Mama

Apparently Jessica Chastain's the
only one who really matters here.

"A mother's love is forever."

Hello folks, welcome to Thursday at The Tagline! As promised, I got out to the theater and saw Mama, directed by NOT Guillermo Del Toro (he is just the executive producer big whoop), who brought us other movies that were weird and frightening, such as Pan's Labyrinth. This movie was directed by Andres Muschietti who I have no idea who he is, but he directed this movie and not Guillermo Del Toro, and deserves the credit. Let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time, a guy played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (hereafter referred to as Jaime Lannister, who he portrays in Game of Thrones) decided that he would kill his wife, and then drive his two very young daughters off a cliff in the snow, wander through the woods, find a creepy old cabin, and then kill them there. Alas, before he could make his grab for dad of the year award A nightmare specter murders him, but we can't get a good look because we see this through the eyes of the older daughter Victoria, who has lost her glasses. I was frankly relieved that he was savagely murdered by some vengeful monster-spirit, because I certainly did not want to watch a bullet emerge from the face of a dead 4 year old. The movie is PG-13, so I was pretty sure that wasn't going to happen, but still I was fearful. Anyway, so the girls are stuck in a cabin now, with this... thing, and its five years later before they are found, by some grizzled old guys on behalf of the girls' uncle, Jaime Lannister 2 (he is dead-dad's twin brother). Jaime Lannister 2 takes custody of the girls, despite the protestation of their maternal aunt. Along with Jaime2 is his girlfriend Annabelle (Jessica Chastain the only person important enough to appear on the poster apparently) who, who is presented to us as a really lame rocker lady with tattoos who plays bass for a band I imagine is called like V.J. Powerhouse or Vagiantess or something. The point is, they seem really lame. Under really shady, deeply unethical circumstances, Jaime2 and Annabelle are given a big house to live in with the girls by their psychiatrist who is obviously using them, to try and draw out a horrible crazy momghost. As you might imagine, this doesn't end great.

ParaNorman

Stop animation at its finest.

"You don't become a hero by being normal."

Hello everyone, welcome to another exciting week of The Tagline! over the weekend, between naps, I managed to stay awake long enough to watch ParaNorman. If you managed to miss it (and the numbers would suggest that many folks did) ParaNorman is an oddity, in that it is a stop motion film, using full color 3D printers for a large portion of the puppet creation. The fact that it is stop motion at all (and not using the normal 3D format cameras) is remarkable by itself, and watching the fluid quality of the animation, it's no wonder that the filming process of the movie took a total of two years. ParaNorman stars Kodi Smit-McPhee (who also starred in the American vampire movie adaptation Let Me In) as the voice of Norman Babcock, a boy who is very unusual. He's unusual because he can see dead people (obligatory Sixth Sense joke here). Among these is his grandmother. Suffice to say, Norman's family, especially his father, aren't super excited about the fact that Norman watches slasher flicks with his dead granny all day. Norman also for all intents and purposes doesn't have any friends. He gains one, the incredibly goobery ginger Neil. After being assaulted in a public place by his creepy distant relative, the smelly beardo Mr. Prederghast (voiced by John Goodman), Norman is drawn into a frightful situation involving a witch's curse, and some zombies. See in Norman's home town, there's this myth involving a witch who was put to death, and subsequently put a curse on the members of the town government that put her to death, that involved them rising as zombies. Scary stuff!

The Lorax

This is just... creepy to me. I'll explain why below.

"He speaks for the trees."

Hey gang! today as threatened earlier in the week, I will be talking about The Lorax, a full length movie based on the animated Seussian musical of '72/children's book about not killing the environment. This film follows the same basic premise, only with a few changes to the basic premise. Namely, the Once-ler (voiced by Ed Helms) is only half of the story, told in flashback form. The other story is about Ted (Zac Efron, yuck) who wants to romance Audrey, and figures the only way to do it is to get her a real tree (in his city there are no real trees). Audrey by the by is voiced by Taylor Swift, and I'll address that further later in the post. So Ted leaves town and finds the Once-ler, who is supposedly the only person who knows where trees might be. The Once-ler tells the story of how he made some really stupid thing called a Thneed out of Truffula trees against the urgings of the Lorax, who if you didn't know speaks for the trees. He does this in the voice of Danny DeVito, and when I talk about things in this movie I found odd and unsettling, we'll address that too. Long story short, the Once-ler told the Lorax to get bent, and then paved over the Earth to get rich, but at some point became a creepy smelly hermit. Ted vows to use the last Truffula seed to replant a tree, but the short asshole who rules the town's industry wants to stop him, so he can sell bottled air to people. Antics ensue, and also there is some singing.

Silver Linings Playbook

Quirky font on the poster? Sign me up!

"Watch for the signs"

Hello all, welcome back to The Tagline! Over the weekend I found out that my nearby theater was screening Silver Linings Playbook, which previously I'd have had to see at the art cinema (for more money than I wanted to spend). I was thrilled and so immediately set off to the movies! Silver Linings Playbook (based on a novel of the same name) stars Bradley Cooper as Bipolar Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper doing something that isn't making a Hangover movie, which is nice) who at the beginning of the movie is in a mental institution. His mother, at the protest of the doctors, arranges for Pat to leave the institution early, coming back home to live with her and Pat's also pretty crazy dad Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro), to try and get his life back together. We find out that Pat was in the joint because he walked in on his wife Nikki and a teacher from her school (an old dude at that) naked together in the shower, with Pat and Nikki's wedding song playing on a stereo. Pat reacted... badly, and beat the guy within an inch of his life, and had a wildly psychotic break. One can hardly blame him, given the circumstances, but it becomes readily apparent very quickly that Pat is not okay. His rambling speech, and outlandish delusions are clearly those of a bipolar if you've ever known a person with that range of disorders, and I thought it was good that they portray mental illness in a way that is not exaggerated or insulting. Pat's actions are meant to be amusing at times, but his illness is not.

Dredd

Not a lot of deep thought happening here.

"Judgment is coming."

Hey folks! Welcome to another blood soaked installment of the Tagline! Today I'm going to talk about the 3D bloodbath sensation  Dredd, a 2012 adaptation of the prolific British Judge Dredd comics, first printed in the late 70s, and continuing through the present. Dredd stars Karl Urban as the eponymous Judge Dredd, (the last movie I saw him in was the new Star Trek, he was McCoy, wait scratch that I forgot about Red). He accompanies a prospective Judge named Anderson (played by Olivia Thirlby, the last movie I saw her in was Juno believe it or not. Pretty serious genre shift) who is undergoing a kind of trial by fire to decide if she's fit to be a judge. Apparently her test scores are pretty underwhelming, but she is a powerful psychic, and so the Hall of Justice decides that she's worth the trouble. During what is a routine investigation of a triple homicide, Dredd and Anderson run afoul of Ma Ma (Lena Headey, you know, Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones!) who controls the entire mega-block the murders take place in. She's in the process of distributing a new drug that will give her serious leverage and grow her little crime empire, but first she has to make sure one of her captured goons never gets to be interrogated by the judges. To achieve this end, she locks down the block and sends her thugs to wage war on the two trapped judges. Dredd takes it pretty personally, and what ensues could be delicately termed an orgy of gun violence.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Prepare for, probably a white-knuckle thrill ride?

"I couldn't find a tagline for this cruddy movie"

Welcome to Tuesday at the Tagline! Every now and then, a movie comes along that changes the way we think of movies. It tells us something deep about ourselves, and the human condition, while at the same time thrilling and entertaining us. This is not one of those movies. I was thinking about my First Class review, and then I got to thinking about not so great X-Men movies, and that led me down the dark back alley path to... well X-Men Origins: Wolverine. A story of truly shitty proportions, X-Men Origins follows the entirely remade up and intensely stupid origin story of Wolverine (played as always by Hugh Jackman) who apparently was a little kid 200 years ago, along with his brother Sabertooth. After baby Logan murders his real drunk father, and not his pretend drunk father, who was already dead at that point, he realizes he has bone claws (in what is a truly silly scene for the history books) and runs through the woods. Then Logan and his big bro best bud Victor (Liev Schreiber) fight in a whole bunch of wars, because neither of them can die thank to their super regenerating. Over the years Victor gets to lovin' that thar a'killin' too much. Logan and Victor eventually become members of a special mutant ops squad for the government, lead by no one else than a young William Stryker (played here by Danny Huston). Among their teammates are Fred Dukes a.k.a. THE BLOB, a guy who's special power appears to be shooting people, Deadpool (played by Ryan Reynolds, more on him in a bit) and Will I Am from the Black Eyed Peas.

X-Men First Class

No villain is more evil... than Kevin Bacon.

"The story begins"

Skimming my archives I realized that somehow, I managed to never cover my thoughts about X-Men: First Class, the pseudo reboot of the X-Men franchise. I say pseudo reboot because, unlike The Amazing Spider-Man which was more or less a direct reboot of the franchise, First Class was a dramatic re-imagining of the franchise. Set in the 1960s, the movie is an origin story for the generation of superheroes before what could be considered the contemporary X-Men. Primarily, it is the origin story of Charles Xavier (aka Professor X) who is portrayed by one James McAvoy (you might remember from the not quite so terrific movie adaptation of Wanted) and also Erik Lehnsherr (you know Magneto) portrayed by Michael Fassbender (the creepy cyborg from Prometheus among other roles). The two are brought together thanks to a mutual enemy, the extremely bad news mutant Sebastian Shaw (the sinister KEVIN BACON). Charles wants at him because he is threatening the free world, but for Erik it's personal: the bastard killed his mother in front of him in a Nazi concentration camp (it is worth mentioning: Shaw does not age). Sebastian Shaw leads the mysterious Hellfire Club members including Emma Frost (in the comics also known as the White Queen) and Azazel, who like he sounds looks like a devil and has the same teleporting powers as Nightcrawler (in traditional canon Azazel is his father).

The Green Hornet

Machine Gun Car is not a superpower.

"Protect the law by breaking it."

Hello everyone, its a brand new week with The Tagline! Today I thought it would be pretty fun to talk about a movie I watched despite the warnings and protestations of the internet, and any speaking person who I was acquainted with. This film is an adaptation of a very old character, originating in radio dramas in 1936, later moving to comics and television. This particular effort stars Seth Rogen as Britt Reid, a really rich asshole, whose father is  the editor of a newspaper with things like principles and morals. Unlike Britt, who is a slacker nobody. After Britt's father is poisoned (well killed from an allergic reaction to a 'bee sting') Britt does what any self-respecting loser would do and fires his whole staff and goes on a bender. He later rehires his father ninja mechanic Kato (Jay Chou) and they together continue his bender. After getting really wasted, they decide to cut off the head of a statue of Britt's dad, because they both hate him. In the process they save a couple from being mugged, but are mistaken for the muggers. Britt then proposes that they pose as criminals to infiltrate actual criminal organizations, and take them down from the inside, using their cool gadgets and Kato's super ninja assassin powers, and Britt's ability to be a useless tool. Thus, the GREEN HORNET IS BORN.

Django Unchained

That's classy right?

"Django is off the chain"

Hello everyone and welcome to a new year at The Tagline! I had the first day of the new year to myself and so decided to spend it the way I've spent so many other afternoons: at the movies. I decided to take in Django Unchained, the Quentin Tarantino's latest entry into the explosively gratuitously violent movie genre (okay so it's not a genre, but it is the kind of movie that he makes all the time). Django Unchained follows the exploits of a somewhat eccentric bounty hunter named King Shultz (Christoph Waltz, switching sides to bat for the good guys since he last appeared in a Tarantino flick, Inglorious Basterds), who frees the slave Django (Jamie Foxx, who you might remember I mentioned in my rundown of Tom Cruise movies, he was portrayed the protagonist in Collateral) to help him run down a bounty he is after, because Django knows what the criminals look like (from when they tortured and whipped him and his wife).After some shooting and dead bodies, Shultz and Django take out his target, and King proposes that Django stick with him and work as a bounty hunter. In return, King offers to help Django track down and purchase the freedom of his wife Brunhilde (evidently she was owned by Germans originally).