Special

He certainly IS special, that's for certain.

"He's not your ordinary superhero."

Welcome to another week at The Tagline! Today I'm going to be talking about Special, a movie made in 2007 and part of the growing genre of movies about delusional people who think they are superheroes/have superpowers/get seriously injured. The interesting thing about entries into that genre is that they all tend to put a different spin on the idea. Is it a mostly funny thing, that turns out sort of okay? Is it a social commentary, on the desperate plight of the modern man? Or is it the single most depressing thing I watched all week? In the case of Special, we are looking at door number three. Special is about a guy named Les (Mike Rapaport) a meter maid who is picked by a corporation for a trial of an experimental drug that seems like its for anti-depression or something. What actually happens is Les starts to trip balls, and is convinced he can levitate, and read people's minds, and an increasing host of other delusional beliefs. The company's owners, a pair of brothers, become increasingly concerned over the well being of their own sorry asses, and being sued by Les, though Les is obviously not thinking about that because he's too busy running at full speed into solid walls (because he thinks he can go through walls).

Oblivion

Space machine guns are always shiny.

"Earth is a memory worth fighting for."

Hi everyone, welcome to Thursday's Tagline! As planned on Tuesday I went to see Oblivion, the new Sci-fi Tom Cruise flick, directed by Joseph Kosinski, who also directed Tron: Legacy. Oblivion takes place in 2077, 60 years after the Earth was attacked by a mysterious race of aliens known as Scavengers, who had come to harvest the Earth's resources. They began their attack by mostly destroying the Earth's moon, throwing the planet into ecological upheaval, and then proceeded to assault the ground in earnest. After a brutal battle that involved the desperate use of nuclear stockpiles, mankind was victorious, but at a grievous cost to the planet. With no other real alternatives, the population migrated to a colony on Titan, leaving behind only a skeleton crew to mop up and protect large hydroplants harvesting the Earth's oceans for use powering the Titan colony later. one such technician is Jack Harper (Cruise) a man haunted by fragments of memories of his life before his mission (as part of some security protocol he has no memories from before the start of his mission). His only human interaction comes in the form of his mission support officer, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, who has been in exactly nothing I've seen ever... except the pilot of Being Human apparently) who is both his mission control and girlfriend, which I guess would happen if you had contact with only one other person in the world, and they were an attractive British woman. I can't go in to details about the movie without revealing some crucial plot, so serious spoilers beneath the cut.

Fire With Fire

Those rules mostly involve murder

"Revenge has its own set of rules."

Hey everyone, welcome to Monday's Tagline! Today I'll be exploring the nature of revenge as it relates to B action movies on Netflix, in the aptly named Fire with Fire, aptly named because that word applies to virtually everything that happens in this movie. Josh Duhamel is firefighter Jeremy Coleman, who is present when a Neo-Nazi gang leader named David Hagen (Vincent D'Onofrio coming around from the cop side of the desk after a long stint on Law & Order: Criminal Intent) opens fire on the store owner and his son. Jeremy is present and escapes the gunfire of Hagen's cronies, and so is tapped by the authorities to testify against Hagen. This of course puts Jeremy right back in the line of fire (okay I'm done I swear). Also a bunch of shit gets set on actual fire (now I'm done). Heading up the case against Hagen is Detective Mike Cella, a veteran cop whose partner (and his partner's family) were both murdered when they previously attempted to take Hagen down. During his time in protective custody, Jeremy begins a secret relationship with Talia Durham (Rosario Dawson) one of the agents protecting him. Naturally things do not go smoothly, and Jeremy finds himself in a difficult position when Hagen starts attacking his friends even while he is in custody. Deciding he has no other options, Jeremy decides to take matters into his own hands, and kill Hagen before he can kill him and everyone he cares about.

The Secret World of Arrietty

Arrietty, aka The Secret World of Arrietty aka the Borrower
Arrietty aka a lot of French words on a poster.

"Do not be seen by humans. That's been the law of children of the underfloor."

Welcome to Thursday at The Tagline! Today I'm talking about Studio Ghibli's Arrietty, which has like three different names but I will refer to it just as Arrietty, because that is shorter. The most recent of Studio Ghibli's efforts and a film from the post-Miyazaki era, Arrietty follows a teeny tiny girl (named Arrietty) and her adventures. The film is based upon The Borrowers, a novel by English author Mary Norton, (and a book which previously received an American film adaptation in 1997... a bad one) and centers around the Clocks, a family of borrowers living underneath a small country home. These tiny folk are called borrowers because they take things from the house they live under (little things like a sugar cube or a tissue) of course 'borrowing' seems like a cute way of saying stealing here. I mean, I'm not saying I'd miss single tissues or anything, but I hope to god they don't give them back when they're done using them, that sounds pretty gross.

Butter

The people aren't butter though. Just other stuff in the movie.

"There's going to be a meltdown."

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Tagline! Today I'm talking about Butter, a movie about sculpting things, out of butter, to prove that you're better than a nasty housewife, or a dirty stripper/prostitute. No really that is sort of what it's about. So a locally famous butter sculptor, Bob Pickler (Ty Burell) who has dominated the yearly competition for the past 15 years (because I guess people do that) is asked not to compete so maybe someone else can win. 10 year old Destiny (Yara Shahidi) who has been placed with foster parents Ethan and Jill Emmet (Rob Corddry and Alicia Silverstone) wanders into his exhibit of buttery prowess, and decides that she wants to take part in this years contest (because she's apparently good at sculptin' that thar butter). However she faces competetion in the form of Bob's awful wife Laura (Jennifer Garner ewwww Elektra ewwwww) who wants to win the competition as some sort of weird social supremacy marker or something I don't know she's horrible. To try and screw Laura because Bob still owes her 600 dollars for...services rendered, a stripperwhore named Brooke (Olivia Wilde, pics forthcoming) also enters.

Seeking Justice

Remember: always either whispering or shouting

"Would you cross the line for vengeance?"

Hey gang, you're most of the way to the exits for the week, and I'm here with the Tagline to ease the transition with a movie where Nicholas Cage seeks revenge etc. etc. you've heard this story before. Mr. Cage is a high school English teacher in New Orleans named Will Gerard whose wife is brutally raped by a stranger on the way home one night. Will is then approached by a man named Simon, claiming to represent a group of 'concerned citizens' willing to 'take care' of the man who raped Will's wife, by 'murdering him' with a 'gun' (they're a shadowy group of vigilantes okay?). After waffling over it for a little while, Will agrees to make a deal with this suspicious man he has never met who works for a group of shadowy criminal murderers. This seems like a good idea for exactly 0 seconds. It isn't long before Simon is back, looking to have Will do some favors for him. For starters its just dropping off a letter, and other cryptic instructions, but soon after he asks Will to push a guy off a bridge into traffic.

The Factory

What factory. What does that... WHAT.

"Based on true events NO REALLY"

So starters, the tagline for this movie suggested it was based on real events. There is no proof or even suggested evidence of that. So get that out of the way!

Happy Tuesday everyone, welcome back to The Tagline. Netflix was recently flooded with an explosion of new crappy movies, and so I'm here to deliver the goods, starting first with a police murder mystery called The Factory. It follows two detectives, Mike (played by our main man John Cusack, check out my fave five here) and Kelsey (Jennifer Carpenter, of Dexter fame) as they attempt to hunt down a man they believe to be a serial killer of prostitutes. During this hunt (which isn't going at all well) Mike's daughter Abby (Mae Whitman, she appeared in my review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower), after being dumped by Tyler from the Vampire Diaries, is picked up by said serial killer, because she basically looks like a hooker.

The Caller

Victoria is held captive by a past lunatic.

"Some calls are best left unanswered."

Like the call to be in a Twilight movie or two for instance! Welcome to another gripping edition of The Tagline! Today I'll be talking about The Caller, a film that somehow merges horror, being stalked, time-manipulation and land-line telephone service. Starring the bountifully tressed Rachelle Lafevre (who was Victoria in the first two Twilight movies, but NOT the third) as Mary Kee, a woman who is attempting to escape her abusive husband who she is trying to divorce. She moves into a new apartment and finds an antique phone which she decides to use. Around that time she begins to receive phone calls from a clearly crazy lady named Rose. What's really freaky though is that Rose is apparently from the past. Rose seems to be calling from somewhere in the 70s or thereabouts, and despite Mary's attempts to stop the calls, Rose just keeps on a'callin. This only adds to Mary's problems, because her ex-psycho is stalking her. Fortunately she meets John (Stephen Moyer, who most notably portrays Bill Compton on the series True Blood), who is a really nice guy. Things might turn around for Mary, right? not likely.

The Host

RADIOACTIVE RADIOACTIVE.

"Love never dies."

Hey everyone, welcome to another spectacular week at The Tagline! Just for you guys, I went to the movies today and watched The Host, the movie adaptation of the only Stephanie Meyer novel yet to receive a movie adaptation. The Host takes place on an Earth that has been conquered by a race of aliens called souls, who are placed into human bodies and subsume their consciousness, taking over their host body, though often retaining memories. Melanie Stryder(portrayed by Saoirse Ronan, who you may have seen either in Hannah or The Lovely Bones) is a girl who is caught by the souls,  and implanted with one called Wanderer. Despite this, she continues to resist her alien parasite, and tricks her into seeking out Melanie's surviving family and her boyfriend Jared. Over time Melanie bonds with Wanderer, and other romantic stuff happens that who really cares about them answer not me. This is Stephanie Meyer at her finest, and now I will elucidate exactly in what ways this movie is just like the Twilight movies (though admittedly there is slightly more of a plot in The Host than in most of the Twilight novels).