Movies I Will Not Be Seeing: 2010 Edition
Daybreakers: I didn’t have the heart to post on Icine and say this looks like a complete piece of shit. There was a time when I regarded the presence of Sam Neill as some sort of mark of quality; even an uneven mess like In the Mouth of Madness was rendered enjoyable by Neill’s well-meaning hammery. Now he’s like a poor man’s Anthony “Anything for a Buck” Hopkins. I’m tired of nonsensical dystopian futures where everything is apparently lit by one-source blue lighting. This was old when Supernova detailed the thrilling voyage to the planet Ridley-Scott in 199, but honestly, enough already. Let’s get some bleak movies with some solar hues for fuck’s sake. Despite the good reviews, I simply cannot dredge up enough care from Giveafuck Bay.
Legion: Killer grandma! Killer ice cream man! Paul Bettany deserves better than a retread of Prophecy written by Corky from Life Goes On. I can only hope that the possessed wall-crawling grandma is meant to be comical somehow, because judging from the trailers, it’s about as soul-blastingly frightening as Beverly Hills Ninja. Also, when was the last time you saw a good humor truck? I haven’t spotted once since about 1991. Surely today’s youth will connect with the cheap and dark irony of the killer ice cream man! Also, everyone knows that you can defeat angels by shooting them with machine guns. If Abraham had brought his Webley to the mountaintop like he’d planned, he wouldn’t have had to pretend to sacrifice Isaac. He could have just shot God in the face and yelled “now what, motherfucker!” (Thus commenting wryly on the vague and incestuous nature of the Holy Trinity in an ironic fashion. Abraham can later hint that Gabriel is his own grandpa.)
Twilight: Any of ‘em. From Bram Stoker’s original Prince of Fellatio-Phobia to vampires playing baseball and moping over girls one-hundredth their age. You’ve got to admire Stephenie Meyer for making a billion dollars from a consequence-free parable that reduces the flesh-eating undead to a hunky love interest straight off the pages of Tiger Beat. Lestat would be proud. I look forward to Meyer’s inevitable descent into braying, Anne Rice-style insanity, wherein she declares herself above all editing (not much of a leap there, I’d wager) and writes the scintillating follow-up, Spinebreakers, about deadly mother-eating babies and the teenage girls who love them.
Dan – I’m planning to see Legion without actually expecting anything good from it. (It has people in it who I want to see get more work.) Anyway, thanks to you, when something sucks I’ll think of what fun it will be to tell you how right you were. Hmm, maybe I should just buy the ticket and slip into a different auditorium?
↓ Quote | Posted January 18, 2010, 7:03 pmThanks for the comment, Robin. I heard Legion was actually shelved for three years before finally getting released. That doesn’t bode too well. And I’ve seen plenty of bad movies for exactly the reasons you give — Legion just isn’t going to be one of them.
↓ Quote | Posted January 18, 2010, 7:56 pmI wouldn’t mind seeing Daybreakers, but have no obsessive desire to do so. May just end up being a renter. I did get dragged to New Moon and I got some amusement from the squeals of tween girls who’ve apparently never seen a shirtless man before.
↓ Quote | Posted January 20, 2010, 11:29 pmAhhh, your niche!
You’ve mentioned elsewhere that you don’t want to see “The Book of Eli” either; that same elsewhere, I said I was kinda interested in it. I would like to take this opportunity to formally retract that. I, uhhhh. found out what it was actually about.
Congratulations on the new website! So exciting!
↓ Quote | Posted January 25, 2010, 4:24 pmTambo, I will have to see The Book of Eli simply so I can pen my cutting satire, The Book of Urkel.
↓ Quote | Posted January 25, 2010, 4:27 pmThe Book of Urkel?! With ideas like that, you need to be in the movie-making business, my friend. The universe demands it.
P.S. Your baby’s going to burn.
↓ Quote | Posted January 25, 2010, 8:13 pmYeah, ‘Daybreakers’ looks about as fresh as one of the walking dead that populate it. I may get bored around next Halloween and Redbox it. The other two are out of the realm of possibility, I’m gleefully unaware.
↓ Quote | Posted January 26, 2010, 3:17 am