Hot Tub Time Machine! Bronson! And more!

TVBronson (DVD)
Nicolas Winding Refn, who made the absolutely brilliant Pusher trilogy, directs a film about Britain’s most known jailed criminal, Charles Bronson. I liked this film a lot, but it’s a huge departure in tone from Pusher. This is a lyrical, downbeat and sometimes hard to follow folly of a man who doesn’t know who he really is, and is happiest destroying his own life by getting into endless fights and crime sprees. I did not come away from this film loving it, but I did admire the filmmaking. Next up for Nicolas Winding Refn: supposdedly a reboot of Wonder Woman.
Grade: C +


TV's Greatest Surprises (CBS)
A pretty fun trip down memory lane and Jeff Probst did a very nice job hosting. Some of the clips were odd choices to say the least, but all were entertaining on some level.
Grade: B


Taken (HBO)
Liam Neeson is afraid to let his daughter (played by the worst actress of the moment, Maggie Grace (Shannon from Lost), go overseas because as a former government spy Liam has seen it all and doesn’t trust his girl being alone overseas. He relents, and a day later she calls him just as she is being kidnapped for sale in the white-slave prostitution market. He knew it!
Snarky remarks aside, this gets pretty great once Liam is in motion. SPOILER ALERT:
Why doesn’t anyone care about the girl that died?
Grade: B

Jesse James on NIGHTLINE (ABC)
Pathetic. Not only did he start the interview by claiming that he first thought Sandra Bullock was some “Hollywood bitch” before he met her. Then he met her and discovered she really had some smarts in her!

Then he started crying about child abuse he suffered that has since been refuted.
My guess: Jesse James has some nice guy persona that shield the fucking asshole that he really is – and this interview proved what a moron he is.

You had it all, Jesse. But as Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan before him once said” You threw it all away.”
For a tattooed Nazi.
Jesse James: F

Hot Tub Time Machine (DVD)
One of the real surprises in the last few months of onscreen comedy, Hot Tub looks and feels like an 80s movie with a modern sensibility. John Cusack’s presense only intensifies the 80s feel, and Craig Robinson just keeps getting better and funnier in every role. This is not a picture-perfect clever time-travel film that pays so much attention to the minute details of time-travel so much as it pays attention to the emotional core of these characters, and still has quite a few 80s suprises up its sleeve. There are some real belly laughs, Chevy Chase makes a memorable cameo, and the cast gels together wonderfully. The unrated version is what I watched. Completely profane, and I loved it.
Grade: B +


2012 (DVD)
I rented this and blasted the sound, ready to give myself over to a two hour world-ending bonanza. What I got instead was John Cusack running around and a lot of miserable scenes to accompany the destruction. This had to be one of the most poorly plotted and routine action pictures I have ever seen. Every other scene was “just because this man is a janitor, that does not mean he doesn’t deserve to live!” I wanted to love this because there is a great film to be made about the end of the world. This is about as far from it as you can get. The funniest thing about this film is that whenever it’s about to get interesting, the director would cut to something else. There is so much bad in this film, so little good, that I have nothing to really say except avoid this unless you like just-okay special effects.
Grade: D

Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever (IFC)
I finally caught this genuine creepfest of a horror film. The first scary movie directed by Eli Roth, this was the film that caught the eye of Quentin Tarantino who later would lend his name to HOSTEL, the torture-porn masterpiece Roth later wrote and directed. As for this movie, five friends take up in a remote woods cabin for a weekend getaway. What they encounter are very strange rednecks and flesh eating diseases. None of the horror comes from expected places and the film builds genuine tension. If the last 20 minutes get a little haywire, it's still quite a nice balancing act the director keeps for an extended eerie time. Far from a perfect film, this is a pretty terrific creepy rental.
Grade: B -