John Wick

Gonna be a looot of gun pointin!

"Don't Set Him Off!"

Hello friends, welcome back to The Tagline. Today we're taking a brief break from the frightfest to talk about Keanu murdering dude, because that's what I decided to spend my Saturday afternoon watching. This particular movie is perhaps a return to form for Reeves, who spent a healthy amount of time as an action star before kind of falling off the edge of the world (though I recently reviewed Man of Tai Chi, which Reeves directed and also starred in as the primary antagonist) and now he seems to slowly be coming back into focus (I mean he's been in a steady clip of movies I just mostly didn't care about them, and I didn't care about HIS role in 47 Ronin). Reeves stars as the eponymous John Wick, a man who we're introduced to at a very vulnerable moment, as his wife has just passed away from cancer. He receives as a post mortem gift from his wife, an adorable little puppy named Daisy, and bonds with the little monster while going about the process of grieving his wife. This portion of the movie lasts just long enough that you start to wonder if you're in the right movie theater, or whether there was another Keanu Reeves movie playing right next door about a sad guy bonding with a puppy. Just around that point though, Theon Greyjoy shows up and murders John Wick's puppy and steals his '69 Mustang (okay so obviously it's not Theon Greyjoy, it's Alfie Allen playing the son of a Russian crime boss names Iosef but I found his character more or less the same). Iosef tries to sell the stolen car to Aurelio (John Leguizamo), and much like Theon might, he gets bitch slapped for doing something dumb and is sent out of the shop. Iosef's father, Viggo (Michael Nyqvist, probably most famous for portraying Michael Blomkvist in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies, the Swedish ones) calls up Aurelio asking why he did such a thing, and Aurelio explains how catastrophically Iosef has fucked up. Viggo responds simply by going "oh..." 

Wargames

Make a cover that's mostly black space.

"The only winning move is not to play."

That's also good advice if you feel yourself being drawn into an argument on the internet! Hello friends and welcome to a slightly late edition of the Tagline, I wanted to give Tron some time in the spotlight by its lonesome, and it looks like everyone got their money's worth. Now that time is over though, and it's time for us to move exactly one year ahead, to 1983, where a computer program was deciding not to try and take control of mankind, but rather to just blow it straight to hell. Today's feature film is WarGames, a film that I think is more or less forgotten along with things like the Cold War and Matthew Broderick. In this film Broderick starred in one of his first major roles as David Lightman, a generally delinquent high school student who prefers to spend his time hacking computer systems, only not in the really dumb way that Hackers did. One day while idling his time away by dialing every number in his town with his modem, he finds a computer that won't identify itself, and decides to investigate further. David eventually finds a way to access this computer, but doesn't realize that this machine is the supercomputer at NORAD that controls the nuclear missile silos of the US, and is continually running launch scenarios, and learning from these simulations. David engages the computer in a rousing, friendly game of "Thermonuclear War" which I think we can all agree is a really fun game to play on a sunny afternoon when you have nothing else to do. David chooses Russia as his side, proving that Matthew Broderick is a communist, and does not realize that in doing so starts the computer with its metaphorical finger on the metaphorical red button down a path that leads to mutually assured destruction. Oops.

The Lego Movie

ITS WRENCH TIME?!

"The story of a nobody who saved everybody."

Hello friends and felons, it's Thursday and that means that you're all one day away from a weekend of drunken debauchery maybe, or maybe you don't do that. Also maybe you work in the service industry, and so your toil will end only in death. I can relate. You know who else can relate, and meets their bitter fate with exuberance? The Lego workers in The Lego Movie. After all, I have it on good authority that everything is awesome, and everything is cool when you're part of a team (that song has been stuck in my head since I watched the movie and I realize now that I will have to use a power drill to get it out. A sacrifice I am willing to make to just be free from it). On that chipper note, today I will be talking about The Lego Movie, a film that I would say was unlikely to ever happen, and further than that was even less likely to somehow be good. As you might guess from the title, this film is about Legos, and Lego stuff. It stars Chris Pratt (who is having a pretty big year I guess, between this, his ongoing appearance on Parks & Rec, and his upcoming appearance in the Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy film) as Emmet Brickowoski, an absolutely average Lego construction worker, living in the land of Bricksburg. Emmet is a boring loser, but one day he accidentally stumbles upon the Piece of Resistance, a thing that supposedly will save all the Lego lands from being destroyed by the ruthless Lord Business, who wants everything to be neat and orderly, and so plans to glue everyone in place. Emmet is found by super cool ninja lady/maybe some kind of DJ Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks, also not doing bad for herself this year), and together they set off to find the wise wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) so they can try and stop Lord Business.

Mazes and Monsters

This is a really misleading cover.

"Danger lurks between fantasy and reality."

Good morning boys and girls, it's that time again! Time for me to relay to you my latest foray into the danger that lurks between good actors, bad movies, and role-playing games! Well, at least that is what I will be doing today, as I explore the exquisite garbage that is Mazes and Monsters, a 1982 film based on a novel written by Rona Jaffe, during the height of Satanic D&D pandemonium. Am I referring to how Dungeons and Dragons is a tool used to recruit children into covens of Satan worshipers, using non-Christian ideologies and REAL MAGIC INCANTATIONS to twist their minds and souls to do the work of the devil? Why you bet I am! A quick primer for the uninitiated. Back in the 1980s, when liking nerd things didn't have a sitcom about it and basically made people regard you with a mixture of pity, suspicion and fear, a number of groups, particularly religious ones, put forth that D&D, and to a lesser extent all fantasy role-playing games, were tools of occultists and devil worshippers. By getting individuals to play these games, they were introducing them to real satanic rituals, and using the guise of a game to get these impressionable minds tied up in a pursuit of power and riches, making them servants of the beast. Of course no one ever had substantive proof that any of these cults existed, despite claims that their members numbered in the hundreds of thousands AT LEAST, but that didn't stop every hack on the block from blaming D&D for all the wrongs of the youthful world. It also didn't seem to encourage any of these people to actually discover what kind of game D&D WAS, given that none of the things they talk about actually happen in a D&D game or any game ever. There is also of course the very real possibility that these groups were simply full of liars and reprobates, but NO surely that couldn't be possible?

Wreck-It Ralph

Looks like John C. Reilly to me. Giant fists and all.

"Get ready for a new kind of hero."

Hey y'all, welcome to the Tuesday edition of The Tagline! I finally got to the movies to see Wreck-It Ralph, so I want to give my immediate impressions and feelings about it, while the movie is still fresh in my mind. Wreck-It Ralph Stars John C. Reilly (did anyone else like Walk Hard? I thought it was funny in a really intensely stupid way) as Ralph, the bad guy in his game, Fix-it Felix. Ralph is sick of living in the dump while Felix (Jack McBrayer, best known for his role in 30 Rock as NBC Page Kenneth Parcell) is showered in medals and accolades. In an attempt to turn his fortunes around, Ralph goes to the modern shooter game Hero's Duty, where he's heard he could get a medal himself (settling a bet he made with one of the supporting characters of his game). This doesn't go the way Ralph hoped, and he ends up blasting off into the world of go-cart racer Sugar Rush, where he meets the diminutive and annoying Vanellope Von Schweetz (played by Sarah Silverman, a funny lady who I am both attracted to and legitimately scared of). Ralph unfortunately trails a cybug from Hero's Duty into the world of Sugar Rush, and that is... well not good, because those bugs are real bad. Sergeant Calhoun follows after the bug (Jane Lynch, probably best known currently as Sue Sylvester on the TV show Glee) to try and stop its rampage.