Team America: World Police

Here to save the motherfuckin' day.

"Putting the F Back in Freedom."

Hi gang, and welcome back to The Tagline. Originally I had intended to review a different movie tonight, but the recent withdrawal from theaters of The Interview, followed by the withdrawal by Paramount of Team America: World police, prompted me to change my plans, and instead review Team America, which I realized I had not done. If you find that offensive somehow, the idea of me reviewing a movie where a team of American puppets attempt to thwart the plans of terrorists and Kim Jong Il to blow up the world, well fuck you, too bad. Here at the Tagline we don't respond to threats, only generous bribes. Since Paramount and Sony have refused my generous offers to be bribed, I will instead review the greatest masterpiece in puppet existence, TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE. From the genius duo that brought us South Park, Orgazmo, and who starred in BASEketball, the thing my girlfriend always gets mixed up with actual basketball, Team America is the movie that Matt and Trey said they weren't going to make. After the South Park movie, the guys were pretty disdainful about doing another movie. Despite this, they were inspired apparently by how stupid the idea of The Day After Tomorrow was, and originally planned to re-shoot the whole movie only in puppet form. They were informed that this could have legal difficulties, so instead they opted to just make a puppet movie that was a send up of all manner of big action movies. Team America is about a stage actor named Gary who is recruited to be part of Team America, an elite Thunderbirds-esque team that fights terrorists around the world, by shooting them and blowing them up and stuff. Awesome right?

The Black Hole

I think the black hole has an infection.

"You can't escape the most powerful force in the universe."

Except when you can, and everyone literally spends the entire movie doing that, but I guess in this circumstance that's sort of splitting hairs. Anyway welcome to a new week at the Tagline, and today I'll be launching into the deepest, most boring portions of space, to talk about the 1979 Disney film The Black Hole, a movie which actually has very little to do with a black hole, it just sort of takes place near one, and I guess they go into it at some point or whatever. For the most part the black hole serves as backdrop for crazy scientist theater (and not the funny Mystery Science Theater kind). This will hopefully become a monthly tradition here at the Tagline (shitty ass movies on Tuesday) but for now let's just enjoy this really execrable instance of vintage science fiction. Released shortly after Star Wars made a big splash and brought science fiction to the forefront of popularity, the Disney goons decided it was high time to try and get a slice of that pie. This movie is significant (especially in light of Disney's mighty empire today) in that it represented the first Disney production that didn't receive an all ages rating, due to some mild portrayals of death, and some profanity. I find it rather hilarious that now, over 30 years later, Disney actually OWNS Star Wars. Anyway, let's go back in time to when Disney kind of sucked, and talk about this real piece of work. 

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.

Tron (1982)

Yeah the cover's pretty similar too.

"Trapped in a fight to the finish inside the video world he created."

Hello all, welcome to a new week at The Tagline! Summer is meandering towards its conclusion, and I am slowly being driven insane, so I thought now would be an opportune moment to explore a movie that features less preposterous science fiction than Hackers. To that end, I will be talking about Tron today. Yeah maybe it was a lame joke, but seriously, today I'm reaching back deep into history so that we can have a chat about the original Tron, a movie that spawned a franchise over the course of several decades, and eventually a sequel in 2010, which some people who clearly had never seen the original didn't like (and I'll talk more about that in a little bit). Originally conceived in 1976 by its director and writer Steve Lisberger, Tron was intended at first to be an animated feature, but as time went on and no one picked up the production, the emphasis slowly shifted towards backlit animation mixed with live action and computer animation, which was what ended up happening when Disney eventually picked up the film (yes it was always Disney, some people didn't know that I guess? I shouldn't be surprised but...) There it developed into the work that would eventually spawn a fairly prolific franchise, including a cartoon and a number of games. It's important to take this movie in a little bit in context of when it was made. In 1982 computers were very much not the mainstream, and even video games in their earliest form (Pong being a major inspiration for Lisberger) were an extremely niche attraction. It was the director's hope that he could sort of open up that world, and eventually that DID happen, though at the time Tron was not extremely successful (that being said it wasn't a flop either, it almost doubled its money).

R.I.P.D.

This makes it almost look not dumb.

"Defending Our World One Soul at a Time"

That is open to debate and remains to be seen. Welcome back to The Tagline, and pardon my Tuesday/Thursday late post earlier this week, it was the result of forgetfulness and being away in Boston all weekend. Incidentally, today's movie takes place IN Boston, and was actually shot, at least in part, on location there. I know this for a fact because there is a modestly lengthy sequence in the middle of the film that was clearly shot in the Hynes Convention Center, which is where I was in Boston for the entire weekend. The scene is supposed to be a finance convention or something, I have no idea. I was definitely not attending a finance convention. ENOUGH OF THAT THOUGH today I will be talking about R.I.P.D. a movie billed as a supernatural comedy film released last summer, based on a Darkhorse comic book of the same name. The film stars Ryan Reynolds (here taking his fourth bad turn as a comic book character by most people's reckoning, though I honestly didn't think Green Lantern was that terrible, and I think Ryan Reynolds was a perfect Hal Jordan) as imminently deceased police officer Nick Walker, and Jeff Bridges (AKA The Dude/Obadiah Stane I guess) as very deceased former U.S. Marshall Roy Pulsipher, as they work out their sentence in the Rest In Peace Department so as to improve their chances of not ending up at the big barbecue down below (that's Hell kids. I'm talking about Hell). Nick of course still has unfinished issues to work out with his violent death, where he was killed by his partner Bobby (Kevin Bacon, here as a ghost monster and not a pretend Nazi) after deciding he was going to turn in his portion of the gold they found during a drug bust. Nick is also worried about his wife, and just generally is dealing well with having been shot off of a balcony in a burning warehouse.

Star Wars Holiday Special Nightmare

Feel the magic! and the fear.

"A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

Yeah that's right, I'm going there. Even though it is not a movie, technically speaking, it altogether runs for about two hours, and it is...holiday themed I guess, so I'm going to make you all sit there and listen to me recall a dark thing that happened to me one time when I was young and foolish in college, and thought it would be funny to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special. Back then the full extent of internet proliferation had not quite taken root, and so it was actually kind of tough to find a digimal version of the Holiday Special. This is principally because it only ever aired once. Eventually though I did manage to secure a copy and what I found filled me with regret. As it turns out, for a fan of Star Wars, or indeed any other creature that could perceive their surroundings, it was not so funny. What it was, in fact, was one of the most traumatically bad segments of television I have ever experienced, and it is generally regarded as being one of the worst pieces of television ever created. You see Christmas is a special time, when we celebrate with our families, but I think sometimes it's important to be given a grim reminder of things past, and so I'm here to be the ghost of Life Day Past, and remind us all of the holiday that was.

Ender's Game

Time to stare out some viewports.

"The future must be won."

Good evening all and welcome back to The Tagline! My apologies for the late review, but it's been... kind of a week. No doubt you have all languished in agony in the intervening hours, wondering what I was doing, and why I had not shared my ESSENTIAL opinions about film with you, on this, the designated day. WELL FEAR NO MORE I'm here now to talk about Ender's Game, based on the iconic science fiction novel of the same name, written by Orson Scott Card (Who has entertained the idea of adapting the book into a movie for some time, I'll get into that a little bit later. Ender's Game, for the uninitiated, is not about a game really, but it is about a boy who has a spectacularly stupid name (Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, ouch mom and dad) who is training to be a strategist. You see, it is the future, and a race of bioelectric charged space bugs tried in the past to colonize the Earth, but were repelled by the combined forces of the human race, and some guy named Rakasakam Robot or something stopped them by crashing his plane into their mothership. The bug aliens (The Formics they're called because they are flying ant-like) have retreated back to their home planet, but the Earth government, fearing their return, is determined to launch a preemptive strike to wipe them all out. At the outset of the movie Ender is seconded for training in battle school, by Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford) who believes that Ender is the brilliant strategist they have been looking for.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

HAHA GET IT A GAME CHANGER
BECAUSE GAME YOU KNOW.

"Get the hot girl. Defeat her evil exes. Hit love where it hurts."

Hey everyone, welcome to another week at The Tagline! I realized that I have been terribly remiss, in that I have not yet spoken at ALL about Scott Pilgrim VS THE WORLD. I aim now to remedy that gross oversight. For those who have hidden from the internet, comic shops, or the world at large, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was a movie based upon the Scott Pilgrim series of graphic novels, the second of which shares a name with the movie. This movie is about the eponymous Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera awkward douche extraordinaire, best used in Arrested Development) who is a Canadian twenty-something loser, who is in a band that has a really stupid name and no one cares about (they're called Sex Bob-omb, which is maybe the worst name for a band ever, and a hint of the COOL RETRO GAME ADVENTURES TO COME). Scott does a lot of other great things with his life, like date a high-schooler and have no job, and live in a one-room apartment with his gay friend. This guy is, in other words, TOTALLY AWESOME OH MAN HOW COOL IS HE. It's okay that he's dating a high-schooler by the way (Scott is 22 and she is 17, I'm kidding it's not okay) because SHE IS ASIAN AND HAS A REALLY STUPID FUCKING NAME (her name is Knives Chau, not sure which Asian nation that's a traditional name in, like Trigun world I guess? She is apparently Chinese I looked it up). This is all good, but Knives is outs city once Scott meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, she will appear again whenever I review the remake of The Thing) who is so cool because she dyes her hair lots of wacky colors, and has GOGGLES, also she rollerskates places and delivers stuff for Amazon, which apparently employs its own couriers in Canada (it does not). She is apparently referred to in the comic as a "ninja delivery girl" god help us all.