ones
When to Follow: In bed with your tablet, when you’re not in the mood for horror but horrible to fall asleep to.
Where’s This Found: This film was simply made to penetrate the Chinese audience and garner all their hard earned yuan. I say we do the diplomatic thing and leave it to them. Out of a possible 10, I have 2 F’s to give
What To Feedback: What is Nicholas Cage’s BEST movie. Yes, there is at least one.
I shall be doing a Major analysis of Good Kill, revealing Private information and making a good many Rank jokes to see if it has a Colonel of truth or is a General disaster. So read on only if you’ve already seen Good Kill, or don’t plan to.
“I always enjoy a god hummer.”
00:00:58
This story is set in 2010, during the greatest escalation of targeted killings [by drones].
It wasn’t ‘the greatest’ for the victims.
0:03:27 The bomb suspense is surprising because we know what’s about to happen, like licking a car battery or watching the Kardashians.
Drones aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they’re going everywhere.
But don’t think I believe my own shit either. Because we like to dress it up in fancy language: “prosecuting a target”, “surgical strike”, “neutralizing the threat”… Make no fucking mistake about it. We are killing people.
I’m going to drill this into your heads every god-damn day. This ain’t no Playstation, even though — and the brass don’t like to admit it — our operation was modelled on X-box. And half of you were recruited in malls precisely because you are a bunch of fucking gamers and war is now a first person shooter. But when you pull the trigger here… it’s for fucking real.
Speech to the troops by Lieutenant Colonel Jack Johns (Bruce Greenwood)
Dey all a bunch a players – and I ain’t playin’.
Downloading “Saving Ryan’s Privates” and sweating bullets
0:12:28 Johns tells Egan he had to get him a new co-pilot because the previous one, Carlos, “pissed hot”. This means he tested positive for cocaine. #UrineTrouble
This film needs to be on guard about getting too preachy with long monologues and background. Exposition is like Marmite: a little goes a long way, so don’t spread it on too thick.
“The walls had ears, so we had them removed.”
0:13:18 Tom asks his boss to be reassigned to a real jet. Like a recently divorced sex maniac, he misses the cockpit.
0:13:52 His new co-pilot (Zoë Kravitz as Vera Suarez) is a Major Hottie in the Battle of the Sexes.
Loose lips do more than sink ships
0:17:34 Some speeching about the futility of fighting a war in Afghanistan. They should be fighting the boredom instead.
0:20:16 Ugh, while surveilling a compound from the drone, they’re forced to witness a Taliban militia member rape a Muslim woman hanging the laundry. #DirtyLaundry
0:22:46 Back at home, Tom drinks from a bottle of vodka he keeps in the loo. No shite!
0:24:16 In a marital dispute, Tom and Molly make a vague reference to a difficult event in the past. For now they adopt the military line: don’t ask, don’t tell the audience.
Hawke ‘amused’ the rest of the cast with his Selena Gomez impression
0:25:51 Their offices look like a shipping container, or a take out box of Colonel Sanders.
G-man cave
0:27:48 Immediately after launching two Hellfire missiles at a weapons storage location, two playing children run in front of the building. They are sacrificed in the name of clichés.
0:29:48 More speeching, this time about how it was easier to separate home and war when the soldier fought on foreign soil. People who say this have never spent time with my parents on the weekend.
0:31:02
Take the day off. I think you could use a little I&I : Intoxication and Intercourse.
Johns tells Egan not to obsess over the children
I did not know my hobbies have an acronym.
0:31:32 Egan takes both halves of his boss’s piece of advice.
His heads are elsewhere
0:35:27 Entering the second part of the film, the Johns announces they are now assigned to work for “Langley” (the CIA), and will be annihilating Afghani suspects because it’s easier than arresting them. Like American cops with black men. [Good thing I’m not political. Or a black man in the U.S.]
0:37:58
No one regrets the loss of innocent lives more than we do.
Langley on the phone (Peter Coyote? [Yes! I nailed it like a carpenter with wood]) telling our crew to destroy the house with the target and a woman inside
Proof that the CIA care more about the loss of innocent lives than you.
0:40:43 The CIA instructs them to bomb the hole they just made because maybe the Taliban is trying to dig out Taliban corpses. One young gung-ho American soldier (Zimmer, played by Jake Abel) gets into this idea, but Vera has the same expression as your wife when she finds porn on your laptop.
‘Why didn’t he browse incognito?’
0:42:37
There goes the neighbourhood
Suarez (matter of factly): Was that a war crime, sir?
Johns: Shut the fuck up, Suarez.
0:43:52 Suarez and the radical right stereotypes (Dylan Kenin as Capt. Ed Christie and Zimmer) get in a war of words over the merits of bombing the enemy. I’d prefer to discuss the merits of good film making as it pertains to more action.
0:48:48 You’d think that in a Las Vegas club where the foursome go to blow off steam that there’d be some steam blowing off, but instead it’s just a place to make a speech about how much better it is to fly a real jet in missions. Speaking of droning on…
0:49:02 WTF!? Vera flirts with her boss and superior because he just talked about his wife. She’d like to close ranks.
“Teabag? There’s one in your cup and another at the top of the screen.”
0:49:58 “Cards with the devil” by Von Bonneville is a wonderful song to drive drunk to (yet impossible to find on the net). Tom is as lit as the traffic light.
0:53:51 Langley instructs our team to bomb a crowd of men in Yemen, a country the States is not at war with. Yet. Sounds more like O-man! than Yea-man! to me.
0:56:04 Another speech, this one about how America is a terrorist factory because drone attacks are used by al-Qaeda as a recruitment tool. Just like Good Kill is used as a recruitment tool for sleeping.
January is very august
1:02:21
He’s a bad guy, he’s just not our bad guy.
Zimmer referring to the militia member raping the same woman [see 20:16]
Repeat offensive.
1:03:16
Lost Vegas
1:04:29
Lit Up
1:05:26 Tom is slowly losing his wife and his mind. I blame all the speeches.
1:06:46 Nice Ramones copy (“Hey Hey” by the Brakes) while Tom espies his wife in a car with another man. Seems she’s driving him to drink.
1:11:07
Hit me, you little bitch. Hit me!
Molly in a fight with her husband
He hits the mirror, so she ushers the kids away as though he were to blame. I think it was her favourite mirror.
1:17:34 He speeches his wife about how he blew up a Taliban leader’s house with his family in it, then he blew up their funeral. Hint: he’s not talking about photographs.
Hole digging is a grave concern
1:21:04 He drives drunk so often, he should get a frequent flier card.
1:22:44 This film could’ve been a short, especially if you take out the speeches. Like this one, where the lieutenant colonel says the ends justify the means. Why can’t they get to the ends faster?
“OK, who drew the Robot Jesus?”
1:23:16 WTF!? Jack Johns speeches about how he’s come to terms with the distasteful aspect of the recent missions because “they aren’t going to stop, so we can’t. ” To which Suarez responds:
It never ends… sir?
Then, instead of trying to go a little deeper than black or white declarations — even if it means declaring there is no solution — they simply cut the scene here and go back to bombing people. Infuriating, especially when considering this film has set itself up as a study of this issue. There are no easy answers but those are the only ones this film wants to give, even if they’re the wrong ones.
Major Gamer loved playing Call of Doody
1:26:32 Because Suarez is feeling uncomfortable about bombing the civilians with the terrorists, Egan pretends to lose the signal with the drone. Perhaps the drone will crash and burn, like the rest of this film.
1:29:32 As punishment, he’s downgraded to ‘surveillance’ which sounds a sight well better than ‘blowing everyone up ‘.
1:30:19 His wife tells him she’s taking the kids and leaving him alone in the house. Tom reacts like this is bad news when it seems to me he’s dodging a bullet.
1:33:32 Suarez quit her job when Egan was demoted and for some rank WTF reason she was promoted to officer. She tells him they can now legally fraternize, all the more so because his wife has left. Honestly, though, what does she see in him? The only way she could get a rise out of him is with yeast.
“If you’re a Major-ette, I’m a Major Disappointment.”
1:34:28 In a supreme military breach of WTF protocol, Egan tricks everyone in the container into taking a break so he can bomb the serial rapist. It’s as if the World Police just locked their keys in the car.
Ethan after setting the record for world’s biggest dump
1:37:17 Tom kills the bad guy and almost the rape victim along with him but she comes back to life at the last second and her young son runs out to hug her because conflict is just that simple.
1:37:38 Tom Egan hops in his car and drives towards Reno while a mysterious drone follows him from above. It’s supposed to make us think, but why should we start now?
Roll credits
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: 5 striking ones
When to Follow: When you want to feel political without using your brain…like a real politician.
Where’s This Found: While it’s nice to see Ethan Hawke rise above such bombs as Getaway, I was thoroughly disappointed in director Andrew Niccol. His Lord of War was so good even Nicolas Cage couldn’t ruin it, yet here he seems to content himself with piloting a film that simply drones on and stays below the radar without scoring any hits. Out of a possible 10, I have 6 F’s to give
I shall be judging Inherent Vice‘s video, analysing its record and poring over its transcript to see if it’s a guilty pleasure or should be condemned. So read on only if you’ve already seen Inherent Vice, or don’t plan to.
Synopsis (AKA one long spoiler): The film is about Doc, a private detective in the 1970s, who is investigating 3 main cases: the disappearance of a real estate developer (Michael ‘Mickey’ Wolfmann), the disappearance of a saxophonist (Coy Harlingen), and the activities of a mysterious boat (the Golden Fang) off the southern California coast.
Overall, this film represents the end of the hippy generation and the loss of innocence experienced by the United States as it moved from the 1960s into the 1970s. The film’s title references this for in maritime insurance, ‘inherent vice’ refers to an item whose deterioration that can’t be avoided, E.G. eggs break, chocolate melts, glass shatters…and time passes.
0:00:28 Gordita Beach, California, 1970 – It’s the end of an era. The problem with films based on well-written books is that they feel compelled to have a narrator read their favourite passages. Like here, Joanna Newsom is Sortilège reading the exposition. Let’s hope it’s not a bedtime story.
She’s being taken for a ride, and so are we
[The year the film is set in is important, as the 60s are chronologically (and soon spiritually) over. It’s a matter of time.]
0:04:52 Like a lad with an Oreo, this movie starts in the middle. Shasta Fay Hepworth arrives at Doc’s beach house to ask for help. Her wealthy boyfriend (Mickey Wolfmann) is married and his wife (Sloane) and the wife’s boyfriend (Riggs) want Shasta to use her relationship with Mickey to have him institutionalised. The three of them could then share his money. Crazy is as crazy does, and I’m committed.
[Note: this plot line will be abandoned like science in the United States. The FBI will eventually sequester Mickey in an asylum for his protection, but this is the last we’ll hear of someone trying to steal his wealth.]
The main characters thus far:
Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston): Ex-hippy and Doc’s obsession. She symbolises Time, and she’s passing. (“Tonight she was all in flatland gear, hair a lot shorter than he remembered, looking just like she swore she’d never look.“) Unfortunately for him, Doc doesn’t want time to pass.
Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix): Stoner detective, dentist and many other ‘D’ words. Also the central character around whom the other stars orbit.
Michael ‘Mickey’ Wolfmann (Eric Roberts): Real estate developer and wannabe philanthropist who decides to cast his lot with the establishment.
The only thing shorter than her skirt is his memory
0:05:17 Shasta is using Doc’s heart strings to play him. 0:05:46 Shasta wants Doc to use his relationship with his bed friend (Deputy D.A. Penny Kimball), to help her. People in this film use each other the way I use my mobile. 0:10:10
Doc [on the phone to his aunt] : Mickey Wolfmann, what can you tell me? Aunt Reet (Jeannie Berlin): Power house in LA real estate, from the desert to the sea. Technically Jewish, but wants to be a Nazi.
Conflict of interests. 0:12:03 Doc’s “old cop buddy” / policeman Lt. Det. Christian F. ‘Bigfoot’ Bjornsen (Josh Brolin) moonlights as a hippy on the telly in an advert for Channel View Estates, property being developed by Wolfmann. Perhaps Bigfoot is trying to make some extra WTF!?
Best of all, a view of the Dominguez Flood Control Channel that can only be described in two words: Right On.
You cannot change the Channel
0:13:38 It would seem Doc is a real physician with an office, and not just a ‘Doc’ of the Bugs Bunny sort. 0:14:36 Tariq Khalil (Michael Kenneth Williams) is waiting in Doc’s office. He says he would like some money due him from a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and the debtor is Michael Wolfmann’s bodyguard. This racist organization plot line will remain like a ten-year-old beauty queen: under-developed. 0:18:46 Doc goes to the offices of Channel Estates to find Glenn Charlock, the Aryan that Tariq said owed him money. This is what the sales office of Channel Estates looks like.
“Our sample-her menu.”
0:20:48 Doc is knocked unconscious and wakes up outside in a dirt lot beside Glenn Charlock’s (Christopher Allen Nelson) dead body. I’ve not woken up next to dead people, but I have gone to bed with a few. 0:21:25 Bjornsen takes Doc in for questioning for the murder.
Bigfoot Bjornsen: Do you think Glenn and Shasta were f-u-c-k-i-n-g -ing? Doc: ‘Fucking-ing’?
Glenn was Mickey’s bodyguard and now Mickey is m-i-s-s-i-n-g -ing. 0:24:50
And now I want a banana
0:26:52
Doc could never figure out what Shasta might have seen in him besides being the only doper she knew who didn’t use heroin, freeing up a lot of time for both of them.
Sortilège
High Mass
0:29:46 Hope Harlingen (Jena Malone) has a case for Doc. She tells Doc about Amethyst, her daughter with a probably not dead musician whom Doc must look for. Doc gets on her case.
I don’t know if you have the stomach for it but… This is what we had her looking like. Everyone helpfully pointed how the heroin was actually coming through the breast milk.
Hope hands Doc a photo of her baby
MRW I see my pay check after taxes
0:30:06 Hope mentions she has new teeth because heroin “sucks the calcium from your body like a vampire”. She does have a toothy grin.
[This scene will become relevant toward the end of the film. In short, an Indo-Chinese heroin cartel working off of a boat called the Golden Fang is making money off of every aspect of the heroin trade. They make money 1) selling the drug, 2) helping people kick the drug and 3) replacing the wrecked teeth of those addicted to the drug.]
0:33:04 Doc, posing as a lawyer, pays a visit to Sloane Wolfmann (Serena Scott Thomas). While there he gets the name of a sanatorium owned by the family (Chryskylodon) and admires Mickey Wolfman’s collection of ties emblazoned with the naked images of the women he’s slept with – Shasta is an item on this list. The gentlemen knows how to tie one one.
Stuck up like a sadists candle
0:37:27 Doc speaks with Penny Kimball (Reese Witherspoon) “part time squeeze and Deputy D.A.”. She sets him up for an interview with the FBI, and not of the job sort. 0:41:16 The FBI is in town to investigate Mickey’s kidnapping.
Doc: Aren’t we all in the same business? Agent Borderline (Timothy Simons): There’s no need to be insulting.
0:41:48 Three of the four FBI agents finger their noses? Is it a tell or a signal? Regardless, they’re very nosy.
You can pick your nose and pick your friends, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose
0:44:48 Jade (Hong Chau, the Asian woman from Chick Planet – the sex trailer that doubled as the Channel Estates sales office) meets Doc and tells him a bald bloke with a swastika tattooed on his face (A.K.A. Puck Beaverton) is the one who knocked him out. She also brings up a boat: the Golden Fang, a schooner used to transport heroin. The boat, then, is good for trips.
[IMO, the Golden Fang represents the Future. It’s referred to in only the vaguest of terms and Doc never gets to board it. We, the viewers, are permitted glimpses of it on the horizon, but are given no concrete details about its contents.]
“It’s a little hazy to me, too!”
0:47:32 Doc meets Hope Harlingen’s husband, Coy (Owen Wilson), the musician who was rumoured not to be dead. It would seem that rumour was accurate. 0:48:06 Sauncho Smilax, Esq (Benicio Del Toro), Doc’s lawyer, tells Doc the Golden Fang originates from near the Bermuda Triangle.
Sauncho: See, the problem with this vessel is trying to find out anything.
[More parallels reinforcing my belief that the Golden Fang symbolises the future.]
They donned their flood waiting trousers and sat on the dam
0:50:31
Doc: Are you emotionally involved with the boat? Sauncho: She’s not just a boat, Doc. She’s much more than that.
That’s what I keep trying to tell everyone. 0:52:41 Sauncho says that Mickey may have taken the boat out for a ride and that he’s working in cahoots with the FBI to buy property in Las Vegas so that the Mafia doesn’t buy up the entire strip. I’m starting to realize this entire film is one long explanation.
“70? It’s 69 plus this finger.”
0:54:46 Doc to Penny on the telephone.
You can bring a bar of soap and clean my feet.
I’m not too proud to admit that, like the FBI nose pickers, I have no idea what this is meant to represent. #ThisStinks
Pussy Footing
[Note: Con-day, a reader far more intelligent than I, elucidated this point on my post at the Inherent Vice Message Board: “On dirty feet: In the book it’s explained that crude oil has been washing ashore on Gordita Beach, and that regular feet cleaning has necessarily become part of the beach lifestyle.”]
0:56:11 Penny pops over despite the feet and tells Doc that Coy, in addition to not being dead, is a police informant. He faked his death in order to return to his wife and child and stop being a ‘snitch’ for the police. Dead men sell no tales. 1:04:54 Jade informs Doc that Chick Planet is a front for the Golden Fang to launder money. As it’s borderline prostitution, I suspect it’s less of a ‘front’ and more of a ‘behind’.
“I think you sat in bird vomit…”
1:10:14 Glenn Charlock’s sister Clancy (adult actress Belladonnaappearing under her birth name, Michelle Sinclair) shows up at Doc’s office and says Mickey wanted to use all of his money to build a free commune in the desert. She also implies that Puck Beaverton [see 44:48] killed Glenn and kidnapped Mickey. She neglects to explain why we should care. Then there’s this:
Clancy: He [Puck] is a major-league asshole. Doc: Sounds like you dated. Clancy: Him and his room-mate. Doc: Two at a time? Clancy: That’s my preference.
[Mickey was interested in building a free commune in the desert, but that was before boarding the Golden Fang and seeing the future.]
1:11:20 According to Clancy, Shasta was “deeply in love” with Mickey. Doc returns to his office to spray his still bare and even dirtier feet with room freshener. Foot Message? 1:12:00 Nice example of the hippie music in the film (“Les Fleurs”, by Minnie Riperton) 1:13:22 A postcard from Shasta has Doc reminiscing about a romantic moment, once upon a Ouija board. Déja voodoo. 1:18:25 Doc visits Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd (Martin Short) in a giant golden fang. He’s the executive leader of a Dentistry syndicate called the Golden Fang. Think of him as a King with a dental crown.
Built tooth & nail
1:20:18 While there, Doc stumbles upon a room full of young people receiving dental care because their heroin addiction sucks the calcium from their teeth. Their dental plan is better than their life plan.
[See 30:06 – This is yet one more way for the Golden Fang to make a profit off the heroin.]
1:22:51 We meet Japonica Fenway (Sasha Pieterse – a serial escapee from the Chryskylodon asylum) because this film is simply a parade of characters meant to distract us from the lack of a coherent story line. 1:24:49
The writing’s on the wall and it’s still not enough
1:25:12 Bigfoot calls Doc to say the Dr Blatnoyd has been drilled…in the neck. By fangs. What a pain! 1:26:18 Here’s where it gets very complicated to the point it’s a WTF!? Bigfoot and Doc meet. Their conversation is as dense as a religious fanatic in science class.
“He’s so level headed!”
1:31:38 Doc travels with Sortilège to the mental institution [see 33:04 and 1:20:18] called Chryskylodon, which means ‘gold animal tooth’ in ancient Greek. It’s all Greek to me.
[FWIW, Sortilège exists only as some sort of Greek chorus but occupies no space on this material plane. Proof of that is this scene, where she’s speaking to Doc in his car, yet when he parks, she’s disappeared back into the ether.]
1:34:26 In the institute’s meditation room, Puck Beaverton (Keith Jardine), wearing a naked Shasta tie, attracts Doc’s attention. Mine too, but I care far less about this than he, I suspect.
What’s worse: Nazis or Naked Embroidery? It’s a tie!
1:33:58
It was occurring to Doc now – something Jade said once about vertical integration. That if the Golden Fang can get its customers strung out, why not turn around and sell them a program to help kick? Get them coming and going. Twice as much revenue. As long as American life was something to be escaped from, the cartel could always be sure of a bottomless pool of new customers.
Sortilège
1:35:20 Owen Wilson promotes my site!
He’s saying, “Watch The Film”
1:35:26 The head of the institute (Jefferson Maysas Dr. Threeply):
Which brings us to the institute’s own Zen garden, imported from Kyoto. But each textured pebble, each grain of white sand is transported and reassembled here exactly in place by a team of some of our more obsessive patients.
1:36:32 Doc finds Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts) in the asylum. The FBI has placed him here because Mickey wanted to give away all of his money in his “bad hippy dream”. He sounds a lot more sane when he tells Doc to “Go away, little hippy. Go away.” To be fair, we all sound more sane when we say this.
“Can’t tell if I’m stupid…or if it’s the film.”
1:38:47 Mickey re-emerges and builds the casinos the FBI wanted him to build. #YouBet 1:40:59 Then, suddenly, just like that, Shasta shows up at Doc’s place and I wonder why this film hasn’t ended yet. 1:43:44 Al K Hall nudity alert: Shasta stands before Doc in her full frontal skin asking him what kind of girl he needs. ‘Naked’ would seem to be his response. 1:46:43 Shasta touches herself while describing how much she enjoyed being treated badly by Mickey. This so Doc will give her a little spanking and a punishment bonk. “Hippy Shades of Grey”
“I’d like another piece, please.”
1:50:31 Shasta explains she got her necklace on a boat ride, which probably means the Golden Fang. This is the same style of necklace Puck will wear later.
Shasta: They told me I was precious cargo that couldn’t be insured because of Inherent Vice. Doc: What’s that? Shasta [smiling]: I don’t know.
That makes all of us, then. 1:51:37
Sortilège: Inherent Vice in a marine insurance policy is anything you can’t avoid. Eggs break, chocolate melts, glass shatters and Doc wondered what it meant when it applied to ex-old ladies.
That clears everything up not at all.
[In fact, Shasta represents time, especially the passing of time, and this is something that cannot be avoided (like eggs breaking). Implicit in this idea is that it’s not worthwhile to mourn the passing of time, as it’s something “you can’t avoid.”]
1:54:26 Penny gives Doc gets access to Adrian Prussia’s (Peter McRobbie) police record, and he learns Prussia is basically a hit man for the cops. This was back in the day before they started doing it for themselves. 2:00:22 Doc goes to meet Prussia but is introduced instead to Puck Beaverton (who is wearing the same necklace Shasta wore when he punished her with his sex).
Keeping a breast of the situation
The giant man gives Doc some PCP laced marijuana and then handcuffs him to a pipe. Proof that marijuana is truly bad for you. 2:01:20 WTF!? While under the influence of PCP, Doc’s able to pick the lock of his handcuffs with the piece of a credit card with Shasta’s name on it that he keeps on his shoe? PCP is an open the gateway drug. 2:02:36 Doc injects Puck with the drug cocktail and then shoots Prussia. Isn’t this how World War I started? 2:05:06 Bigfoot is also there and stows many of the bales of drugs in Doc’s car. Is it to frame him like a picture of Snowden in the NSA headquarters?
The short arm of the law
2:06:10 Crocker Fenway (Martin Donovan), calls and says the PCP is his. He’s got more drugs than a Columbian medicine cabinet. 2:08:24 Mr Fenway insinuates that he killed Dr Blatnoyd for corrupting his daughter (Sasha Pieterse as Japonica Fenway). That’s ‘insinuate’ with extra ‘sin’. 2:11:16 Doc negotiates with Fenway to return the drugs in exchange for Coy’s safety, after Coy quits his job as police informant and moves back in with his family. It sounds to me like he could’ve also asked for some cash as well, but he’s a hippy so it doesn’t mean the same thing to him as it does to people.
She can’t stomach the film either
2:13:41 They make the trade and Doc is given a credit card for Coy with the message “Well done, welcome back to the main herd, safe journeys.” ‘Safe trips’ might be more appropriate for this film. 2:16:04 Doc drops Coy off at his house and I can’t help but feel there was a lot of energy spent and wasted getting us from the beginning of the film to this point. The book was no doubt more complex but this film is less interesting than an old episode of Columbo. 2:16:24 In under two minutes, the Golden Fang is seized by the Department of Justice. Well, that was as anticlimactic as sex on quaaludes. 2:21:48 Shasta and Doc drive into the night with no destination more specific than…THE FUTURE! Ooooooh.
“Your door is open and I can see your bum.”
[Thus the conclusion to the three cases I mentioned at the outset of this post are as follows. 1) Michael ‘Mickey’ Wofmann returns to his family and rejoins the establishment, 2) Coy Harlingen rejoins his family, and 3) the Golden Fang operation is closed by the authorities. This film tries too hard to be arty and not hard enough at everything else.]
When to Follow: When you want your time dead but not wasted and you have nothing to kill it with
Where’s This Found: Inherent Vice is an orgy of characters, and like an orgy it’s hard to keep them all straight. Paul Thomas Anderson usually does a better job of running multiple story lines than this jumble of scenes he’s collected in a giant pile of WTF!? Intellectuals will tell you it’s a great film but won’t be able to say why, only that they don’t understand it so it must be brilliant. Personally, I refuse to be duped. Out of a possible 10, I have 5 F’s to give
What To Feedback: What is your favourite Paul Thomas Anderson film?
I shall be dissecting Zombeavers, examining the body of work and analysing its samples to determine if it’s killer or toxic. So read on only if you’ve already seen Zombeavers, or don’t plan to.
[NOTE: In order to review this film as thoroughly as possible, I’ve found myself in the uncomfortable position of being constrained to include some NSFW photos. If nudity offends you, please read another of my critiques.]
Any party with people over 30
0:01:18 Joseph (Bill Burr) and Luke (John Mayer!) – two blue collar types – are transporting medical waste in a van.
Joseph: You know, I dated a guy once.
Luke: Could I hear all about it?
Joseph: I mean, there’s not a lot to tell. It’s like one of the easiest weeks in my life, other than the sex. That was brutal. You know, it’s not the dick, it’s the whiskers, man. Just creeps you out. Yeah, we just agreed on everything. “Want to get some beers?” “Yeah.” “Want to watch the game?” “Absolutely.”
Wait, what? Less than 2 minutes into this film and it’s already genuinely funny? No one warned me this was supposed to be good.
Me, my selfie, and I
0:01:53
Luke: My friend told me I can’t shit in his house any more.
Joseph: Isn’t that the worst?
Sounds like a shitty deal.
0:02:25 Texting while driving, Joseph hits a deer and, in the process, a barrel of medical waste falls off the back of the truck and into a neighbouring lake. That Luke warned him well enough in advance not to hit the deer taints the film with a film of WTF!?
Deer on the grill
0:04:22 Stylish opening credits. #Credit
Drawing Blood
0:05:21 A young blonde bird (Lexi Atkins as Jenn) is crying in a petrol station loo and hash tagging out her breakup with a bloke named Sam. She later joins two other girls in a motorcar filled with luggage, because girls come with a lot of baggage.
Proof that Lexi Atkins has good taste and a good sense of humour:
Lexi Atkins favourites and retweets my commentary on Zombeavers
0:07:15 Jenn’s boyfriend cheated on her (boys are what they have: dicks) so the trio is getting away for the weekend. One lass, Zoe (Cortney Palm), has a dog – dogs in horror films always finish as monster bait.
About not inviting the boyfriends…
Mary (Rachel Melvin): We know that’s asking you to give up a lot.
Zoe: Only about six inches.
Followed by… Dick pics! (Al K Hallnudity alert, if Al were gay.) I see where this film is going because I’ve come this way before.
3 Stooges: Scary, Slow and Churly
0:08:28 A young lad is attacked from behind by a shadow making pig noises. I was led to believe there would be atrocious special effects and not cheap shots.
0:10:38 After the younger women arrive at the cabin, the neighbour lady, Myrne Gregorson (Phyllis Katz), comes over to greet the younger women. When Zoe sarcastically reassures Mrs Gregerson that they’ve never had sex in their lives, Myrne Gregerson says,
My daughter’s a total fucking bitch, too. A real whore. Sometimes she brings people home, I don’t even know what sex they are. And I’m not saying anything negative about them – I’m a very very liberal woman – but my daughter is a real piece of work…and not that attractive.
0:13:42 Al K Hall nudity alert: Zoe removes her bikini bra to tan without tan lines and either the air is nippy or she’s very happy.
“I showed Mark Hamill my boobs!” [NB In Sushi Girl]
a text tattoo on the inside of her right arm that reads “In peace with justice / In harmony with nature”
a gecko with the initials LP (for ‘Lake Powell’, not ‘Loves Pauly’)
the quote “Float Upon Sturdy Waters” on her side
a Palm (hey, like her name) with an eye on it in the other side.
Marked for life.
0:14:54 Perhaps the scariest thing about this film is that the actresses swam in this cesspool. I wonder what’s happening to their beavers now.
You Scum!
016:21 LOL, Zoe covers up when they spot a bear. She refuses to bear her breasts.
Bear Breasts
0:17:32 We’re introduced to Smyth (Rex Linn), with a’y’, “in case you need to write me a cheque sometime.” He’s a hunter who tells all the girls to cover up, and he doesn’t mean the “politician in Thailand” sense.
Smyth: What brings you across the lake?
Jenn: We were looking for beavers.
Smyth: Well hell, ain’t we all?
I give you my solemn word that this review will have fewer ‘beaver’ puns than the film. The score is 1 for me [see 14:54] and 1 for the film.
Holds his gun like this because he’s a little backwards
0:22:01 Mary’s hot boyfriend Tommy (Jake ‘Ever so’ Weary), Jenn’s cheating boyfriend Sam (Hutch Dano), and Zoe’s boyfriend Buck (Peter Gilroy) show up in a predictable surprise. The second act of the film begins its quick descent into mediocrity. Seriously, Zoe is the badass of the group and we’re to expect this is the man she’s chosen for her beau?
He was told to wear protection
0:24:31
Oh! I feel like a Power Ranger.
Buck fornicating Zoe
And I hoped the zombeavers would be the most irrealistic thing about this film.
0:25:12 Sam tries to explain the photo of him kissing another girl that appeared on Facebook.
I know it looks bad. I do. But I was drunk.
Said every boy ever at least once.
“I’ve got some wood for your beaver.”
(That’s 2 ‘beaver’ puns for me, 1 for the film.)
0:27:28 The zombeavers arrive, and not a minute too soon. One is waiting for Jenn before she gets in the shower. Am I the only one who gets completely undressed before getting in the shower?
“Get out! Can’t you see I’m in the tub!”
0:29:02 After the zombeaver attacks Buck, Tommy beats it to death with a baseball bat. Technically, beat it to another death.
0:29:53
Mary: That was rabies?
Tommy: Yeah, probably. Then again, I’ve never seen a real beaver before up close so…
Buck: Me neither.
Zoe: Well maybe you should try going down on me once in a while, Buck.
(That’s 2 for the film.)
0:31:07 WTF!? This is not the same lake the girls want swimming in.
That escalated quickly
0:32:58
Buck: Sorry Sam didn’t kill anything, because that would be the only beaver he’s getting this weekend.
Jenn: Will you please stop with the beaver jokes?
(#3 for the film, still 2 for me.)
0:33:35
So, you seen the mysterious photo?
Sam to Mary while on the float in the lake
And just like that I understand Jenn’s best friend Mary is the girl Sam was kissing.
0:35:24 One of the beavers bites off Buck’s foot. There are beavers afoot.
0:36:46 Lol, Jenn, in the cabin, can’t use the phone as the zombeavers chewed through the phone lines. Dam beavers.
Now that’s out of line
0:38:29 Meanwhile, Sam throws the dog off of the raft [see 7:15] to lure the beavers away so the humans can just stand there watching the beavers leave, rather than jumping in and swimming to safety as they’d planned.
0:38:48
“The smell killed it!”
0:39:31 Suddenly, it’s instantly night and nothing has changed except the clothes. The youths apparently have been standing around the kitchen looking at the beaver Jenn pinned to the counter with a knife for six hours. I’ve had more fun paying tax.
“Dam, I’ve already had beaver today.”
(3 – 3 tie on the ‘beaver’ puns.)
0:41:47 Zoe told Jenn (and the ever-so-sexy Tommy) that the girl kissing Sam in the picture was Mary. Thank God the beavers choose this moment to attack because the high school drama club is wearing on my last nerve.
0:44:02 Tommy carries Buck and Zoe carries his foot in her handbag while they make a break for the car and, hopefully, escape. This would surprise me more than zombie beavers.
A role he can sink his teeth into
0:45:28 WTF!? In the neighbour’s house, a zombeaver kills a dog and hides its body without making a sound in the space of 6 seconds while thebloke is petting the dog!
0:47:06 There’s a twig in the middle of the road, blocking the pick-up truck. Tommy decides Buck’s condition is not as bad as he stated because he’s sending Zoe to take Buck back to the house in the car. Tommy, on the other hand, goes it alone, on foot, with some weapons he’s found in the back of a pick-up truck. It would seem his minutes are numbered.
0:47:08
Buck: Zoe, I’m sorry I never ate your pussy. I’m gonna go back and eat all of it one day.
Zoe: It’s OK, baby. We’re gonna get out of here, OK?
Buck: It just smells so bad down there.
That’s below the belt.
The things she won’t do for a role
0:47:54 Tommy is killed by the beavers who made a tree fall on him. Meanwhile, Smyth returns and rescues Zoe and Buck, taking them back to the house. Additionally, his truck sits on the opposite side of the fallen tree from the car, thus impossible to use to return to the cabin, but on the right side to drive to safety. I call WTF!?
0:49:22
This just in. If you are receiving this broadcast, barricade your doors and windows and do not leave your home. Unless you want the deal of the century! Come on down to Ashland Toyota!
Radio advert
What I suspect is a double reference. The first, clearly, is a nod to the original Night of the Living Dead, which included this radio announcement.
The main advice news reporters have been able to get from official sources is to tell private citizens to stay inside their homes behind locked doors. Do not venture outside for any reason until the nature of this crisis has been determined, and until we can advise what course of action to take.
“Do you see what I’m driving at?”
The second, possible, reference is in the name of the Toyota dealership: ‘Ash’ is the lead character in the brilliant The Evil Dead series.
0:52:03
Smyth: Filthy hairy beavers.
That makes 4 ‘beaver’ puns for the film.
0:52:31 Smyth arrives back at the house with Zoe and Buck but the others have boarded up the door so the newly arrived have to run across a field to get to the neighbour’s house. Evidently, they cannot take the truck they’ve just arrived in because of all the WTF strewn about.
Sam was reluctant to play sports with the big boys
0:56:01
We cannot turn against each other right now. That is exactly what the beavers would want.
Sam to Jenn and Mary
There are not enough lines like this to hold up this film.
0:58:54 Mary decides to go to bed because all of the excitement is putting her to sleep. Jenn joins her in bed, not for the lesbian scene that’s set up for us, but for Jenn to turn into a zombie beaver (which, let’s be honest, is nearly the same thing as a lesbian).
Dam dentists
1:00:32 Buck now changes into a zombeaver and WTF!? because he was bitten hours before Jenn and she changed before he did. He then proceeds to bite Smyth’s head off.
1:01:52 Lol, Jenn slapping at the ground with her giant beaver tail is original. #CreditDue.
Nice Tail
1:03:06 Zoe, being chased by the neighbor lady, leaps through the first floor window. She hits the ground and is unconscious, making her more down and out than a hobo alcoholic on his last beer.
1:03:16
Whack-a-beaver
1:04:57 Rather than try to protect themselves from the army of killer rodents. Sam and Mary decide to have sex on the sink. I hope they have protection…and condoms.
1:05:14 A beaver gnaws the electrical wiring so that he’s on fire and can scurry into the curtain to set the cabin on fire. This film is warming up like a zombie in a microwave.
Leave it to Beaver
1:05:32 Jenn comes up through the floor and gnaws off Sam’s wood. Like a meal with no starter or main course, it’s just desserts.
1:05:58 Just when it seems Mary is going to burn to death in the house, Zoe drives the truck through the wall and into the cabin. Mary hops in, but as they drive away, the hunter has become a zombeaver (he changed a lot faster than the first two, WTF you very much) but he’s shooting at the truck with his rifle (WTF, since when do zombies use the skills they had when they were alive… Can zombie doctors perform surgery?). All the fun is bleeding out of this film.
A dead eye
1:06:38 Zoe decides to continue driving but not to continuing looking at the road so she crashes into a tree. The blind driving the blind…
1:07:48 The truck refuses to start…until the last possible moment. They’re driving away in the clear… until Jenn, hiding on the top of the truck, leans over the windscreen. Zoe slams on the brakes…and Jenn falls to the road, then Zoe runs over her head. Basically, the film has turned into a giant cliché, as though all the other zombie films bit this one and infected it with their clichés.
1:08:44 The ladies have to abandon the truck because it can’t get around or over a branch lying in the road? WTF!?
Plus, if the car is on the other side of the branch, why don’t they drive it to safety?
1:10:26 Mary turns into a zombeaver. Zoe kills her with an axe. And many shites were not given that day.
1:10:47 Zoe decides to start limping for some reason. Perhaps, like this film, she’s on her last leg.
1:11:24
Luke: Hey, you see that girl?
Joseph [while texting]: Yeah, I see her.
Luke: I trust you.
Dead end
At least they nailed the ending.
Roll blooper reel and credits
(Bill Burr and John Mayer are still the funniest part of this film)
1:17:03 Post-credit scene: A bee sucks a dead zombeaver’s dried blood (for the WTF!? nectar) and, infected, returns to the hive for a sequel. Which, to be honest, is actually a great idea for a film.
Zombees: get it?
Tally Ho’
Final ‘beaver’ pun tally: 4 for the film and only 3 for me: I win!
WTF!?’s: 11 biting ones
When to Follow: A Saturday afternoon when you have an hour to burn (yes, I mean marijuana) before you go out to party.
Where’s This Found: The opening scene was so original… how could they let the film devolve into clichés? Like a date with me, this is a one 1 hour 17-minute disappointment. Out of a possible 10, I have 5 F’s to give
What To Feedback: I’ve included some link to NSFW content in this post. How do you feel about this?
I shall be thoroughly digesting The Human Centipede 3, examining its movements and poking through its samples to see if it is in good taste or hard to swallow. So read on only if you’ve already seen The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence), or don’t plan to.
Warning: The subject matter of this film is not for everyone. The pictures used below are mostly NSFW (Not Safe for Whomever), proceed at your own risk. You Have Been Warned.
“The end of the queue for the loo is back there.”
0:00:51 Like a movie centipede, this film begins with the end of the second film.
William ‘Bill’ Boss: I fuckin’ told you these movies would be shit, and they are pure shit. Literally, they stink.
Like your grammar. #figuratively
Bill (Dieter Laser, the mad scientist from the first Human Centipede) is speaking to his deputy, Dwight Butler – get it? ‘Butler’ because he’s an assistant (Dwight is played by Laurence R. Harvey, – the ‘star’ of Human Centipede 2). Babies got back in the same film.
About to make their own human centipede
0:02:52 There is also a perky blonde assistant (adult film star Bree Olson is Daisy, as in ‘chain’ – get it?) who says she enjoys the Human Centipede series, and that everyone is talking about them. This while she gives Bill Boss a pedicure. Bill implies this isn’t the only job she does on her knees.
Three boobs
0:07:15 Boss is the warden of the George H. W. Bush State prison [the name isof ex US president George W. Bush’s father], a failing prison in Texas. To punish a prisoner (Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister as Inmate 178), Boss breaks the convict’s ‘masturbation arm’. After this breakup, his left arm will become his ‘significant other’.
0:12:28 Boss receives a package containing dried clitorises. He eats a handful, claiming tribal Africans ingest them for unbelievable strength. He may not be that wrong judging from the butch lesbians I know.
“Turn around and back up my hard drive!”
0:12:42 Boss receives a phone call from a voice which states,
It’s your death squad, coming to rape you to pieces.
I only mention this as ‘rape’ is referenced constantly in this film as a threat. Perhaps it’s symbolic of what this film is doing to my eyes.
0:14:43
Torah new asshole
0:19:15 William ‘Billy’ Boss waterboards the prisoner who called in the rape threat with boiling water. The special effects are as hot as the water really is.
Hard boiled criminal
0:20:11 With all of the terrible acting and special effects, the most unbelievable thing about this film is that it has Eric Roberts in it. Maybe his sister Julia will star in a sequel? #EatShit,Love
0:20:23 For the hearing impaired, the subtitles specify ‘Instrumental music’. As compared to…?
I prefer non-instrumental music
0:23:02 Eric Roberts is the Governor and is upset that the prison’s poor results are making him look bad in an election year. He’s given Boss two weeks to remedy the situation, or Boss will be sacked. Billy could always find work at a hospital cafeteria.
0:30:38 Daisy has a difficult job to give, and Bill hopes she blows it.
0:32:41 Boss eats the prisoners testicles for lunch. He has balls.
Having a ball
0:41:58
I have the answer to all our problems. We’ve got to make a human centipede of our prisoners. Sewn ass to mouth, sharing one digestive system. No more prison fights, no more assaults on guards, no more disrespect. They will literally be on their knees… We don’t gotta deal with their shit no more. They just gotta deal with each other’s.
Dwight
Toilet Paper Dolls
0:49:38 Isn’t this lovely. The prisoners somehow find Boss alone in the cafeteria, where the castrated chap cuts a hole in Boss’s kidney and begins fornication with it while the other prisoners chant “Death rape.” The good news is, because Boss castrated him, he need not worry about getting pregnant. NSFW GIF
0:50:21 But of course, like Tom Six not making The Human Centipede, this is just a dream.
0:51:04 Tom Six cameo (he’s the one to blame for all three Human Centipedes).
Tom Sicks
0:52:03
First of all, Mr. Six, I’d like to say congratulations on your movies. They’ve become a cultural meme. I mean, there’s the South Park episode of the ‘Human Centipad‘, and then there’s the LA porn parody, and the cat toys…
Dwight is a fan boy. This scene is like The Office set in hell.
0:56:50 The group will create a Human Centipede with the prisoners. Dwight has made some modifications to the original Centipede to make it easier for prisoners to be released. This period comes at the end of their sentence.
0:58:44 The prisoners are shown both Human Centipede 1 & 2 before they’re informed of their fate. It leaves a bad taste in their mouths.
Re-runs
[The scene they’re shown is the same one I made a GIF of here.]
[This scene also features Akihiro Kitamura as Inmate 333. Akihiro played the ‘lead’ of the human centipede in the first instalment of the franchise.]
Jazz Hands!
0:59:44 After hearing of their fate, the prisoners become like this film: revolting.
1:05:07 Either Dieter Laser confuses acting with shouting, or he rehearses in a bowling alley on an airport runway.
Barrel of fun
1:06:08 Boss is shooting prisoners in their cells with a tranquilliser rifle. Instead of ‘fish in the barrel’ it’s ‘jailbirds in the can’.
1:07:47 It’s not acting, but it’s this.
MRW I don’t have to watch The Human Centipede
1:12:44 One prisoner has a stoma, a hole in his abdomen through which urine and faeces pass. As Boss can find no place for him in the chain, he sticks a pistol in the open wound and fires. Why didn’t he just make the bloke the final person in the Centipede? This film could use a problem solver of my magnitude. Someone who thinks outside the bottom.
1:13:27 The doctor, who chooses to stand behind a man being shot at, promotes my website.
He’s saying, “Watch The Film!”
1:14:22 Boss forces himself on (and in) Daisy, who is in the prison hospital after being beaten into a coma during the riot.
Who’s sicker?
1:17:58 I can’t help but suspect many of these scenes exist for the sole reason of making this movie last longer. This film, like a genuine human centipede, has a lot of filler.
1:19:29
A film based on assholes
1:20:22 Tom Six has returned, playing himself, the director of the Human Centipede films and curious to see one in real life. Interesting bit of trivia, he acts as badly as he directs.
1:21:51
Drawn Together
1:22:41 When he sees Bill Boss is sawing off the arms of a prisoner, Tom Six vomits. Now he knows how we feel.
1:26:08
You talk so much shit your ass must get jealous.
Governor Hughes to Bill Boss
There it is, I’ve found it! The only quotable line in the film.
1:28:08
You don’t have to take this shite
1:29:07 Daisy is included in the chain as well. Dwight is upset, as he wanted to click that link.
1:31:22 For the prisoners on death row and those condemned to a life sentence, there is the human caterpillar. It’s resembles the human centipede but has no arms and, like Tom Six, no legs to stand on.
More like Human Centi-speed bump
1:35:17 Bill shoots the doctor over his disappointment at the governor’s rejection of the plan. Like someone in the Centipede, I don’t see the link.
1:36:52 Governor Hughes returns and says he is 100% behind the project.
1:38:14 Bill kills Dwight and masks it as suicide so that Dwight can’t claim credit for the idea. Dwight needed Bill like a hole in the head.
Something crossed Dwight’s mind
Roll credits
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: As the film is one, giant WTF, there was only 1 really strained one
When to Follow: More interesting than the 2nd one, not as good as the first (which wasn’t good, either), watch this when you have nothing left to live for.
Where’s This Found: The Human Centipede series of films is like a human centipede passing the same shite down over and over. The concept has already been processed through two films so now the shock value is as diluted as diarrhoea and just as palatable. The biggest surprise of this film was Laurence R. Harvey. The fact he was a passable actor here makes his performance in The Human Centipede 2 look all that much better. Out of a possible 10, I have 2 F’s to give
I shall be exploring Kingsman‘s secrets, investigating its file and breaking its code to see if it’s an asset or defect. So read on only if you’ve already seen Kingsman, or don’t plan to.
0:00:34 Starts off with ‘Money for Nothing‘ on a boom box in the Middle East in 1997. Let’s hope ‘Money for Nothing’ is not a commentary on this film.
0:02:11 During an interrogation in a rebel stronghold, a soldier sacrifices himself on a grenade to save Galahad / Harry Hart (Colin Firth) and some other blokes. Galahad then tells a survivor, “Welcome to Kingsman.” That’s one tough entrance exam.
0:03:47 Harry gives the dead soldier’s widow a medal of honour with a number on the back. If she calls that number and gives the code word, she will be given a favour, the nature of which she’s free to choose. As the favour she wants is for Harry to feck off and die, he gives the medallion to her young son, Gary.
I’d call and ask WTF!? Seriously, she can call only once but ask for anything? What’s to stop her for asking for a billion pounds or being the leader of a small country? What would you ask for?
0:06:34 Seventeen years later, miscellaneous hoodlums hold a university professor hostage in a snow-covered chalet in the mountains of Argentina. The soldier who’d been welcomed to Kingsman earlier (Jack Davenportas Lancelot) arrives to rescue said professor. All of the Kingsmen have names from Round Table, so let’s everyone have a good knight!
0:06:58 Lancelot defeats all the thugs but when he meets a woman with ski knife feet (the striking Sofia Boutella as Gazelle) he is of two minds. Literally. She splits him like a banana.
“Hold my whiskey, I have to split.”
I’m pleasantly surprised to learn this movie is not the Harry Potter in spy school film I’d feared it was from the poster, but bears instead a 15-certificate. Harry Potter with an R rating: Hairy Rotter.
0:07:42 Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) arrives and introduces himself with a lisp as the head evil doer. He then adds he vomits profusely at the sight of violence. Sounds like his career path is somewhat slick.
0:10:26 Back in London, Harry / Galahad is briefed by his boss (Michael Caine as Arthur) and an aide (Merlin, Mark Strongfrom Kick Ass, doing a very bad Scottish accent on half of his words and an American accent on the others). That the entire meeting is conducted through the lenses of secret glasses pleases the 10-year-old in me (yes, that’s a euphemism).
“Lens me your ears.”
0:10:41 Merlin informs us Professor James Arnold (Mark Hamill), the kidnapping victim, is no longer missing but has returned to Imperial College. Like a child in September, he’s back in school.
0:12:32 Gary ‘Eggsy’ Unwin (Taron Egerton as the dead soldier’s lad) has grown up and lives in poverty with his mother and her chav insignificant other (Geoff Bell as Dean) and their baby spawn. It’s like Harry Potter’s step-family…if they were Muggers rather than Muggles.
[NB: The news on the telly is about global warming.]
0:13:46 At the pub, Eggsy boosts the car keys of a young lad who belongs to Dean’s gang (to the tune of ‘Bonkers’ by Dizzee Rascal & Armand Van Helden). Eggsy’s riding Dean’s car while Dean’s riding his mum.
“Guinness!? Don’t you know this is a gay bar?”
0:17:24 After getting arrested for this joy ride, Eggsy calls the number on the back of the medallion, gives the secret code and is released from holding faster than a rich white male.
“What kind of candy, mister?”
0:19:01 Picking him up from jail, Galahad takes the kid to a pub and recites his spy qualifications. We already know he’s dexterous (pinching the keys), good behind the wheel (outran the cops in reverse gear) now we learn he’s also a genius and an excellent gymnast. He’s more than just a petty face.
0:20:52 Nice fight scene between Galahad and the youth gang. Well filmed and interesting, although I call WTF on the amnesia dart shot from a wrist watch.
Beer with a head
0:25:17 After letting him get thrashed by his step father to test his silence under pressure, Galahad tells Eggsy to meet him at Kingsman tailors. On the way there, Eggsy demonstrates his parkour ability in evading the gang. He’s very good on his feet, but I’d like to see how good he is off them.
0:27:42 Origin story…
Since 1849, Kingsman tailors have clothed the world’s most powerful individuals. By 1919, a great number of them had lost their heirs to World War I. That meant a lot of money going un-inherited and a lot of powerful men with a desire to preserve peace and protect life. Our founders realized they could channel that wealth and influence for the greater good. And so began our other venture: an independent, international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion – above the politics and bureaucracy that undermine the integrity of government-run spy organisations. The suit is a modern gentleman’s armour, the Kingsman agents are the new knights.
I still would not want to get shot whilst wearing a suit.
The fourth dummy
0 31:52 Eggsy joins a group of entitled ponces (and two more socially flexible lasses) in an underground bunker where they will be tested to determine who the next Lancelot will be. I predict the final three will be Eggsy, Roxanne / Roxy (Sophie Cookson) – blonde aristocrat who seems willing to sleep outside of her class – and Charles (Edward Holcroft), head dick (or dick head).
0:36:12 The first test is the dorm room filling with water while they sleep. Some of the candidates use shower hoses in the toilet bowl to breathe fresh air but Eggsy uses his fist to break the two-way mirror. Everyone fails, however, because redundant girl is made redundant (Fiona Hampton as Amelia). It was just a question of time, and hers is up.
Wet Dream
0:37:35 Galahad goes to interview the professor, but the professor loses his head – when it explodes all over Galahad’s face.
0:38:44 Want an equivalent of Harry Potter’s owls? To teach responsibility in Kingsman, the youth must choose a puppy that looks like them. Some of my mates already have a head start.
0:44:22 Because Scandinavian Princess Tilde doesn’t agree with Jackson’s plan, Gazelle kidnaps her and kills her guards with surprisingly bad CGI. More like CGI give up.
CGI-ay-ay-ay!
0:46:08
We each spend, on average, 2000 dollars a year on cell phone and Internet usage. It gives me great pleasure to announce those days are over. As of tomorrow, every man, woman, and child can claim free SIM card compatible with any cell phone, any computer and utilize my communication network for free. Free calls. Free Internet. For everyone. Forever.
Valentine
Yes, please! Just show me where to plug my SIM card into my computer. WTF!?
0:57:05 Galahad secures and invitation to Valentine’s mansion where they eat McDonald’s and Valentine implies Galahad is a gentleman spy and Galahad implies Valentine is a “futuristic, colourful megalomaniac”.
Thank you for such a…happy meal.
Galahad when leaving
Because they ate McDonald’s.
The wine should always match the colour of the food box
0:58:06 WTF!? Some of the world’s top leaders are kept prisoner in Valentine’s underground lair, yet intelligence organizations the world over are incapable of looking at the rulers’ agendas and noticing the last appointment they all had was with Valentine? Thus proving once again that “Intelligence Organization” is an oxymoron.
1:0024 The three remaining trainees [see my prediction at 31:52] are drugged and placed on a train track, with the promise of escape if they betray Kingsman. Of course Eggsy and Roxy succeed this test because they have one-track minds. Charlie, on the other hand, gives up Kingsman and is booted from the organisation because he’s a rich pompous arse with a poor track record.
1:08:04 Eggsy is given a tour of the weapons room. Shocking signet rings to electrocute people, cigarette lighter grenades to get lit up, poison pens for poison pen letters (and people), and shoes with a knife in the toe that pack a kick.
“No, we don’t have crab killer.”
1:08:52 Kingsman is not advanced enough to detect the tracer Valentine placed on Galahad, so Valentine pops by the tailor’s and gets a suit, making Galahad look ridiculous. Still not as much as that baseball cap.
Starting Finishing School
1:10:05 As Galahad decides he may as well surveille Valentine in turn, he sends Valentine to a hatter who sells bugged top hats. Because there needs to be a film, Valentine agrees.
1:10:59 As a final test, Arthur gives Eggsy a pistol and instructs him to shoot his dog. Merlin is conducting the same test with Roxy. This may well be the only test I could pass.
1:12:00 Eggsy can’t pull the trigger, Roxy can.
At least the girl’s got balls.
Arthur to Eggsy
If not, she can always take the dog’s.
When you look like a bitch
1:12:46 Eggsy is sent home and Roxy is welcomed as the new Lancelot. Methinks this is not the last we shall hear of Eggsy. Otherwise Eggsy would be over easy.
1:15:34 That didn’t take long. Galahad brings Eggsy back to his house and tells the young man the pistol was loaded with blanks and that the redundant brunette at the beginning didn’t really die but is an employee in IT. I wonder if Roxy isn’t a tad disappointed that her dog didn’t die.
1:17:52 Galahad attends a service in an ultra-conservative American church looking for Valentine. Not seeing his nemesis, he decides to leave, at which point a woman asks…
Woman: What’s your problem?
Galahad: I’m a Catholic whore currently enjoying congress out-of-wedlock with my black, Jewish boyfriend who works at a military abortion clinic. So, “Hail Satan” and have a lovely afternoon, madam.
I need a T-shirt of this.
Rough Sects
1:20:22 A brilliant fight scene in the church where Harry/Galahad goes berserk and begins killing everyone, spurred on by Valentine’s SIM card in his phone. What I find WTF!? is 1) we weren’t informed Harry had the SIM card, and 2) how is Eggsy able to watch the feed of the riot on a tablet in England?
Hot Head
1:23:00 Valentine is waiting for Galahad in front of the church, where he explains how his SIM card functions.
In simple terms, it’s a neurological wave that triggers the centres of aggression and switches off inhibitors.
He should call it ‘tequila’.
1:23:12 This is the scene that makes this film a good film.
Valentine: You know what this is like? It’s like those old movies we both love. Now I’m gonna tell you my whole plan and then I’m gonna come up with an absurd and convoluted way to kill you and you’ll find an equally convoluted way to escape.
Galahad: Sounds good to me.
Valentine: Well, this ain’t that kind of movie.
And neither is Kingsman.
Give it a shot
1:26:43 While speaking to Arthur about the demise of his mentor, Eggsy notices a telltale scar behind Arthur’s ear, which signifies he’s either a member of team Valentine or has had a face lift.
1:26:58 Arthur hasn’t seen it and the camera hasn’t seen it but I know Eggsy just distracted Arthur in order to switch the glasses of Napoleonic brandy. It’s the Princess Bride all over again.
From the maker of XO-Men
1:28:19 WTF!? The premise of this whole film is a bad metaphor? Valentine compares global warming to our bodies getting a fever. The fever is meant to kill the germs, so Valentine postulates the earth is trying to kill humans as we are like bad germs for the planet. He proposes doing the earth’s job for it. He doesn’t mention that the analogy is false because a fever is a cause while global warming is an effect. What if he’d compared global warming to sexual excitement? Would he champion a universal orgy?
Dallas, England
1:30:02 I was right earlier about the drink switching, and now Michael Caine passes out like a high school girl on spring break. Eggsy takes advantage of him… by cutting into his neck with a fountain pen and pulling out a computer chip. There’s a major WTF!? here. Why doesn’t Valentine blow up the chip now that Arthur has been compromised, like he did for Professor Arnold earlier [see 37:35]? Eggsy should be fried.
1:32:48 The neck byte that blows people’s heads off also makes the wearer immune to the effects of the SIM card, but your minutes are numbered.
1:33:44 In order to destroy one of Valentine’s satellites with a portable missile, Roxy is going to go into the atmosphere on weather balloons that will explode when they get too high. I prefer Eggsy’s job. I don’t know what it is, but I prefer it.
1:36:02 Eggsy’s job is to dress as Arthur and infiltrate Valentine’s fortress. He looks gorgeous dressed as Arthur. If he was on my round table, I’d make sure he Came-a-lot.
Economy classy
1:37:41 Eggsy arrives and evidently resembles Michael Caine more than I realize, for like a sober débutante, no one has fingered him yet.
1:38:47
Server: Would Sir care for a drink?
Eggsy (as Arthur): Martini. Gin, not vodka, obviously. Stirred for ten seconds while glancing at an unopened bottle of vermouth. Thank you.
1:43:34 When Roxy’s rocket destroys Valentine’s satellite, he promotes my Website!
It’s supposed to be working! WTF!?
“Is that the new Apple crate?”
1:44:48 Eggsy has to kill Valentine because of a biometric security override. Valentine’s palm came in handy.
1:48:58 Just when Eggsy is trapped like a rat, he tells Merlin to hack into the chips and explode anyone wearing an implant. Hats, and all the rest, off!
Blow your top
Minds blown
1:50:48 Valentine didn’t put an implant in his own head, so he’s able to launch the SIM card attack after borrowing a satellite from a friend. My mates can’t even lend me 5 quid. I need more evil friends.
1:51:23 Llol! Literally laughed out loud. Eggsy finds the Finnish princess locked in a cell and the exchange goes like this.
Princess Tilde: Can you get me out?
Eggsy: If I do, will you give me a kiss? I’ve always wanted to kiss a princess.
Princess: If you get me out right now, I’ll give you more than just a kiss.
…
Eggsy: Sorry, luv, gotta save the world.
Princess: If you save the world, we can do it in the asshole.
Eggsy: I’ll be right back.
Not butt of the joke, but the joke of the butt.
1:51:35 The apocalypse in London, or the afternoon of a football match.
Catching the bus…with your face
1:52:22 WTF!? The button to end the world button isn’t a button? Valentine has to keep his hand on the touch screen for it to work? And this geezer is meant to be on the cutting edge of technology? When it comes to his technological advances, I say ‘Hands off’!
1:55:42 WTF!? Why does Gazelle turn green when she’s attacked? Looks cheesy to me.
[I would love if someone could please explain to me why Gazelle turns green when she’s wounded!]
Breaking the mould
1:56:24 Eggsy throws one of Gazelle’s sword feet through Valentine, killing his arch nemesis. #StabbingPain
1:56:38 Nice touch – Valentine vomits as he dies because he can’t stand the sight of blood, especially his own!
1:58:53 To the strains of ‘Slave to Love’, Eggsy takes a bottle of champagne with two glasses and rescues the princess. She’s a lovely jail-bird.
1:59:20 Directed by Matthew Vaughn. Of course it was! He’s the chap who made Kick Ass and X-Men: First Class. That explains why this film felt so fun.
2:01:28 Eggsy returns to rescue his mum from her boyfriend, whom I thought she’d already left. If she keeps going back to him what’s to stop her from returning again after Eggsy thrashes him this time? Like frozen ready-made fish & chips, I find this unsatisfying.
When to Follow: If you find yourself home on a Saturday night, there are worse ways to kill time.
Where’s This Found: This film’s secret weapon is Matthew Vaughn. While some of his movies may miss their mark (I’m looking at you, Sucker Punch), this hits the bull’s-eye. Out of a possible 10, I have 8 F’s to give
What To Feedback: Can anyone leave a comment and let me know why Gazelle turned green when she was killed?
…because you can watch the film for free before you read the review.
[Full disclosure: The reason I can find no fault with this film has nothing to do with my backing it on Kickstarter (proof)]
00:03 The static on the screen is intentional. Set in Miami in 1985, the film is meant to look as though it’s being viewed on VHS video cassette. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this technology, think Vine recorded in the dark on a roller coaster.
00:27 This is the scene in the trailer that had me saying, “Shut up and take my money.”
Kicking it off with a bang
01:00 An Atari style video game called Laser Unicorns (which is also the name of the production company that made Kung Fury) comes to life when a loser kicks it. The player becomes the game hunted by the machine.
Are you game?
02:20 Kung Fury (David Sandberg, also the film’s writer and director) is called in for backup. He’s going to put the video game out of commission.
Stepping on it
02:34 The quality of the image mimics VHS technology. Bad quality tapes would fall out of sync and automatic tracking would kick in, attempting to re-establish the image. For those of us familiar with the experience of watching VHS, this is uncanny. I feel like I’m 6 months old again.
03:12
He’s got balls of fire
03:44 Back story: After a sentimental bonding session between a young police officer and his older partner (Steven Chew as Dragon), the Kung Fu master (Eos Karlsson as Red Ninja) they were pursuing cuts the moment short. Literally.
With one fatal blow, he hit my partner. I could tell he was dead straight off.
Splitting up
03:58 Before our hero can exact revenge, he is transformed into Kung Fury.
I was hit by lightning and bitten by a cobra. I blacked out and saw images of ancient Shaolin temples and monks, mastering the art of Kung Fu. It was an ancient prophesy about a new form of Kung Fu so powerful only one man could master it. The chosen one.
Origin-al Story.
[NB. In his Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), director David Sandberg poses this leading question, “Also, was it Thor’s lightning bolt that created Kung Fury in the first place?” (See 14:54)]
04:47
Kung Fury: Knock knock.
Red Ninja: Who’s there?
Kung Fury [hesitating]: Knock…cles.
Then he punches the evil doer into a gas container lorry and does the splits, but not in the same fashion as his partner.
He’s got gas
05:44 I love this film like I love meeting a lover who has my sense of humour.
How do you make a dinosaur? Take a dino and spank him!
06:28
I’ve got the mayor up my ass like a fag on Viagra.
Viagra wasn’t released until 1998. I understand this might be an intentional anachronism, but the joke breaks the illusion of the VCR / 1985 theme so I call WTF.
07:21 In the police station, Kung Fury quits the force because he’s forced to have a new partner. He’s a no-nonsense cop who doesn’t go by the book, or read them either.
07:38 Hitler (Jorma Taccone) has come from the past (in the same alley Kung Fury received his powers) and steals a device that is more phone than mobile.
You big phoney
07:57 LOL! I wish this film would be my life partner.
Shoot your mouth off
08:48 Kung Fury’s IT assistant, Hackerman (Leopold Nilsson), was able to not only trace the call, but determine the identity of the caller.
A piece of shitler
Hackerman: His name is Adolph Hitler.
Kung Fury: Hitler… He’s the worst criminal of all time.
Hackerman: Do you know him, sir?
Kung Fury: I guess you could say that. In the 1940s, Hitler was a kung fu champion. He was so good at kung fu that he decided to change his name to Kung Führer. But it didn’t stop there. He knew of the Kung Fury prophesy and wanted to claim the throne… Then one day, he disappeared from the face of the earth and no one has seen him ever since. Until now.
Raise a führer
10:16 Hackerman realizes that, with the right computer algorithm, he can hack Kung Fury back in time, like a time machine. Cracking the code could be BASIC.
12:44 Hackerman slips up and sends Kung Fury too far into the past. Like getting lost in Memory Lane.
Fuck, that’s a laser raptor. I thought they went extinct thousands of years ago.
Kung Fury, after a dinosaur destroys his skate-keyboard with beams from its eyes
13:18 A Viking woman called Barbarianna (Eleni Young) rides in on a giant wolf and kills the dino with the fifty calibre machine gun she’s wielding. This must be how the laser raptors went extinct.
I can tell by her hat she’s horny
Kung Fury: What year is this?
Barbarianna: It’s the Viking age.
Kung Fury: That explains the laser raptor.
13:38 Barbarianna tells Kung Fury to meet her at the God’s Drop, and that Katana will take him there. What she fails to mention is why she can’t. WTF!? Maybe it’s a lone passenger wolf.
Instead, Katana takes him there on the back of a ‘T-Rex’ with lizard skin seats.
A Train Rex
[NB: Helene Ahlson, the actress who plays Katana in the film, is not the same actress who played her in the trailer (Joanna Häggblom). In his AMA, David Sandberg implies Joanna was unavailable for this film.]
M.I.A. (Missing In Acting)
14:54 A colossal Thor (Andreas Cahling) arrives to send Kung Fury back to Nazi Germany, and his flexing muscles sound like leather stretching. Meaning his skin is leathery, I suppose.
16:04 Kung Fury gives Barbarianna his phone number and a phone with which to call him and an advert as well. Adverts in direct-to-video cassette B-films are as 80s as Culture Club and parachute pants.
17:34 Kung Fury arrives in Nazi Germany thanks to Thor’s portal (not a euphemism).
Kung Fury could write for this site!
0:18:24
I’m disarming you.
Before Kung Fury, I never wanted offspring. Now I want this film to bear my children.
Very handy
18:44 A long but original fight scene where Kung Fury attacks the Nazi soldiers in a format based on side-scrolling games in the 80s. Think ‘Donkey Kong Fury’.
20:46 After Hitler apparently kills Kung Fury with a fifty calibre machine gun he keeps in the podium, Thor, Hackerman, Triceracop, Barbarianna, Katana and a T-Rex arrive from a portal to destroy Hitler. Blasts from the past.
21:08 I’m not proud of it, but Hitler promotes this site.
He’s saying ‘Watch The Film’
23:24 After the ensuing battle in which our team of intrepid heroes defeat all the Nazi soldiers, the golden eagle decorating the backdrop of the stage comes to life and fights the T-Rex. Meanwhile, the merry band discover Kung Fury’s body and the film suddenly switches to Saturday morning American style cartoon. Now Kung Fury can have an animated discussion.
[NB. Triceracop shoots every Nazi soldier in the genital region because: “Triceracop can shoot a fly in the dick from 500 yards away, it’s his one skill that he prides on. He got top dick shot at the academy.” – David Sandberg]
24:25 Cartoon Kung Fury speaking to his Cobra spirit animal on a hover platform in heaven.
Kung Fury: Mr. Cobra, I’m a police officer and I need you to send me back to earth. Pronto!
Cobra: I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that. You see, you’re dead.
Kung Fury: You’re under arrest!
Cobra: What!?
Kung Fury: For obstruction of justice!
And just like that, cartoon Kung Fury is sent back to the body of the real Kung Fury, who resuscitates. #Re-animation.
Colourful language
24:54
Kung Fury: What the hell happened?
Hackerman: I hacked away all of your bullet wounds, Kung Fury.
#Reboot
Arm’s length
26:04 Hitler, now alone, becomes obsequious and tries to placate Kung Fury into joining him.
Hitler: We are so alike, it’s almost like we finish each other’s…
Kung Fury: Balls!
Balls!
26:21 Thor brings the hammer down on Hitler and his metal eagle. They disappear in no time…flat.
26:35
Kung Fury: Sorry I ever doubted you, Triceracop. You’re the best damn partner I’ve ever had.
Triceracop: I came back in time for you, Kung Fury, because, damnit, I love you.
They’ve known each other for minutes and these are the first words they’ve ever spoken to each other. Unrealistic? No, American!
“Let me pinch Jurass.”
27:18
Two days earlier, in the future.
We return to the scene where the video game destroys Miami. In a Knight Rider tribute, Kung Fury is arguing with his car’s internal computer, the Hoff9000 (David Hasselhoff), about opening the doors while he drives. With the film and the vehicle, The Hoff is on-board.
Driving Hoff into the sunset
28:20 In the alley where the boom box plays the radio, the golden eagle appears with Hitler enfolded in its wings. The swastika is shown on the edge of the killer video game.
Kung Fury: Wait a minute, I’ve seen that symbol before… somewhere. [flashback] Hitler!
[NB: In his reddit AMA, director David Sandberg says that “[Thor] accidentally opened up a portal to 1985 Miami instead of Killing him [Hitler].”]
Roll credits
David Hasselhoff sings the theme song.
Tally Ho’
WTF!?’s: Only 2 that packed a punch
When to Follow: Right this second. It’s at the top of this post.
Where’s This Found: This film is the reason the internet was invented. The most beautiful thing about it is not it’s ‘cleverness’ although there is certainly enough of that, but the solid ideas that support it. Out of a possible 10, I have 9 F’s to give.
Prints suitable for reposting! 
0:35:36 For those of you interested in the story line, if the little prince arrives at some village for some ceremony with the royal seal then he is automatically King and nothing can be done about it. Thus, Shing wants his brother killed before arriving at said town. Also for those of you interested in the story, I pity you.
