Addams Family Values

Kooky spooky etc etc.

"The Family Just Got A Little Stranger."

Hello and Happy Post-Thanksgiving Friday Consumer Nightmare! Maybe you've been out shopping, or maybe you're not mental and you stayed home, but either way, there's always good flicks on at the Tagline. As you all may or may not be aware, it's kind of tough to find Thanksgiving themed movies, because there frankly aren't that many of them (as opposed to say Christmas movies). For 2012's offering, check out this link, but I have a really good one this year. I guess you could debate whether or not it's actually a Thanksgiving movie, but I feel like there are some really great related moments, and also that there's a lot of thanks-giving going on. So without further ado, let's talk a bit about Addams Family Values, the 1993 sequel to the 1991 film based around the Addams Family characters created by Charles Addams in 1938. This movie sees the return of the original's cast (mostly, I think that the actress who portrayed Grandmama changed between movies). Raul Julia in what is perhaps his most remembered popular role, portrays Gomez Addams (okay maybe his most remembered role was as M. Bison, but I'm trying to draw attention away from that disaster), alongside Anjelica Huston as Morticia. Christopher Lloyd features as Uncle Fester, and a twelve year old Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams. The family is rounded out by Wednesday's brother Pugsley, the Frankenstein's monster-esque caretaker of the house Lurch, the disembodied hand Thing, and in this movie we don't see too much of Cousin Itt, but he does show up briefly (and of course Morticia's weird witch-like mother Grandmama). This film opens with the family welcoming a new member, the recently born and grossly named Pubert. In typical child fashion, Wednesday and Pugsley are none too pleased with the new arrival, and set about trying to murder the kid, but fail because this isn't a movie about murdered babies (Not primarily at least).

The Rocketeer

Come on look at how sweet this poster is.

"Three years before the United States declares war, Cliff Secord leads America's first battle against the Nazis."

Hello all and welcome back to a new week at the Tagline, with Thanksgiving right around the corner! Starting this week I am implementing the first wave of changes to the way I conduct this blog, though this part at least probably won't result in a noticeable front-end change. Just thought I would share! Anyway, let's start off the week right, with a story about Nazis and airships and rocket packs. Also as promised, this will be an excursion into another Disney movie! Today I will be talking about the 1991 movie The Rocketeer, This movie was based on the comic of the same name, featuring a airplane stunt pilot named Cliff Secord who after a series of chance occurrences comes into possession of a experimental rocket pack that was being developed by Howard Hughes. During the misadventure that led to him acquiring the rocket pack Cliff's airplane was shot to pieces and then blown up, leaving him with a sore need for a new source of income. This causes him and his partner Peevy to keep the thing, but this has consequences they maybe didn't anticipate, such as the rocket pack being missed by certain individuals. For starters a bunch of mob types with machine guns trying to get it back, and intending to give it to the guy who paid to have it stolen in the first place. Howard Hughes meanwhile believes the pack was destroyed, and is glad because the government wanted to use it as a weapon. The movie is set in 1938, so we're talking about a country just coming out of the depression and nearing war against the Nazis. Don't worry though, just because the U.S. hadn't entered the war yet doesn't mean there won't be plenty of fascists.

Big Hero 6

If this were Star Wars it would be Big Hero
5, because droids don't have souls or rights.

*fist bump* "balalala"

Hello all, welcome back to The Tagline! Where sometimes we don't have taglines at all because poster makers can't even be bothered to half-ass their job. Instead they like... quarter ass their job. If you guys are wondering "From the makers of Wreck-It Ralph" is not a tagline! Do you even need a tagline anymore... I don't know did we ever? It's just sad, because it gives me one fewer thing to taunt for being terrible. Regardless, today is a brand new day and we'll be talking about a brand new movie! While I visited the NYC, and before I succumbed to the inevitable sickness that overtakes me as soon as I return, I went to the movies with my friends to go see Big Hero 6, because it looked fun and I like movies about robots fighting bad guys. Even robots that look like fat marshmallows! Who am I kidding, ESPECIALLY robots that look like fat marshmallows. So Big Hero 6 was a no-brainer for me, and I have to say I was not disappointed. So here's a little background. In this confusing post-comic future we live in, where Disney owns Marvel, the lines blur and even as people complain about the movies being full of nothing but sequels and remakes, the possibilities to me seem to be expanding. This is the case with Big Hero 6, a movie made by Disney, based on a Marvel comic of the same name (albeit pretty loosely). The movie focuses on Hiro, a 14-year old super genius who uses his talents mostly to hustle people out of their money in robot fights. Tadashi, his older brother, is concerned that Hiro is wasting his talents, and so helps to convince him to apply to the robotics program at his university. Hiro comes around to the idea pretty quickly, and submits an innovative microbot system as his application project to the university. This is great but certain events (that I don't want to spoil too much) derail his attempts to enroll and Hiro's bots end up being lost/destroyed. Hiro ends up befriending the medical robot his brother created, Baymax, and then accidentally discovers that his microbots still exist, and are being mass produced towards some nefarious end by a mysterious man in a kabuki mask.

Batman (1989)

Classic.

"..."

It's that time again! Welcome back to The Tagline, where movies are queen and I'm also a queen and we're all queens I guess. I don't know look... it's been a long week okay guys? Don't worry about that stuff though with queens, because really what it's all about today? Is fucking bats. Listen, I know it's an upsetting subject no one wants to talk about, but bats are all around us. Flying around at night? Those aren't just weird night birds, those are fucking bats okay? That guy driving the weird car he parked in the middle of traffic? Bat. The weird airplane shooting missiles at parade floats? Also a bat. That's right, those the Batmans are all around us, and we don't even notice it all the time! Recent years have been good to the Dark Knight, but it wasn't always that way. I can direct you to my grisly review of Joel Schumacher's war crime Batman & Robin. Then again, Batman Begins wasn't the first good Batman that ever happened either. There were some very different, but still good times with the Batman under the direction of Tim Burton believe it or not. I know I find it tough to believe too. Even more surprising is that neither of the Batman movies directed by Burton feature like... a Riddler played by Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham-Carter as... Poison Ivy? Catwoman? I don't know I'm gonna try to put it out of my mind. At any rate, today I want to talk about the very first Batman, starring Michael Keaton as the Bat, and Jack Nicholson as the Joker. This movie just recently found its way to Netflix, and so naturally I wanted to check it out and see how it stood up after all these years.

Small Soldiers

He looks kind of sad actually.

"The few, the proud, and the small."

Hello my fair friends, welcome back to the Tagline, a land of whimsy and wonderment. Or profanity and boobs. I never remember which one it is, I need to work on that. It's not important though, because it is time for more movies! Today I am going to dip once more into that deep well of inspired cinema, the Netflix. I couldn't HELP but notice that Small Soldiers was cropping up in the like... popular with stoners on Facebook feed or something, and I mean, really how could I say no? So I loaded it up (the movie duh) and sat down to relive one of history's greatest cinematic triumphs, a movie with a action figure that sounds like Tommy Lee Jones attempting to kill the kid from Everwood. It's sort of like a Terminator thing, robotic being goes back in time to try and kill Gregory Smith before Everwood can ever even happen. Just like Terminator though, the robots were doomed to fail (spoilers the main character kid in this movie is not brutally murdered by action figures). Small Soldiers was a 1998 movie aimed at I am not honestly sure who, kids I guess, but like, slightly older kids... tweens? I guess so. Anyway it features Gregory Smith as a reformed-ish juvenile delinquent named Alan whose father runs a super lame toy store. In an effort to drum up some sales, he conducts a shady deal with a delivery truck driver to "acquire" some new fancy action figures. What baby Ephraim doesn't realize is that these toys are totally fucked. See Jay Mohr is an idiot who works for Denis Leary, who is in this movie Gil Mars, owner of Globotech, which is a massive corporation that has recently opened up a toy division because petrochemicals and military weapons weren't keeping him entertained or something. Did I mention Jay Mohr is an idiot? Well he is, and he decides to make the toys super cool by installing crazy learning military grade microchips in all of them. This is swell and all, except that their programming makes that sort of... let's go with problematic. That's nice.

Anaconda

Is this The Nightman Cometh?

"When You Can't Breathe You Can't Scream"

Hello everyone, it is that time again! Welcome back to more from The Tagline, where terrible movies I saw that one time are king! Recently (last Thursday actually) there was a live Rifftrax presentation of the fantastically not good snake movie Anaconda. This reminded me that Anaconda was a movie that happened, for better or worse. So today I figured I'd share that recollection with you, and review ANACONDA, the least scary movie involving snakes ever made. Starring Jennifer Lopez as a documentary maker named Terri Florez who is attempting to locate the elusive Shirishamas tribe in the Amazon. This is also a region of the world where enormous, 70 mile long snakes who are all powerfule burst through boats and try to kill Danny Trejo (not before he shoots himself though!). For those wondering, the longest verified Anacondas range around the 25 ft marker, but firsthand reports have reached such outlandish numbers as 145 ft. This movie capitalizes on that absurdity, and so JLo ventures out into the jungle, along with Ice Cube, Owen Wilson, Kari Wuhrer (the queen of B-horror T&A) and that foppish british guy from The Mummy. Oh also there's some other guy but he gets stung by a deadly wasp and is basically not in most of the movie. This crew of mostly incompetents ventures into the Amazon aboard a ship captain by the second most obviously untrustworthy person in this film. After a short trip down the amazon into a massive rainstorm, the group meets the FIRST most untrustworthy person in the movie, Jon Voight's character Paul Serone, a man who is perpetually saying vaguely threatening things and leering at everyone. He may as well be wearing a high collared cape and be cackling while he ties maidens to train tracks. I assume the movie taking place in the jungle is the only reason he was NOT tying people to train tracks.

Nightcrawler

Red car seems like kind of an eyegrabber.

"The City Shines Brightest at Night"

Hello all, welcome to a new month with the Tagline! Today I said I'd finally put down the horror for a few minutes, but that doesn't mean that I promised not to horrify you. As such, we will be looking straight into crazy land and talking about Nightcrawler today, a movie featuring Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom, a nobody lowlife living in LA, stealing fencing and copper pipes to try and turn a buck, when he stumbles over a new means of generating income: taking photos and video of dying people at crime scenes and selling them to TV stations. That is the setup that leads us into this film, as much about the darker side of life as it is about the darker side of human impulse. Nightcrawler follows Lou as he uses his spooky wacko personality and singular drive to go from street level no one to slightly higher street level no one. After witnessing some guys (mostly Bill Paxton) filming a fiery car crash, Lou gets it into his head that he could make some serious scratch by doing the same thing, and so steals a bike and sells it so he can buy a handheld camera and start filming crime and accidents. Naturally this starts out kind of rough, because it's a rough job that requires you to be a heartless shithead, but eventually Lou starts to find his footing, and becomes singularly obsessed with obtaining success as a crime scene photographer, freelance of course. This isn't really a one man job though and so using all of his bullshit spinning powers Lou hires the desperate loser/near hobo Rick to be his navigator and extremely underpaid assistant on his nightly prowls for shocking happenings worthy of the news.