Talking with Bong Joon-Ho of SNOWPIERCER

June 25, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Interviews Tagged Interviews, Memories of Murder, Park Joon-ho, Snowpiercer, South Korea, The Host

I’ve said it one times too many already but for the purpose of this article, it’s really worth reiterating again: I’m a big fan of South Korean film. So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I jumped at the opportunity to interview Bong Joon-Ho, a great voice within the oeuvre of South Korean films and a leader of the movement to turn it into a world wide product. Snowpiercer, his latest hit, is an even bigger, bolder move than we saw from his countryman Park Chan-wook who went from directing the OG Oldboy to last year’s ravishing Stoker. Read More

The Absolute Worst Movies of 2013

January 16, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged A Good Day to Die Hard, After Earth, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Diana, Epic, Getaway, Iron Man, Lists, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Movie 43, Now You See Me, Oz: The Great and Powerful, Pacific Rim, Parkland, Prince Avalanche, Reviews, The Canyons, The Fifth Estate, The Hangover: Part 3, The Host, The Last Exorcism: Part 2, The Lone Ranger, Worst Of

With all the talk of great movies out of the way, the task of singling out and ridiculing the slate of absolutely garbage that somehow managed to limp into theaters this year has come. Now every year inevitably sees a slew of flunkies hit the big screen like a batch of rotten tomatoes but I found 2013 in general to be a torpid offender in the “worst of” category. Maybe I ought to chalk up the number of bad movies this year to the fact that I watched over 150 films but then again, I did actively skip a lot of movies that seemed objectively “bad.”

You won’t find the likes of Scary Movie 5, Grown Ups 2, Safe Haven, or Madea’s Christmas on this list because there was no way I was going to see those films. At least the ones I’ve included below had a shot at being decent. Whether or not that makes them even more offensively bad is certainly a topic worth debating, but all that really matters is that they stunk to high heavens and deserve to be watched by no one.

Before I launch into the absolute bottom of this trash bag of entertainment, I do need to recognize some crud that managed to stay off the list just because their terribleness was one-upped. But don’t confuse their absence from the coveted top ten as me patting them on the head and letting off the hook. Think of it more like a police officer letting you off for grand theft auto because someone just set fire to a hospital full of cancer babies. Obviously they’re going to go after the baby arsonist. Here, I have my sights on the baby arsonists of cinema.

Dishonorable Mentions:

Prince Avalanche
The Last Exorcism: Part 2
The Lone Ranger
Parkland
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Epic
Diana
Now You See Me
Pacific Rim
A Good Day to Die Hard

10. GETAWAY

A remarkably dull endeavor that (worse than anything) turned Ethan Hawke‘s otherwise considerable year on its head, Getaway uses close quarter tactics to unwittingly beat us into a state of exhaustion and apathy. More believably a hack than a hacker, Selena Gomez offers some of the worse acting of the entire year so poor Hawke didn’t stand much of a chance. Watching them interact is like having a Skype conversation with a five second delay. There’s just absolutely no life to it. There is one definitive scene towards the end of the film that showcases how the film could have been approached successfully but, unfortunately, filmmaker Courtney Solomon decided to go the easy, cliché action route and blasted out this dud of a thrill ride that’s absent on thrills and, at the end of the day, makes absolutely no sense.

9. OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

What a plastic, cold effort from otherwise rafter-swinging Sam Raimi. In addition to being a massive disappointment, Oz: The Great and Powerful is easily one of the worst of the year. It all just seems like one big joke. The cocksure and smarmy performance from James Franco is certainly gag-worthy but it’s somehow outshone by the spam of a performance from Mila Kunis as the poorly makeup-ed Wicked Witch. Even the usually consistent Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz are flat and ineffective. For a movie with so much talent, promise, and resources, Oz is a far cry from great and not even remotely powerful.

8. ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE

I hate to bury Adam Levine‘s 2006 horror movie that finally saw the light of day this year but it really deserved to stay in its coffin. Existing on a purely meta level, this genre film dares us to see past the faux-irony that is having everything we expect to happen happen. Or maybe the whole thing was supposed to be a shock and I just saw through it like the 35-cent jello mold that it was. Although a small fan base slobbered this one up, it unequivocally offered nothing new in terms of surprises, effects, or execution and was as wholly flat as the Texas plains where it takes place. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a glowing representation of the horror of lazy horror.

7. MOVIE 43

You know this list is bad when you find Movie 43 all the way up in seventh place. Steaming pile of garbage though it was, I didn’t actively hate Movie 43 the way I did many of the others on this list. Sure, it’s lazy, dumb, obnoxious, tasteless, offensive, and desperate for laughs but at least we didn’t go in to this expecting it to be a real movie. And for the many, many misses, there were a few sketches that worked my funny bone and I gotta dish out some credit where it’s due. Still, nothing this year clawed at my nerves like the Beezel the cat sketch. That was just in a league of its own.

6. THE HANGOVER: PART 3

An ugly and unnecessary conclusion to a series that should have ended when it began, The Hangover: Part 3 has no idea what it’s doing. Instead of rehashing the events of the first one like the Bangkok-set Hangover 2 did, this second sequel turns fatally dark and all but drops the comedy angle. There’s not a laugh to be found in its 100-minute runtime. And maybe it’s the disappointment that the series has fallen so far or maybe it’s the fact that this movie is just undeniably bad to the bone but The Hangover: Part 3 is the perfect example of sequels sullying the good name of the original. The decision to carry on the franchise even though they were clearly out of ideas is only exacerbated by bringing Ken Jeong‘s cringe-worthy Chow character to the forefront. What a steaming mess this flick is from cover-to-cover.

5. THE FIFTH ESTATE

A purely pathetic effort no matter which way you look at it, The Fifth Estate is the Billy Madison of biopics. And with its agenda so clearly honed in on degrading Julian Assange, I’m surprised they didn’t just have Adam Sandler play the part. Shockingly enough, it seems to have no idea how terrible it is. There are no character revelations, no sense of arc, no focus, and no real reason for this film to exist at all. Beyond the cinematic no-no that is trying to make coding cool, Bill Condon goes so far as to craft a series of scenes that take place in “the coding world.” Part bumbling Matrix-style mind game, part collective brain fart, these recklessly awful sequences provided some of the most laughable moments of the entire year. The true shame is that within The Fifth Estate is an important story but it was approached with the finesse of a drunk chimp and made for entirely daffy drama.

4. AFTER EARTH

Look no further than Jaden Smith‘s earth-shatteringly horrendous performance to see the failings of M. Night Whoever‘s latest box-office turd. It was a miracle that anyone agreed to finance another Shyamalan film after steady and progressively worse receptions of his films but, considering the sizable budget on this one and the seeming star power in the Smiths, hope was in the air that maybe After Earth would be a redemption of sorts of the faltering director. But when it crashed landed, it couldn’t have been further from a revival. Defunct on all levels, After Earth is one of the dumbest films to see the light of day in 2013 and fails on just about every level that a film could fail at. However if there was one film this year proved to us the effectiveness of acting through pouting your lips, After Earth proudly stands on the puffiness of Jaden’s punim.

3. THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

Long, unnecessary title aside, plot threads dangle throughout The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones like cobwebs in a tomb. Though convention has taught us to expect resolutions by a movie’s end, it’s almost as if the people in charge here forget how many nonsensical plot holes were left gaping by the time the lights went up. The best, and worst, example of which includes the central teenage pair who fall for each other even though they’re informed that, you know, they’re brother and sister. But, I mean, whatevz right? Backed by awful, hammed up performances across the board, this flunkie failed to make even the devout YA fans care. The saving grace is that after such a disappointing financial cull, production was halted on the follow-up that was already in progress, so it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see a sequel.

2. THE CANYONS

As ugly as it is repugnant and pseudo-intellectual, The Canyons is gross and unnecessary on all fronts. Imagine a movie so bad that Lindsay Lohan looks endlessly talented when compared to her co-stars and the solitary selling point is its close resemble to soft core porn and you have the ingredients that make The Canyons. From the very first tracking shot that just screams amateur filmmaker, I knew this film was going to be awful but nothing could have prepared me for just how hideous and empty it really was. The Canyons goes about trying to indite LA trust fund babies for being vacuous and unable to relate by being vacuous and unable to relate. Like that guy who wears neon t-shirts down to his kneecaps and leaves the sticker on his b-ball cap and think he’s the cock of the walk, the whole cast and crew in The Canyons just don’t seem to realize that we’re laughing at them, not with them.

1. THE HOST

An amazing feat of filmmaking as implosion, The Host, when it isn’t awful, is busy boring you to tears. Even for a teen franchise, The Host is dramatically inept and utterly incapable of making you care about anything or anyone. As if that’s not enough already, it lacks even one moment of genuine excitement. Even the love quadrangle will leave tweens checking their watches. The Host transforms the boredom of watching the paint dry with waiting for the wheat to grow. Seriously, there are multiple scenes where the characters are literally waiting in a cave for wheat to grow. How did anyone expect this movie would appeal to anyone?! I haven’t even mentioned the intolerable voice-over inner-monologues a la teeny-bopper arguments which serve as the brown icing smeared on this shit cake. The Host is so actively bad that it seems like the kind of thing that would play on repeat in hell while your eyes are shuttered open Clockwork Orange style.

So there it is, the worst of the worst of 2013. As a consolation prize for everyone who made it all the way to the end, here are my (brief) awards for worst actor and actress.

Worst Actor: Johnny Depp “The Lone Ranger”/Jaden Smith “After Earth”

I had to make this category a tie because both performances are truly awful, but for their own unique, special reasons. While Jaden seems to be suffering from a case of not knowing any better, Depp has no such excuse. So a tie between Johnny “I don’t want ever watch the movies I’m in”/”I’m 1/64 native American so me playing Tonto isn’t offensive” Depp and Jayden “I literally can’t act”/”But Daddy says I can” Smith seems like a fore-drawn conclusion in the worst actor of 2013 showdown. When it comes down to the wire though, I don’t think I could be forced to choose which of their performances is more actively awful. Coin toss anyone?

Worst Actress: Selena Gomez “Getaway”/”Spring Breakers”

If there’s one thing Selena Gomez has proved trying to break away from her Disney image it’s that she shouldn’t have tried to break away from her Disney image. Her wildly ineffectively chemistry with just about anyone who happens to be unlucky enough to share a scene with her is written on the walls with permanent marker. Between her pitiful performances in both Getaway and Spring Breakers, Gomez only has herself to compete against herself to be named the Prom Queen of grade-F acting.

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Weekly Review 37: CANYONS, HOST, EPIC, THIEF, SIGHTSEERS, SCISSORHANDS, GRANDPA

December 22, 2013 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged 2013, Bad Grandpa, Edward Scissorhands, Epic, Identity Thief, Reviews, Sightseers, The Canyons, The Host, Weekly Review

The last of 2013 is upon us and I’ve been shoveling in just about as many films from the year as I can, building towards my awaiting best of/worst of lists and the second annual Silver Screen Riot Awards. At the theater, I closed out seeing the last films I would this year with Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, August: Osage County, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and The Wolf of Wall Street. Reviews for all three to debut soon. Also check newly published reviews of Saving Mr. Banks, Inside Llewyn Davis, and American Hustle. At home though, I saw some of the worst, most unadulterated trash I’ve seen all year. Just pure garbage. But amongst the filth, I found a few hidden gems and finally watched some old classics. This might be the last installment of the year as the Holidays loom large and my time is going to be severely crunched.

THE CANYONS (2013)

In this utterly terribly film, Lindsay “Dead-Eyed” Logan and James “The Actual Pornstar” Deen have the chemistry of a brick and a rock. Beyond their impressively poor performer’s chops, the rest of the acting is atrocious, with each amazingly managing to be worse than the last. Paul Schrader‘s amateur porn-level direction seems like it’s trying to be different but it’s just confused and, there’s no tiptoeing around it, downright awful. Bret Easton Ellis, a reputable author dabbling for the first time in the script-writing business, loves to pen these drab, empty, trust-fund scumbags but the script here is either DOA or entirely misinterpreted by Schrader’s incompetent hand. The soulless LA landscape occupied by depraved, despicable people, who occasionally take their clothes off and bang (as if that’s any consolation for the horror that is watching this monstrosity) is signature Ellis but it lacks any irony, substituting tits for wit, meandering in his usual loose moral cesspool. Either way, he ought to probably stick to writing because there’s a reason this was rejected from both Sundance and SXSW for “quality issues”

F

THE HOST (2013)

Absent on entertainment, The Host makes Twilight look like an art film. With a script that makes fan fiction seem like Pulitzer material by comparison and features lines like “Kiss me like you want to get slapped,” it’s impossible to not scoff your way through this wildly ineffective disaster of a movie. Even if you took the grating voice-over work out (*shutters*) you’re still left with a film where absolutely nothing happens. Most certainly one of the worst movies of 2013 and probably up their amongst the worst movies of all time.

F

EPIC (2013)

It’s almost amazing how flat this animated feature is. It’s got all the expensive looking animated design but Epic struggles to make you care about in the least bit about this retread story. Like Rio, the voice work is transparent and completely fails to make us forget the celebrity names behind the characters. Most importantly though, the film is boring, lazy, and just more “there” than anything. The whole good-vs.-evil conceit works fine so long as there’s something beneath them. Here, that’s just not the case. A couple of comic moments from Aziz Ansari and Chris O’Dowd help to break up the monotony but the rest of the voice performers are straight out of the vanilla convention (Amanda Seyfried, Josh Hutcherson). I’m left wondering where the hell the name Epic came from as well since there is nothing the least bit epic about this epic failure.

D

SIGHTSEERS (2013)

An out-of-the-blue effort from deep English director Ben Wheatley, Sightseers is an untamed hologram of a vacation gone horribly wrong. Going into this blind is going to really boost your experience with it so I’m just try and skirt around any significant details. It’s easy to spot that the film was made on a paltry budget and a shame to see that it didn’t even make $50,000 dollars in US theaters but what can you expect from notoriously choosy American audiences (who would rather spend their money on Lone Ranger or another junky Hobbit flick). Although the project at first seems the work of amateurs, it really settles into its own and manages to be a fun, horrifying, thoughtful, and succinct experience.

B

IDENTITY THIEF (2013)

There’s hardly anything to say about this comedy entirely bereft of laughs. Identity Thief is nothing more than a totally forgettable clunker set on cruise control and left on the shoulders of the goodwill of its popular stars. Jason Bateman once again squanders his comic talent, playing a straight man to Melissa McCarthy‘s unpalatable identity thief. But rather than inject any genuine humor into the thing, all the “jokes” are culled from McCarthy letting loose a string of expletives or throwing karate chops at unexpected vocal chords. Beyond the pure laziness masquerading as humor, the third act dissolves into the saccharine melodrama that has no place in an R-rated comedy. All in all, what a waste of time.

D-

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990)

In the process of trying to acquaint myself with Tim Burton‘s early and much-beloved work, I’m discovering a man oozing with passion. His character and set designs are as gothic and home-grown as ever and there is undeniably heart living in this project. Furthermore, this is without a doubt a weird Johnny Depp character and yet he’s still more relatable than the slew of weird characters he’s played for the last ten years. Beyond the scars, makeup and scissored hands, he’s a gentle giant struggling with his pure-heartedness and society’s uneasy alliance with him; the Beast to Winona Ryder’s Belle. It’s a shame that Burton has since turned to cheap remakes and Depp to hackneyed characterization because these are two men who really seemed to understand each other and their audience.

B

JACKASS: BAD GRANDPA (2013)

Without the ADHD framework of bopping between segments where Johnny Knoxville and crew get charged by bulls, launched from buildings, or have their scrotums assaulted in the most heinous of ways, it’s a little harder for the Jackass crew to keep our attention. Bad Grandpa relies on sentimentality and a loose narrative structure to involve us beyond cringing reactions and uproariously laughter. And while seeing Knoxville rocking old man makeup as Irving and taking little Billy under his wing in this hidden camera comedy does show an inkling of emotional storytelling rarely present in Jackass’s finest work, the social commentary present in Bruno and Borat is largely absent here. It’s no surprise that the bits that’ll work your funny bone hardest mostly rely on the easy humor of sharts and male anatomy but seeing little Jackson Nicoll steal the show from Knoxville was definitely out of left field and a pleasant surprise.

C

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Weekly Review 33: AFTER, FILM, HOST, STUFF, IMPOSTER, THELMA

November 19, 2013 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged After Earth, The Host, The Imposter, The Stuff, Thelma and Louise, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Weekly Review

I managed to get a lot of home watching in this week as there wasn’t a ton of screenings I had to attend with The Book Thief being the only film I saw in theaters, and while it had a lot going for it, was ultimately let down by clumsy melodrama. I also published my full review for Blue is the Warmest Color, which I had a lot of problems with, and Kyle wrote up a review for The Best Man Holiday, which he had a lot of problems with. Today brought a screening of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which I’ll probably review by tomorrow, and this week also holds Vince Vaughn‘s Delivery Man, the Jason Statham vs. James Franco actioner Homefront, and Disney‘s Frozen, which everyone has just been loving. But let’s get down to business and do some weekly reviewing.

THE HOST (2006)

Firstly no, not the Stephenie Meyer book, the much, much better 2006 South Korean film. A monster movie that isn’t really a monster movie, The Host revels in its hazy political metaphors of totalitarian government. No matter how fake the slimy creature from Seoul’s Han River might look, his computer generated presence is still a well laid MacGuffin to probe state’s interference and the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. Gripping and smart from start to finish, The Host is monster movie making at its most thoughtful and sly. Also, no Stephenie Meyer.

B+

THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED (2006)

Chartering just how screwy the MPAA is when passing judgement on films’ ratings, Kirby Dick‘s documentary points a lot of fingers and raises a lot of good points, but could have been crunched down into a shorter, tighter doc. However interesting the topic – to some – a documentary needs to preserve a sense of urgency of knowledge and This Film is Not Yet Rated wastes a large portion of its screen time lingering too long with a batty PI and false tension.

C-

THE STUFF (1982)

Horrid acting, terrible directing, and dimwitted metaphors that beat you over the head at every turn, there is nothing of substance in The Stuff. The only thing likely to stick with you after it wraps are the catchy jingles (but it’s not like you want any more jingles bopping around your skull.)

F

THELMA AND LOUISE (1991)

I finally got around to watching one of Ridley Scott‘s most beloved films and can certainly recognize why it gets so much of said love. This is the undercover feminism movie that sees women’s empowerment as something to be celebrated, not just something to be talked to death. As two woman turn away from their domestic prisons, they discover something within themselves that, now free, can never be caged again. The film has a few issues in terms of character development vs. established timeline but nothing so bad as to muddle the overall impact. Witnessing these women’s decent into lawlessness is one of the more fun, and more meaningful, experiences of domestication gone awry.

B+

THE IMPOSTER (2012)

A soaring documentary bubbling over with so much unthinkable insanity that you couldn’t have made up anything more wacky. A true stranger than fiction tale, The Imposter‘s success isn’t necessarily a result of perfect – or even great – filmmaking so much as it is a stunning story culled from an absolutely gripping topic. What’s more is that it leaves you craving more details, shocked and amazed at these true events and wanting to take part in the investigation yourself. Going into it blind is absolutely essential so learn as little as you can before watching. If you do, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more gripping, edge-of-your-seat film – documentary or otherwise.

A+

AFTER EARTH (2013)

Earth to Will Smith. Your career is dying. Abort acting with your child. Repeat: abort! In After Earth, the rockstar Smith of the 1980s seems to have shriveled up and disappeared and in his place is an aging surly stone of a man intent on exclusively working with his children. While there was a certain cutesiness to that chemistry in Pursuit of Happyness, it has gotten the better of him here. Jayden Smith‘s mildewed acting is as transparent as it is hollow. His bratty face-crunching acting style is more disastrous than M. Night‘s career -which at this point is so in the hole it’ll never imaginably see the light of day again. Just stale from front to back, there is not a modicum of joy to be found in this crash landing of a movie.