The Grand Budapest Hotel

Pink Hotel.

""

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Tagline. The week is new, and at last we can almost see the ground, emerging from the hellish permafrost that I feel has engulfed us for an eternity. I know that February is the shortest month out of the year, but I swear it dragged on for months. Enough about that though, let's focus on what's going on inside of movie theaters specifically. today I will be talking the recent effort from that most...I don't know what word I'm searching for, but it falls somewhere between pretentious and whimsical, of directors, Wes Anderson. I am talking of course about The Grand Budapest Hotel, a film that was recently nominated for nine Oscars (four of which it won, although best picture eluded it). I wouldn't take it too hard though Wes, this is the same academy that last year nominated Gravity for best picture, which I feel the need to reiterate, I FUCKING HATE. I'm not sure this is a body you can trust, though I guess it's better than the AACTA, which actually AWARDED best picture to Gravity. That's awful, but don't worry, that's enough about that garbage. Instead we will talk about The Grand Budapest, a film starring Ralph Fiennes as Monsieur Gustave H, the concierge at the Grand Budapest. This story is a framing story, within another framing device, being a story that an author is telling, about a story he was told by the owner of the Grand Budapest to him in the 60s, about when the OWNER was a young lobby boy in the late 30s.

The Cable Guy

HYSTERICAL AM I RIGHT?!

"There's No Such Thing as Free Cable"

A point I feel Comcast is constantly trying to establish by alternatively letting my cable go out and then increasing rates. I feel like I should pay them for 2/3rds of the month, which is the percentage of the time that I actually have functioning service. BUT THAT IS A STORY FOR SOME OTHER TIME. Welcome back to the Tagline, where I am the submissive and you are all my dominant. Or something. I assume there will be a point in the future where I stop ridiculing 50 Shades for being the worst piece of garbage ever, but that time friends is not now. In the meantime let's talk about something else. Have you folks ever seen the Cable Guy? You know, that movie about the guy and the cables? Well we're talking about that today, so tune in and listen up. The Cable Guy is weird from beginning to end, and goes to a dark place... a place many of us have been really. For starters, this movie was directed by Ben Stiller (who also appears in the movie... twice technically) and produced by Judd Apatow, which probably explains why Leslie Mann is here. Also Jack Black but back to the movie. The Cable Guy stars everyone's... favorite guy Matthew Broderick as Steve Kovacs, who following a failed proposal is on the outs with his girlfriend Robin (Mann) and so moving into his own apartment. He gets some questionable advice from Jack Black about convincing his cable guy to let him steal some movie channels on the cheap, but his cable guy Chip (Jim Carey) hooks him up, making him a "preferred customer". He also convinces Steve to hang out with him the next day. Shit pretty much goes all downhill from there.

Batman Forever

Batman for... a while at least.

"Courage now, truth always...."

I know, I've been working up to this for a while, and now here it is! A special Saturday Tagline for you all today, and I'll be talking about a very difficult topic that we all have to try and cope with. Sometimes it can be difficult to admit to yourself that an old, trusted friend has become somebody else, and it can be even more difficult to confront THEM about it. That's how I think we all felt when we saw Batman Forever. We were two good Batman movies in, maybe felt like we could rely on those good times, and then... this happened. Thank Warner Brothers for that. They decided after the release of the fantastic Batman Returns that it hadn't grossed enough money, and that if it were more "mainstream" it would do better. To this evil end, they gave Burton and his Gotham City the boot out of the director's chair (though Burton had been lukewarm about even doing a second Batman) and tapped Joel Schumacher to direct, with Burton restricted to producing. This film struck a completely different tone from the previous two, with villains so flamboyant that they make Jack Nicholson's turn as the Joker look positively subdued. This movie also introduces the character of Robin, portrayed here by Chris O'Donnell, although originally Marlon Wayans was cast. Presumably he was replaced because Hollywood is intensely racist. Anyway, the most important swap out here was Michael Keaton, who opted not to appear in another Batman because he didn't like the new direction (though apparently he still considers himself to be the ONLY Batman), was replaced by Val Kilmer. Now I enjoyed Top Gun at least as much as the next guy, but that is not an equation with equal values on both ends of it. That being said, Val Kilmer is still a much better Batman than George Clooney. Squaring off against the new caped crusader are Two-Face (portrayed in explosively red tiger-striped fashion by Tommy Lee Jones) and The Riddler/Edward Nigma (here played by Jim Carey). It seems like the common wisdom is that unless the primary villain is the Joker, there must be at least two villains on the stage at any given time (and in The Dark Knight even there was still Two Face) Okay, the stage is set, now let's talk about this FANTASTIC MOVIE

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. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

Turtle power!

"Heroes in a half shell!"

Hello friends, welcome back, to the Thursday edition of The Tagline, where movies are things that dominate most of your waking hours. Today I once again peer into the maelstrom of streaming media, and pluck out a gem from 1990, which if anyone was wondering is now about 25 years ago. I'm talking about those totally radical dudes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In particular I am talking about the first live action outing, not the one with that totally fresh Vanilla Ice song (haha I made a funny). This film was an interesting attempt to capitalize on the success of the TMNT in the mid to late 80s, first as a comic book and then later as a tv cartoon/merchandise and toys fuckstorm. This film acts as an origin story for the turtles, and also chronicles their first battle with the Foot and Shredder. An interesting thing to think about before I talk about the movie in greater detail, is that you are in somewhat perilous waters when you are trying to market a series that is about ninjas to children, because ninjas as a rule are assassins, in other words their job is murdering people. The original comic wasn't really intended for the kiddie audience, and so as it became mainstream concessions were made. At the end of the day though, they are still "ninjas" and that can cause problems. For instance censorship is apparently pretty wacky in the UK, and they changed the name to Teenage Mutant Hero turtles for the 1987 cartoon, and also in all of the original movie releases (the original trilogy) they censored out in particular Michelangelo's nunchaku, because I don't know. Maybe in the past the UK had a serious issue with ninjas that we just didn't hear about in the US. The point is, the movies were stuck toeing a fine line between boring and too violent, with varying degrees of success depending on the movie.

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.

Zombieland

It isn't like that at all.

"Nut up or shut up."

I honestly can't believe this, but I guess I really never reviewed one of my favorite zombie movies! Anyway, welcome back to The Tagline! Congrats you've survived another week. Unless you work weekends, in which case congrats, the worst part of your week is just beginning! So... sorry for that I guess! Today I'm going to reach back into the past to talk about Zombieland, a 2009 horror/comedy film set in a zombie apocalypse wasteland, starring Jessie Eisenberg as the fearful shut-in Columbus, who meets up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) a badass zombie killer who begrudgingly lets the meek Columbus tag along with him. The two are first conned and then later also join up with Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) and Wichita (Emma Stone, I'm still not over Spider Man 2) who are travelling to some amusement park because why not I guess pretend an amusement park won't be full of zombies, not like there's anything better to do right? Everyone needs to have a goal in life after all. Tallahassee's is to find a Twinkie before the last of them expire. The problem is it seems like all he can manage to find are snowballs, and I mean, who wants to eat that shit? Just not tasty, unpleasant texture combination, ugh the worst. This movie isn't about Twinkies though... well I guess it kind of is, but mostly it is about surviving in the very worst situation imaginable. Zombieland is full of those runner-type zombies, and you guys know how I feel about that shit.

Life After Beth

She seems like a nice girl right?

"Til Undeath do Us Part."

Hello friends, welcome back to the Tagline! Today I'm keeping the spook rolling with a movie about zombies why not, in this case Life After Beth, starring Aubrey Plaza (you know) as Beth, the recently deceased girlfriend of Zach (Dane DeHaan) who is deeply distraught about it. Beth went hiking alone and died from a snakebite I guess, so that's all very sudden and tragic, except then after spiraling into a weird depression and hanging around her parents' house for a while, Zach notices Beth wandering around inside. This discovery leaves Zach understandably upset, and after some more stalking and almost breaking & entering Zach finally gets Beth's dad Maury (John C. Reilly) to explain what's going on, as best as he understands it. Which is to say he has no idea what's going on, just that Beth rose from the dead and showed up at their house, and doesn't remember dying. This is all very exciting for Zach, who was deeply distraught about Beth's dying, but it is clear from the get go that something isn't quite right with Beth, who seems constantly confused and thinks that she has a big test coming up or something. It isn't long before she begins to visibly decompose, become freakishly strong, and starts experiencing insane mood swings and tries to eat Zach. Those are all totally reasonable reactions to rising from the dead I guess, even if you don't know that's what happened.

Maximum Overdrive

What a fantastic poster.

"The day horror went into overdrive."

Hi folks, welcome back to the Tagline, where its Spooktober all month, or at least until I get bored and decide to review something completely unrelated because I tend to do that. Today I am talking about a really scary movie, scary because it was DIRECTED BY STEphEN KIIINGGG WOOOOooOOOo. Sounds pretty chilling right? Well sort of. Have you ever heard of Trucks? It was a short story that Stephen King wrote in the early 70s that is about trucks (and other machines and electronics) coming to life to terrorize and murder people. If that sounds like a serviceable short story idea and not a great movie idea, I'd generally agree with you. Movie producers however did NOT agree, and they made not one but TWO movies based on this kind of absurd premise, the first one being written and directed by King himself, and that's this weird ass movie MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. What could make a movie like this better than being about killer trucks? I'll fucking tell you what, if it was starring Emilio Estevez, and lo' and behold it does, as a parolee who works at a truck stop that becomes besieged by trucks. There's also some other losers at the truck stop, a kid riding his bike tirelessly for at least a whole day, a really annoying newlywed couple, and some drifter girl who was hitchhiking with a molester who sells bibles. King admitted later to being "coked out of his mind" for essentially the entire production of this film, which actually explains a lot of what happens during the film (this movie was released in 1986 and that was about the height of King's substance abuse problems). Keep that in mind while I talk about the rest of the movie.

Girl Most Likely

Kristen Wiig loves to be glamorous. 

"She has a lot to live up to. And a few things to live down."

Good morrow to you all, and welcome back to the Tagline, where movies are king or sometimes me posting late is king and movies are like the queen regent or something. It's a fresh week and today I'm going back to the Netflix to scrounge up something to watch and talk about. Today that refuse is Girl Most Likely, some slipped under the radar movie with Annette Bening (wow I misspelled BOTH her names on the first go) and Kristen Wiig. The movie centers around Wiig's character Imogene, a woman from Atlantic City who got out thanks to a writing scholarship, but that has since done nothing of note, living a kind of really sad desperate parasite life among New York socialites. You know like just really shitty rich people who do shitty things to each other, especially if one person is maybe not fitting in so well (like poor, incredibly depressing Imogene). After her complete douche boyfriend suddenly breaks up with her, what little control she has over her life is lost and she spirals into a deep dark place that anyone who ever lived in a pretty lie is probably familiar with, and decides that the best way to fix THAT issue is to write a dramatic note, take a bunch of pills, and try to kill herself. Her friend stumbles across her unconscious body though and so instead of dying Imogene wakes up in a hospital, and shares her really unfortunate history to the doctor, who then releases her into the... care of her mother (Bening) who is a compulsively gambling woman from Jersey that leaves Imogene sedated in the back of her car so she can gamble, which seems responsible. So without any of her belongings, money, or a means of transportation, and also with a legal order in effect forcing her to stay in the care of her mother for 72 hours, Imogene has no choice but to endure Jersey once more.

Cool as Ice

Okay, this situation is starting to really get grisly. I mean what am I supposed to do, go see THE NINJA TURTLE MOVIE? That doesn't seem like an awesome life choice, and I just hope it doesn't come to that. Not that their weird little Shrek ears aren't endearing or anything I just... if Vanilla Ice isn't in the movie then really what's the point. Hmm... okay, fuck it, since I'm grasping around for ideas about a movie to talk about, and now I'm thinking about Vanilla Ice, let's just commit and do this thing...

...oh good god this is the worst tagline ever.

"When a girl has a heart of stone, there's only one way to melt it. Just add Ice."

COOL AS ICE

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

No problem indeed.

"No pulse? No problem."

Hello friends, welcome back to another hopeless walk through the trackless desert that is September, a month that has thus far proven to be a cinematic death march into the fall season. I mean really what's taking me to the box office this month? I guess A Walk Among the Tombstones (aka Taken 2.5)? Maybe the Maze Runner? I guess I shouldn't complain too much, as October will bring Left Behind, a movie based on the long running series of novels about the end times. Why am I looking forward to this ridiculous guaranteed shitpile? Because it stars Nicholas Cage, and that means that Thanksgiving is coming early for this boy. So there's at least a light at the end of this tunnel, and that light is the flames from the lake of fire I guess. Enough of that though, today I'm here to talk about mediocre and under-promoted movies about paranormal detectives. As an expert of mediocre paranormal fiction it seemed only fitting that I deliver the prognosis for Dylan Dog: Dead of Night. This was a movie that I'd initially intended to review over a year ago, when I first saw it, but I became occupied with movies that were more pressing, so it ended up on the back burner until the world class famine I have on my hands now. In case you aren't really into Italian comic books (how weird!) Dylan Dog is a long running Italian horror comic (started in 1986) about the eponymous Dylan Dog, an investigator who is an expert in dealing with the nightmarish and bizarre. In the film adaptation this holds true, with a few changed details (namely his assistant is not a Groucho Marx impersonator, and I personally am really grateful to whoever made that executive decision, because that sounds terrible). Dylan works in New Orleans instead of London, that makes sense, this is an American movie after all and we couldn't possibly have an UN-AMERICAN HERO, that's insane. Along with his undead buddy Marcus (Sam Huntington, also known as the werewolf on the U.S. Being Human) Dylan doesn't just go around blowing the faces off of the things that go bump in the night. Rather he also acts as an intermediary between them, working to maintain the uneasy peace that exists between various groups.

Hackers

CAN YOU FEEL THE EXCITEMENT.

"Hack The Planet!"

Hello everyone, welcome to a fresh week of excitement here at The Tagline! Last night, in a moment of weakness I asked my Facebook for movie suggestions, and I don't know why I was surprised at the outcome. While there were a fair number of varied suggestions (many of which you will most likely see over the coming weeks) there was also a public outcry for me to review Hackers, a thing that I desperately did not want to do (as you may remember, earlier this year I reviewed another 90s cyberthriller, Sandra Bullock's The Net). Still, as reluctant as I might have been, the people spoke, loudly, and some of them said cusswords at me to emphasize their point, which I returned in high volume (which is to say I swore loudly, at my computer screen). The end result was that I decided I had to watch Hackers, in all its mysterious computers of the early 90s glory, only not actually because I question whether the people who made this movie had ever seen a computer. If you were not around in the 90s, or just suppressed this part of them feverishly when trying to craft an idyllic picture of your past, cyberthrillers pretty much had their day at the early to mid section of the 90s, when computers and the internet were just common enough that people knew they were a thing, but had no idea how they functioned or what mad wizards operated them. People mostly STILL don't have any idea, but they know at least what computers look like and that you can browse Facebook on them. Hackers stars Jonny Lee Miller (who mostly went on to a career in TV, but remember him in Aeon Flux?) as Dade Murphy AKA CRASH OVERRIDE, a high senior with a past as a hacker (when he was like 10) that gave him both a record and a reputation. Despite his bad history with the law and the net, he can't stay away from those tasty, crispy cyberwaves, or what the fuck ever they decide is thematically appropriate slang in this movie. Dade immediately falls in with a group of hackers upon moving to NYC and arriving at his new school, and that's when things start to get complicated. He finds himself quickly caught up in a complex web of plots and futuristic looking 3D animations, as his friends become the targets of a set-up that will allow inveterate asshole Plague (Fischer Stevens who was most notably also in The Super Mario Bros movie ouch) to steal 25 million dollars from the company he works as security for. Everyone needs a scapegoat I guess!

Guardians of the Galaxy

This IS a badass poster though.

"All heroes start somewhere."

Hello former friends and colleagues, welcome back to The Tagline! Originally I had planned to put off seeing Guardians until a little later (mostly just because I knew it would be in theaters forever and I wanted to see some other things that were less likely to stick around) but circumstances shifted and I ended up seeing it over the weekend. If you've lived in deep space for the past week or so... I imagine you still were picking up a lot of chatter about this movie, as roughly the entire internet has been orgasming about it basically since it was released, or some time that was significantly BEFORE that. Still, some background. Guardians of the Galaxy represents a relatively gutsy gamble on the part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, focusing on a group of interplanetary misfits who end up... guarding the galaxy I guess. First among them, as the unifying force that makes them a team, is Peter Quill, aka Starlord (Chris Pratt, having a busy year between this and The Lego Movie), who in the movie is abducted by aliens approximately 3 minutes after the movie starts, and 10 seconds after his mom dies from what looked like cancer. The movie jumps forward to his adulthood, where he has become a Ravager (who are like space pirates I guess? They are the guys who abducted him) and steals stuff from places while banging ladies who are interesting colors like pink why not. A particular salvage brings him into conflict with Ronan the Accuser, who if that sounds like a guy you don't want to be in conflict with to you, you've got a good sense for guys who hang out in giant space ships waiting to kill you with a fucking hammer. The guy's space fortress is called the Dark Aster for crap's sake. This is clearly a dude lacking a sense of humor, which is too bad for Starlord because that's one of his strongest attributes? I guess. Starlord's lot is tossed together with a motley group of cock-ups, including Gamora (Zoe Saldana gets green, maybe she liked the looks of her roomate at Starfleet Academy), who has betrayed Ronan and Thanos in order to prevent disaster, Draxx the Destroyer (Dave Batista, as in the pro wrestler) who seeks revenge against Ronan for the death of his family, and the duo Rocket (who is a talking raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Groot (a humanoid tree voiced and motion captured by Vin Diesel). 

3 Days to Kill

Wyatt Earp pose.

"From the Planet that Brought You Waterworld" (I made this tagline up because there were none)

Hey folks welcome to a new week and more thrills from the Tagline! As I had subtly threatened last week, I'm going to start off this week right, with some Kevin Costner action. As many of you know, I have on at least one occasion been an apologist for a Kevin Costner movie  (and I stand by my position, people need to get a fucking grip) but that doesn't mean that I think every movie he's in is cinematic gold. That said, I do regard him as a trustworthy, father-figure who makes the most of sometimes very bad situations, and that is I suspect what happened with 3 Days to Kill, one of the more perplexing movies I watched this month. This film stars Mr. Costner as Ethan Renner, a CIA Cleaner (that's code for person killer) who is assigned as part of the team cornering and eliminating "The Wolf." Renner's part of this job is to kill a creepy dude with no hair or eyebrows called the Albino, so you know he's a bad guy. We get to watch him crush a lady's head under an elevator car too, so that cements his bad guy status pretty firmly, I mean look how weird and evil he is! Anyway, Renner's kicking this dude's ass into next Tuesday when he suddenly collapses. He wakes up and is told he has like hyper-cancer or something, and that he has only a few months left to live. The CIA gives him a cheap looking watch and tells him his pension is on the way, and then tell him to piss off. Deciding that he needs to make the most of the time, Ethan returns home to Paris, to try and make amends with his estranged wife and daughter. Just as he is awkwardly trying to do that, he is approached by Vivi (Amber Heard, stringing together cinematic disasters one-after-another but hey at least she's pretty right?) a super-sexy assassin that wants Ethan to help her take out The Wolf, because he is the only person who has ever seen him. To try and entice him into this job, Vivi offers a Mcguffin: a experimental magic drug that will help him live longer. naturally, with such an enticing and totally ridiculous reward on offer, Ethan is obliged to accept, if only to get more time to spend with his pathological liar daughter (Hailee Steinfeld, who you can see also in True Grit and Ender's Game). Who would want to miss out on that.

Drive Angry

All the boys love Mandy Lane IN HELL.

"One hell of a ride."

Howdy y'all welcome back to Thursday's thrilling edition of The Tagline. There's a lull in my movie-going schedule, so I needed some garbage to fill it with. Then, While I was flipping through channels I came across the truly lamentable Drive Angry. Those of you who've been following my posts for a while will probably remember me talking briefly about this movie when I reviewed Nick Cage's 5 Worst Films. I was initially content to leave it at that, but then I saw it again and I just felt like "wow this is really spectacular garbage, I should give my readers the benefit of experiencing this." To that end, today I will regale you once again with the tale of a man who escaped from hell, with the sole purpose of killing some guy who was going to use his granddaughter in a satanic ritual. Also in what I'm sure the writer thought was really clever, this guy's name is John Milton. That's not clever scriptwriter, it is shameful. You should feel ashamed, but I know you don't, obviously anyone with a sense of shame could not have made this movie. Anyway Nick stars as John Milton, a man who has returned from hell with the stolen gun of the devil (called Godkiller, it destroys the target's soul apparently) so that he can take bloody vengeance for the murder of his daughter, and also so he can rescue his baby granddaughter as mentioned above. In the process of tracking down the complete nutball coocoo who's planning to do this ritual (his name is Jonah King, and he's portrayed by the world's best mustache dad Billy Burke) Milton runs into Piper (Amber Heard) who works at a diner as a waitress and has a boyfriend who is a scumbag. Fortunately Milton is an undead scumbag, so he fits right in, and sabotages Piper's car so he can then proceed to FIX it, and get a ride. I think maybe stealing a car would have been more expedient if you already are from hell, but that's just me nitpicking I guess.

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.

Chocolate

Prepare to get beaaaaat.

"Taste the fury."

Hi everyone, welcome to Thursday's Tagline. As I promised on Tuesday, today I'm taking us on a trip to distant Thailand, where violent martial arts movies are even more violent than elsewhere. The movie I'm interested in talking about today is Chocolate, released in 2008, and directed by Prachya Pinkaew, probably best known for directing Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior, a movie that lots of you are probably familiar with as it earned international fame and spawned a slew of sequels (though Pinkaew didn't direct those, in fact I think he only was involved as a producer on the first sequel). This movie was the springboard for the career of Yanin Vismitananda, who starred in a slew of successful Thai martial arts movies from 2008 to 2012, before taking a hiatus from movies after announcing that she was pregnant (as you can imagine being beaten up in a hand to hand sequence isn't great for unborn babies). Vismitananda herself was experienced in Taekwondo before becoming an action star, and consequently she does a lot of the stunts performed in the movie (all of them actually and I'll talk about that more a little later). Chocolate is sort of about a lady who is caught between a mobster and a really bad mobster, who then gets cancer. What it is really about is her daughter, Zen (that's Yanin) who is autistic. She lives with her mother next to a Muay Thai school, and is super amazing at mimicking things she sees, either there or on TV. Also, she has super mega-reflexes, so she falls into the typical movie category where having a neurodevelopmental disorder gives you superpowers like you're in the X-Men. I don't necessarily subscribe to, or encourage that kind of behavior or practice, but if it can be the avenue for brutal cinematic beatings in southeast Asia, then I'm willing to let it slide I guess.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror

Wow.

"Why did the eagles and vultures attack?"

That's right fuckers, welcome back to the Tagytagtags, it's time for SHOCK AND TERROR on a Thursday morning (or Wednesday night if you stay glued to your feed I don't know). Over the weekend I had the unique experience that is viewing Birdemic, a movie so impossibly bad that I at first was convinced that its shittiness was deliberate. Alas, my sense of shock and terror grew as I came to realize that this movie was a sincere effort, that just also happened to be one of the worst things a human being has ever done on camera under the guise of cinema. Directed, written, and produced by James Nguyen, a person I can only assume is criminally insane, Birdemic chronicles the life, love, and attack by killer birds, of Rod and Nathalie, two young successful young people living in I don't remember or care, California. Rod is a multi-millionaire, after he closes some great sales, his company sells for A BILLION DOLLARS, and he launches his own start up that sells solar panels or something. He drives a Mustang, or at least I assume he is driving it, but it's possible that he cut a hole in the floor and is powering it with his feet like the Flinstones, because I've seriously never seen a Mustang move so slow in my entire life. I honestly didn't think they could be running and move that slow, but now I know better I guess! Anyway, Rod meets an old classmate one day, who is a fashion model, which I guess is different than some other kind of model, and they're really careful to make sure you know how much she is a fashion model. She's really on the rise too, given that she has become "the cover model for Victoria's Secret". Is that a thing? I don't know, but gosh they sure are nonchalant about how she is now a super famous model suddenly. Anyway, despite these two collectively commanding the wealth of a medium sized third world country, they go on dates at town fairs and low-class looking vietnamese restaurants. Also they enjoy live musical performances by some weird guy singing a song about hanging out and having a party with your family.