Cop Out (2010)

COP OUT (2010).
Directed by Kevin Smith. Written by Robb Cullen, and Mark Cullen. Starring Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Guillermo Diaz, Kevin Pollack, Adam Brody, Michelle Trachtenberg, Jason Lee, Rashida Jones, Seann William Scott, Ana De La Reguera, and Juan Carlos Hernandez.

Ooh, a tribute to 80s buddy-cop movies! Ooh, Bruce Willis! Guillermo Diaz as the bad guy! Directed by Kevin Smith!

Oh, but Smith didn't write it. Hmmm. And Tracy Morgan? He reminds me of Bernie Mac - he's not as funny as he thinks he is, nor as someone somewhere thinks, and he seems like he's always reading his lines, they don't come out instinctively. And Kevin Pollack - this guy still makes movies? We're a long way past The Usual Suspects now... if it wasn't for Willis and his hitman comedies, I think everything he makes now would be direct-to-DVD. Still, let's give it a try...

Plot: a down-on-his-luck cop with an idiot for a partner needs to sell his prized baseball card to not suffer the embarrassment of having his ex-wife's new husband pay for his daughter's wedding. But the card gets stolen. And by attempting to recover it, the cop kind of starts a war with drug (and human) traffickers.

Oh, boy.

It starts off fine, with Tracy Morgan quoting what seems like 100 different Hollywood movies in 90 seconds, almost overshadowing Bruce Willis, but it doesn't stick. Furthermore, as the film moves along, this supposedly film buff stops quoting films altogether, even when it'd be obvious to, as when he and Willis are in a car (sitting in front) with Seann William Scott in the back seat, and Morgan's wielding a gun and waving it everywhere, reminiscent of the ''dead nigger'' scene in Pulp Fiction. But no.

And it seems like every ten minutes, the movie becomes less and less realistic, as if it started as a tribute to the Lethal Weapon series but delved more and more into the parody realm. Guillermo Diaz is convincing as the menacing villain, although his role is pretty much identical to the one he plays in Weeds.

This isn't a bad film by any stretch of the imagination - it just isn't very good, either. So Smith's talent is wasted, as is Diaz'. And Willis', but that isn't a first. And to think Robin Williams and James Gandolfini were originally slated to star in this... now that would have been a piece of crap! For pop culture junkies, the first 15 minutes of the film are a delight, for ''Willis will save us one at a time'' fans, this could also prove satisfying. For a stupid good time, if all your other choices are not available to rent, this might be a decent choice. This will probably get some undeserved Razzie nominations, but big stars like Willis are used to this by now.

3/5

Lost Myths / Rick Trembles' Motion Picture Purgatory

Talk about symbiotic - a post I can put in 3 different blogs - my regular one, my collectibles one, and my film criticism blog!

Last night, I went to a show at the Fantasia Film Festival called Lost Myths, a dual slideshow/storytelling performance, with the first half consisting of texts and narration by Claude Lalumière over art by Rupert Bottenberg, and the second half consisting of an oral history of Rick Trembles' autobiographical film criticism comic strip Motion Picture Purgatory, that runs in the Montreal Mirror and often has Trembles himself in them, and at times also mentions his ''weird punk'' band American Devices (whom I have featured in my Video Of The Week segments here); the MPP is kind of a cross between film criticism, the honesty and autobiographical themes of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor series (especially those with the art of Robert Crumb) and the sex scenes of Caligula - with more shit - literally - and a sensibility for humour reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson's.

Since the show was part of Fantasia, I'd classify the 'performance shorts'' as short ''films'', as it was, indeed, an audiovisual feast for both the eyes and ears. I did enjoy the Lalumière/Bottenberg piece, as it was a fun and innovative look at how myths may have been written in the first place, but the (perhaps Bible-like) repetitiveness of them became an issue after the first half-dozen or so, seeing as (too) many of them had a baby-God born from an unworthy mother who would die during childbirth; unless that is a real-life issue Lalumière is trying to deal with through his art, it had run its course and become redundant way before the last story. But the storytelling itself, tongue-in-cheek and with a certain beat, was fun - and the art was beautiful. Most of the images would make awesome gig posters.

But the true headliner of the night, the one who got the loudest applause, was without a doubt Trembles. His work for the Mirror is read by some 300,000 people weekly, and since he incorporates his own life into the strips, we all know he is in his second stint with them (since 1998), as they had also published him in the 80s but fired him when they deemed one of his pieces to be too controversial and obscene. He - again - told us all about it, with a few strips shown to emphasize his points, but he also delved into his past, such as the fact that his father had also been a cartoonist, and who his influences were.

Of course he also talked about his band, and about a few short films he made. Once it was all over, he even took the time to show us the three animated shorts he made: God's Cocksuckers - based on a drawing he made and keeps recycling into his other works; a video for his band's De-censor-tized song; and the Canadian government-funded coup-de-grâce Goopy Spasms, which, despite being an animated short drawn in the style of '60s counterculture icons with an endless array of things stuck up the animated Trembles plug-hole, is as real a piece of cinematic truth as anything I've seen since Gaspar Noé's Irréversible - ironically enough, reviewed in one of the MPP books. It was realer than a political documentary.

But the best part of the night came after the show, as I approached the table where Lalumière, Bottenberg and Trembles were sitting, selling their books and offering to sign them. I made my way to Trembles' side and he just looked at me and said: ''You're Mr. Hell?''

To have someone who music I've been listening to for over 20 years, whose writings and drawings I've been reading for over a decade - and to whom I had never spoken to before - know who I was... it made my week. It was way more intense than when Jeffrey Ross asked me which bar he should go drinking in.

So I purchased both Motion Picture Purgatory books, and he signed them in blue ink, with a different blurb for each, both a play on my name.

Good times!

Iron Man 2 (2010)

IRON MAN 2 (2010).
Directed by Jon Favreau. Written by Justin Theroux. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson, Mickey Rourke, Jon Favreau, Sam Rockwell, Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Bettany, and Garry Shandling.

Plot: Billionnaire Tony Stark, who outed himself as superhero Iron Man at the end of the first movie, has to fight off new enemies, his own government and test his friends' patience in this sequel that serves more as a bridge to the upcoming Avengers movie than its own vehicle.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, by any means, it's just that once the film is over and done with, you leave with the impression of having watched a Friends reunion show more than an action movie, firstly because there is little action to speak of, but mostly because everybody just seems genuinely happy to be working together again - and the one-liners come out at a frantic pace, most of them predictable but still heartwarming.

What saves it from sitcom territory is the quality of the acting though: Robert Downey Jr was made for this role (more so even than Chaplin), Gwyneth Paltrow was born to play an assistant, Mickey Rourke seems at his place playing a lovable villain, Sam Rockwell and Garry Shandling are perfect as self-serving assholes, and Don Cheadle is also perfectly cast as a replacement for fellow Oscar nominee Terrence Howard as Jim Rhodes. Oh, and Scarlett Johansson looks great in a cat suit, but we'll get a better opinion of that in her spin-off, for Black Widow. And Jon Favreau and Samuel L. Jackson are their usual amazing selves in small (almost cameo) roles.

And that's probably because the film was made by actors. Favreau directed, sure, but the film was also written by Justin Theroux, whom you may remember as the non-lesbian character from David Lynch's terrific 2001 picture Mulholland Dr. It seems Theroux wrote the ultimate actor's screenplay, one where every actor looks good and says cool lines, but misses in the one area where a writer would be needed - plot and story.

It's not as entertaining as the first one, but it's still worth seeing on ''half-price Tuesdays'' if those exist in your area - or rent it.

3/5

First Sunday (2008)

I figured we might as well start with a bang... a film I saw a couple of weeks ago...

FIRST SUNDAY (2008).
Directed by David E. Talbert. Written by David E. Talbert. Starring Ice Cube, Katt Williams, Tracy Morgan, Loretta Devine, Regina Hall, Keith David, Chi McBride, and Malinda Williams.

Plot: two low-life best friends, one a petty criminal and the other a struggling father, must find thousands of dollars to escape their fates and choose to rob a church, where they will inevitably learn from their mistakes and become better people.

Alright, people, let's get this straight: we're late in the first decade of the 21st century. Films have been around for over 100 years, and American comedies have become the world-wide go-to standards of excellence (or respectability, at least) since the 1940s, be it in TV sitcoms or in film.

The loser-finds-faith-and-turns-into-a-winner schtick is getting old fast, and every film that continues trying to tell that same old story over the course of two hours is going to bore the audience to tears. Or sleep. And when you have top-notch comedic talent like Ice Cube, Katt Williams and Tracy Morgan in your cast, that is a crime that just shouldn't be allowed to happen.

Writer/director David E. Talbert should have taken a cue from the best comedies of the past decade (Zoolander, Old School) and gotten rid of the whole plot in the first 10 or 15 minutes of the film and let the comics handle the rest; instead, Williams is relegated to crap one-liners once every 10 minutes, Cube plays it straight and Morgan is nothing more than a bumbling sidekick - none were given enough direction to make the film reach laugh-out-loud funniness, nor were they given dialogue to help them over-ride the story lines to bring it to Funnyland.

In the end, we're left with a below-average feel-good movie that could/should have been one of the funniest films of the year.

2.5/5

Welcome

Hi.

It had been requested of me many times before, and I caved in: I will criticize movies I've seen for the benefit of... whomever.

I was going to have this in my regular blog, but it's clogged enough as is, so I decided to create this off-shoot in which I'll only vent about movies.

The template will likely change at some point, so don't worry about the look so much. Any help is welcome in that regard, by the way.

For those who question my right to criticize films and request my pedigree, I will remind you that I have two Bachelor's degrees in film - one in ''film production'' as director/screenwriter, and one in ''film'', a minor in screenwriting and a major in teaching. And I've directed many a short film (one of them ''award-winning''!), as well as a (as-of-yet still unreleased) feature-length mockumentary about... myself. None of this, of course, matters. Everyone is allowed their own opinion on any subject, and I choose to write mine. Here.

I hope you like what you read.

Thanks for your time.

Le Seb.