Van Helsing

Look at his awesome hat.

"Adventure lives forever."

Adventure DOES live forever, man that tagline has a really good point. Welcome back folks, as always I am your host on this breathtaking tour of the underworld of cinema, and today I'm going to be digging deep into the past to 2004, with the release of Van Helsing, a kind of Universal Studios monster orgy that happened somehow and was gifted with an absolutely insane 160 million dollar budget. Yeah that's right, watch that movie and try to guess where they dumped 160 million smackaroos, because I can't quite figure it out. Anyway Van Helsing is not about Abraham Van Helsing, the character from Bram Stoker's Dracula, but it does involve Dracula prominently. In this iteration Hugh Jackman is Gabriel Van Helsing, an agent of the Vatican who is dispatched to kill Dracula. That seems pretty reasonable, because I'm sure that no one in Rome is a big Dracula fan, on account of him being a vampire and all. So Van Helsing travels to Transylvania with his loyal ammo monk in tow (the guy who played Faramir in the Lord of the Rings no less!) to try and deep six Drac. The Holy Order also charges Van Helsing with helping ensure that the Valerious family doesn't end up ever getting stuck outside of heaven's gates, because I guess they don't get to go to heaven unless they kill Dracula or something who fucking even knows. Of course Dracula isn't the only thing that can kill you in Transylvania. There's also werewolves, and Dracula brides, and... gross baby vampires that explode because they need different kinds of batteries or something... stay with me here guys.

Gravity

I think they could've let go.

"Don't Let Go."

Except for that one part, then you can totally let go. Hello Tagliners, welcome back. Today I'm going to exercise my rights as a card carrying contrarian, by disagreeing with virtually every critic in existence. Correct former friends, today I will be talking about the universally acclaimed and award winning film Gravity. Gravity stars Sandra Bullock as medical engineer Ryan Stone, who is on a space mission and servicing the Hubble Telescope alongside Lt. Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), when a storm of debris from a Russian missile striking an inactive satellite passes their ship, the Explorer, and kills everyone except Kowalski and Stone, and propel them into a life or death situation. The movie is frequently and extensively experienced from the perspective of Stone, who as a novice in space is frequently (and understandably) terrified as she attempts to survive in an extreme situation that undoubtedly would push even the hardiest individual to their limits. The movie is essentially a film about survival, about Stone overcoming existential dread and her personal demons in order to survive and make it back to the Earth. I want it to be known before I get into the rest of my review that I fully understand all of the above. I recognize the movie's intent, and I even recognize that it succeeds at what it sets out to do, and that it accomplishes great things in terms of 3D cinematography. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about how I liked the movie. I didn't. I am here to tell you that I did not give a single shit about anything that happened in this movie.

Only God Forgives

He's a really bad boxer.

"Time to Meet The Devil."

Hello again friends, it is once again time for The Tagline. I know I promised true holiday horrors today, but you'll have to wait a bit longer to realize my darkest nightmares. Frankly speaking... some things are just TOO terrible. I'm afraid dear readers, afraid of what I will do in the pursuit of your entertainment. So in the meantime, I offer up something less horrific, and not as seasonal, while I steel myself, body and mind, for what might be the worst thing I've ever watched... again. Instead, let me reach into my bag of stupid, and pull out a movie that was bad, but not in a particularly holiday way. I'm talking about Only God Forgives, a film starring Ryan Gosling as Julian, who runs a muay thai club in Thailand that's actually a front for a drug operation. His brother brutally murders and rapes a prostitute (and probably in that order too the twisted sack of shit) and then is killed in turn by the prostitute's father, with the consent of the fucked up Thai police, who play things kinda fast and loose as you can probably guess. After the death of Julian's brother, his horrible crime boss mom shows up to run the show, and tells him to go out and even up the score. This is about what you can sort out as regards the plot of this movie.

Devil

Going DOWN.

"Five strangers trapped. One of them is not what they seem."

Hello all and welcome, it's time to gather 'round and listen, as I tell a grim tale about a movie I watched, that ultimately I probably should not have. Do you ever occupy yourself with some other activity while watching a movie, only the second activity is the one you really focus on because the movie is so boring/crappy? For me sometimes I do it because if you're just watching a movie, by yourself, in a way that means that you are trapped alone with that movie until it ends. Sometimes I will decide I want to know about a movie I suspect will be complete garbage, but I'm just not brave enough to put myself alone in a room with it. So I set a secondary task, a handheld game or the internet or something ANYTHING, to be the third wheel to my date that I suspect is doomed from the start. In the spirit of that endeavor, I actually was doing TWO other things while I aired Devil, a film that was meant to kick off a series titled ever so humbly THE NIGHT CHRONICLES, dealing with the supernatural within urban society. That's right boys and girls, this is an M Night Shyamalan production (he didn't direct, but he did write it, so the fingerprints are still all over the murder weapon). I can't emphasize enough the sheer arrogance it must take to launch a series of movies, and name the series after yourself. Me personally, I wouldn't want my name on the Marquis over this movie, but that's because I like good things. Enough exposition though; what is Devil all about?

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

My favorite Transformers movie.

Hey y'all, welcome to another week at The Tagline! Today because I haven't watched any new movies and I'm kind of feeling like a jerk, I'm going to talk about that sequel to the Percy Jackson movie that came out like a month ago. Most of the time, most people I think go to movies because they imagine there is at least a chance that they will be half-way decent. In comparison, I often go to movies because I know they will be regrettable shitshows. I crave that kind of sordid fuckfest, the way normal people crave actually good movies. Do I take a twisted enjoyment out of movies that are comically awful? Yes, I certainly do (On that score I am filled with regret that my schedule has yet to permit The Mortal Instruments into my viewing area. I think that is definitely what I'm after, but it still eludes me). This was the general attitude that drew me into the theater in August to go see Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, the sequel to Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Both are based at least nominally on a series of young adult books, all focusing on the eponymous Percy Jackson(the kid from Perks of Being a Wallflower, who is a scion of the god Poseidon. He hangs out with all his half godly friends at a camp which is specially set aside for them, with a really stupid name (Camp Halfblood how creative right?) After the events of the first movie, where Percy stopped some bad god related stuff from happening, Percy has been experiencing a dry spell. In the hero department I mean. Probably in other departments too, he only hangs around this one Athena daughter who's clearly not giving him any action, and this other Mars daughter who is just making him look like a chump all the time.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Oh dear god no.

" Mankind's finest achievement. Our nation's proudest moment. A secret hidden for forty years."

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Tagline! I normally wouldn't bother to even address how shitty a Transformers movie is, but while watching a Rifftrax of the third Transformers movie, I came to realize that it was maybe one of the single worst movies I'd ever had the misfortune of experiencing. It was so unspeakably shitty, that indeed, it was hard to even watch with the MST3K crew making jokes over it (If you do not know about Mystery Science Theater, then learn you some here. Rifftrax is what Mike Nelson, Kevin Muphy and Bill Corbitt do now). I can also mention that I didn't care for the first Transformers movie either. I can admit that it was an average action movie at least, as opposed to the epic level train wreck that is Dark of the Moon. I'm now going to attempt to summarize the movie, but I expect that's going to be challenging because I'm not 100% sure about any of it. I'm going to open the wiki page about the movie and we can discover the plot together!

House at the End of the Street

Because the girl next door is Jennifer
Lawrence I'm supposed to believe.

"Fear reaches out... for the girl next door."

Hello everyone! It's Thursday, and that means it's movie time! Today it came to my attention that while I had intended to, I never reviewed House at the End of the Street, a mystery horror film starring Jennifer Lawrence, of Hunger Games fame. She stars as Elissa Cassidy, daughter of fresh divorcee Sarah (Elizabeth Shue). The two have just moved to the house of their dreams, but all isn't well in paradise, thanks to weirdo kid Ryan Jacobson (Max Thieriot) who lives at the end of their street... in a house. He lives alone because when he was a young lad, his sister went crazy and murdered his parents. People believe she drowned in the river after that, but her body was never found. What Elissa discovers is that Ryan is misunderstood. She starts to get close to him, and then she discovers... some other stuff. Ryan by the way survived his sister Carol-Ann's murder spree because at the time he'd been caring for his ailing aunt far from home, and so did not get psycho-murdered. From Ryan, Elissa learns that Carol-Ann had fallen and suffered a brain injury that made her really violent.

Stoker

I don't think there was innocence to
begin with.

"Innocence Ends"

Welcome to Tuesday at the Tagline! Grasping after a movie to review, I sought out some new movies to take in. I ended up through a series of events settling on Stoker, a film directed by Park Chan-wook, a Korean director I was already familiar with from his earlier movie Old Boy (a movie I can heartily recommend you watch if you like dark dramas) Stoker stars Mia Wasikowska (who I previously enjoyed in the most recent rendition of Jane Eyre) as India Stoker, a moody, creepy girl whose father has just died as the film begins. At the same time, her uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode, probably you know his as Ozymandias from Watchmen), whom she did not know existed, comes to live with her and her eccentric mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman). Immediately it is apparent that Charlie is a not okay guy, India is a not okay girl, and her mother is also... well not okay. I wasn't sure what exactly was going on at first , but it was clear that something very strange was occurring. Murder was clearly in the offing, but I couldn't be sure who was doing all that murdering.

They

I feel like the German version makes the
poster at least suck a little less.

"The fear is real."

Hello everyone! Exciting news, over the course of last week, around Tuesday's post, The Tagline crested 50,000 lifetime hits! How exciting is that? Also exciting is that this Friday, The Tagline will be celebrating its one year birthday (since I re-started posting in earnest at least). To celebrate this momentous occasion, I'm going to post two reviews of two horror movies by Wes Craven, only one of them isn't really a horror movie, and the other isn't really by Wes Craven in any way. Today I'll be reviewing that one, the delightfully titled Wes Craven presents They. Normally when a movie is 'presented' by some well known director, they are at least an executive producer or something, but Wes Craven has literally nothing to do with this movie. He is credited on IMDB as the presenter, which I'm pretty sure is a made up thing.

So now that we've established that Wes Craven is presenting this the way a horse might present its ass to you, we can talk about the atrocious title. They. They. When I try and talk about this movie (which I seldom do), generally people get really confused, thinking that I'm starting a sentence, when really I'm just saying "have you seen they?" "have I seen that they what?" "who?" Like I get it, it's what everyone says in the movie "They will get me" "They are coming" but you couldn't call it Them? Or any of a number of other names that sound less stupid. I'm getting carried away about the name though, what about the actual movie itself?

Lost in Space

Set a course for the lame quadrant.

"Get Ready. Get Set. Get Lost."

An unfortunate choice of tagline if I've ever heard one. Hello everyone, I've returned from my week long 'vacation' (I am glad it's over, what an exhausting episode it was x_x) and back with more movie snark. With the release of Star Trek, a movie that by all reports is apparently a good film, I figured I would review a space/sci-fi movie that was NOT good, to hold you over until I can see Into Darkness. Enter Lost in Space, a film I first saw in the theater back in 1998 when I was young and foolish. So very foolish. Starring William Hurt (who regrettably we last saw on the Tagline in my review of The Host) as Professor John Robinson, a scientist leading a mission to journey for ten years in suspended animation to a distant planet, with the intention of linking Earth and this planet via companion hypergates (kind of like the mass relays in Mass Effect I guess?) so that the planet can be colonized. This is to preserve the human race, which has more or less rendered the Earth  uninhabitable from pollution (like in Avatar). The mission is obviously going to be a long (if not permanent) posting, so Prof. Robinson is travelling with his family: his wife  Maureen (Mimi Rogers) his daughters Penny (Lacey Chabert, who was in Mean Girls and provided Meg's voice for the first 13 episodes of Family Guy before Mila Kunis took over) and Judy (Heather Graham, who I don't think has cropped up in another movie I reviewed somehow) and his son Will (Jack Johnson, who did not much after that really). Also joining them is their fill in pilot Major West (Matt Leblanc, of Friend's fame) and a stow-away Saboteur, Dr. Zachary Smith (the great Gary Oldman, here playing for the bad guys).

Walled In

That is kind of what she looks like yes.

"Some secrets are best left buried."

The same can be said for some movies, but I'll give you no such reprieve! Welcome to Thursday at The Tagline! Today I'm scraping another clod of dirt out of the bottom of the Netflix barrel, this time with a...thriller? No that can't be right, I wasn't thrilled, let's call it the borer, Walled In, starring the spectacularly untalented Mischa Barton as Sam Walczak (that's pronounced WALLZACK so you know walls get it WOW THIS IS A GOOD START) who works for her father's demolition company, and is sent to assess a building before its demolition. The twist here being that the building was the site of a string of grisly murders, presumably at the hands of the 'mad genius' who constructed the building Malestrazza (you know he's bad because he has a kind of bad sounding name) who is presumed dead by the time the movie begins. The only people who still live in the building are an old lady, an old guy, the creepy caretaker who gave me weird incest vibes Mary (Deborah Kara Unger,who was the creepy crazy mom of Alessa in the Silent Hill movies, I guess that's her specialty) and her son Jimmy (Cameron Bright, who was one of the Volturi in the Twilight movies OH NO TWILIGHT ACTOR ALERT). Spooky stuff happens while Sam tries to work, most prominently the weird obsessed attentions of Jimmy, who is clearly not all together, and also other spooky noises or whatever because Sam is apparently scared of the dark, and being trapped in buildings, which is maybe why she blows them up for a living?

The Awakening

Visually grey and yes chilly, and sort
of sleepy.

"All the children are gone... except one."

Heyo everyone, welcome back to Thursday at the good ol' Tagline. Today was damp and gloomy, and so I figured I'd pick a movie that was also those two things more than much of anything else. The Awakening stars Rebecca Hall, who I was just talking about when I reviewed Iron Man 3, as Florence Cathcart, a published author on supernatural hoaxes, who is called to investigate a possible haunting at a boarding school after a child dies. Florence gets to the bottom of the mystery, but in the process, is drawn into something substantially stranger. Ms. Cathcart is alone at the boarding school while it is on break, except for herself, the housekeeper Imelda, Robert Mallory, the man who called her to the school, the groundskeeper, and a boy named Tom, who seems lonely and sort of weird and fixated on Florence in a not strictly normal fashion. What follows is a chilling, visually sumptuous, lithium paced stumble through spooky English Town, at a pace one might generously refer to as glacial.

The Factory

What factory. What does that... WHAT.

"Based on true events NO REALLY"

So starters, the tagline for this movie suggested it was based on real events. There is no proof or even suggested evidence of that. So get that out of the way!

Happy Tuesday everyone, welcome back to The Tagline. Netflix was recently flooded with an explosion of new crappy movies, and so I'm here to deliver the goods, starting first with a police murder mystery called The Factory. It follows two detectives, Mike (played by our main man John Cusack, check out my fave five here) and Kelsey (Jennifer Carpenter, of Dexter fame) as they attempt to hunt down a man they believe to be a serial killer of prostitutes. During this hunt (which isn't going at all well) Mike's daughter Abby (Mae Whitman, she appeared in my review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower), after being dumped by Tyler from the Vampire Diaries, is picked up by said serial killer, because she basically looks like a hooker.

The Host

RADIOACTIVE RADIOACTIVE.

"Love never dies."

Hey everyone, welcome to another spectacular week at The Tagline! Just for you guys, I went to the movies today and watched The Host, the movie adaptation of the only Stephanie Meyer novel yet to receive a movie adaptation. The Host takes place on an Earth that has been conquered by a race of aliens called souls, who are placed into human bodies and subsume their consciousness, taking over their host body, though often retaining memories. Melanie Stryder(portrayed by Saoirse Ronan, who you may have seen either in Hannah or The Lovely Bones) is a girl who is caught by the souls,  and implanted with one called Wanderer. Despite this, she continues to resist her alien parasite, and tricks her into seeking out Melanie's surviving family and her boyfriend Jared. Over time Melanie bonds with Wanderer, and other romantic stuff happens that who really cares about them answer not me. This is Stephanie Meyer at her finest, and now I will elucidate exactly in what ways this movie is just like the Twilight movies (though admittedly there is slightly more of a plot in The Host than in most of the Twilight novels).

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.

The Lorax

This is just... creepy to me. I'll explain why below.

"He speaks for the trees."

Hey gang! today as threatened earlier in the week, I will be talking about The Lorax, a full length movie based on the animated Seussian musical of '72/children's book about not killing the environment. This film follows the same basic premise, only with a few changes to the basic premise. Namely, the Once-ler (voiced by Ed Helms) is only half of the story, told in flashback form. The other story is about Ted (Zac Efron, yuck) who wants to romance Audrey, and figures the only way to do it is to get her a real tree (in his city there are no real trees). Audrey by the by is voiced by Taylor Swift, and I'll address that further later in the post. So Ted leaves town and finds the Once-ler, who is supposedly the only person who knows where trees might be. The Once-ler tells the story of how he made some really stupid thing called a Thneed out of Truffula trees against the urgings of the Lorax, who if you didn't know speaks for the trees. He does this in the voice of Danny DeVito, and when I talk about things in this movie I found odd and unsettling, we'll address that too. Long story short, the Once-ler told the Lorax to get bent, and then paved over the Earth to get rich, but at some point became a creepy smelly hermit. Ted vows to use the last Truffula seed to replant a tree, but the short asshole who rules the town's industry wants to stop him, so he can sell bottled air to people. Antics ensue, and also there is some singing.

Breaking Dawn, Part II

Are you ready for this experience!

"The epic finale that will live forever"

Welcome to Thanksgiving week (or... nothing special if you don't live in the U.S. I suppose) A new edition of The Tagline is out today! I braved the rabid crowds Thursday at midnight, got lost in the dark, and finally arrived at a theater despite the growing cold I was developing, all so I could bring you my impressions of this, the final movie in the TWILIGHT SAGA!!! I knew that I couldn't allow myself to miss a movie that was guaranteed to fill me with unintentional amusement, and I didn't want to deprive you of that second-hand humor! Breaking Dawn: Part II continues the adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's final Twilight novel, a story that is 25% wedding 25% gross excessively long sex stuff that's really unsexy, 40% buildup, 5% a baby being eaten out of Bella's stomach, and 5% the climax never happening. How did the movie compare? Well Breaking Dawn: Part I was almost entirely the aforementioned wedding and gross sex stuff. Part II was also stuffed with gross RPatz KStew sexytimes, but also lots of that aforementioned buildup. What's that like huh?

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"We Are Infinite"

Hello everyone, happy Thursday from The Tagline! Today I'm going to talk about a film I wasn't really interested in, watched with disinterest, and didn't enjoy in any way shape or form. The internet made a big enough noise about this film that I thought "hey, it's a shortish movie, I can spare the time to watch it. Maybe it'll be charming right?" Well I found myself thoroughly un-charmed. Let's see if I can piece this together for you in a way that might make some sense. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a film based of the best-selling novel of the same name. I have not read that book, but having seen this movie I am not inspired to go pick it up. The film stars Logan Lerman (or as I like to think of him, Percy Jackson) as Charlie, an incoming high school freshman introvert, who thinks that no one sees him and gets picked on and is sensitive and intelligent BLA BLA BLA. Gosh that's the most original premise for fiction EVER, I'm sure I've never heard that exact story a million times. Now I'll grant you, that isn't an instant mark against the movie. If it shows us something interesting, does something novel, then a rote premise can be fine. Sadly this story isn't that. Charlie is taken in by two outcast seniors, who let him into their little misfit club, they all have wacky adventures and make precious high school memories, that's about then end of the story. Drama happens, Logan has SERIOUS HIGH SCHOOL problems, and then he learns that he's not okay, they're not okay, and that's okay. Or something. Charlie's guiding lights are Sam (Emma Watson, or her true identity, Hermione Granger) and Patrick (Ezra Miller). Supporting cast includes Nina Dobrev as Charlie's sister (She being best known as Elena Gilbert on the CW television show The Vampire Diaries).

Conan The Barbarian

All those skulls are people who died of
boredom.

"Enter an Age Undreamed of."

This is very true. I don't spend a lot of time dreaming about really vague generic fantasy settings, where no one does anything that I find even remotely interesting. That is the magical land of the Hyborian Age in the 2011 reinterpretation of  Robert E. Howard's fantasy universe (From what I recall the Hyborian Age is the fantasy equivalent of George Lucas' 'a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.'). After floating around in development limbo for the better part of a decade, changing production companies several times in the process, the studio system finally shat out this cinematic disaster. For those late to this particular subject, Conan the Barbarian, or Conan the Cimmerian was a character created by the aforementioned Mr. Howard, in fantasy stories serialized in the Weird Tales periodical  in the 1930s . In the early '80s several films were made based around this character starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and these films would garner him recognition worldwide as an action hero. Despite mixed reactions from critics they were also notably some of the first films based on comics and pulp fiction to actually turn a profit, cracking the door open for what would eventually become our comic-book infested free-for-all present. But this review isn't about those films. This review is about a much worse film.

Valkyrie

This looks... maybe ok?

"Many saw evil. They dared to stop it."

Looks like it could be fun right? That's actually sort of inaccurate. It's more like "Many saw evil. They sort of dared to try and stop it, but failed miserably because they were all such fuck ups."

I didn't exactly expect great things from this movie, but I did sort of expect some amount of entertainment. I mean this is a movie you could pitch by saying "Tom Cruise is a nazi with an eyepatch, trying to blow up Hitler." That should at the very least be the funniest movie ever. Instead I think despite the hundreds of movies I've seen, this may very well have been the most boring movie I have ever watched in my entire life. Absolutely nothing ever happens in this movie. A cast of nazis who are all inexplicably British actors spend the whole movie dicking around and talking about whether or not they will really TRY to kill Hitler. Then at the end, they go off half cocked, fail and die. At the end we're supposed to be like "oh man, not ALL Nazis were bad guys! They tried but died, oh how brave!" All I thought was "man I'm glad they died. Dumbasses." I was sort of expecting an at least decent movie, what with Bryan Singer behind the helm, but evidently if the movie doesn't involve mutants he just doesn't know what to do with himself anymore.

Do you remember seeing the commercial for this movie? You remember there were people running around, explosions STUFF THAT HAPPENED? Yeah well that's actually all of this movie you need to see, because they used up the only two minutes of action in this whole movie in that trailer. The rest is guys standing around, talking about mostly NOTHING. Take a good look at the poster I for the movie. See how it says 'from the directors of The Usual Suspects and X-Men.'? Those are some good movies that you could watch, instead of this piece of crap. Next post I will alleviate the pain of Valkyrie with the best cure for sadness...

Bruce Willis.