Lucy

Spooky Eye: The Movie

"She has the Power."

Good afternoon friends, and welcome back to another stirring edition of the Tagline, where movies are still king, or possibly queen as the case might be. Today I will be going back a little bit to talk about the recent Luc Besson film Lucy, a movie that I avoided seeing for a while because I wasn't sure I needed to see Scarlett Johansson hurricanrana another person. As it turned out, I really didn't but she mostly hurts people in different ways, so that was a real relief. Lucy is a movie about a girl, who as you may have guessed is named Lucy. She is kind of a dumbass, For starters, she hangs around with a seedy crowd, including her super awesome boyfriend who essentially sells her as a drug mule so that he can try to get out of a bad debt he owes to some Korean crime boss in Taiwan (where they are). This doesn't really work out great for him or his splattered brains, but he was an asshole anyway so really who cares. Lucy on the other hand... doesn't end up much better off, having her abdomen stuffed full of drugs and then getting kicked in her drug bag, which seems like a dumb plan on the part of her captors. Large amounts of the drug are absorbed by her system, which causes her to freak out and then does what every drug addict dreams about: gives her super powers. Despite her enhanced abilities and telekinesis and other crazy shit, Lucy's body is rapidly deteriorating, and so she attempts to locate the rest of the drug mules so she can juice up some more. Also she contacts well known wise person and maybe god Morgan Freeman so that she can try and figure out a way not to literally disintegrate on an airplane.

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.

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.

The Maze Runner

Run dat maze boyee.

"Based on the Best-Selling Novel"

Hello everyone! Welcome back to another thrilling, chilling edition of the Tagline! Today I am going to jump back to the present and review a movie that I don't recall fondly from 20 years ago (god it is so unreal to think that 1993 was over 20 years ago). So instead of that, today we're jumping back into the vibrant genre of "movies based on young adult novels featuring dystopic or post-apocalyptic settings" Because hell if one movie like that is good then surely eight or nine hundred will be GREAT RIGHT? I don't know. Anyway today I'm going to be talking about the Maze Runner and not the Giver, I know it was a real toss up but there it is. The Maze Runner is a thrilling film based on a novel of the same name, and starring that kid from Teen Wolf as Thomas, a boy who wakes up in a cage that has opened into a grove full of young dudes, and is understandably freaked out, because really who knows what they might do to him. Fortunately it's not that kind of movie, and Thomas discovers that he has been released into the center of a massive labyrinth where many other youths have been released before him. He learns that there is no known escape from the maze, and that at night the area outside of the grove (the maze proper) is prowled by things called grievers, which no one has encountered and survived. They sound like shrieking hell monsters, and for the curious out there, once they show us one we as the audience discover that they also LOOK like shrieking hell monsters, that are also have mechanical. They're basically like something out of doom, as I was watching I had to ask myself like... why did they build them like that? Any mechanical thing chasing you would be scary, but these guys really went the extra mile in the bowel-voiding terror department. Anyway, no one has any memories of how or why they ended up in the maze, but they all want to get out, because living in a grassy grove surrounded by monsters and with a bunch of other dirty dudes isn't the greatest way to spend the rest of your life... I mean unless that's your thing I guess. No judgement.

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.

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!

Vampire Academy

GET IT?!

"They Suck at School."

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Tagline! I've gone months and months, starved for shitty YA movie adaptations, and finally found something to really sink my teeth into. I mean, don't get me wrong, The Mortal Instruments wasn't very good, and Divergent was REALLY not good, but I was looking for a real piece of shit, and it also really needed to be about vampires. Thankfully, the movie industry and YA writers didn't leave me disappointed and empty handed, they gave me Vampire Academy. Released in February of this year, Vampire Academy is just the worst kind of movie I could possibly think of, combining an embarrassment of riches in terms of young adult AND vampire cliches, seemingly in an effort to make me laugh in delighted malice so hard that my head falls off. I saw this described as being Mean Girls meets Twilight, and that's sort of true, but it leaves out all the other things that this movie is ripping off, and that just ISN'T ACCEPTABLE. Vampire Academy is based on the first book in a series of YA novels (of course) about a girl named Rose who is a Dhampir (that's a half vampire) and her BFF Lissa, who is a Moroi (if you're playing the home game a Moroi is the Romanian word for a kind of vampire that isn't immortal, though sometimes they're ghosts go figure). Moroi in this world are apparently all Harry Potter style wizards who can use elemental magic, and they drink blood but otherwise are swell folks or so we are told. They mention that people who are on the receiving end of the vampire biting get something out of it, but we're never told what, so I have to assume it's some sort of sex thing. Anyway the Moroi are protected by the Dhampir, because for some reason even though they can set people on fire with their minds they can't defend themselves. Who are they being defended from? Why the Strigoi of course, who are the scary Nosferatu kind of vampire, all living forever and being crazy and wanting to kill everyone. You know REAL VAMPIRES.

The Frozen Ground

Look at those heads starin'

"The hunter becomes the hunted."

Hello everyone, welcome back to another gripping, touching, murdering in the woods edition of The Tagline! Today, with the weather constantly warming up I figured that it would be nice to cool down, and take a trip up to the frosty north, where young girls go missing and wind up as frozen, desiccated corpses in the Alaskan tundra after being tortured and hunted for sport. If that sounds like your kind of thing, well then I have to please ask you to leave, and I'm calling the cops. If it sounds like the plot of a movie you might watch, well then congratulations, I'm bringing the goods today. Today I'm going to be talking about The Frozen Ground, a film released to limited theatrical and on-demand availability in August 2013, based on the real life hunt in the 1980s for Alaskan serial killer Robert Hansen, who was a real life person, who killed other real life people, in Alaska. Unlike in real life, the guy who is desperately trying to find him despite little in the way of manpower and resources, is Nicholas Cage (his character's name is Jack Halcombe, because I guess that sounds cooler than the real investigator's name Glenn Flothe, which is admittedly not a super cool sounding name). Unfortunately the search becomes less of a police fueled manhunt and more of a Nicholas Cage fueled manhunt, as Jack has virtually no one offering help or leads, except for 17 year old prostitot Cindy Paulson, who is incidentally portrayed by Vanessa Hudgens. Was that weird? Yeah, it was pretty weird, we'll get a little more on that later, but anyway, I guess the question you have left about casting is who's playing Robert Hansen, the twisted killer extraordinaire? Why none other than JOHN CUSACK OH YEAH BABY. Bringing back the dream team from Con Air, this film pits Cusack against Cage in a WINNER TAKES ALL FIGHT TO VANESSA HUDGEN'S DEATH.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

Teen Angst Squad.

"There is a world hidden within our own."

Hello all, and welcome back to The Tagline! Today I will at long last deliver on broken promises, and talk about The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, seeing as it now looks inevitable that we will be seeing more of this series (at least one more movie is already in the pipe). Starring Lily Collins as Clary Fray, normal girl living in the city, City of Bones follows her as she discovers that she is intensely and gruesomely not ordinary. This movie, like any movie that is not about comic book characters or that has a female protagonist, is based on a series of young adult novels, set in a world where unknown to regular people, a race of half-angels (Nephilim if you want to be sassy about it) are charged with fighting against demons and other varieties of nightmare creatures, all while the rest of the world's assholes are oblivious to the fact that Dracula is trying to summon the devil or something, with help from Moriarty. Don't worry though, some rail thin teenage girls and teen heartthrobs are more than ready to eff those demons in the A, by which I mean mostly be moody at each other. This cast of likable jack-holes includes Jace (who you DON'T remember as Caius from the Twilight movies, but see him here in Anonymous as the young Oxford) who is Clary's sexy love interest who might be her brother, which makes some of the stuff that happens in the movie Luke & Leia levels of awkward, Alec who is a douchebag with few if any redeeming qualities we see, and his sister Isabelle, who has this whole leather vixen thing going on that was kind of awkward but I guess it was probably the way she was described in the books, given how frequently it comes up in the movie. Also I'd be remiss if I forgot to mention Clary's boy in waiting who will always be waiting, Simon, who just doesn't stand a chance against the brooding possibly sibling Jace. Like how much does that hurt, she thinks the guy is her brother and you still can't compete. Ouch Simon.

Divergent

Roofstander: The Movie.

"What Makes You Different, Makes You Dangerous."

Fortunately there is no chance of anyone or anything becoming dangerous in this movie, as there is nothing unique or different happening. Hello everyone, welcome back to The Tagline! Today I'm going to talk about the impossibly long-running film Divergent (it is STILL in theaters for some reason) Starring the always bland and uninteresting Shailene Woodley, who is attempting to assert herself on the big screen after her turn on The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which I assume people must have watched because she is still working. Divergent is the latest in the string of adaptations of young adult novels with stubborn strong willed female protagonists who go against the establishment, in order to change their dystopic future society. If I sound so jaded that it even comes through in text, that's because I feel like we can probably explore some other narrative space at this point. I'm sure likable female protagonists can think of something ELSE to do, other than lead a future revolution. Divergent is the first book in a trilogy (all three of which are being filmed) taking place in a world that was almost totally annihilated. In order to organize the post-apocalyptic civilization, individuals are split into one of five factions. Erudites are the smarties, Dauntless are the soldiers, Amity are the happy fieldworkers, Candor are the lawyers, and Abnegation are the selfless public servants and leaders. Also there is a substantial body of factionless refuse that no one seems troubled about, but I guess it's a hard knock life in the future. Beatrice (Woodley) is about to turn 16, and so will soon take the aptitude test and choose what faction she belongs to. Her parents belong to Abnegation, and they are currently in some sort of cold war with Erudite, who as near as I can tell are a bunch of smug douchebags who think they should own the world. Tris ends up getting three different results when she takes her test, meaning that she is divergent. This is not good, and divergent people tend to get disappeared. Beatrice is warned not to tell anyone.

Chopping Mall

Nothing like this happens. Ever.

"Where shopping can cost you an arm and a leg."

Greetings from the dark underworld of movies, it's time for more Tagline! Today I decided that it was a fine time to explore the wide world of B-movie garbage, and so took to the archive. This brought me into striking range of the dross produced by Roger and Julie Corman, and eventually to Chopping Mall. You might suspect from the name that Chopping Mall is a horror movie about a serial killer or ax murderer in a mall killing people. Maybe you'd think it was about a mall where people are chopped up, in some sort of bizarre dystopic world. You would be wrong in both cases, as this movie is actually about killer robots! Originally released in '86 as Killbots, I guess that wasn't punny enough so they re-released it as Chopping Mall, and it did a bit better afterwards. The premise of the movie is not super complicated. There is a mall. Then there are robots. The robots start killing people in said mall. That's about all there is to it. I mean, I guess I can go into more detail about the highly scientific way that the robots get to this point.

How I Live Now

This looks way more badass than the
actual movie.

"Love will lead you home."

Though sometimes home might be a blasted out shell of its former self! Hello folks, welcome back to The Tagline. Today I'm going to talk about a movie where World War III takes place, but all we get to see is some dreary English blocks and forests. I'm going to talk about How I Live Now, a 2013 film based on a novel of the same name, released in 2004. Really though what movies now are NOT based on a novel? What do screenwriters actually do anymore? Do they even exist? That's something to think about for later, anyway let's get back to the moviebook. How I Live Now follows the life of Elizabeth "Daisy" during a time of civil unrest. For reasons never adequately explored, Daisy has come from the US to the UK, where she will be staying with her cousins for the summer. What is immediately apparent to the viewer is that Daisy's cousins are English rascals always getting into woodsy British hijinks. The other is that Daisy has some serious issues with hostility, and trying to exist in general. She spends time living at the backwoods home of her cousins, and being extremely anti-social, though the movie telegraphs via slow motion staring at each other that Daisy is going to be kissing cousins with her oldest, most handsome cousin. This also opens up the question of why are movies seemingly obsessed with family members making out all the time, I feel like that's coming up more than I'd care for. That comes later though, at first it's just Daisy not talking to anyone and maybe having an eating disorder, again not fully explored. Eventually Daisy gets pushed in a river and then she bonds with everyone because of that or at least that's how the movie makes it look.

Flowers in the Attic

Look at this beautiful art.

"."

Hello ladies and gents, welcome back to The Tagline. Today I have a real treat for you, that I want you to experience because I was forced to experience it. I'm going to tell you a little story, and that story actually involves a fair amount of incest. In the 80s there was this book, Flowers in the Attic (well it was published in '79 I guess) that became very popular. My girlfriend tells me for some reason all the girls she knew had read it in high school. The book was apparently really popular, it managed to sell something like 4 million copies. This book is about a family living the American dream, until the unexpected death of the father. After that, the mother Corrine (Heather Graham,  takes her four Aryan children back to live at the house of her parents, revealing that though she had been estranged from them they are letting her come home. Also they are apparently very, very rich. Of course, everything isn't well in paradise, and so as soon as the kids and Corrine arrive it's clear that shit is not right. The children are rushed into a spare bedroom in secret where they are told that they must stay "just for a while", but also that no one can know they are there. That strikes as somewhat weird. Also their grandmother is really not the nice kind, and she is really religiously obsessed, and has some very disparaging things to say about how all of Corrine's children are the spawn of Satan and have evil lurking in their hearts. The kids feel about the same way about that as I do, weirded out, but they don't quite get it all the way until a bit later.

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.

Frozen

FROM THE CREATORS OF MICKEY MOUSE.

Hello all, The week is half over and that means it's time for more movies! It's cold as hell here and I figured that would make it an appropriate time to talk about Frozen, a film all about being cold and maybe dying from exposure to extremely low temperatures, and also living in a world devoid of warmth, left out alone in the snow, or locked away where no one can see you. SOUNDS LIKE FUN RIGHT? Well yes and also maybe not so much, but we will get to that in a bit. For starters, Frozen is the latest Disney film that is computer animated and about princesses who live in castles. This particular film concerns sisters Anna and Elsa, one of whom is super outgoing and energetic, and the other of whom has been hidden from the world her whole life because she has icy frost magic. The king and queen of Arendelle die, and so Anna and Elsa are left mutually alone, as Elsa shuts everyone out, to try and protect them from her unholy frost witchcraft, probably gifted to her by the devil (well that's how they treat her anyway). Elsa is eventually to become queen, and on the day of her coronation there's a big hullabaloo and a fancy party. There, Anna (Who is voiced by Kristen Bell, I actually have a really weird and awkward movie with her in it to talk about some other time) meets Hans, who seems like the handsome and kind prince she has been waiting to fall in love with at first sight (As we know, that always works out SO WELL) Anna wants to marry him right there on the dance floor, but Elsa isn't as thrilled as her (Elsa by the by is voiced by Idina Menzel, who previously appeared in Disney's Enchanted) and won't give her blessing. They fight, Elsa gets emotional, and then maybe she shoots some icy magic, is chased out for being a witch, and then accidentally blankets the kingdom in unending winter. Oops.

The To Do List

Awful guys. Awful.

"She's going from straight A's to her first F."

That is not good guys and gals. Look at that tagline. It is a bad tagline. It should feel bad about who and what it is. I threw up a little typing it, but I mean, I had to. That's what was on the poster, what else could I do? Let me try and regain my composure. Okay I'm ready, hello everyone, and welcome to the awkward sex portion of the week. Today you'll be following me down a bizarre rabbit hole into the figurative and literal clusterfuck that is The To Do List. For those wondering "what even are you talking about" that's a fair question. The To Do List stars Aubrey Plaza (see her here as well) as Brandy Klark, a really awkward power nerd who decides that she needs to be more experienced sexually before she goes to college. To this end, she goes about solving the problem any true nerd would, by making a list of mundane (and also kind of weird) sex stuff, researching said things, and then setting about doing them all. I first heard about this movie after a bizarre incident that a lot of people think might have been staged, but that I'm not 100% about because it was really weird, you can look it up online. I'm referring to Aubrey Plaza crashing the stage of the MTV Movie awards and attempting to take Will Ferrel's award during his acceptance speech. There are reasons to believe that it was staged and that she wasn't just bomb annihilated drunk, for starters why she was in the very front row. Also she had the name of this movie written across her chest, and that got some camera time when she returned to her seat (before she was reportedly ejected from the venue). The MTV Movie Awards are known for that kind of "unstaged but actually no totally staged" stuff though, so who knows. THE POINT IS that was how I first heard about this movie, and so I figured what the hell, give it a watch and see what sorts of weird shit happens. Well all kinds I guess.

Troll 2

Troll squared? What are you trying to tell me.

"Be afraid... be TWICE as afraid!"

It's Thursday, and you know what that means, I've returned to haunt you with more movie reviews! Now many of you are probably at least passing familiar with today's movie, as it has been made popular at least in meme form by the internet. In particular there is one clip that frequently surfaced for a while, catching an especially shitty moment. While it is a funny clip, and certainly representative of the movie, I feel that no short length of the film can really encompass in all its grandeur the sheer insane shitty-ness of this movie. From opening credits to close this movie is sucking at 100% capacity like an industrial vacuum cleaning up a basement flooded by a burst septic system. Before I really get into the heart of the matter, I wanted to note a few things about the movie. Firstly, while the company that produced it bought the rights to Troll the first (because it experienced very mild financial success, despite also being dross) this movie has no relation to that one at all. Second, there are no trolls at any point in the movie. There are only goblins. The movie even specifically refers to them AS goblins, so that's important too. Third, the movie was produced and directed by an entirely Italian crew, and none of them spoke English, except for a set or costume designer (I don't remember which) who interpreted. Fourth, the entire cast auditioned for parts as extras, but were then cast in leading roles. Most are incredibly ashamed of this film, so I will refrain from referring to them by anything but their character names. None of them went on to anything much better anyway, so mentioning their names would only serve to further their already considerable public humiliation. Speaking of, let's talk about the movie itself.

The Bling Ring

Excellent choice of font.

"Living the Dream, One Heist at a Time."

Proving again that dreams can be at LEAST as boring and stupid as real life! Welcome to a new week at The Tagline, as we are rounding out the spookiest month of the year with a movie that was certainly a horrifying experience after a fashion. That is to say, I was horrified that I was watching it, and that a 90 minute run time could feel like and unending prison sentence, which is funny considering the subject matter. Today I'm going to talk about director Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring, what is described as a "satirical black comedy crime film" based on true events revolving around a group of teens who burglarized the homes of a number of celebrities including Paris Hilton (They actually robbed her half a dozen times if accounts are to be believed). The movie stars mostly unknown young actors as the members of the eponymous Bling Ring, with the exception of Emma Watson, who trades being brainy Hermione for being maybe the dumbest human being alive, Nicki (Also if you watch American Horror Story Taissa Farmiga, who was the daughter Violet in season 1, is in this movie). The cast is rounded out with cameos of people who were robbed, Leslie Mann who plays Nicki's mother, and Gavin Rossdale (the frontman for Bush) who portrays a scumbag who helps teenage robbers fence Rolex watches. The movie is shot jumping between scenes of the actual crimes and of the burgling teens being interviewed after the fact. Either way.... I wasn't especially impressed.

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.