It was around the time that Sam Rockwell sporting a pink unitard and speaking in an offensively cliché gay lisp, picked up a flat cow turd and ate it that I realized that Gentleman Broncos wasn’t really intended to entertain anyone. If anyone is entertained it is purely incidental. The writing in Gentleman Broncos feels like a five year old heard his first fart joke and immediately wrote a movie. Everything is unnecessarily gross and mildly hateful.

I don’t want to say that Gentleman Broncos is the ugliest film I’ve ever seen, but if Trashhumpers didn’t exist Gentleman Broncos would be the ugliest film I’ve ever seen, but at least Trashhumpers had the benefit of being ugly on purpose.

Michael Angarano plays the main character of this movie and that is just too bad. Mr. Angarano has in his short career made been in some pretty great movies, Snow Angels, Sky High, that one movie where Jet Li and Jackie Chan fight each other or some bullshit, Red State, and in this he is totally wasted, as is Sam Rockwell. The only person that comes out of this not appearing bad at there job is Jemaine Clement, who completely buys into the role of Ronald Chevalier and crafts the only character worth watching. In a different, more perfect world, I different writing/directing team would have created Chevalier and made a decent send-up of the notoriously absurd and conceited world of sci-fi novelists. Instead we are stuck with a movie that revels in unearned testicle jokes and unfunny homophobia.

This movie is funny like reminiscing with your elementary school friends about all the poop jokes and girls you used to like, not very funny for anyone else to watch and even the people who experienced it should realize that “One of the lasers hit my boob” screamed by a man in drag isn’t very funny. The whole stupid affair reeks of kids swearing in the cafeteria, none of them really knows what it means and aren’t really committing to the vulgarity just in case adults are listening.

On the topic of puke jokes: I love puke jokes, and in my naïveté I thought all puke jokes were funny, my ignorance was brought to light by Gentleman Broncos, and I hate it for this reason.

There is quite a bit of unhappiness at the filmmakers Hess. After Napoleon Dynamite became the Juno of that year (what was the pre 2008 version of “This years Juno”? “This years Scent of A Woman” maybe?) people started getting down on the husband and wife Mormon moviemaking team, I didn’t bye into it, sure Napoleon Dynamite got old pretty quick and doesn’t hold up, but I still hold Nacho Libre (the couples second film) as one of the funnier movies around. I say all this in order to offset any claims that I was predetermined to hate Gentleman Broncos, which is the very opposite of the truth, the makers of this movie failed in their own right with no help from bias.

The main problem this movie has in terms of “integrity” (or whatever term you’d use for the category of thing sin the writer/director has control over) is that none of it is original. Each of its three acts have their own half assed story arc each stolen from better movies. The first act, taken from Hess’s own Napoleon Dynamite, is about an awkward teen’s romance with an awkward girl. Both movies main characters obviously have little or no experience talking to girls but where Napoleon was a begrudgingly sweet story of weirdoes finding each other Gentleman Broncos’ love story is a mean one where the girl takes advantage of the boy’s earnestness.

The second act is about Michael Angarano selling his book, The Yeast Lords (everything about this movie is off putting), to a local filmmaking group. It is at it’s heart a rip off of Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind, and what a cold, dead heart it is. Be Kind Rewind is a flawed but entertaining film simply because of the creativity of it’s direction, and the simple sweet nature of it’s performances and script. The production of The Yeast Lords has all the surface appearance of a “sweded” movie from Be Kind Rewind (dolls standing in for special effects, using men to play women, bad line readings) but instead of the sense of community the view felt during Be Kind Rewind, Gentleman Broncos urges us to laugh at it’s would be filmmakers, Hess and his cohorts go out of there way to say “Look at these idiots, they think they can make a movie.” Which is ironic, I suppose, because the piss poor production of The Yeast Lords is only slightly more terrible than Gentleman Broncos.

The third act is stolen whole cloth from the Frankie Muniz/Paul Giamatti family vehicle Big Fat Liar, where a corporate bigwig steals a short story and attempts to make big money off it. In Gentleman Broncos, Jemaine Clement steals Michael Anganaro’s sci fi book The Yeast Lord and repurposes it only slightly to become Brutus and Balzaak (one of many really lame jokes about testicles featured in this movie). I have very little good to say in terms of Big Fat Liar except that Gentleman Broncos belongs in the small group of films categorically worse than Big Fat Liar.

Who knew foul-mouthed, king of the slackers Kevin Smith had a movie like Red State in him?  Once known pretty much exclusively for masterful creation of dick and fart jokes Mr. Smith has come out with one of the best thrillers in recent memory.

After the cinematic turd known as Cop Out I was ready to cast Smith aside, and any hopes I had for his next film Red State were pretty much thrown out the window. Then the first trailer came out. It looked gritty and visceral, more Rob Zombie than Kevin Smith, and that creepy voice over by Michael Parks, had me interested, but then thoughts of Bruce Willis telling unfunny jokes during poorly shot and edited car chases danced in my head and I filed my curiosity away.

Well here I sit eating my words.  Red State is an expertly made thriller about religious fanatics think Fred Phelps meets Waco. Three teens are kidnapped after being tricked with the promise of sex. Abin Cooper (Michael Parks) and his flock intend on punishing the three deviants for their wicked thoughts and actions. Soon things escalate and ATF is called to the scene

The story is something that has been seen before, but not in movies very often, this sort of thing happens in the news. Where Smith surprises is in his direction. Usually Smith focuses on the writing and the direction, cinematography, and pacing are left on the back burner. In Red State we have dynamic camera work, and one or two scene that are tenser than anything I’ve seen in years. Never before has Smith had me on the edge of my seat but here I was hold my breath, can’t look away, holy shit what is going to happen, tense for long stretches of the movie.

That isn’t to say that the writing suffers. Red State features some of Smith’s best writing since Dogma (it seems religion gets the best out of him) and it seems he benefits from the almost complete lack of dick and fart jokes.

As far as acting this is really a one-man show for Michael Parks who is allowed long speeches about scripture and “the homosexual” and it’s really enthralling and disturbingly entertaining. John Goodman does well as the ATF agent in charge and Kevin Pollak has a good moment followed by a great moment. The teens are good and Kevin Smith seems to understand how actual modern 18 year olds act and talk.

Perhaps Red State is a fluke, or a momentary rest from his standard output, either way I feel safe in saying that aside from Clerks, Red State will be the one Kevin Smith is remembered for in the long term. Short term it’s a great movie.

A trend I hope everyone has noticed with the recent influx of super hero and comic book films is the post-modern deconstruction of super hero and comic book films.  From Kick-Ass to Special these films take a skewed realistic look a how life would be if people put on a suit and tried to make the streets safe once again. Super is one such film, and it is also likely the perfect post-modern deconstruction of super hero and comic book films.

James Gunn wrote and directed this pitch-pitch-pitch black comedy about Frank (Rainn Wilson) an uninteresting, neurotic, and strange man who all his life felt out of place until a co-worker (Liv Tyler) takes an interest in him. She has a dark past and when the film starts it catches up with her again in the form of Jock (Kevin Bacon). She leaves Frank, which causes him to lose it. In one of the more disturbing and visually brilliant scenes of the film (of which there are many) Frank his touched by “The tip of the tip of the finger of God” which leads Frank to believe his duty to the planet is to put on a costume and tell crime to shut up.

What follows is a pretty much non-stop spree of weirdly depressing violence. I found my self simultaneously cheering on the insanity like it was a Robert Rodriguez movie and squirming like it was an episode of Extras. Rainn Wilson’s Crimson Bolt is an insane creation; imagine if Travis Bickle grew up on Batman and the Punisher, and the addition of his kid sidekick Bolty (Ellen Page) creates possibly the most uncomfortable sexual tension this side of… everything, I have never seen a movie with a more disturbed sexual subplot, ever.

I’ve recently come to fall in love with Kevin Bacon and Super is the latest in his attempt to become… I don’t know, this generation’s Walken… except without the self-parody. His performance as the bad guy Jock is hilarious and deranged and I loved every minute. Same goes for Michael Rooker as Bacon’s right hand, he isn’t given much to do but in true Rooker fashion he makes you notice him.

The effects in this film are perfect. I don’t know if the effects were practical or done in post, I’m leaning toward practical because there are some scenes of violence and gore in this film that are truly disturbing in a way that CG gore has yet to achieve. I couldn’t tell you if the gore is over the top because I’ve never seen someone get hit in the forehead with a pipe wrench, but I imagine it looks quite a bit like it does in Super.

Many people will come away from this film feeling dirty and depressed. Hell I did and my favorite movie starts with a rape, but don’t think this wasn’t intentional. If you look at what Gunn has done here is showing us what super heroes really are. Yeah we like Batman when he punches the Joker or drops a Mafioso from a second story building, and some people (not me) enjoy the adventures of Spider-man, but this sort of vigilantism is not a healthy exercise, and Super is showing us what Kick-Ass should have that there is nothing really good or rational about people putting on masks and taking the law into their own hands.

That isn’t to say that Super will change the way you look at super hero movies. James Gunn is just presenting another way to look at them, and unlike Kick-Ass, Super doesn’t drop the ball in it’s last act, there are no rah rah girl power montages set to Joan Jett songs or bullshit Jet Packs. This is the closest thing to real life as you can get from a super hero movie, and you know what, I love it.

The first four issues of Image comics Lil Depressed Boy written by S. Steven Struble with art by Sina Grace have been collected into a trade paperback. Before I found this trade I had never heard of LDB but my friend picked it up and I gave it a read.

After finishing the book I was confused, not due to plot or too many characters, actually the structure and story of LDB are beautifully small, I was confused as to how others felt about it. Some aspects of it I thought were good to great, and others I found to be cliché and trite.

Starting with the good LDB himself is a pretty good creation, he is a simple white anthropomorphic rag doll that exists in a world of real people, which could possibly turn out to be a Bottomless Belly Button style switch up (i.e. this is how LDB sees himself, while the rest of the world sees a normal dude), his personality is also solid if you ignore the similarities between him and Scott Pilgrim (although Scott was never so depressed).

That’s probably my biggest issue with Lil Depressed Boy; it’s a blatant Scott Pilgrim rip off, except instead of interesting music references and a deep love for video games, Lil Depressed Boy has really obvious music references (True Love Will Find You In the End by Daniel Johnston, really?) and a deep love for Garden State. This is none more obvious than in the Manic Pixie Dream Girl who LDB falls in love with, she is like Ramona Flowers, from the alt chick suicide girls lite wardrobe to the way she knows just what to say right at the perfect moment to make LDB feel better about himself. It’s lazy, cliché, and I’m pretty well over this lazy device.

At the end of the trade they have some pages by other artists and one of them is of LDB and Jazmin (MPDG) in the style of a Scott Pilgrim cover. Some might argue that this is a way to shake off any complaints about aping SP’s style but I really don’t think the creators have a case, just because you reference the thing you are copying doesn’t make it good.
I did find the art to be very good in it’s own way. The simplistic art perfectly compliments the story being told, and I like that, so good job Sina Grace.

So back to my initial question: What did other people think? Well it seems other people are oblivious. After reading every review I could find online I did not see a single one mention the over used Manic Pixie Dream Girl cliché or the fact that this is a retread of Scott Pilgrim with Zach Braff instead of Michael Cera in the lead role. I was really hoping to find some intelligent discussion on whether or not we should hold comics to the same standard we hold movies or novels, especially now that comics are beginning to ape stale movie tropes to gain cred.

Anyway the ending of the fourth issue piqued my interest enough to keep going with the series as it comes out, but it’s certainly on a probationary period until it steps up it’s game and does something to move away from my Garden State comparison.

Both GFE and Full Frontal are short slice of life yarns about people in some kind of entertainment industry. GFE is a drama about a really high-class prostitute (played by Sasha Grey) and Full Frontal is a comedy about people in and around Hollywood.

The Girlfriend Experience wasn’t as good as Full Frontal simply because I didn’t care about any other character outside of Sasha Grey’s girlfriend for money Christine. Pretty much every character is a super rich business type and since the film is set on the cusp of the economic crisis and the 2008 presidential election all they do is complain about money and who would be better for there money.

Full Frontal was better to me because the cast was pretty great and I’m just more interested in th film industry than I am prostitution, especially the kind of prostitution that costs over 2 grand a date and has no dependence on crack. Probably the most entertaining part of Full Frontal for me was Blair Underwood and Julia Roberts starring in a romantic comedy within the film and then Blair Underwood’s character starring in a David Fincher film within the romantic comedy (complete with cameo from both Fincher and Brad Pitt). It was funny, and it actually kind of hurt my brain. Also the sub plot about the always great Enrico Colantoni putting on a weirdly pretentious play about Hitler starring the equally as great Nicki Katt was laugh out loud funny.

All in all both films succeeded in their own ways, The Girlfriend Experience was very nice to look at but ultimately hollow, and Full Frontal was ugly as sin but had some interesting things to say about creative people, but honestly I don’t think I’d ever like to watch them again.

Solaris is a surprisingly great film. It’s a simple sci-fi story about a shrink (Cloon the goon) who has to take trip to a space ship that has stopped all contact. The ship is orbiting a celestial body known as Solaris. Solaris is a strange entity that nobody understands and when Clooney gets there he finds half the crew dead and the other half slowly being driven mad by the power of Solaris.

Any description of this film will make it sound much more intense and science fictiony than it is, but like 2001 (a film that obviously influenced Soderbergh in the making of this film) Solaris is a much subtler more subdued thing. Really this film is about one man coming to terms with the death of someone he loved, set against the always interesting back drop of madness from the vastness and intense alienness of the cosmos.

The film also stars Jeremy Davies, Viola Davis, and Natascha McElhone, and that is pretty much it. Personally I love Jeremy Davies in this and pretty much everything, he is just a fascinating person to watch, and his fidgety pause filled delivery is perfect for a Space Madness film. Viola Davis is also quite good she plays the other surviving crewmember and while she is just as crazy as Davies she plays it exactly the opposite, she is always stone still and very unassuming. McElhone plays Clooney’s lost love in both flashbacks and as a projection of Clooney’s memory via Solaris. McElhone has the tough job of being simultaneously off-putting to the audience but believable as somebody Clooney would immediately fall back in love even though he knows she is dead and she pulls it off perfectly.

As a sci-fi fan I was disappointed a bit with the way Soderbergh pushed aside most possibilities for some great sci-fi, but by the end I got what he was trying to get across. This isn’t a film about space and alien life it is about memory, and death, and love, and big themes that have been explored before, but in my opinion any theme is better if it is explored on a space ship.

Until then I’d like to say a little bit about the films coming out in the spring of this year. In the coming weeks I’ll do a few more posts about the summer and fall, and maybe winter, who knows. Enjoy!

Drive Angry (February 25th) – Yes it looks unbelievably stupid, yes Nic Cage looks to be playing the guy from Bangkok Dangerous, yes it’s actually called Drive Angry, but watch the trailer and then tell me it doesn’t look like it’ll be worth every cent. Plus it was filmed in 3D none of this post-3D-ification Clash of the Airbenders nonsense.

Rango (March 4th) – I haven’t been this excited for a kids movie since Where the Wild Things Are. I don’t think Rango will be as good, but man Rango looks fun as hell. It’s really nice to see worthwhile CG projects coming out of a studio not named Disney.

The Adjustment Bureau (March 4th) – I really want this movie to be good. I know it won’t be good, but damn it could be. It looks to straight-laced to be a great PKD adaptation (like Minority Report or A Scanner Darkly) but a bit too weird to get the Matt Damon soccer mom crowd. I probably won’t be seeing this until it’s on Netflix Instant

Mars Needs Moms (March 11th) – Just kidding this looks really stupid.

Battle: LA (March 11th) – I only know the bare bones of this flick, but I can’t imagine it goes much deeper than aliens attack. I’m mildly interested to see this, if only for Aaron Eckhart and maybe a solid Military Sci-Fi story.

Jane Eyre (March 11th) – In my The Kids Are All Right review I made some big proclamations about Mia Wasikowsk, the big one being that I would see anything and everything she does from now on. Well this Bronte adaptation is hr next work so I guess I’m gonna have to eat my shoe on that one. For I am mostly a man of my word, mostly.

Paul (March 18th) – When I first heard about this flick I was mad excited, and each new sliver of information that was released over the following 2 years was met with enthusiasm. Then the first trailer came out and I had my first twang of worry, then the second trailer came out and I have pretty much given up on this flick.

Sucker Punch (March 25th) – March 25th cannot come soon enough, I am so unbelievably stoked for this outrageous looking movie. I’ve enjoyed everything Snyder has done in the past and this, his first original work, looks to be his best most entertaining flick. 2011 has a lot of lackluster looking action flick but hopefully Sucker Punch can redeem them.

Source Code (April 1st) – Everything about this movie screams cookie cutter light sci-fi thriller, but, I am excited for this film simply by virtue of it’s director Duncan Jones the man who brought us Moon. Also it has Jeffrey Wright the best actor alive not named Robert Duvall.

Your Highness (April 8th) – Could be great like Eastbound and Down, could be pretty good like Pineapple Express, but it could be awful. I’m hoping for greatness, and expecting pretty goodness, but there is a reason Willow 2 was never made.

Thor (May 6th) – Of the big budget Superhero flicks coming out this year Thor is the only one I want to see. The lead looks good, Natalie Portman is a talented actress who can hold her own against everyone in the cast. Plus nobody is wearing weird ugly CG clothes.

So that pretty much covers the movies I want to see in the springtime. Maybe I’ve sparked your interest in an upcoming film, maybe I made you decide not to see another, at the very least I hope I have entertained you momentarily.

Everything about this film is incredibly well crafted, it’s a literal movie translation of Occam’s Razor in that ever aspect of the film is down to the bare minimum and this works to give the film a fresh, unhindered, free quality not seen in other “man trapped in one spot” movies (I’m looking at you 127 Hours).

The minimalistic quality of the film helps to keep your mind on the subject and the freedom Rodrigo Cortes as director and editor has given himself keeps the “gimmick” of Buried from killing it. That gimmick being that you never leave the coffin and are never more than a few inches away from Ryan Reynolds’s (wicked handsome) body.

Sure parts of the flick get a little political, but in the end, you forgive it for two reasons. A) Everything these days is a little political because like war and poverty man, and B) we can forgive it because it never gets in the way of the unbelievably tense story.

That is the best part about Buried, it never lets up, and I mean never. At one point you think it’s letting up, you feel like you might get a moment to breath and calm yourself, but then “No” says Buried, “Fuck you” it shouts at it runs off with your nerves and emotions in a tiny bag, a bag which Buried then pees on and sets fire to.

The first time I saw this film (being last Sunday) I wanted to tell everyone I knew to see it. The second time I saw it (being the Tuesday after my first viewing) I was actually a little upset that everyone I knew hadn’t already seen it. I film like this deserves a wide audience more than any of the crappy movies that came to my theater over the past year, and it worries me that since so few people have actually heard of Buried that now that it’s out on DVD and Blu Ray they’ll think it’s some straight to video piece of garbage. My only hope is that every person who loved Reynolds in The Proposal rents this and instead of being confused (like fans of Sandra Bullock films would normally be when faced with a film with zero jokes about underpants) they are hit with a sudden case of intelligence and enjoy this flick.

Speaking of The Proposal (or whatever crappy movie Reynolds was last in), Buried pretty much redeems him for every previous sin he’s committed against filmed entertainment. The movie totally depends on the performance of its main character because he is (excepting about 3 seconds) the only person on screen for the entire 90 minutes. If the performance had been anything short of great, this review would be entirely different, but as it stands Reynolds knocked it out of the park, using some real, honest to god, acting skillz. It’s just too bad that his next flick after this is the one where all his acting will be computer generated.

I cannot recommend this flick anymore highly; you owe it to yourself as a respectable human being to see it as soon as possible.

I had a tough time picking between this and Catfish, and in the end Babies won because man this is just a joyful flick. I was excited for Babies for almost a year and when it finally came out I was bummed because I knew it would never play at the theater in my town, but luckily my mom lives in a much more culturally rad city and they got it.  Rarely do I squeal like a teenage girl at a Jonas Brothers (are they still a thing?) concert but man this movie caused uncontrollable fits of Jo-Bro squealing.

14: Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 improves on every aspect of the original. A more menacing villain, a better actor playing Tony Stark’s buddy (the always great Don Cheadle replacing the always boring Terrence Howard) and the finale isn’t tacked on and boring.  If you liked the original you probably saw this, if you didn’t like the original, give this one a shot.

13: The Losers

I’m a sucker for the rag-tag team of soldiers each with their own area of expertise genre, I’m also a sucker for Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba (STRINGER!!), Chris Evans, and Zoe Saldana. The Losers is a great looking flick with some incredibly cool characters and even cooler action, and excellent popcorn flick that was superior to the similar in idea A-Team.

12: True Grit

The Coen’s are on a serious hot streak ever since No Country for Old Men. The past couple years they’ve made the most thoroughly maddening, interesting, and entertaining films of their careers. True Grit isn’t as maddening, interesting, or good as A Serious Man, Burn After Reading, or No Country, but it’s still better than most films released in 2010. It’s an extremely simple western with three great performances from Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and the best most, impressive coming from Hailee Steinfeld. While True Grit wasn’t what I’ve come to expect from the Coen brothers I thoroughly enjoyed it.

11: The Town

If you haven’t seen this film because Ben Affleck is in it then fuck you, pardon my French but seriously, you suck. Ben Affleck is a pretty good actor, he’s been in some bad movies but from what I’ve seen he comes out of event he worst flicks pretty okay (Gigli not withstanding that flick is really as bad as you’ve heard). However, Ben Affleck is a god damn great director. The Town is his second film behind the camera after Gone Baby Gone and this time he decided to star in it as well, which works because he really got his best performance to date out of himself. Plus the dude from the Hurt Locker (Jeremy Renner) and the handsomest man in show business (Jon Hamm) are also in it and they are also really good.

10: Exit Through the Gift Shop

This is the best documentary I have ever seen, unless it’s not true, but you know what I think at least part of it is true, and whatever parts of this are true are the best documentary I’ve ever seen. A flick by street artist Banksy that is sort of about the rise of urban street art but mostly about a Frenchman who is nanners and carries a video camera everywhere he goes. It’s an engaging, enlightening, entertaining, and to break the alliteration, hilarious film.

9: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

I’ve heard myriad complaints leveled against this film but I don’t understand any of them. It’s certainly not Stone’s best film, but it’s far from his worst. It’s a slick infinitely watchable drama with some great performances by Michael Douglas, Josh Brolin, Carey Mulligan, and yes Shia Lebeouf who I will stand by as a really good actor except when he’s acting with giant CG robots and gross, gross, inexplicably popular actresses. And sure it’s pretty much a modern retread of the original Wall Street but come on if you are going to steal from a movie you can do a lot worse than the Wall Street.

8: The Killer Inside Me

Despite the fact that The Killer Inside Me takes place in a small Texas town and takes place mostly on sunny days, it is an intensely dark flick. Casey Affleck gives an insanely creepy performance as the sexually violent main character Lou Ford, a deputy sheriff with some extremely serious sexual issues. The best way to describe this film is if American Psycho were set in Texas and actually as good as people think it is. Also remember Bill Pullman? He needs to be in more movies.

7: Valhalla Rising

This movie messed me up man. When the credits rolled I sat in the theater in stunned silence totally in awe of what I had just seen, then some stupid chick behind me had to say “I don’t get it” and ruin my moment of cinematic nirvana, I hate her and will hate her forever for doing that to me. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danishman behind the disturbingly good Pusher trilogy and the almost too fucking good Bronson. You may not have heard of this but seriously watch it, if you have netflix it’s on the instant streaming deal, watch it and tell your friends, and if you don’t get it, keep that to yourself asshole.

6: Toy Story 3

Pixar mostly makes great movies, occasionally they make good movies, and once they made a bad movie, but Toy Story 3 as you most likely know, and if you don’t know you must have heard, belongs to the first category, it’s great. Sure I have my problems with it, mostly regarding the scene that made me cry (the one before the other scene that made me cry again) but other than that it’s a funny and engrossing piece of animation, now seriously Pixar forget about Cars and make a Bug’s Life sequel

5: How to Train Your Dragon

That’s right it’s higher on the list than Toy Story 3. Admittedly it’s probably a “better” film but Dragon is just more fun and had me emotionally invested in the characters without the filmmakers unnecessarily depressing the hell out of me. How to Train your Dragon is just a really fun adventure that almost makes up for how terrible the last three Shrek movies were.

4: Scott Pilgrim

If you find yourself complaining about the dearth of fun and originality in films these days you need to see Scott Pilgrim Vs The World because it is without a doubt the most fun film in years, and certainly Edgar Wright’s finest hour to date. This film is non-stop, every joke is tight and hilarious, every actor turns in if not there best performance certainly their funniest. I really cannot recommend this film anymore. Also if you think this film isn’t original because it’s based on a comic that is heavily influenced by video game and anime/manga culture name me one other movie that is anything like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, you can’t because it’s original.

3: The Social Network

Dude like I really dig this flick because I mean like it’s really about my generation and like the way we kind of uumm communicate with each other and like how Facebook has totally changed like the way our lives work and like how friendship is, you know, but like it’s also got like really good acting and stuff from that guy from Adventureland and some guy who I’ve never seen before but is like playing Spider-man or something and like it’s super good and the guy who did Fight Club did this one and like his last few movies were totally boring but like this one is more exciting like Fight Club, but The Social Network isn’t as confusing or like trippy as Fight Club, because like Fight Club is probably the most confusing and trippy movie ever made.

2: Inception

You know what I like about Christopher Nolan’s latest and greatest flick Inception? It makes you think. Everyone can think about this flick, from the idiots who are still wondering if it’s all a dream or if the top fell over, to actual thinking human beings who wonder what this film says about filmmaking or wonder if maybe it’s all a metaphor for gay/lesbian rights (think about it Cobb and Saito really seem to be interested in growing old together). On top of all that elitist thinking that us artistic pinkos love this film also has some top-notch action set pieces for the plebes, and also for the non-plebes because no matter who you are zero-g face punchin’ is cool.

1: Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky is a director who knows how to gross me out. Every film he’s made so far has made me flinch, gag, or cover my eyes, in Pi it was the thing with the drill, then in Requiem it was the arm sore, The Fountain actually didn’t have a moment but every rule needs an exception to prove it, or so I’ve been told, then in The Wrestler the staples in the guys back freaked me out, Black Swan had like 20 moments like that. What’s worse (or better?) was that the movie totally makes you forget that it just made you want to throw up by having really tremendous acting by Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel and surprisingly Mila Kunis. Seriously, Portman is getting a lot of praise, which she totally deserves and it is a superb bit of acting she does (some people would call it brave, I wouldn’t because I don’t really know what that means) but Mila Kunis really surprised me, I mean I hated her more than Wilmer Valderama on “That (awful piece of garbage) 70’s Show”. I’d compare it to The Aviator for DiCaprio where you forget he was on a really crappy sit-com and accept him as an actor, except Kunis did it way sooner in her career. I expected Black Swan to be good, but it turned out to be the best flick I saw in 2010.

I really wanted to enjoy The Kids are All Right. Going in I was expecting a light, funny, intelligent comedy about an interesting modern family. In the end, however, I wasn’t all that impressed.

The Kids are All Right is about a lesbian couple played by Julianne Moore and Annette Bening and their two children 18-year-old Joni and 15-year-old Laser played by Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson respectively. Joni has just graduated high school and with some pushing on the part of her brother decides to call the guy whose donated sperm was used to impregnate the moms. That dude’s name is Paul and the normally very entertaining Mark Ruffalo plays him.

Now if you were presented with this premise, just this sort of over long log line, what story would you tell? I know I would tell the story of the kids and use it to explore the idea of homosexual parenthood and the bizarre act of people using a stranger’s seed. That to me is infinitely more interesting than a story about the dysfunctions in the marriage of Moore and Bening.

My disinterest and boredom with the squabbles and bickering of the parents has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it is two women; it has more to do with the waste of an excellent and original story. As far as I know there has not been a film about teens born from donated sperm, certainly nothing as mainstream as this, starring bankable actors and actresses. Instead The Kids Are All Right seems more interested in telling the same old boring upper-middle class suburban marriage falls apart at the slightest interruption to the status quo.

Annette Bening does what she’s been doing since American Beauty by playing an uptight control freak, this time she’s a bit looser, which was occasionally refreshing, but mostly it just felt extremely cliché. Julianne Moore plays a bit against character as the fun-loving, new agey, middle-aged hippie. I found Moore’s performance a bit nerve-racking in the beginning, and then her character makes a few decisions that were so bizarre and stupid to me that I just sort of lost it.

Now before you think I’m completely writing this flick off let me just say that there are moments that were incredibly intelligent and equally as entertaining. Every one of those moments involved the kids. Especially Mia Waskowska her performance was incredible, something about the way she got across her character’s unassuming intelligence and her, in a way, contradictory need for approval really floored me in a way few teenage character’s do, plus she was really quite funny. Hutcherson was also quite funny in almost all of his scenes in a much more obvious (but in a good way) and jokey manner. Hutcherson’s friendship with a mildly psychotic neighbor kid was also interesting and realistic, it’s one of the few honest teenage friendships in a film where yes jock type straight-laced looking kids in this day and age do in fact hang out with insane punk rock junkie types, it’s just the accepting kind of world we live in now. It’s just too bad these characters have felt more like tangents to the director’s intended story.

Speaking of acceptance, the portrayal of the homosexual relationship was one thing I really felt the director Lisa Cholodenko along with her co-writer Stuart Blumberg got right. Now when I say right I don’t necessarily mean true to life, this I do not know, I have never known a seriously committed lesbian couple so I do not know how they or their children would be treated, I do however know that the least interesting thing they could do would be to have the kid’s having to deal with their peers mockery for having “two moms”. I applaud the writing team for that, however, as much respect as I have for that aspect of the film, I would like to heap on doubly so my disdain for another aspect of the writing.

If this film wins any writing award, especially from the academy, I will be mildly perturbed, for really only one reason, but this is just so glaring and annoying that it took me out of the film every time it happened. I am speaking of course of naming Josh Hutcherson’s character Laser. Holy crap man, why, I mean that reads to me like a first draft kind of thing, where your put it in as like a joke, with maybe a couple of jokes about it strewn throughout and then in subsequent drafts when you realize that it is stupid you take out all the jokes, which the must have done, but then the writers forgot to do a find and replace function for the name Laser to replace it with Ansell or Vincent or some sort of arty name. Naming the kid Laser just felt over written and kind of twee, and if that was the point then it was a bad idea because they didn’t need to give the audience anymore reason to dislike the annoying, bickering, overly hip parents.

I expected to like The Kids are All Right more, instead what I got was a really dull experience punctuated by glimpses of the kind of movie it could have been. Taking the good with the bad, at least I know to look out for any and every flick Mia Wasikowska does from now on, and I have another reason to really like Josh Hutcherson besides his (surprisingly awesome) previous work on Zathura.