End of Days

We're gonna party like it's 1999.

"Prepare for the end."
Hello everyone! I thought since this is more of a approaching the new year movie that I would post it early, though I suspect you won't be reading it until sometime on Tuesday night when you wake up from New Year's Eve festivities. We already saw over the past week and change what I think of when I think of Christmas, but what do I think about New Years? I think that the only proper way to celebrate it is for the Terminator to fight Satan in a battle for the fate of the world. That brings me to today's review: End of Days. Now I don't know what it says about me that apparently holidays all remind me of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies but... there it is. Let me set the scene: It's 1999. People are convinced that the laziness of computer programs is somehow going to precipitate the end of days, and not just make some computer clocks think it's the wrong day. Having just survived another apocalypse related to people keeping track of what day it is, we can all easily relate. Cashing in hardcore on this collective seizure of brain function, Universal Studios produced a movie about the devil making a bid at birthing the Antichrist, using the only vessel appropriate for a movie produced at the end of the 90s (...I guess): Robin Tunney.

Rise of the Guardians

He looks like kind of a creeper to me.

"Legends unite."

Hi everyone! How was your Christmas? Today I'm going to talk about the seasonably appropriate Rise of the Guardians, which does prominently feature Santa Claus (Only a big sword wielding Santa, voiced by Alec Baldwin). Mostly it is a movie about Jack Frost (Chris Pine, aka Kirk in the recent Star Trek movie) though, a young (appearing) spirit who likes to freeze stuff and be a dick to everyone by freezing their stuff. Jack is depressed because no one can see or believes in him, and he doesn't know why he was dragged out of a frozen lake by the man in the moon (who never like... talks he just sort of... shines at people.) Meanwhile, the scary mean spirit Pitch Black (aka the Boogie Man, voiced by Jude Law, who's good at sounding evil) sets out to wipe out all the good dreams and hopes of children and replace them with fear and nightmares, because he is a real jerk-off. To do this, Pitch plans to knock off the four guardians, who include Santa, the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher, who I really liked as that psycho in Wedding Crashers) The Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman, the australian bunny, who recently appeared when I reviewed Real Steel) and the Sandman (who has no actor attached to him, he's weird and animated and never talks). Around the time Pitch begins his attack, a new guardian is chosen by the moon to protect all the lil' chilren of the world: Jack Frost. Not everyone is on board (especially the Easter Bunny, he's a contentious sort) but Jack goes along with it, in the hopes that he will find out who he is, and why he was chosen.

Off-day

I didn't take Christmas off, so I am taking today as an off day. I'll be back with a review on Saturday, and here with an end of the year/new year review on Tuesday. It's been about half a year since I started this blog up again, and I never thought I'd have so many people reading it. So thanks to everyone for supporting my blog, and I hope you'll continue to stop by!

This is how happy I am right now.

Jingle All the Way

Put that cookie down! Right now!

"Two Dads, One Toy, No Prisoners."

Hello all and Merry Christmas from The Tagline! What better way to ring in this magical day, than with a movie where Arnold cold-cocks a reindeer in someone's living room. I'm referring of course, to the ridiculous Christmas movie Jingle All the Way, starring the Governator himself as Howard Langston, an absentee father (which is apparently the preferred protagonist for these movies) who has forgotten to buy his son Jamie (the nauseating Jake Lloyd) a Turbo Man action figure, the hot toy for the Christmas season, and the television super hero that Jamie looks to as a male role model in the vacuum left by his actual father, who is too busy selling... I'm not sure what I don't think you find out really. Realizing that he has forgotten to get this really shitty looking action figure for his son on Christmas Eve, Howard sets out to try and find one last minute, while his sleazy neighbor Ted (Phil Hartman God rest his soul) puts the moves on his wife Liz (Rita Wilson). Along the way, he encounters a postal worker also trying to get a Turbo Man figure at any cost, named Myron (Sinbad, yeah that's right), and the two become embroiled in a bitter race to obtain a Turbo Man.

Christmas Nightmare Double Feature

Hello all! Christmas is right around the corner, so I had decided I wanted to do a list of Christmas movies that were bad or just scared me. Then I realized that there were really only two movies I wanted to talk about. One was bad, creepy, and depressing. The other was just plain creepy. Actually I found it so unsettling that I didn't even want to watch it again for this post. Alas, duty drove me to it, so now I will share with you all:

PRE-CHRISTMAS NIGHTMARE
DOUBLE FEATURE

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

ホビト輪とてもすごいです！

"From the smallest beginnings come the greatest legends."

Hey everyone! As promised, today I will review The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Based on the Tolkien book, The Hobbit, Unexpected Journey is the first part of a three movie arc adapting said book into epic movie form. This particular film follows Bilbo (Martin Freeman, most notably he plays Watson on the BBC Sherlock) as he sets out with the party of Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage, who you might know if you watched the BBC Robin Hood show, he was Guy of Gisbourne) and his dwarven companions. Also Gandalf is there (Sir Ian McKellen, of course). The group sets out with their eyes set on a grand prize, the lost dwarven kingdom of Erebor, to which Thorin is heir. Erebor resides inside a massive mountain (The Lonely Mountain to be specific) and is the lair of the massive and vicious fire drake Smaug. Bilbo is roped into this enterprise, despite his initial reluctance, by Gandalf, as a potential infiltrator, because hobbits are just that easy to ignore and overlook. Their journey carries them through a countryside that is gradually growing darker in aspect, as sinister forces long dormant begin to stir across Middle Earth.

The Long Kiss Goodnight

You know it's a movie, because Samuel L
Jackson is in it.

"What's forgotten is not always gone."

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Tagline! I thought today I would eaaase us into Christmas with a movie that... well isn't about Christmas but takes place around it. For that purpose I decided to dig up an entry from my pile of "movies no one remembers or possibly ever saw in the first place The Long Kiss Goodnight. You see, Christmas is about family, and togetherness. It's about giving, and love. Also it's about a mild-mannered suburban mother and schoolteacher, who is actually an amnesiac killing machine who used to work for the CIA. That's what this movie is all about. Starring Geena Davis (Of Thelma & Louise and Beetlejuice fame) as Samantha Caine, a woman who was found 8 years before the events of the movie, washed ashore with no memory. Also she was pregnant. She has attempted several times to hire private investigators to figure out who she is, but there's been absolutely no trace of her previous life. The latest P.I. she's hired is Mitch Hennessy (Samuel L.) who despite being of questionable ethics, seems to be proficient at his job, So, then what happens?

Lord of The Rings: A Retrospective

Hey everybody! Congrats, you survived another week of holiday season, and now it's the weekend. Today I want to take a moment to look back, at the original Lord of the Rings movies, in anticipation of The Hobbit, which hopefully I will be able to elbow my way into some time in the coming week. As I reflect, I will remark on plot, comparison, color commentary, and weird recollections about my high school life that I associate with these films (because I was in high school when they came out, and saw them... more than once let's say). Reviews and first hand reports about The Hobbit are already filling up the internet, but I'll reserve judgement until after I've seen it myself. So journey back with me now, into the distant past (about 11 years exactly) as I relive The Lord of the Rings.

The Lord of The Rings: A Retrospective

Can't Hardly Wait

I like this dumb movie so much it's embarrassing.

"Yesterday's history. Tomorrow's the future. Tonight's the party."

Hey everyone! It's Thursday, you've almost survived the whole week! I was going to wait until late in the Spring to post about this movie, but my friend sent me some choice video clips, and that got me to thinking about it. So today I will be talking about my favorite party teen movie of the 90s: Can't Hardly Wait. Starring (primarily) Ethan Embry as awkward high school grad Preston Meyers, on the night of a big post-graduation party. His long-distance, all high school crush Amanda Beckett (Jennifer Love-Hewitt) has just been dumped by her high school boyfriend Mike Dexter (Peter Facinelli). Preston sees this as his big chance to finally confess his feelings, before he misses it, and so heads off to the part, dragging along his reluctant friend Denise (Lauren Ambrose) along with him. At the same party, bullied super nerd William Lichter (Charlie Korsmo) plans to exact his ultimate revenge on Mike, for a lifetime worth of abuse, and awful gangsta' wannabe Kenny (Seth Green) is planning... perhaps somewhat fancifully, to score before the night is out. What follows is a post high school cluster fuck of a party, that leaves everything forever changed... or not changed.

30 Days of Night

30 Days of Pee Your Pants Terror.

"They're Coming!"

They sure are! Welcome back to Tuesday at The Tagline, a lovely, gloom soaked Tuesday. Winter gets a boy thinking about snow, and naturally the only thing that recommends itself when you think snow is endless night populated by frenzied blood drinking monsters from your darkest nightmares. That's what got me to thinking about 30 Days of Night. As background, 30 Days of Night came out in 2007, before the Twilight craze robbed the vampire genre of any semblance of credibility for at least the next five to ten years. Based on a comic mini-series of the same name (which later spawned a number of other iterations) 30 Days of Night takes place in Barrow, Alaska, well above the arctic line, where something called polar night occurs. That's a wonderful phenomenon where sometimes the sun goes down and doesn't come back up for a long loooong time. During this time, a wonderful, magical thing happens to the inhabitants of Barrow. A shipload of murderous blood drinking fiends shows up on a ship, and sets about massacring everyone in town. Basically they show up and decide to throw their own little blood orgy. Why not right? Enter Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett, remember I was just talking about him!) the town's sheriff, who along with his ex-wife-to-be and several other survivors, attempt to last out the long night while the vampires set about butchering everyone in town.

Unorthodox Buddy Cop Movies

Hello everyone! You've made it, it's finally the weekend, and for a rare few of you that might mean you don't have to work. For the rest of us, I have a special Saturday post, after two weeks of slacking off and just reviewing a third movie. I've been thinking about movies with cops in them, and that got me to thinking about the "buddy cop" genre in general. For those unfamiliar with the particulars, a buddy cop movie is at it's core about two dudes (usually law enforcement of some kind as the name implies) who team up to solve a crime or otherwise bring down the bad guys, despite dispositions or backgrounds that put them at odds with each other. This is a theme present in a ton of movies, though in more recent years it has almost exclusively appeared in either remakes, spoofs, or unusual entries into the genre. As fate and chance might have it, those movies which play somewhat against form tend to be my favorites. So now I will enumerate some of my favorite buddy cop movies, and everyone can keep their opinions about Lethal Weapon 4 to themselves.

On Latter Day Buddy Cop Movies

Airheads

Totally badass. Or something.

"The music. The legend. The hostage situation."

When I did my top 5 Adam Sandler movies (that's here) I mentioned this movie in an off-hand fashion, but now I want to talk about it a little more in depth. In Airheads, Chazz (Brendan Fraser, making it onto my blog for a movie that isn't causing me to throw up) Is the front man for a band (a band called the Lone Rangers oof that hurts), trying to get their music on the air. The problem is, everywhere they go they find doors slamming in their face (because really who would listen to a band called the Lone Rangers, fronted by metalhair Brendan Fraser?) After being thrown out by his girlfriend for being a loser (Which in her defense he is) Chazz decides with his bandmates Rex (Steve Buscemi) and Pip (Adam Sandler) that the best way to get their music out there is to sneak into local rock radio station KPPX and persuade the DJ to play their demo. After sneaking in behind a station employee, the three get into the studio with DJ Ian "The Shark". When station manager Milo barges in to tell them that they're all trash (Rex specifically) He finds himself on the wrong end of an Uzi. Oh did I say Uzi? I meant water gun filled with pepper sauce that looks like an Uzi. Oops.

The Raven

Rebel Without a Clause. I'm sorry.

"The only one who can stop a serial killer is the man who inspired him."

Welcome to another week at The Tagline! I'm going to resist the urge to start my holiday coverage quite yet, but rest assured that you will be seeing plenty of Arnold Schwarzenegger before the end of the month. Today however I will be talking about the suspense/horror film The Raven, starring John Cusack (who has his own post here) as a fictionalized Edgar Allan Poe. I say fictionalized because, while perhaps a vulgar, high functioning alcoholic prone to ravings, he at no point marries any 13 year old relatives, and seems generally pretty lucid, just a little odd, and so that gives him serious advantage over historical reports of the real Edgar Allan Poe. This movie follows some of Mr. Poe's final days, as he partners with police to try and identify and capture a serial killer who appears to be using Poe's literary works as inspiration for his murders.

In Time

In Time FOR WHAT JTIM?

"His crime wasn't stealing time. It was giving it away."

Hello all, Welcome to Saturday at The Tagline! I've been hitting my movie backlog so hard lately that for the past few weeks I've felt compelled to do 3 reviews rather than a special Saturday post. Today I will talk about In Time, a Dystopian Sci-fi film starring Justin Timberlake (of smashing N'Sync fame) as Will Salas, a poor guy who becomes a rich guy, and then almost becomes a dead guy. The movie premise is a such: In the future, people stop aging at 25, but after that have only a year to live. In addition to being used to indefinitely prolong life, time is also currency in this future, and so the very wealthy are effectively immortal, never aging and never dying. In stark contrast, the poor live literally from day to day, dying in the streets as they bottom out. One day Will meets a rich guy who is sick of living, and gives him 100 years worth of life before dropping dead off a bridge. Will, after losing his mother (played by Olivia Wilde, who in real life is actually four years younger than Timberlake) by being seconds too late to share the wealth, decides he's going to "stick it to the man" as it were, and goes on a vague warpath that eventually entangles Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried, of Mean Girls fame) the daughter of perhaps the wealthiest man alive. 

Let Me In

A movie drenched in blood! 

"Innocence dies. Abby doesn't."

Hey everybody! Welcome to another Thursday at the Tagline. After almost a month off from grisly horror movies, I decided that it would be okay to talk about a movie where everyone is pretty much drenched in blood for the duration (okay so mostly Chloe Grace Moretz, but occasionally also people she savagely murders). Let Me In is a somewhat peculiar beast, an American remake (in 2010) of a Swedish film, made only in 2008 called Let the Right One In, which itself was based on a Swedish novel of the same name (published in 2004). It is unusual then not just because it is an adaptation of a foreign film but also because it is an adaptation of a very recent one. A lot of fans of the original book/movie felt that this film was unasked for and unneeded, but I will suggest here and in the rest of this post that Let Me In has a lot going on for it. Let Me In takes place in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where 12 year old Owen (Kodi Smit-Mcphee, he was also the kid from the movie adaptation of The Road) is the victim of vicious bullying at school, and a total outcast, with a somewhat disturbing fantasy life (that involves probably murdering the people who pick on him). He has no real connections, having a stand-offish relationship with his mother (whom he lives with) and has a very distant relationship with his absentee asshole of a dad. One day, new tenants arrive in his apartment complex: an older man, and a young girl, named Abby (that would be Chloe Grace Moretz, aka Hit Girl, aka Carrie in an upcoming remake aka I'm scared shitless of this 15 year old girl).

Real Steel

No, Hugh Jackman does not fight a robot.

"Champions aren't born. They're made."

Hey everybody, welcome to a new week and a new Tagline! Today I'm going to talk about Real Steel, a movie which I did not see when it came out last October (I can't see EVERY movie in theaters, but I get around to most of them sooner or later, especially when they're about boxing robots). This movie stars Hugh Jackman (probably best known for his portrayal of the X-Men character Wolverine, in numerous movies, some of which were even good) as Charlie Kenton, a former boxer who now controls fighting robots, in a near future world where people beating each other up as a sport has been replaced by robots beating each other up. Charlie is clearly in a tailspin towards rock bottom as the movie begins, over his head in debt with some very not nice people, and desperate to try and make money however he can. During this time, he is summoned to sign over parental rights to his abandoned 11 year old son Max to the kid's aunt and uncle (the implication is that old Charlie-boy was never in the picture). Charlie agrees to take care of the boy for the summer, but extorts money out of the kid's uncle in exchange (The aunt and uncle are going on vacation and the uncle doesn't want the kid along). Charlie immediately pisses away the money on a robot that gets demolished, and then resorts to digging in a scrapyard for parts. There the two stumble over an old sparring robot, and with Max's constant cajoling, they refit it to be a fighting bot.

3rd Review: Skyfall

October 26th? Not in this country.

Hello guys, welcome to the weekend and The Tagline! This week I decided that rather than doing a top 5 list, I would do a third review, given that I just got out to see Skyfall, the new James bond film currently in theaters. No tagline for this one, Skyfall IS the tagline I guess. Skyfall is the third James Bond film starring Daniel Craig as Bond (the first two being Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace if you didn't see them) and these movies represent a kind of renaissance of the Bond brand. Casino Royale was a spectacular film, that gave the Bond franchise a new lease on life, by dropping the excessively lame punning, the goofy super weapons and silly gadgets, and replacing them with honest to god espionage. In doing so they also gave us a new Bond. Still charismatic, and sharply dressed (at times) but a real spy, a dangerous, possibly unstable individual who doesn't hesitate to pull the trigger, or do whatever it takes to get the job done. He spends a lot of time killing people, and getting beat up. Skyfall manages to raise the stakes again (and it really seems in the current movie climate that's always the name of the game) and pushes 007 to his limits.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Walk with me into the past.

"What he really wanted was to spend Thanksgiving with his family. What he got was three days with the turkey."

I picked that tagline because it was one of the lamest jokes I'd ever read in my life. Hey everybody, it's Thanksgiving here at the Tagline too, so I thought I would try and review a Thanksgiving themed movie. It probably says something about just how deranged I am that the first movie that came to mind for me was Addams Family Values (for reasons you'll understand if you have seen that movie). Eventually I recovered and with a little help remembered that Planes, Trains and Automobiles was, at least in theory, about a guy trying to get home for Thanksgiving. Directed by John Hughes, a man known for directing a grocery list of movies that are considered 80s classics and that I also don't really care for all that much (Like Ferris Bueller, fuck that guy) I did however really like this movie. P, T & A stars Steve Martin as Neal Page, who is trying to return to his family for Thanksgiving after a business trip to New York. His trip is ill-fated however, as he runs across Del Griffith (John Candy), who causes him to miss out on a cab he was racing after. The two end up travelling together, and the results... well they aren't good. They aren't good at all.

Breaking Dawn, Part II

Are you ready for this experience!

"The epic finale that will live forever"

Welcome to Thanksgiving week (or... nothing special if you don't live in the U.S. I suppose) A new edition of The Tagline is out today! I braved the rabid crowds Thursday at midnight, got lost in the dark, and finally arrived at a theater despite the growing cold I was developing, all so I could bring you my impressions of this, the final movie in the TWILIGHT SAGA!!! I knew that I couldn't allow myself to miss a movie that was guaranteed to fill me with unintentional amusement, and I didn't want to deprive you of that second-hand humor! Breaking Dawn: Part II continues the adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's final Twilight novel, a story that is 25% wedding 25% gross excessively long sex stuff that's really unsexy, 40% buildup, 5% a baby being eaten out of Bella's stomach, and 5% the climax never happening. How did the movie compare? Well Breaking Dawn: Part I was almost entirely the aforementioned wedding and gross sex stuff. Part II was also stuffed with gross RPatz KStew sexytimes, but also lots of that aforementioned buildup. What's that like huh?

My 5 Favorite Adam Sandler Movies

Hello and welcome to a very special Saturday edition of the Tagline! Today I decided that I wanted to do another actor top 5, and I thought "you know who's starred in roughly 5 movies I really liked? Adam Sandler!" Okay, so that's a harsh exaggeration, he's been in more than 5 movies that I really liked, but I'm going to give my top 5. I spent some time trying to sort out which went where, but I couldn't really make sense of the order except for the #1 movie, which is definitely my favorite. It is also worth mentioning that I really liked the movie Airheads, but I consider that more of a Brendan Fraser movie, and let's face it, the guy needs every good mark on his record he can get (he's already appeared on my hall of shame at least once here). So without further ado I give you!

My Top 5 Adam Sandler Movies

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"We Are Infinite"

Hello everyone, happy Thursday from The Tagline! Today I'm going to talk about a film I wasn't really interested in, watched with disinterest, and didn't enjoy in any way shape or form. The internet made a big enough noise about this film that I thought "hey, it's a shortish movie, I can spare the time to watch it. Maybe it'll be charming right?" Well I found myself thoroughly un-charmed. Let's see if I can piece this together for you in a way that might make some sense. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a film based of the best-selling novel of the same name. I have not read that book, but having seen this movie I am not inspired to go pick it up. The film stars Logan Lerman (or as I like to think of him, Percy Jackson) as Charlie, an incoming high school freshman introvert, who thinks that no one sees him and gets picked on and is sensitive and intelligent BLA BLA BLA. Gosh that's the most original premise for fiction EVER, I'm sure I've never heard that exact story a million times. Now I'll grant you, that isn't an instant mark against the movie. If it shows us something interesting, does something novel, then a rote premise can be fine. Sadly this story isn't that. Charlie is taken in by two outcast seniors, who let him into their little misfit club, they all have wacky adventures and make precious high school memories, that's about then end of the story. Drama happens, Logan has SERIOUS HIGH SCHOOL problems, and then he learns that he's not okay, they're not okay, and that's okay. Or something. Charlie's guiding lights are Sam (Emma Watson, or her true identity, Hermione Granger) and Patrick (Ezra Miller). Supporting cast includes Nina Dobrev as Charlie's sister (She being best known as Elena Gilbert on the CW television show The Vampire Diaries).

Wreck-It Ralph

Looks like John C. Reilly to me. Giant fists and all.

"Get ready for a new kind of hero."

Hey y'all, welcome to the Tuesday edition of The Tagline! I finally got to the movies to see Wreck-It Ralph, so I want to give my immediate impressions and feelings about it, while the movie is still fresh in my mind. Wreck-It Ralph Stars John C. Reilly (did anyone else like Walk Hard? I thought it was funny in a really intensely stupid way) as Ralph, the bad guy in his game, Fix-it Felix. Ralph is sick of living in the dump while Felix (Jack McBrayer, best known for his role in 30 Rock as NBC Page Kenneth Parcell) is showered in medals and accolades. In an attempt to turn his fortunes around, Ralph goes to the modern shooter game Hero's Duty, where he's heard he could get a medal himself (settling a bet he made with one of the supporting characters of his game). This doesn't go the way Ralph hoped, and he ends up blasting off into the world of go-cart racer Sugar Rush, where he meets the diminutive and annoying Vanellope Von Schweetz (played by Sarah Silverman, a funny lady who I am both attracted to and legitimately scared of). Ralph unfortunately trails a cybug from Hero's Duty into the world of Sugar Rush, and that is... well not good, because those bugs are real bad. Sergeant Calhoun follows after the bug (Jane Lynch, probably best known currently as Sue Sylvester on the TV show Glee) to try and stop its rampage.

Top 5 CGI Family Movies

Hey everybody, welcome to a special Saturday edition of The Tagline! Wreck-it Ralph is currently in theaters, and while I still haven't seen it, I thought it would be nice to recount some of my favorite computer animated films that Disney now almost certainly owns the rights to, having purchased virtually every film company in existence (Ok that's not true and some of these are not Disney movies but so what). So on that note, let's go to the board with the:

My 5 Favorite CGI Family Films
(That I totally didn't tear up at the end of)

Sorcerer's Apprentice

Nicholas Cage's biography.

"It's The Coolest Job Ever."

I agree tagline, being Nicholas Cage would be the coolest job ever! I wish I could be a rich person for acting literally insane all day long. Anyway welcome to The Tagline! Today I am going to talk about the Sorcerer's Apprentice, a movie that as a concept is patently ridiculous, but was still enjoyable. Starring Nicholas Cage as the sorcerer in question, Balthazar Blake, this film follows a socially awkward physics power nerd named Dave Stutler (Dave Baruchel, who lent his voice to the portrayal of  Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon) who leads a mundane college life after a bizarre run-in with Balthazar when he was a little kid. This existence is ended however when the evil sorcerer (and Balthazar's former BFF) Horvath (Alfred Molina, you know, Dr. Octopus!) is released from an urn that he was trapped in (with Balthazar, don't make me explain watch the movie). The two are both interested in Dave because he is some special dude who is destined to inherit Merlin's power (a little backstory, Balthazar and Horvath were both Merlin's pupils, along with a lady, they both had the hots for her, she went Cage, DUH and then Horvath betrayed them all and joined Morgana, who is an evil bitch, OBVIOUSLY), including his magic ring, which Horvath wants to use to release Morgana from a magic prison, do some really dark magic, take over the world etc. In short he is not a very nice guy.

12 Monkeys

Prepare for something FRENCH

"They're Coming."

Hey everyone, it's Tuesday, and I'm finally back for real! I have working lights and everything, so I thought that it was time for a celebration. I celebrate things by reviewing or watching Bruce Willis movies. So today I thought I'd pick pretty much the weirdest one I can think of, and talk about Twelve Monkeys. I mentioned that Looper kind of reminded me of this movie, even though it was only because their messages were so different, but there is a similar kind of structure to them. Twelve Monkeys was made in 1995, based on a French short film shot in the 1960s. It stars Bruce Willis as James Cole, a convicted criminal living in a post-apocalyptic future, where an engineered virus has forced the remains of human civilization underground. In this future, scientists have developed an imprecise form of time travel, and in order to try and earn a pardon, Cole is sent into the past, to try and gather information about the virus, and if possible obtain a sample of the original so a cure might be made. The virus is believed to have been released by a terrorist organization known as the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, and with that vague information to go on Cole is sent first to 1990, and then to 1996 around when the virus was supposed to have been released.

Drive

Hey Ryan, those are some nice gloves!

"Some Heroes Are Real"

Hello and Happy Halloween! You're getting an early Thursday post, because I still have no power, and so had to seek an alternate location for posting! I want to also give a quick shout out to the like 400 people who visited my blog today searching for The Crow, I assume because it is Halloween! Thanks for stopping by! Anyway, I've been meaning to write a post about this movie Drive for a long while now, but I always ended up doing something else instead. No more! Today I give Ryan Gosling his due, and talk about this movie, which came out of nowhere one September day to dazzle and then horrify me. Starring Ryan Gosling as the nameless Driver (no one ever refers to him by his name). He is duh a driver, stunt by day and criminal get away by night. He doesn't seem to do this because of any particular ambitions, other than to be the best driver (like no one ever was?) He works as a mechanic with his... friend I guess Shannon (Bryan Cranston, who while he wasn't being in Breaking Bad was in Total Recall) who does have aspirations that get him into trouble. Driver meets a girl (Carey Mulligan, who is British I guess? News to me) and her son, who live in the same building as him, and we see a gentle side to this otherwise hardened criminal.

Silent HIll: Revelation

It's like T2. In this one Pyramid Head's
the good guy?

"Prepare for a THREE DEEE RIDE THROUGH HELL"

Happy Tuesday everyone! For those of you in the path of the hurricane, I hope you're not dead! I'm setting this to autopost in case my power's out, so who knows, maybe I'm sitting in the dark, and the situation has devolved into cannibalism! If so, then what more fitting movie to talk about than a Silent Hill film in THREE DEESSSSS. For the record I did not see this movie in 3D, because I hate 3D movies and really REALLY don't want to pay 13+ dollars for a movie ticket. That sucks. Silent Hill: Revelation is a direct sequel to the original Silent Hill movie (if you missed it I reviewed the original on Thursday) following Chris, now Harry (Sean Bean) and Sharon now Heather (Adelaide Clemens), who are on the run from a mysterious group, who want Heather for some sinister purpose. This movie is clearly intent on hedging very closely to the plot of Silent Hill 3, and that is to its credit. Like I said on Thursday, in my opinion Silent Hill 3 was the best one. So how did this movie stack up to the original?

The 5 Dumbest Horror Movie Sequels

Happy Saturday everyone! Apparently the world is going to end in a horrific hellstorm for those of us living on the east coast, so I figured I should finish up my life's work today, by running down a list of the worst sequels to horror movie franchises ever. This has been my lifelong ambition. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but that is what I'm going to do today! Horror movie franchises are renowned for being not good, but some in particular take the cake. As franchises grow stale, and movie producers grow desperate to turn a dime, things take a turn for the really really dumb. These movies are all so worthless that I will list them in no particular order. They are all #1.

The 5 Worst Horror Movie Sequels

Silent Hill

Look at the time...

"Welcome to Silent Hill"

Happy Thursday everyone! We're still in the thick of October, and a new Silent Hill movie, Silent Hill: Revelation, is hitting theaters this Friday, so I thought now would be an appropriate time to talk about the original Silent Hill movie, a movie which surprised me by not sucking ass. You might recall that I did a two part list of the shittiest game movies ever made (here and here) and mentioned that there was a short list of movies that fell into that category and were not absolutely awful. Among those was this movie, released in 2006. Based loosely on the games of the same name, Silent Hill starred Radha Mitchell (you might remember her from the science fiction/horror film Pitch Black), Sean Bean (to a lesser extent than Radha Mitchell, we don't see as much of him) and also Laurie Holden (most recently she has portrayed Andrea on the AMC original series The Walking Dead) portrays the police officer Cybil Bennet. Jodelle Ferland (she appeared in the Twilight sequel Eclipse as Bree Tanner) portrays the requisite creepy little girl.

The Crow

Looks serious right? it is.

"In a world without justice, one man was chosen to protect the innocent."

Hello everyone, welcome back to The Tagline after my short weekend away! I did NOT give away a copy of The Crow to anyone, but now I will review it for all of you. It seems appropriate with the approach of Halloween! You see, there was a time once called the 1990s. During this time, now lost to history and left only in fable and myth, everything was super deadly serious, no matter how ridiculous it might have seemed. Paradoxically no one cared about anything, because that was super uncool. Out of this fertile bed of alternativeness sprang The Crow, a film direct by Alex Proyas, who also later directed Dark City, the first movie I reviewed on The Tagline in its current incarnation. The Crow was loosely based on a comic series of the same name, about a musician named Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) who is murdered, along with his fiance on October 30th, in a urban gothic hellscape version of Detroit (slightly worse than real Detroit).

Almost Heroes

Like Tommy Boy, if it were
about Manifest Destiny

"Almost History... Almost Legends... Mostly Ridiculous."

Hey gang, welcome to Thursday at The Tagline! Today I thought I'd pick from a genre I more seldom address, and review a movie that most audiences that saw it enjoyed, and that virtually every critic who reviewed it hated: Almost Heroes. For those who were about 10 in 1998 when it came out (and I was 11) Almost Heroes starred Matthew Perry as the foppish explorer Lesley Edwards, and Chris Farley as his boorish partner Bartholomew Hunt. Together, the two set out in search of the western edge of North America, following in the wake of Lewis & Clark, in the hopes of beating them to planting a flag on the beaches of the Pacific. This endeavor is hindered by the fact that Edwards is a dandy, and Hunt is a drunken imbecile. Also the crew accompanying them includes some of the most incompetent simpletons one could hope to find. Among them is a crazed Frenchman and his indian woman (their group's version of Sacajawea), a priest, a dumb guy who loses several limbs, and Edwards' man servant (played by Bokeem Woodbine, you saw him in Total Recall) who is essentially the only person in the group who isn't braindead, except maybe the indian woman. Along their way, Edwards and Hunt are waylayed by their own stupidity, the French guy being really jealous of anyone looking at his Indian lady, and also an insane conquistador named Hidalgo, and his henchmen. Yadda yadda hilarity ensues.

Evidence

Evidence that guys with cameras will get
you killed.

Welcome to Tuesday at The Tagline! Today I'm going to talk about a movie I watched on the Netflix last week: Evidence. This continues my horror movie tear (I guess this is the time to do it right?) Evidence was an interesting film, shot on a very small budget and using the "found footage" approach to movie making that was first popularized in horror by The Blair Witch Project, a movie which bored my pants off with its boring woods scenes. As the name might indicate, the film itself is the 'found footage' shot by 4 friends filming a documentary in the deep woods, when things go wrong. Really wrong. The footage serves as evidence of the bizarre experiments that seemed to be conducted in the area. There were a lot of neat ideas on offer here, and certainly I was impressed by how far they managed to stretch their budget, but the movie had plenty that was wrong with it too, and I'm not going to gloss over it. Warning for everyone, I have to spoil some stuff to explain some of my criticism.

My 5 Favorite Spooky Spirit Movies

Welcome to Saturday on the Tagline! As we move towards Halloween I decided it would be appropriate to talk about some horror movies. For me one of my favorite types of horror movie to be freaked out by are movies that involve ghosts, spirits, and possession. I know what you're thinking, why those? Well I know some people are not big fans of movies involving spooks, and I realized it's because they don't believe in ghosts! Now believe might be a strong word for me. I wouldn't say I believe in them, just that the thought of an invisible intangible thing that can take control of my body while I sleep, drag me off and then make me kill myself and everyone around me is more than slightly upsetting. Once you allow for that as an even distant possibility, well then horror movies about spooky spirits become a lot less corny and freaky as hell. So I give you

My Top 5 Movies That Made Me Not Sleep For Weeks on End

The Losers

Zoe Saldana in a cowboy hat.

"Anyone Else Would Be Dead By Now."

Welcome back to the Tagline! Today I'll be talking about a film I saw a couple years back that I feel really didn't get noticed, the vertigo comic based The Losers. The movie follows a group of special forces operatives burned by the mysterious CIA spook "Max" as they attempt to get revenge and clear their names. This more or less follows the premise of the comics, albeit in a movie shortened fashion.  The Losers stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan (who I recently talked about in The Possession) as Clay, who is the team's leader. Supporting cast include Zoe Saldana as Aisha (Her best known role was probably as Uhura in the Star Trek remake) and Chris Evans as Jensen (You are probably familiar with him, he was most recently Captain America in The Avengers). The team travels from Bolivia to the U.S. where they perform a variety of dangerous, suicidal, and very illegal operations all in an attempt to find Max, so that they can kill him. Max meanwhile has his own plans, and is attempting to use next generation weapons of mass destruction to start a war, in order to influence world events and 'steer the world back on track'. You know, your typical megalomania villain fare.

Looper

Not to be confused with 12 Monkeys

"Hunted by your future. Haunted by your past."

Welcome to a fresh week of The Tagline! Over the weekend I got out to the movies and took in the new Bruce Willis/Joseph Gordon-Levitt flick Looper. Taking place in the year 2042, Looper stars JGL as Joe, a specialized assassin used by criminal syndicates in the future. Because it's very difficult to discreetly dispose of someone in 2072, the syndicates instead use illegal time travel tech to send the people into the past, where loopers (the assassins) wait to kill and dispose of the future people. The victims are sent back with the loopers payment strapped to their backs in the form of silver bars. There's a catch for the loopers though. To keep loose ends tied up, loopers sign a contract, agreeing that their last assassination will be of themselves from 30 years in the future. As the movie begins, many loopers are having their contracts terminated all at once. The prevailing rumor is that a new crime boss, known only as "the rainmaker" has suddenly seized control of all criminal operations, and is terminating the contracts of all loopers. When Joe's future self is sent back, he manages to evade past Joe's attempts to kill him, and seems intent on finding the "rainmaker" and killing him/her (he doesn't even know that much) before he/she can ever become a threat.

Keanu Reeves Hall of Shame

Hey guys, welcome to the weekend at The Tagline! As promised, today we will take a moment to honor Keanu Reeves, and the numerous ridiculous roles he has played. For those that have somehow missed out on the heartthrob sensation that is Keanu "The One" Reeves, he had his first breakout hit on the big screen as a stoner named Ted in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. After that he was... still Ted for a while, in a tv series, and also a sequel to the original movie. That's a lot of Ted! After that he was in other movies, where he wasn't Ted, but he still often seemed like a stoner, because well... he's one in real life. Perhaps his best known role was as Neo in the in-retrospect-not-nearly-as-cool The Matrix. But I'm not going to talk about that (not the first one anyway). So without any more gilding of the lily, let's get to exposing Keanu's great shame, with his 3 worst movies. I could've made it 5, but I really want to tear into just these special 3.

Keanu Reeves' Hall of Shame

21 Jump Street

He'll beat your dick off with both hands!

"They're too old for this shift."

Welcome to Thursday everyone! Today I'm going to be talking about the 2012 movie adaptation of the 80s tv show 21 Jump Street. The movie stars Channing Tatum (I think he just played a male stripper in Magic Mike? Yeah that was weird) as the good looking, athletic, and dumb Jenko, and Jonah Hill (who found his breakout in Superbad) as the not so good looking, less athletic but very smart Schmidt. With their powers combined, the two of them form almost one functioning police officer. Almost. After they completely screw up an arrest, mostly because Jenko doesn't know the miranda rights, the two of them are turfed to 21 Jump Street (which is in a Korean Church) where they are tasked with posing as high school students to discover where a new deadly designer drug is coming from. What follows is a less than textbook perfect operation, that involves distributing alcohol and drugs to minors and stealing a couple cars. While it might not be good police work, it is really funny.

Inception

I haven't seen this poster before. I don't
care for the title font, it's stupid looking.

"The Dream is Real"

Welcome to the first post of October at The Tagline! As I teased on Saturday, today I will be talking about a movie with Ken Watanabe in it: (albeit as a supporting character) Inception. I had previously avoided reviewing it because I felt like I couldn't get away from people talking about it, but now I think it's okay to share my thoughts. For those of you who did not see Inception (I suppose someone might not have), it's a movie about people who use some manner of made up technology to enter other people's dreams, so that they can... do stuff to them. Typically they're trying to steal information right from the person's mind while they are sleeping. Among them, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is considered one of the best, and is called upon to help a rich businessman (Watanabe) prevent another company from obtaining a complete monopoly over the energy market, by convincing its new CEO that his father's dying wish was to break up the company. They will do this by performing a supposedly impossible feat known as inception: planting an idea in a mark's mind and convincing them that it was their own. Cobb assembles a team of friends and associates to help him perform this monumental and risky mind operation.

My 5 Favorite Tom Cruise Movies

Hey gang, welcome back to The Tagline! It's Saturday, and that means it's time for me to list some stuff probably (that's exactly what I'm going to do). You all undoubtedly are acquainted with Tom Cruise. He's a famous movie star, in countless movies that have grossed huge mountains of money (a long with a collection of less than great films). He's also a well known crazy person, one of many very, very rich people belonging to the church of scientology (it doesn't get capitalization). I'm not going to talk about all that crazy stuff though. Despite his... eccentricities (or perhaps because of them) Tom Cruise has played a lot of roles that I've really enjoyed. I want to go over my favorite 5 now. Bear in mind that I'm not saying these are the best movies he's been in necesarily, they're just my personal favorites.

MY TOP 5 FAVORITE TOM CRUISE MOVIES

Green Lantern

One of these aliens is Mark Strong.

"In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night."

Welcome back to The Tagline, with another review of a movie that I thought was ok and everyone else hated apparently: Green Lantern. Green Lantern stars Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, who over the course of the movie becomes a green lantern (for those not familiar, Green Lantern is not a single person, there are a whole bunch of green lanterns, they're like superhero space police). As Hal comes to terms with his new-found powers, he must also come to terms with his own fears as he battles to save the Earth from Parallax, a monster which feeds on the fear of its victims to become stronger. This film hedges pretty close to the comics as an origin story for Hal Jordan, and features a huge special effects budget. For reasons that I'm not entirely sure of, people didn't care for this movie at all. I don't just mean that they were lukewarm about it or that it got some bad reviews, I mean that people really, almost universally disliked this movie. While it might not have been the most original or deep movie I have ever watched, I don't see why Green Lantern was such an apparently awful movie. I will now, as is my way, defend green lantern systematically, by addressing issues reviewers had with it, and then calling them a bunch of rude names while disagreeing with them.

High Fidelity

This movie is about 9 clone John Cusacks.

"A comedy about fear of commitment, hating your job, falling in love and other pop favorites."

Hello everyone! Well I felt bad about leaving this movie off my top 5 John Cusack list, and apparently some people were put off by that too, so today I'm going to be talking about what is probably my #6 John Cusack movie, High Fidelity. High Fidelity Was based on a British novel of the same name, by Nick Hornby with some minor changes (it takes place in Chicago and not London, some names are changed) about Rob Gordon (Cusack), a music geek and compulsive list maker, who decides to list and subsequently look up his exs to figure out what he's doing wrong, after his current relationship with girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle, who is Danish evidently). Rob in the meantime runs his record store, with the help of his two heckling moron friends Barry (Jack Black) and Dick (Todd Luiso). Sounds like a pretty basic premise, so what puts this movie above others of its sort?

My 5 Favorite John Cusack Movies

Welcome to the weekend gang! Today I decided I'd take a break from enumerating things that I hate, and instead make a list of things I like. John Cusack, as you may or may not know, first encountered success in the early '80s, working alongside other notable members of the so-called 'brat pack' in Sixteen Candles. He avoided the crash and burn of those others however, and unlike other teen stars of the 80s continued to have a career into his adult life. So now, I give you, my five favorite works of Mr. Cusack.

My 5 Favorite John Cusack Movies

Jumper

He looks cool right? We still like Hayden Christensen totally!

"Anywhere. Anything. Instantly."

Well that's not entirely true. They couldn't for instance, find a plot that I gave half a shit about. No sirree bob. Welcome back to the Tagline, today I'm going to be talking about Jumper, the thrilless sci-fi action movie starring Hayden Christensen, who you all probably know best as Anakin Skywalker from the Star Wars prequels. He delivers another stellar performance in this movie as David, a guy with a special power: the ability to teleport at will wherever he wants to. He uses this power to be jerk, teleport cars, impress his girlfriend (Rachel Bilson) and oh yeah, rob the shit out of banks. He is not the only person with this jumping power, and he meets Griffin, a jumper who hunts down paladins. What's a paladin? Well they are guys who hunt down jumpers, and lead among them is Roland, portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson. The movie is based on a novel of the same name, by Steven Gould. I haven't read it, so I can't say for sure, but if the book was anything like the movie, then it must have been the worst book ever written in the history of the world.

The Hunger Games

I did not experience it again in IMAX.

"The Games Will Change Everyone"

Happy Tuesday everyone! I thought that with it recently out on DVD that it would be fun to talk about the dystopian action film The Hunger Games, based on the young adult novel of the same name. The film follows the life of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence, you might remember her as Mystique in X-Men: First Class) who volunteers to partake in the games to take the place of her sister. The games are essentially the same scenario as the one played out in the Japanese film/book/manga franchise Battle Royale. For those who aren't familiar, a number of adolescents are pitted in a fight to the death until only one remains. In the case of the Hunger Games, one boy and one girl are chosen from each of 12 districts to participate in a televised bloodbath as a form of penance for when the districts rebelled against the tyrannical Capitol.

The Top 5 Worst Bruce Willis Movies

Welcome to the weekend everyone! I decided that, given my history of praising movies starring Bruce Willis, it would only be right and fair to also highlight the worst movies he has ever made. Given that Mr. Willis has a career spanning some 30+ years of serious movie making, there are bound to be a few stinkers mixed in there right? Yeah, big time. So without further delay!

The Top 5 Worst Bruce Willis Movies

Premium Rush

JGL On a Bike: The Movie

"Ride Like Hell"

Welcome back to the Tagline! Today I'm going to be talking about the second movie I saw last week: Premium Rush. I honestly saw this movie as a bit of a lark. I'm not sure if it's just me, but it seems like everyone is up JGLs ass lately (especially the fangirls) and it's starting to wear on my nerves. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised. Despite its somewhat unusual premise, Premium Rush was actually very engaging and entertaining from beginning to end. If I were a complete tool, I'd probably describe it as "A white knuckle thrillride that will leave you on the edge of your seat." Fortunately I am not that big of a tool, so I'm not going to say any of that senseless shit. What I will say is that this movie is just like the lunatic cyclists in it. There is not an ounce of fat to it, it is all business from the time it starts until the credits roll.

The Possession

Based on a true story that someone made up.

"Fear The Demon That Doesn't Fear God"

Welcome back to the Tagline, this weekend I got to the movies not once, but twice, and so I'll be treating you to two current movies this week. First up is The Possession, a horror movie about a little girl who gets a box. A very bad box. Well the box isn't bad, but the horrible body stealing, soul eating demon inside is pretty bad. The movie stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Clyde (Most recently you might remember him in The Losers, a movie I will probably talk about at some point, or as the Comedian in The Watchmen), a not very good dad (not a new role to him if you have seen Supernatural) whose daughter Em (Natasha Calis) buys a wooden box at a yard sale. A wooden box with a malicious Hebrew demon inside it. Kyra Sedgewick plays Clyde's stupid ex-wife who blames everything bad in the movie on him (actually his older sister does too, but I forgive her a little more on account of she's a tween). The demon is trying to possess Em, and Clyde goes to great lengths to try and stop it.

The Worst of Nicolas Cage

Welcome to the weekend everyone, it's time for another special post from the Tagline! Today I thought I would deal with a very serious subject this weekend, bring it down a notch, and so I'm going to be talking about Nicolas Cage. Mr. Cage has wooed and wowed us over the years, as a variety of crazy people, doing very strange things. Sometimes however, those crazy people are not wowing or wooing. Sometimes they are just crazy people. Over the years the frequency of the latter category seems to have increased, and we have all begun to suspect I think that these are not characters at all, but simply Nicolas Cage, in real life. Without further ado, I give you!

THE Top 5 Worst Roles of Nicolas Cage