So I Married an Axe Murderer

I love axe murdering.

"The Honeymoon Was Killer."

Hello folks, welcome back to the Tagline, where it's all Mike Myers movies from the early 90s as far as the eye can see. After going on my Wayne's World bender earlier in the week, and while doing research for my post on the matter, I came across a movie so thoroughly forgotten that it had even slipped MY mind for a moment. This was 1993's So I Married an Axe Murderer, a movie that properly speaking had no right to be good OR entertaining, because it was dopey and simplistic at its core. Despite that, I actually really like it and think it's a really funny movie, in no small part thanks to Myers and also the general enthusiasm of the cast. So let's talk about it! So I Married an Axe Murderer was the first movie Mike Myers made after Waynes World 2, and it cuts a similar tone despite a very different premise. In this film Myers plays a beat poet named Charlie who lives in San Francisco. He seems really terrible, but people like him, so maybe I just don't know what a GOOD beat poet is like. Charlie has lousy luck with the ladies, mostly because he is paranoid and a commitophobe, constantly finding reasons or forming theories about reasons why his girlfriends aren't right for him. Around this time he meets Harriet, a local butcher who he immediately takes a liking to. The only catch is that he begins to suspect that she might be a black widow, as some of her strange behavior, along with a tabloid story about "Mrs. X" gets his imagination really running. Charlie has his friend Tony, who is a cop, looking into it. Tony himself has his own problems, centered around how disenchanted he is with actual police work, and how boring it is. Basic premise established, kind of a mixed bag of rom-com cliches along with some other thoroughly random bits, but really the random bits are what makes the movie entertaining.

Odd Thomas

DUUUUUUUUDE MONSTERS.

"In Odd We Trust"

Hello all, welcome to a new bright definitely not super rainy spring week at The Tagline. Today I'm going to be talking about a film I'd nearly given up the hope of ever seeing, ever, for a variety of reasons. First it was caught up in a bizarre legal battle, and then shelved for years. Then last month, it received an extremely limited theatrical release, bringing it exactly nowhere near me (like I would have been going into a different state to see it). Finally after all that it was released this month on DVD, allowing me to at last see Odd Thomas, the movie adaptation of the Dean Koontz novel of the same name, the first book in a series about a character named... Odd Thomas. Odd Thomas is odd because he can see the dead, and is drawn to solve murders of those who died unnaturally, and bring their killers to justice. He lives in the small town of Pico Mundo, which is a desert sort of nowhere. He has the sheriff there backing him up (Willem Dafoe not playing some kind of heinous villain is just weird to me) and by day works as a short order cook at a local diner. He is dating the weird but really hot and awfully named Bronwen "Stormy" Llewellyn, because Dean Koontz considers his job incomplete unless everyone has a completely idiotic name. In addition to all this, Odd sees one other thing, a race of horrifying shadow monsters he calls bodachs, that seem to lurk wherever a bloody disaster is about to happen, and apparently exult in such disasters. Odd intimates to us that if the bodachs caught on that he could see them, they would probably kill him, which is a nice thought isn't it?

Insidious 2

Baby kidnap GO!

"It Will Take What You Love Most."

Good morrow to you my fair friends! It's that time again! Today's Tagline comes from the horror quadrant. Today we'll be talking about Insidious: Chapter 2, the sequel to the 2011 film Insidious (see my thoughts on it and some other films I enjoyed here). Released this past September, Insidious: Chapter 2 picks up immediately after the end of the first movie, when Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson, see him also here in The Conjuring) had to cross over (with John Edward) to retrieve his astrally projecting son. Unfortunately something followed him back, and murdered his friend and super badass medium Elise (who has a lot of juice in the supernatural department). Things have calmed down since, except for perhaps the ongoing investigation around Elise's death. That being said, it doesn't take long for weird shit to start happening in the house the Lamberts are now occupying (the house Josh grew up in, which is spectacularly creepy looking). You know the kind of stuff, pianos playing themselves, stuff getting knocked over. Just the regular routine. His wife Renai (Rose Byrne here she is as a crazy person) starts to notice something is up as well (given that all the poltergeist shit is happening mostly to her) and decides to seek help.

Cherry 2000

Sure is hot in the desert.

“She's blonde, beautiful and forever young.”

Hello and welcome back to The Tagline! I decided that I wanted to continue the new year with a further peek into the distant, misted past, when hairspray was as essential as water, and the future was definitely going to involve some sort of big desert and having sex with robots. Living in an area covered in forest and completely devoid of robots to bang, I don't mind telling you that I am still trying to cope with my bitter disappointment on the matter. I guess I shouldn't get too down, we could still get our deserty sexbot future! It might just be a while, but I suppose patience is a virtue just like they say. ANYWAY today I will be talking about a classic movie about a sexy lady in an american muscle car shooting guys with rockets in a desert while looking for the body of a robotic sex wife. You may or may not have guessed by now that I am talking about Cherry 2000, a cult film originally slated for release in 1985, Orion shelved this film for years basically because they didn't know how to market it, or what to really do with it. Having seen it a number of times, I can certainly understand their confusion and trepidation... I'm not sure how one would classify or explain Cherry 2000, especially in the 80s. The film features a dystopian future US, with a setting somewhere lost between cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic. The year is 2017, and in the wake of a number of economic disasters and civil uprisings, civilization exists in isolated clusters. One man, Sam Treadwell, is a business executive who lives with his limited edition gynoid, (the eponymous Cherry 2000 model) until she short circuits during some very soapy sex, because apparently advanced androids AREN'T WATERPROOF SOMEHOW. That leads to some gross questions about how he has sex with her and keeps her clean, but let's just... not think about that anymore.

Let Me In

A movie drenched in blood! 

"Innocence dies. Abby doesn't."

Hey everybody! Welcome to another Thursday at the Tagline. After almost a month off from grisly horror movies, I decided that it would be okay to talk about a movie where everyone is pretty much drenched in blood for the duration (okay so mostly Chloe Grace Moretz, but occasionally also people she savagely murders). Let Me In is a somewhat peculiar beast, an American remake (in 2010) of a Swedish film, made only in 2008 called Let the Right One In, which itself was based on a Swedish novel of the same name (published in 2004). It is unusual then not just because it is an adaptation of a foreign film but also because it is an adaptation of a very recent one. A lot of fans of the original book/movie felt that this film was unasked for and unneeded, but I will suggest here and in the rest of this post that Let Me In has a lot going on for it. Let Me In takes place in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where 12 year old Owen (Kodi Smit-Mcphee, he was also the kid from the movie adaptation of The Road) is the victim of vicious bullying at school, and a total outcast, with a somewhat disturbing fantasy life (that involves probably murdering the people who pick on him). He has no real connections, having a stand-offish relationship with his mother (whom he lives with) and has a very distant relationship with his absentee asshole of a dad. One day, new tenants arrive in his apartment complex: an older man, and a young girl, named Abby (that would be Chloe Grace Moretz, aka Hit Girl, aka Carrie in an upcoming remake aka I'm scared shitless of this 15 year old girl).

12 Monkeys

Prepare for something FRENCH

"They're Coming."

Hey everyone, it's Tuesday, and I'm finally back for real! I have working lights and everything, so I thought that it was time for a celebration. I celebrate things by reviewing or watching Bruce Willis movies. So today I thought I'd pick pretty much the weirdest one I can think of, and talk about Twelve Monkeys. I mentioned that Looper kind of reminded me of this movie, even though it was only because their messages were so different, but there is a similar kind of structure to them. Twelve Monkeys was made in 1995, based on a French short film shot in the 1960s. It stars Bruce Willis as James Cole, a convicted criminal living in a post-apocalyptic future, where an engineered virus has forced the remains of human civilization underground. In this future, scientists have developed an imprecise form of time travel, and in order to try and earn a pardon, Cole is sent into the past, to try and gather information about the virus, and if possible obtain a sample of the original so a cure might be made. The virus is believed to have been released by a terrorist organization known as the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, and with that vague information to go on Cole is sent first to 1990, and then to 1996 around when the virus was supposed to have been released.

Drive

Hey Ryan, those are some nice gloves!

"Some Heroes Are Real"

Hello and Happy Halloween! You're getting an early Thursday post, because I still have no power, and so had to seek an alternate location for posting! I want to also give a quick shout out to the like 400 people who visited my blog today searching for The Crow, I assume because it is Halloween! Thanks for stopping by! Anyway, I've been meaning to write a post about this movie Drive for a long while now, but I always ended up doing something else instead. No more! Today I give Ryan Gosling his due, and talk about this movie, which came out of nowhere one September day to dazzle and then horrify me. Starring Ryan Gosling as the nameless Driver (no one ever refers to him by his name). He is duh a driver, stunt by day and criminal get away by night. He doesn't seem to do this because of any particular ambitions, other than to be the best driver (like no one ever was?) He works as a mechanic with his... friend I guess Shannon (Bryan Cranston, who while he wasn't being in Breaking Bad was in Total Recall) who does have aspirations that get him into trouble. Driver meets a girl (Carey Mulligan, who is British I guess? News to me) and her son, who live in the same building as him, and we see a gentle side to this otherwise hardened criminal.

The Losers

Zoe Saldana in a cowboy hat.

"Anyone Else Would Be Dead By Now."

Welcome back to the Tagline! Today I'll be talking about a film I saw a couple years back that I feel really didn't get noticed, the vertigo comic based The Losers. The movie follows a group of special forces operatives burned by the mysterious CIA spook "Max" as they attempt to get revenge and clear their names. This more or less follows the premise of the comics, albeit in a movie shortened fashion.  The Losers stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan (who I recently talked about in The Possession) as Clay, who is the team's leader. Supporting cast include Zoe Saldana as Aisha (Her best known role was probably as Uhura in the Star Trek remake) and Chris Evans as Jensen (You are probably familiar with him, he was most recently Captain America in The Avengers). The team travels from Bolivia to the U.S. where they perform a variety of dangerous, suicidal, and very illegal operations all in an attempt to find Max, so that they can kill him. Max meanwhile has his own plans, and is attempting to use next generation weapons of mass destruction to start a war, in order to influence world events and 'steer the world back on track'. You know, your typical megalomania villain fare.

The Book of Eli

The future's so bright, I have radiation poisoning.

"Some will kill to have it. He will kill to protect it."

Welcome back to the tagline! Today I will as promised deliver another heaping dose of the post-apocalypse, this time talking about 2010's The Book of Eli. Set 30 years after a nuclear apocalypse, The Book of Eli follows the eponymous main character Eli (Denzel Washington), as he makes his way towards the west coast of the former U.S. in an attempt to deliver a book he has somewhere safe, after a voice told him to do so. This book is apparently of grave significance. He is not the only person who is aware of its apparent importance however, and he runs into trouble when Carnegie (Gary Oldman) becomes aware of the book and tries to take it by force.

Red

"He's got time to kill."

Rarely Eat Dairy. Rich Elderly Dudes...

So as a means of apologizing for reminding the world about Batman & Robin, I decided to talk today about a movie that I thought was pretty cool, rather than one that was so bad that I think it made me a little bit dumber. Red was a movie that came out during the middle of the Fall season of 2010 to what can only be described as a lukewarm reception. Despite the almost complete lack of competition, Red finished out its opening weekend in second, behind Jackass 3-D of all things. my feelings about that can't be expressed in type or human language, amounting to a sort of guttural rage noise. Setting that aside, the movie did at least garner mostly positive reviews from movie sites, so I don't need to go on some rage filled hate-tirade like I've had to with some other movies that I put into the 'overlooked' category. Unlike a number of other films that would fall into this category, I don't have a great explanation for why it performed so tepidly, save that it had a nearly non-existent marketing campaign. I think maybe I saw a trailer for it at the beginning of another movie and that was it. A damn shame too.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

"Open your mind. Unlock the secret. Experience the fantasy."

Unleash a new reality? Harsh.

In 2001, something that had not happened before in film occurred. Squaresoft, under the ill-starred Square Pictures imprint, made a feature length film that was entirely computer generated. The intent at the time was that this would be the first but not last film they made, and the main character, Aki Ross, was supposed to be a recurring figure in more movies. Alas, the Spirits Within proved to be a catastrophic undertaking. It was a disaster at the box office, grossing half of the 136 million dollars that went into its production. Squaresoft took such a bath on this movie, that their pending merger with Enix almost fell through. Square wouldn't make another feature until their Final Fantasy VII film Advent Children (more on that in a bit). There is a long grocery list of reasons why this movie tanked in a massive way. I will recount some of the better ones for you now.

Return and Dark City

After not having updated this blog for three years, I decided I wanted to again. So without further ado, let's start with a movie I liked that never got recognized for anything.

"A world where the night never ends. Where man has no past. And humanity has no future."

Looks fun, right?

For those not familiar, Dark City was a movie that came out in 1998. Without spoiling too much of the plot (the circumstances of the plot are revealed slowly over the course of the movie) a man wakes up in a bathtub, with no memories, and finds that he is being accused of committing serial murders, which his present circumstance suggests he committed. He comes to realize that the city he lives in is controlled by mysterious beings who have power over its shape. This leads him into a race to find out what's really going on in the city, and how he figures into that plan. It's a really interesting sort of plot that makes you think you're watching one kind of movie, until you realize that it is totally different.