The Ward

In 2001, John Carpenter directed Ghosts of Mars, and it was pretty terrible.  It was so bad that, even with Ice Cube, Jason Statham, and Pam Grier in the cast, the movie never even approached being an entertainingly bad action movie.  In recent years, Carpenter has let others remake his films (Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog, etc.), but hasn't written or directed anything for the big screen in a long time.  The Ward is his first movie in ten years.  Was it worth the wait?  The answer to that question is an emphatic "no."

Ghost of Mars The Ward

Kristen (Amber Heard) was found alone in a nightgown, with no memory, in front of a farmhouse that she burned down by local police.  What do you do with a half-dressed pyromaniac, suffering from amnesia?  Throw her in the looney bin, of course! 

Not crazy enough to smudge her makeup, though

Kristen is placed in The Ward, which is apparently a specialized psychiatric wing that focuses solely on (mostly) attractive women in their twenties.  Note to self: if I ever open a psychiatric care facility, take only model-quality patients.  There are only a few (four!) other girls in The Ward, which seems both impractical and unlikely; granted, the film does take place in 1966, but even The Snake Pit had more patients than this.  Sarah (Danielle Panabaker) is the local mean girl, Iris (Lyndsy Fonseca) is the nice girl, Zoey (Laura-Leigh) acts like a frightened child, and Emily (Mamie Gummer) acts like a crazy person.

Why so serious?

Naturally, Kristen wants to escape this overcrowded hell hole, because amnesia and pyromania are not symptoms of mental illness.  She tries and fails, repeatedly.  In the process, she encounters what appears to be a ghost in The Ward.

Surprisingly, ghosts rarely have tangled hair.  Why is that?

No one seems surprised to hear her allegations, but no one will talk to her about it.  But then, the girls start disappearing one by one, victims of the ghost.  Why is this ghost killing insane women?  Why does she have it out for Kristen, who couldn't have possibly done anything wrong to the ghost?  The answer is underwhelming.

My biggest problem with The Ward was the odd nature of the ghost.  I suppose you can explain everything away with the twist ending, but...ugh...I don't want to.  The Ward is set up as a haunting story.  Something bad has happened, and a ghost is terrorizing these girls.  Simple enough.  The ghost seems to have the ability to show up anywhere, at any time.  And yet, ghost attacks are staggered over several days.  And the ghost obviously has a physical presence, since it snatches Kristen's blanket (what a bitch!), leaves behind a charm bracelet, and chokes, stabs, slices, and electrocutes different girls. 

Strapped in by a ghost who understands electrical equipment

What the hell kind of ghost is this?  If it wasn't for the creepy face and the teleporting, I would assume that the ghost was a real person.  And how do you defeat this killer ghost?  SPOILER ALERT: With a freakin' axe to the chest.  Of course that works; I've always felt that Ghostbusters was exaggerating the problem.  Yes, there is a twist that (kind of) explains these things (sort of), but the simple fact that no one in the movie notices how strange any of this is bugs the crap out of me.  All it would take is a couple of lines commenting about how ghosts don't steal blankets or ghosts don't usually have murders covered up by hospitals , but the audience isn't even given that much.

The acting in The Ward is not fantastic, but it is adequate for this story.  Amber Heard is decent as the main girl (the one with common sense), Danielle Panabaker is mediocre as a snotty stereotype, and Laura-Leigh overacted as the timid gal with a childish mentality.  Lyndsy Fonseca's character was a little less basic, and I thought she was fine as the friendly polite girl.  Oddly enough, Heard, Panabaker, and Fonseca played crazy characters that didn't look or act crazy at all.

Bitchy?  Maybe.  Crazy?  No.

Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep's daughter, was given the only role that required someone to act crazy.  I'm not sure how much I liked her.  Yes, she acted crazy, and yes, she was annoying.  It's not the worst crazy performance I have seen, but it sticks out here because the "crazy" women tend to act very normally.  Jared Harris isn't very impressive as the doctor masterminding the plot, but I will give him credit for seeming appropriately sympathetic and secretive.  None of the acting is particularly noteworthy, but none of it is awful.  After all, this is a John Carpenter film, and his stories are usually the focus.

I was very disappointed with John Carpenter's writing and direction.   I have nothing against plot twists, but The Ward's twist effectively negates any investment the audience might have made in the characters.  This twist was eerily (and unfortunately) close to the twist in Identity, and that twist suuuuuuucks.  If the script was tighter, the twist may have been revelatory, but it wound up simply feeling manipulative.  As for Carpenter's direction, his pacing was off from the start.  The only scares come in the form of "the audience sees something behind a character" startles, and they weren't even effective most of the time.  Thanks to the ridiculous story (which he wrote), the actors were given an excuse to portray their characters as shallow cliches, which makes this film even less fun to watch.  The Ward is just an all-around miss from a master craftsman that should have known better.

Ten years after his (arguably) worst film, John Carpenter returned with a vengeance.  Unfortunately, not in a good way.  I wasn't expecting a whole lot, given the cast, but I had hoped for a decent thriller or some classic Carpenter horror.  Instead, I was bored and had my intelligence insulted.

Other things that bothered me in The Ward:

• Apparently, the same nurse and patient-wrangler-guy work 24-7, and do not have any relief shifts.
• If the ghost can teleport, why does it take her so long to kill people?  Yes, the twist kind of explains it, but it bothers me that no one else asked.
• Why is Kristen the only one clever enough to escape from her room at night?  It took her, like, ten minutes to craft an escape.  None of the others have come up with anything after presumably months in the hospital?
• Why is the ghost's face disfigured?  That doesn't match the way she died whatsoever.

Hot Tub Time Machine

I guess the big question with Hot Tub Time Machine is why anyone would ever need a review to tell them about this movie.  If the title doesn't explain it all to you, then what can I do to help?  It's a stupid title for a movie that has no intentions of being anything more or less than a stupid comedy.  To be completely honest, the gloriously stupid title (the best since Snakes On a Plane) would have been enough to convince me to watch this movie.  Adding in John Cusack and Craig Robinson is just icing on the cake.

The premise is that three one-time best friends are now eking out sad existences.  Adam's (Cusack) girlfriend has just moved out and apparently taken most of his belongings.  The only person he sees regularly is his nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke), who spends all his time in his basement room playing video games.  Nick (Robinson) is married to a controlling wife (who insisted he hyphenate his last named when they got married) and his job includes cleaning the feces out of rich people's dogs.  They are brought together when Lou (Rob Corddry), an alcoholic party animal, makes the mistake of revving his engine in time to Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home" with the garage door closed.  Someone (who could this possibly be?  It's late at night, he lives alone, and the garage is closed!) saves his life and the hospital assumes that this was a failed suicide attempt.  Since Lou's family hates him and he has no real friends, his childhood buddies, Adam and Jacob, rally to his hospital bedside.  They don't talk to Lou any more because "he's an asshole," but they agree to take care of him because "he's [their] asshole."  If you don't have someone like that in your circle of friends, chances are, you're that guy.

Lou assures them that it was just an accident, but they decide that the best way to cheer up a hard-drinking forty year-old adolescent is to relive their youthful debauchery by visiting their old stomping grounds.  These stomping grounds happen to be a ski town that has all but been condemned; the town's stores are all out of business and their formerly hedonistic hotel is now filled with the elderly and their cats.  The group (which includes Jacob, for some reason) gets their old room, which comes with a broken hot tub.  The hotel repairman (Chevy Chase) fixes it so that glows with a yellow light that makes the water a suspicious shade of urine yellow, but the group strips down and gets hot tub drunk right away.

When they wake up, it is 1986.  The three friends now inhabit their eighteen year-old bodies and are at the bustling ski resort in the prime of their lives.  Jacob has also gone back in time, although no explanation is given as to how or why he is in his own modern day body.  The group is warned by the repairman not to change anything in the past, but that plan gets old fast.  Adam has the chance to avoid dumping the perfect girlfriend, Nick can redeem his musical dreams, Lou can drink a lot and try to get laid, and Jacob can try prevent his existence from being wiped out by the group changing the future.  There are a lot of 80s jokes, some gratuitous breasts, a few shots of Corddry's naked butt, and a lot of slapstick comedy.  Some of it works, some of it doesn't, but it's all pretty stupid.

For being so obviously dumb, this movie had some pretty solid direction.  Steve Pink is better known as a screenwriter (he wrote High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blank), but he has a gift for catching humor with his camera.  Some of that is obviously due to him giving the cast some leeway with their lines, but I'll give Pink credit for making this ridiculous movie not come off as amateurish.

The main cast is pretty good, too.  John Cusack is always likable in his movies, even though he hasn't made a great one in a while.  Craig Robinson is rapidly becoming a reliable quality gauge for stupid comedies.  His deadpanning into the camera the phrase "hot tub time machine" is worth seeing the movie for, just by itself.  Clark Duke plays a chubby nerd this time, expanding on his varied film credits that include "chubby dork," "chubby dweeb," and the adjective-less "nerd."  What will make or break your enjoyment of this movie is how much you like Rob Corddry.  Most of the film's humor comes from him, including every single cheap or gross-out joke in the script.  Personally, I got tired of him pretty quickly, but he still made me laugh on occasion, which I found impressive.  Usually, when I am turned off by a comedic character, there is no way back into my good graces (I'm judgmental like that), but his timing was good and some of his lines are brilliant.  He's really, really obnoxious, though.

The supporting cast is surprisingly full decent performances.  Of course, Chevy Chase has fun as the nutty/supernatural repairman, so he's decent enough.  Crispin Glover gets some laughs as a bellboy doomed to lose his arm...somehow.  Thomas Lennon has a cameo that is a little funny, I guess, but nothing special.  The young cast was surprisingly decent, too.  Sebastian Stan overacted as the stereotypical 80s movie ski jerk, but this isn't a movie that requires subtlety, so it worked well.  Similarly, Lyndsy Fonseca and Collette Wolfe played their ditzy snow bunny slut roles as well as the roles demanded.  Lizzy Caplan did well as Cusack's "true" love interest, and they managed to give the movie something a little deeper than a stupid slapstick comedy deserves.

Are there any flaws in this film?  Well, yeah.  But to detail the film's scientific and logical flaws is missing the point.  You don't think a movie titled Hot Tub Time Machine really cares do you?  If this sounds like a stupid movie, you're absolutely right.  It's dumb and embraces that level of cleverness fully.  It's definitely better than the title implies, but a lot of the jokes generate chuckles instead of laughs.  Admittedly, a big part of that for me was because I didn't really have fun with Rob Corddry's character, even though he had some of the film's best lines.  This movie's biggest flaw was in giving the bulk of the humor to the least likable character.  Corddry carried this film's humor, even though there were several other actors capable of chipping in.  I thought Craig Robinson was underused, despite his theoretically main character status.  Chevy Chase, Thomas Lennon and Crispin Glover could have done more, too.  As far as stupid slapstick goes, there are certainly worse movies to watch, but this just isn't funny enough to satisfy me.

Kick-Ass

I love it when a movie comes out and a supporting character gets all the attention.  Remember how horrible and racist Jar Jar was?  Or how awesome and tragic Heath Ledger was as the Joker?  Kick-Ass has a supporting role that overshadows the main character in a similar fashion.

Kick-Ass is yet another adaptation of a comic book, although it doesn't have a lot of the common problems and strengths of that movie sub-genre.  For one, this is a comic that just finished its run in February of 2010.  Two months later, and here's the movie.  This isn't a longtime fan favorite, either; it only has four issues, and their release was spread out over two years.  Clearly, this is a film that was developed in coordination with the comic, which makes the adaptation less of a concern for fanboys.  Sure, some things were changed for the big screen, but they were relatively minor and make it more palatable for movie audiences.  Also, with so little source material, there is not the typical question of what plot or characters will be featured in the film.  In that, I applaud this movie.  It's faithful to the source material, but is willing to change enough to appeal to a broader audience.

That said, this is not a movie for everyone.  It is extremely violent, both in an over-the-top fun way and a viciously brutal way.  Which type of violence just depends on whether a good guy or bad guy is getting hurt at that moment.  One aspect of this violence that a lot of critics have seized upon is that the best over-the-top stuff comes from a then eleven (now thirteen) year-old girl.  I don't necessarily blame you if you don't find the notion of a teenage assassin awesome, but you're missing out on a lot of fun.

This movie stars Aaron Johnson as a typical semi-nerdy kid that is neither too smart or too popular.  One day, he realizes that nobody has ever tried to be a super hero in the real world.  His friends (Evan Peters and perennial nerd Clark Duke) reason that it is because A) super powers don't exist and B) anybody trying to fight crime while wearing a costume is destined for a beat down.  Not one to listen to logic, Johnson's character orders a wetsuit online and presto...!  the crime fighter Kick-Ass is born.  His first time out, though, Kick-Ass gets his ass kicked.  Once out of the hospital, though, he keeps at it and is eventually filmed doing his good deeds and becomes a Youtube sensation.  That's all fine and good, but Kick-Ass is a small-scale vigilante; he'll try to find your cat or break up a beat down, but he doesn't have the brains or skills to attack crime on a larger scale.  Kick-Ass influences others, though, including some that are on his skill level (like Christopher Mintz-Plasse, AKA Red Mist) and some of whom are way, way, way more qualified to take the law into their own hands than him.  In the latter category are the father-daughter team of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz).  The movie really hits its stride when Kick-Ass gets mixed up with these two and sees how scary and violent comic book-style violence is in the "real world."

For the first half of the movie, viewers are going to be primarily focused on Kick-Ass and his problems with girls and being taken seriously as a hero.  Most of the time, you're supposed to be laughing at him or, at least, sympathizing with him.  To his credit, Aaron Johnson does a good job in this role.  Unfortunately, the movie doesn't feel deep enough to make you care a lot about him.  On the bright side, these scenes are still entertaining, but they're basically cinematic fluff.  Yes, it's funny seeing an ordinary person act so bizarrely in ordinary circumstances, but there's not really any emotional repercussions for any of the actions taken.  For a story that shows how people would react to a real-life superhero, the main motivation for Kick-Ass in naivety and boredom, which seems like it would run out very quickly.

That might sound like I didn't enjoy the movie, but that's just a fundamental problem I have with the story at its core.  This movie is a lot of fun, and it's almost entirely due to Hit-Girl.  Sure, Christopher Mintz-Plasse is good as Red Mist and the other teen actors Clark Duke and Lyndsy Fonseca (both from Hot Tub Time Machine) are fine; in particular, I enjoyed Red Mist and Kick-Ass rocking out to Gnarls Barkley in Red Mist's Mistmobile.  It's not a huge moment, but it's a cute touch.  Fonseca is better than most teenage actresses here, but her role isn't too demanding.  Clark Duke successfully portrays a slightly chubby nerd.  Again.  Mark Strong plays the movie's villain and makes a pretty good bad guy.  I don't know exactly what it is about him, but he doesn't come across as very nice.

But this isn't their story.  Kick-Ass is all about how a normal guy like Kick-Ass compares with Hit-Girl, who has been trained since birth to fight crime and kill criminals.  Chloe Moretz is fantastic in this role.   I'd tell you some of the things that she does and says, but the surprise is half the fun.  She kills lots of people in a uber-stylish comic book fashion and is very entertaining in the process.  Nicolas Cage delivers an awkward performance as her father and mentor, but even his William Shatner-esque dialogue cadence doesn't detract from the film.  The film isn't all fun and laughs, though.  When Kick-Ass, Hit-Girl or Big Daddy gets hurt, it is graphic.  There is a torture scene, and that is both gruesome and uncomfortable.  The worst shots (in terms of being hard to watch, not quality) feature Hit-Girl getting punched and kicked in the face by a grown man. 

The brutality is used to show some consequences for the characters' choices, but this isn't meant to be a cautionary tale.  It is fun, dumb, and very, very violent.  Director and co-writer Matthew Vaughn does a great job with the action in this movie and delivers the humor well, too.  The only problem is with the story itself.  By opting against a psychological profile of would-be superheroes, this movie turns up the fun but leaves the potential for heart behind.  That's not a bad thing, mind you.  Sometimes, there's nothing wrong with enjoying an eleven year-old girl take on organized crime.