The Wicker Man (2006) (Unrated)

31 Days of Horror, Day 8

I don't like to admit to lapses in judgment, but I was unjustly biased against Nicolas Cage for a good long while.  And, sure, he's been in some pretty awful movies and he's been known to overact a teensy bit on occasion, but I actively avoided The Cage for almost a decade. 

I would have been first in line to break his legs here.  Which means I own a horse costume, I guess

I don't know what changed my mind --- probably either the awesomeness of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans or the awfulness of Season of the Witch --- but I now look forward to raging with The Cage.  He might not make good movies regularly, but he can be pretty damn entertaining, nevertheless.  Last October, Danny O'D suggested I check out The Wicker Man (2006), based on the fact that I enjoyed the original movie and because this compilation of scenes is hilarious:

Okay, that's pretty funny stuff, but it's obviously taken out of context.  The issue is whether this American remake can possibly live up to the weird (and fairly UK-centric) wonder that was The Wicker Man (1973) and still have all that goofy shit in it.  Show me what you've got, Cage!

The Wicker Man is the story of Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage), a California policeman, as he investigates the mysterious disappearance of a young girl, Rowan, on the island of Summersisle in Washington state.  The disappearance is mysterious for several reasons.  First of all, the entire island is an enigma; its only contact with the world at large comes from a seaplane that runs supplies to and from the island --- visitors are not welcome.  Second, the person requesting Malus' help is his ex-fiance, Willow (Kate Beahan), who Malus hasn't spoken to in years, and the girl is her daughter.  Thirdly, there is a huge issue of jurisdiction; why would you call a California cop to police things in Washington?  And why would he agree to this?  What's wrong with Washington's police force?  Seattle seems nice enough.  Finally, the island is mysterious because it is a place where weird things happen.

Is that BZZ Top?  ...Because her beard is made of bees.

Whatever reason he had, Officer Malus did, indeed, come to Summersisle.  Once he arrives, he is surprised to find a matriarchy where there is a lot of talk about "the gods" and little girls recite their lessons on phallic symbols.  That would just be unsettling if it was not for the fact that Malus can't get anywhere with his case.  He can't even get the locals to acknowledge that little Rowan even existed at some point.

"Tell me what happened to Rowan, or I will punch you in the face.  Yes, I'd punch a woman"

Eventually, Malus meets the matriarch of Summersisle, the aptly named Sister Summsesisle (Ellen Burstyn), and she does little to lower his suspicions.  Not only is Rowan (probably) missing, but this is a culture that practices pagan rituals, like the "celebration of DEATH...pause...keep pausing...longer pause...and rebirth."  What the hell is going on in this town?  What really happened to Rowan?  And is there a police officer role that Nicolas Cage won't take?

"I can't believe they still let me keep this!"

Have you ever had your mind blown?  The acting in The Wicker Man (2006) absolutely blew mine.  Aside from the last half-hour or so of The Cage being The Cage, the movie is surprisingly well-acted.  Ellen Burstyn was slumming it a bit, but she played a strong, confident and ruthless a female character as well as it could have been played.  Kate Beahan was not as good, but she played her character well.  Her character was kind of annoying because she apparently had an allergy to clear exposition, but it serves a purpose in the overall plot, so I won't complain about it.  Much.  Even the smaller parts were handled capably; I don't think Frances Conroy, Molly Parker, or Diane Delano did anything spectacular, but their actions seemed natural enough.  Leelee Sobieski was a little weird, but I'll give her credit for taking a movie karate kick believably.  As for Nicolas Cage...well, he's Nicolas Goddamn Cage, people!  For the first 75 minutes of the movie, he was just a slightly condescending and strange policeman with odd line delivery.  For the last thirty minutes or so, though, he turned it up to eleven and went completely batshit ridiculous.  I thought he was hilarious, but I doubt that was the original intent of the filmmakers.

Then again...

Director Neil LaBute also wrote the updated screenplay for The Wicker Man (2006), so that means he's doubly responsible for what made the final cut.  From a directorial standpoint, I think LaBute has a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to make a horror movie.  He uses the soundtrack to clue the audience in that something scary/important is about to happen, which would normally be fine, but he does this often and with no good reason.  Why would we need the minor chords of horror soundtracks within seconds of getting on the island?  Implying scares and not delivering them is not the same thing as building suspense.  Given how silly the movie can look when taken out of context, I was surprised at how serious the tone in this film is.

"Does that mean...?  Oh my God.  You're not in on the joke...!"

From a writing standpoint, I would feel better if the Writer's Guild of America burned his membership card.  This has nothing to do with the fact that he had the main character dress as a bear and start punching women.  I don't even want to know how the stupid doll got burned.

Best guess: falling asleep while smoking after doll-sex

What bothers me about the writing is that there are large chunks of this movie that could have been better spent elsewhere.  The entire prologue with the car crash was completely unnecessary.  The only reason it needed to exist was to provide motivation for Malus to go to the island; too bad the plot provides him with two better reasons for going.  Having Malus repeatedly flash back to that scene was also stupid and worthless.  The script is also jam-packed with red herrings that provide nothing to the overall story, like those fetuses that appeared to be embalmed in honey.  Things like that make me wish the tagline to this movie was "The Wicker Man: Wait...What?!?" 

...and this would be the movie poster

Even basic plot points, like the disappearance of Rowan's picture, were handled poorly.  The missing picture was an important piece of the puzzle in this story, but the way it was noticed --- a broken picture frame with broken glass all around it --- was clumsy.  If someone wanted to hide the picture, wouldn't they have just taken the whole frame?  Or at least swept up the glass?

Subtlety takes a back seat when you're wearing Braveheart makeup

The most frightening thing about this remake is that it's not all bad.  There are some interesting ideas in place here, even if they weren't executed very well.  For instance, naming all the women on the island after some sort of plant was a pretty cool idea, although it would have been cooler if The Cage didn't call it out relatively early in the film.  Not very many movies make use of bees, which made this isolationist society unique in appearance and language.  And then there is the whole matriarchy in place here; while it didn't quite fit in this plot, an aggressive female-centric group could make for a great horror story.  There's a lot that can be done with that idea through cinematography, too.  Speaking of which, there were some fairly striking visuals in The Wicker Man (2006). 

AAA!!!  Post-coital elephant man!!!

They weren't all of pretty things, but the set design and makeup teams did some good work.

The Wicker Man (2006) is simply a collection of parts that was never going to be good, but then had the opportunity to be so much more.  Even with the solid acting, the script and direction guaranteed that this film would be a miss.  This is essentially a mystery, but is treated with the same "gotcha" moments that you would find in a crappy slasher pic.  If you want to compare this to The Wicker Man (1973), go right ahead.  Everything that makes the original unique --- the disturbingly cheery tone, the subtlety, the randomness, and the religious aspects --- is missing in the remake. 

The original is missing bee-related hilarity, though

The first hour and fifteen minutes are boring to watch --- they're obviously bad, but not enough to amuse anyone --- but the viewing experience for The Wicker Man (2006) is saved by that last act.  The movie goes from being something worth occasionally snickering at to having layer upon layer of Lefty Gold.  Remember those scenes that were funny when taken out of context?  It turns out that there is no proper context for them.  Those scenes are always that funny, and they come out of absolutely nowhere.

This is Cage's "What's in the box?" moment

With that knowledge, I will watch this movie again, although I certainly won't be sober.  And I will be secure in my viewing choice, because I know how ridiculous the ending is.  Without that knowledge, I can see someone being worried that they're wasting their time with The Wicker Man (2006).  And that's a fair concern, because this is a truly awful movie, more than deserving the scorn heaped upon it.  As a reasonable bit of legitimate cinema, this movie truly fails. 

But this is one of those rare movies that is so consistently ridiculous that you can find brand new things to laugh at every time you watch it.  I might actually buy a copy of this movie, as long as it's the unrated one, because the theatrical version is missing the "not the bees" scene.  This is easily the best so-bad-it's-good movie I have seen in a long time.  It earns a Lefty Gold rating of

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Ghost Rider has never interested me as a character.  Yes, his flaming skull looks pretty cool, but that's where the intrigue ends for me.  When Ghost Rider was released in theaters back in 2007, I thought it looked terrible, so I never watched it.  Despite some harsh reviews, the movie managed to make over $200 million worldwide.  You would think a sequel would be a no-brainer --- and it is, no matter how dumb the first film looked --- but Columbia Pictures was hesitant.  They ended up giving the go-ahead, but only after the budget had been cut to less than half of the first movie.  Normally, I would take that as a sign to stay the hell away from Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.  But then I noticed that Neveldine/Taylor were directing.  The directors of Crank and Nic Cage, working together at last?  That is a recipe for some serious Lefty Gold.

...and the flamethrower urine scene clinched it.  Let's get Ghost Ridden!  Wait...that came out wrong...

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance does not, in fact, begin with the title character.  Instead, Moreau (Idris Elba) has arrived at a monastery to warn the monks of the dangers they face.  The monks are providing shelter to Danny Ketch (Fergus Riordan) and his mother, Nadya (Violante Placido --- a wonderful action movie name).  Well, they were.  Some bad dudes showed up and killed the monks; though Danny and Nadya escaped, Moreau knows that they will be caught before the solstice, unless something drastic is done.  Naturally, his first thoughts went to the Ghost Rider.

Ghost Rider: when "drastic" isn't drastic enough

Moreau tracks down Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) and offers to have his priest buddies remove the Ghost Rider curse from Blaze if he manages to keep Danny and Nadya safe.  What's the deal with them?  Well, the devil (Ciarán Hinds) wants Danny for some nefarious purpose.  Do you need more of a reason than that?  It really shouldn't matter, as long as it gives us an excuse to see Ghost Rider puking metal on a bad guy.

Flaming pee is great, but molten puke is almost as good

The acting in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is about what you should expect from the people behind this movie.  Nic Cage is predictably ridiculous, so your enjoyment will rely heavily on how much Crayzee Cage you can handle.  I thought he was actually fairly solid, balancing some lightweight angst with unintentionally funny scenes where he is fighting to keep the Rider from taking over his body.

I wish this shot made the final cut

Was he actually good?  God, no.  He was suitably silly enough for the script; there is a big difference.  Violante Placido doesn't really do much.  She whines about her son and wonders why bad things happen to characters who have the devil's baby.  In other words, her character is in the film to add a pair of boobs to the cast, and in that, she succeeded.

...AND booze?  Double success!

Idris Elba was okay.  He handled a French accent well enough, and his character's love of wine added some cute moments.  Little Fergus Riordan was decent as a child actor, which can be translated as "he wasn't irritating."  Ciarán Hinds was a solid choice to play the villain, but I would have liked to see him be more obviously bad.  His devil was a pretty sorry-ass lord of darkness.  His lead henchman wasn't any better, either.  Blackout (Johnny Whitworth) starts out as a none-too-terrifying thug, but he is transformed into this:

Johnny Winter?

He now had the power of decay and the ability to do some sort of thing where people can't see him and I guess he moves fast or something.  I didn't quite get that bit, but I caught enough to reconfirm my belief that albinos are too powerful and evil to not register as lethal weapons with the government.  Anthony Head appears at the beginning of the movie and almost immediately dies off-screen.  Rounding out the notable cast is the always peculiar Christopher Lambert, who allegedly underwent several months of sword training to prepare for his role as the guy who fell asleep at the frat party.

It was a very literate fraternity, apparently

Why would Lambert need months of sword training for only a few minutes of screen time?  That's a good question.  A better question, though, is "Why would Lambert need sword training after all those godawful Highlander movies?"

The direction of Neveldine/Taylor fit surprisingly well with the script for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.  They kept the pace going pretty quickly, and most of the downtime was filled with unintentional humor:

Example: the devil smelling a fart

...or intentional humor, like Ghost Rider pissing flames or enjoying Kajagoogoo.  I don't always like the work of Neveldine/Taylor, but they did about as much as they could to make this movie entertaining, given the script.  Granted, making it "entertaining" doesn't negate the fact that this is a stupid, stupid movie, but at least it doesn't take itself seriously.  The script, though, is pretty wretched.  David S. Goyer wrote the story and co-wrote the script, but he didn't do either very well.  This screenplay is either littered with holes, or the editing process was wretched.  When you consider some of the odder moments in the script --- A punk rocker with a hippie van?  The devil can't get enough followers to fill more than a few rows in a stadium? --- I think it's pretty obvious that the writing is at fault.

Please tell me that the Rider will hunt Goyer down for his sins

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was never going to be a legitimately good movie.  Never.  It could have been close, if it had been rated R and let these crazy co-directors do whatever random stuff popped into their heads, but this is about as much fun as I can imagine having with a Ghost Rider movie.  They fixed some of the small things from the first movie -- Cage's hair looks real this time and there's a lot less self-pity --- and also had fun with some ridiculously over-the-top additions (like the Ghost Rider construction vehicle).  The special effects looked pretty good, and that's even more impressive, given their slashed budget.  Even when you consider all that, this is still on the lower end of comic movie adaptations, thanks to some uninspired campiness and poor writing.

 ...but that's only if you take this movie seriously.  If you want something to enjoy after a few drinks, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is a solid choice.  It gets a Lefty Gold rating of

Season of the Witch

I was going to pass over Season of the Witch --- mostly because it looked horrid --- but I saw Chris Gore's quick review of it and my interest was piqued by the words "zombie monks."  Admittedly, that is not a phrase that is often accompanied by "the Academy Award-winning performance of," but Nicolas Cage fighting zombie monks should have been hilarious.  Not hilarious enough, as it turns out.

When, exactly, is Witching Season?  Right after duck season?  Actually, the Season of the Witch takes place during the Crusades of the mid-1300s.  Behmen (Nicolas Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman) are bad-ass knights that love to slaughter heretics.  We know this because the two basically tell the camera in so many words.  You'll have to take their word for it, since the large action sequences aren't very convincing.

I find it hard to believe that anyone reached age 60 in the Crusades, much less a knight

After killing in the name of (DA-DA!  DUM!) God for many years, Behmen and Felson decided to quit the team after they invaded a castle and found themselves slaughtering defenseless women and children.  The resident war-priest guy argued that there's no crying in baseball the Crusades, but nobody kept the pair from walking slowly off into the sunset.  The end.  Ha!  If only!  Behmen and Felson walk back to Behmen's hometown in Germany, only to find the area stricken with dead and bloated plague bodies.

Co-starring Christopher Lee's plague corpse!

Knowing that Crusades-quitters are outlaws, the pair enter the nearest city with the intent of buying horses to take them to Felson's hometown; ever-careful to not be identified, Behmen wears a mask over his face (which doesn't attract attention at all) and Felson wears a hood (except when he doesn't).  Despite these precautions, the men are identified as Crusades-quitters when Behmen allows a clumsy child to handle the only thing in his possession that would identify him as a Crusades-quitter. 

"Okay, maybe I should have thought that one through."

The pair get locked up in a dungeon and await their inevitable hanging for treason.  Or is it inevitable?  The town has captured a young girl that they claim is a witch.  Obviously, a witch being in the same place the plague is means that the witch cursed the land.  Just as obviously, the witch needs to be immediately killed taken to a remote colony of monks, who will put her on trial for witchcraft.  The town is a little short on brave men that can travel across the dangerous German landscape unscathed, so Behmen and Felson get a chance to clear their names.  Of course, it's not that simple.  Witchcrafted wolves and dangerous bridges stand in their way, but Behmen, Felson, the supposed witch, and a few others are off to monkland!

"I've reason to believe we both will be received in Monkland"

Sounds like an acting tour de force, eh?  Yeah, well...this was never going to be a great film, so I went into this with low expectations.  Ron Perlman was decently likable.  Robert Sheehan was kind of annoying as the d'Artagnon of the witch-escorting-party, but he's not so bad that you'll remember his performance the next day.  Claire Foy had a terrible character to play, but she still wasn't very good.  On the plus side, she is about the only person in the cast who looked dirty enough to be in the 14th century.

Surprisingly clean hair, though

Stephen Graham was mediocre in a small supporting role and Stephen Campell Moore was similarly bland as the witch-escort's resident priest.  I was kind of disappointed by their performances, because I have enjoyed them in bit parts in the past; I guess I was hoping that some British charm would help make this movie more entertaining. 

Stephen Campbell Moore witnessing Nicolas Cage overacting for the first time

But that was not to be.  This movie stars Nicolas Cage, and far from his best work.  I have seen Cage do good work in the past, and I have seen him be flamboyantly (and entertainingly) silly.  This is the other Nicolas Cage, the one who thinks he's in a serious movie.  It's not that he's terrible.  I thought he matched the tone of the film just fine; that's only a problem when the movie's tone is shitty.  I've seen him act worse, but Season of the Witch really could have used a less subdued and more ridiculously overacting Nic Cage.

"You want me to overact more?"  I know, I know.

The fact of the matter is that Season of the Witch is about as fun to watch as watching plague blister pus dry.  Why is that?  Director Dominic Sena is no stranger to stupid movies, but at least he usually has the sense to be completely goofy or have Halle Berry take her top off to distract audiences.  This movie is just dull.  The battle scenes in the beginning were tepid, the horror angle never really pays off, and there is no suspense.  This isn't the most incompetent directing job I have ever seen, but it is an impressive blend of disappointing special effects, a lousy script, cheesy acting and boring plot.

...And then there are the frequent story and visual parallels between Season of the Witch and Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal.  If absolutely nothing else, I will say that Sena was bold to invite comparison between this mess and a classic film.  "Bold" isn't always a smart choice, though.  Witch takes a lot of cosmetic similarities --- two men return from the Crudades (disillusioned) to a plague-ridden homeland, the men form a traveling group in the woods, there is a potentially wrongly accused witch being transported through the woods in a wooden cage, etc. --- and tries to twist its premise into an action/fantasy film.  It could have worked (somewhat) with a better script or better special effects, but the constant reminders of a better film just make Season of the Witch seem that much worse.  On the other hand, it was pretty freaking hilarious to see just how heavy-handed the parallels were.

There is something worth noting about this film, but I have to warn you...SPOILER ALERT: Season of the Witch has no witches in it.  Ha!  HA!  That's almost funny enough to make up for the rest of the film.  That's right, the supposed witch is really a demon.  What a twist!  And that's worse because...um...well, it's the first time demons are mentioned in the story, so...I'm not sure.  The witchy-demon does animate monk corpses to fight our heroes, which is awesome in theory.  In practice, the special effects and lack of suspense or horror ruined that seemingly foolproof plot element.  Oh, well.  While that is remarkably stupid, it's not enough to make up for the rest of the movie.  It is good enough for one star, though, and I did enjoy one of the death scenes and I laughed whenever it compared itself to The Seventh Seal.  It's not much, but you take what you can get from witches.

Here's a live recording from Liars, from their witch-themed album, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned.

8MM

You never can tell which Nicolas Cage is going to show up in his movies.  Will it be the Academy Award-winning actor?  Usually not.  Will it be the dead-eyed action hero?  You've got a decent chance of that, but Vegas odds are always on Nicolas Cage, the ridiculous over-actor.  When you combine those odds with the chances of a post-Batman and Robin Joel Schumacher directing a good movie, you get 8MM.  Of course, Cage and Schumacher could have theoretically teamed up for an over-the-top action romp, full of ridiculous explosions and tough guy dialogue; it wouldn't have been very good, but it would have been watchable.  Instead, this is a movie about snuff films, which are by definition not full of hilarity.

Yeah, that's how I react to Nicolas Cage movies, too.

Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage) is a private detective that specializes in seedy cases in which his photos and research frequently end up as evidence in divorce proceedings.  I bet his wife loves his job.  One day, he gets a call to visit a new widow.  Her late husband left her a vast fortune, but she found something odd in his safe: an 8MM film that depicted a rape culminating in what appears to be murder.  The widow wants Welles to find out whether the murder was real or staged, no matter the cost.  After assuring her that snuff films are just an urban legend, Welles agrees to take the case, expecting to uncover a privately-financed movie with some fancy special effects.  What he finds does not support that theory.  Welles does some boring grunt work and manages to stumble across a missing persons photo that resembles the girl from the movie.  As odds-defying as that it, Welles manages to track down her family, discover evidence in her bedroom that neither her family nor the police found, and learn that she went to Hollywood.  As earth-shaking as that concept may be --- a runaway girl who starred in a porn film went to California?  Gasp! --- Welles quickly realized that he did not know how to dig any deeper into this case without help.  Enter Max California (Joaquin Phoenix).

...and he works in a porn shop?  Chick magnet!

Max is a failed musician and belly shirt aficionado who works the counter in a dingy sex shop.  Welles hires Max to help him enter the pornography underworld and the two begin to piece together who could have made a snuff film and who would have acted in it.  Hint: if you see a recognizable actor being questioned by Nicolas Cage in this movie, he's probably involved in the snuff film.

I'd be sweating bullets, too, if this was the best role I could get.

The acting in 8MM is definitely not for fans of subtlety.  Nicolas Cage spends a lot of time grimacing and looking tired.  I don't blame him.  His character had to watch hours and hours of low-budget weird porn before he found enough clues to track down the killers.  Joaquin Phoenix was a little better, but that's just by comparison, and his character's costumes were pretty ridiculous.  I'm not saying that people in California don't wear baggy leather pants every day with their proto-Ed Hardy T-shirts, but there isn't a scene in this movie where I don't want to smack Phoenix just on general principles.  James Gandolfini was fine as a low-life porn producer and Peter Stormare was his typically slimy self as a high-end low-life porn producer, but this is a film that relied heavily on Cage and Phoenix.

Creepy: a new fragrance by Peter Stormare

There are a few other actors in small roles, but none of them have any great impact on the quality of the film.  Anthony Heald is unsympathetic (surprise, surprise), Catherine Keener is kind of bitchy, Norman Reedus is a loser with a bad haircut, and Chris Bauer wears a gimp outfit.  It is worth noting that Bauer's character, The Machine, has occasionally popped up in the sports world.  San Francisco Giants closer --- and professional sports' most entertaining personality, since the retirement of Shaquille O'Neal --- Brian Wilson is apparently a fan.  You can spot Chris "The Machine" Bauer's likeness at around the 4:20 mark.


So...that's kind of weird.  Anyway...

There's really not much that goes right with 8MM.  Director Joel Schumacher placed himself in a tough spot.  The obvious trapping that comes with making a movie about snuff films is that the movie winds up being as exploitative as the snuff films themselves.  I will give Schumacher credit for not falling into that trap.  However, to avoid seeming exploitative, I think 8MM loses its teeth. 

If this isn't a movie that is meant to shock you, then what is it?  A ludicrously tangled mystery?  An expose on pornography's seedy underbelly?  An argument for the banality of evil?  You could choose any of those, but none make this a satisfying movie.  The mystery is too easily untangled, possibly because the mystery focused on "Who made this snuff film?" instead of "Why was this snuff film made?"  The dark side of porn is a potentially disturbing focus, but 8MM just has Cage wander through a couple creepy basement VHS flea markets; nothing is really said or done about anything but this one particular snuff film.  Perhaps sensing that this movie is neither shocking nor captivating, Schumacher changes the tone of the film, transforming Cage from an investigator to an avenger in the final act.  It is here that the bad guys explain themselves, and that explanation --- which is meant to be chilling --- is simply underwhelming.

Less sensual than it looks.

Personally, I can't think of a story that involved snuff films that I would have enjoyed.  Maybe that's just me, though.  I assumed that 8MM would try to be disturbing and maybe take a stand on the issue (murder is bad, perhaps?).  It doesn't.  It's a detective story where the audience is only allowed to see snippets of what Nic Cage is reacting to; that means that Cage's acting needs to convey our disgust for us, and he turns in a very melodramatic performance that undermines that notion.  I'm not saying that I need to see the damn titular movie --- not seeing a prized object can work wonders, as in The Maltese Falcon and Pulp Fiction.  The script and the acting weren't anywhere near where they needed to be to pull that off, though.  Hell, Cage's character lost his private detective credibility in the beginning of the film, when he hides his smoking habit from his wife by spraying air freshener, just like a fifteen year-old.  Hint: change your clothes and hide your ashtrays, too, dumbass.  If he can't do that convincingly, how is the audience supposed to buy into anything else he does in this film?

This movie just plain sucks.  There is nothing quite like a film that is trying to be edgy and watching it fail.  I would have enjoyed laughing at 8MM, but it is a joyless train wreck that is at least thirty minutes too long.  Nicolas Cage does a poor job acting, which is not terribly surprising, and he appears to have no fun doing it.  His character is stupid and without charm.  The script is surprisingly dull and the supporting cast is mostly unmemorable.  This is a surprisingly bad movie with a surprisingly bad story, and I went in with low expectations.  The only redeeming quality this film has --- aside from a surprising second life in sports interviews --- is that it was too draining and incompetent to earn my hatred.

Windtalkers

Loud explosions, pyrotechnics, and bodies flying through the air come naturally to the modern war movie, even to the point that sheer devastation is no longer an effective selling point.  These movies need their own angle in order to avoid being seen as lame Saving Private Ryan copycats.  The hook for Windtalkers is the relatively unknown tale of the Navajo tribesmen that joined the army to act as code talkers in the Pacific side of World War II.  That actually sounds like an interesting premise; so many war movies go boom, while very few spend the time to think.  Sending and breaking codes sounds fairly cerebral, right?

Ooh...but John Woo directed this movie.  And he teamed up with Nicolas Cage as the lead actor and Christian Slater as an important supporting character.  So...the main character isn't Navajo, despite the hook for this movie being about the Navajo code talkers.  Great.  I will give credit where it's due; at least they didn't pull a Touch of Evil and give the lead actor an unconvincing ethnic makeover.  Well, if the story is not centering on a Navajo character, what is the story?

Joe Enders (Cage) begins the movie by holding his platoon's position on Guadalcanal at all costs, which means everyone died except him; he was injured, losing hearing in one ear, which also occasionally hurts his balance.  He recovers in a hospital, thanks in part to a nurse (Frances O'Connor) that is clearly attracted to him, despite the fact that he is played by Nic Cage in his "brooding" mode.  Enders gets a promotion and a new assignment as soon as he is well; his new assignment is to protect Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), one of the new Navajo code talkers.  Ox Anderson (Slater) receives a similar assignment, protecting Charlie Whitehorse.  The Navajo language is an unwritten one and is almost incomprehensible, even within its own language family, which makes it especially hard for enemies to translate; these code talkers were bilingual Navajo that transmitted important messages without the risk of being understood by the enemy.  If the Japanese managed to ever understand the Navajo language, though, the American forces would be in trouble.  Therefore, both Enders and Anderson are told that they must protect the code at all costs; their code talkers must die before being taken captive by the enemy.

That's pretty much the story basics, but there's plenty of stock subplots.  You've got the predictable awkward assimilation into the unit by the Navajo.  They are seen as savages at first, but their impossibly calm demeanor and passivity earn the respect of their squadmates and their practices become more acceptable over time.  Of course, there's one guy (Noah Emmerich) in the squad that is racist; of course, his life is eventually saved by a Navajo.  There's the nervous soldier (Mark Ruffalo) and the guy with the cool weapon (Brian Van Holt).  There's the commanding officer (Peter Stormare) that needs things done, no matter the cost.  There's the inevitable split between the two parallel plot lines; you know either Anderson or Enders will eventually have to kill a Navajo to protect the code.  Who will it be, the nice Anderson, or the bad-ass Enders?

This movie should have been so much better.  Obviously, the big problem is the story.  Why make a movie about the Navajo code talkers, if they are not the main characters?  I'm not crazy about Adam Beach as an actor, but using him as the POV character would have been much better.  Instead, we have a tortured white soldier to identify with.  Even better, it's Nicolas Cage in full-on inappropriate overacting mode.  Ignoring the poor choice of main character, this movie still has major problems.  Are you telling me that the Marines put two extremely valuable code talkers in the same squad, facing immediate danger?  There were only about two hundred of these guys in the war.  I'm pretty sure they would have been better suited for sending messages from wherever the local base was.  This movie barely even uses them for sending or receiving codes; they spend most of their time giving uncoded coordinates for air support.  That's really stupid.  What, are the Japanese (who are shown listening to the radio transmissions) going to hear their own coordinates and assume that whatever is coming their way is good?  Maybe the Americans are bringing them ice cream!  Stupid.  And how many Japanese die in this movie?  This is the Pacific war, where they were dug in and well-protected.  The Americans just run up the side of mountains, and yet I'd estimate that the dead Japanese outnumbered the dead American soldiers by a 4:1 ratio.  That is so far beyond stupid, it's insulting to stupid.

The acting is what you would expect from a John Woo movie.  It's barely there.  Nicolas Cage gets to make funny faces when he's in battle and sulk when he's not.  I'm sorry to say that he actually showed the most range in this movie.  Christian Slater, Peter Stormare, Mark Ruffalo, and Brian Van Holt were all one-dimensional caricatures of 1940s soldiers.  Noah Emmerich got to be the racist jerk that sees the error in his ways (well, he learns to accept one Navajo, anyway), but the character is so boring and predictable that you still don't care.  Adam Beach was a little better, but his character had no emotional arc, so there was nothing for him to do in this role.  Whose fault is all this?  Well, you can blame the writers, John Rice and Joe Batteer, because this story sucks, but I'm going to blame John Woo.  As the director and a producer on the film, he had ample opportunity to realize how crappy this script was and have it fixed.  He didn't, so the responsibility for this wreck belongs to him.

This movie doesn't even have the normal perks of a John Woo movie.  The action isn't good.  Woo is best known for his slow-motion, stylized action sequences, where impossible things happen and then explode.  Here, he tries to channel the destructive spirit of the Pacific war and fails.  The big battle scenes try to have a documentary feel to them (a la Saving Private Ryan), but the special effects in these scenes are far worse than any war movie released in 2002 should be.  Some of the smaller-scale battle sequences are fine, but it's not enough to make this movie watchable.

Let's see...bad story, bad acting, and bad action.  Yep.  This is a bad movie.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

I don't often say this.  It actually hurts me to type this.  Nicolas Cage is totally over-the-top overacting in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans, and he is super-awesome because of it.  Ugh.  I think I need a shower now, I feel so dirty.


Rarely does a film's quality rest so heavily on one actor, but this movie (oddly enough, not a sequel of any kind to the 1992 Harvey Keitel vehicle, Bad Lieutenant) is completely dependent on Cage.  Sure, the supporting cast here is pretty solid, but that's just icing on the cake.  Fairuza Balk shows up for a few minutes and plays against type by not being a goth chick for once.  Eva Mendes plays Cage's junkie hooker girlfriend about as well as you would expect her to (she's pretty and can memorize lines).  Alvin Joiner (AKA rapper Xzibit) does a better than average job as a scary drug lord, but I think the real revelation for him is why he needed a rap pseudonym in the first place.  Isn't "Alvin" tough enough?  I find it hard to believe that misspelling something that belongs in a museum is much tougher than a rascally chipmunk.  Tom Bower is fine as Cage's AA-bound father, but it's his beer-swilling wife that is the surprise.  Jennifer Coolidge (Stifler's mom in the American Pie movies) makes a surprisingly unglamorous appearance as Cage's step-mom; she actually turns in a pretty good dramatic performance here, but my immediate reaction was to how appropriately haggard she looks.  Val Kilmer has a small but key supporting role and, miraculously, does it well and doesn't try to out-overact Cage.

All that is inconsequential, though.  This is the story of Terence McDonagh (Nic Cage), a police officer in New Orleans.  The movie takes place shortly after Hurricane Katrina, although it doesn't mention the disaster much after the first scene.  That first scene is important for two reasons, though.  First, it explains why this New Orleans movie is not about Mardi Gras.  Second, McDonagh hurts his back in this scene and the result is a permanent injury that even McDonagh's doctor admits will not be completely helped by pain medication.  That serves as the justification for this character to seek out any relief he can from the pain, be it drugs (marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and crack), sex (with his hooker girlfriend or a civilian in lieu of arrest), or gambling (often and poorly). In the middle of all this vice, there is a homicide case that McDonagh is supposed to be solving.  The funny thing about this cop movie is that the case is really secondary to the character.  As a viewer, you are never really drawn into the details of the crime because McDonagh treats it like a job, not an obsession (rare in movie cops).  This film shows McDonagh doing absolutely everything wrong until the walls all start closing in on him.  He doesn't stop, mind you.  His mounting gambling debts are starting to creep into his professional life, his addictions have caused him to act in ways that get Internal Affairs actively interested in taking his badge, he has opted to sell information to drug dealers that are willing to kill him, and his vice-sharing girlfriend decides to clean up her life and stop using drugs.  The only question is what will be the first part of his life to ruin him?

Now, that sounds like a really depressing movie, but it's not.  Sure, the back injury can be seen as a justification for McDonaugh's actions, but this film never makes excuses for his behavior.  As such, this is not a story with a moral, and that makes all the difference.  Instead, director Werner Herzog must have asked Nic Cage if he wanted to pretend to be out-of-his-mind-crazy on film for two hours.  Never one to turn down the opportunity to overact, Cage obliged.  It's a good thing he did, too, because Cage is a treat here.  He's weird, though.  He walks around with a hunched back throughout the film.  He throws out some truly bizarre laughs out of nowhere.  He makes you think that Johnny Depp should have studied him for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, THAT'S how drugged up Cage acts.  Cage's performance isn't seen through his own druggy lens, though; instead of seeing how McDonaugh sees the world while high, we see how high the world sees McDonaugh.  Well, that's true for most of the movie.  There is a scene where Herzog allows Cage's drug use to subtly affect how he interprets a TV broadcast.  There's another, less subtle scene where Cage hallucinates iguanas and the camera assumes the point of view of an iguana for about two minutes.  Regardless of the point of view, Cage turns in one of the best performances of his career and

It's difficult to describe an actor acting high without sounding like you should have been an extra in Dazed and Confused.  Imagine The Shield if Michael Chiklis was in-orbit-high.  That's the best parallel for this film that I can draw for you.  There's a lot of gritty crime stuff going wrong and McDonaugh is obviously crazy and deserves to be jailed for his many, many indiscretions, but then you see a moment that shows what an awesome police officer he is.  Or another moment that shows how horrifying it can be to have someone this twisted in a position of power.  Those moments are what make this film hang together.  There's a scene toward the end of the film where Val Kilmer's character shows that he might actually be, in some ways, worse than Cage as an officer of the law.  You'll notice that the movie poster doesn't include "The" in the title; it looks like a clue that, as bad as Cage's character is, he's not the bad lieutenant.  He's just one of many.

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.