Hi! Kris and I are deep into our 3rd annual Summer Movie Fantasy League, so I thought it might be time for an update.

With each of us having had seven of ten movies released and tallied for their opening weekend domestic earnings, here’s how the picture looks:

I came out of the gate strong, with Fast & Furious 6 nabbing almost $100K, but it was all downhill from there. World War Z did pretty well, but my poor choices of After Earth, Epic, White House Down, and Turbo did me no favors. Meanwhile, Kris picked the single biggest film, Man of Steel, plus got the two biggest kiddie flicks, Monsters U and Despicable Me 2. With three movies left for each of us, things are looking grim for the former champion (me).

However! All is not lost. With a string of crap and duds hitting the theaters over the past few weeks, and The Wolverine basically opening without any competition, I could cut a hefty chunk out of Kris’ $96 million lead this weekend. Unfortunately, I doubt it’ll be enough to win. She still has Elysium, which 1) has been advertised like crazy, 2) looks like it might be good, and 3) MATT DAMON. I’m not sure how 2 Guns will do, but it’s got Denzel Washington and Marky Mark, so I assume it’ll have a healthy opening. I think I’m still gonna get beat, but maybe it’ll be close.

Meanwhile, our three film picks for lowest Rotten Tomato score was close for a while! The Purge and The Internship were both basically the same degree of stinky. Kris looked like she might have run away with it by picking Syrup, which had zero positive reviews for WEEKS, but suddenly a positive one appeared, knocking it up to 17%. I managed a 0% pick too, with Hammer of the Gods, but we’ll have to keep an eye on it in case some tool decides to like it enough to give it a decent review. R.I.P.D. was much-hated, but not as much-hated as the most-hated Grown Ups 2. As with Syrup, these scores tend to fluctuate a bit as late reviews come in throughout the summer, but right now, I think I’ve got this portion of the summer league won.

It’s summer! There are movies! My wife and I are bored! That means it must be time for the Third Annual Livingston Summer Movie Fantasy League! Each summer, Kris and I each choose the ten summer movies we think will have the best domestic opening weekend earnings, and see who combines for the highest total. We also each pick three films we think will combine for the lowest Rotten Tomatoes review score.

I never posted the results from last year’s SMFL, because after that psychopath killed twelve people at The Dark Knight Rises premiere in Aurora, Colorado, writing about box office totals just seemed completely inappropriate (particularly since we have family in Aurora). Still, you can see the final totals here, as well as the RT score.

Anyway, we’re back for a third go-round! We started with Memorial Day weekend this year, meaning we missed out on Iron Man 3 and the new Star Trek, but here’s a look at our 2013 picks, in release date order:

I think my biggest mistake was picking After Earth (which is getting horrible reviews) in the third round, which left the door open for Kris to grab Pacific Rim. I also somehow let Kris snag the two kids movies that will be both good and make money (Monsters University and Despicable Me 2) while I wound up with four that open later in the summer and will probably all stink. So, I’m not too hopeful at my chances of a three-peat this year, though Fast and Furious 6’s big opening weekend gave me a great start.

Anyway, I’ll post some updates at the summer progresses, and Kris is going to be writing about it this year too:

Kris here: I’ve lost two years out of two. Not spectacular. Last year, I passed on the Avengers and went with the Dark Knight as my first pick. Many of the people I love live in Aurora (or A-town as my brother calls it), and my niece’s husband is a huge Batman fan. I checked with my brother, and was very relieved to hear that my family was okay.  After the shootings, we didn’t really have much fun with the league. The trash talking didn’t feel right.

This year will be different. A few days before our draft, I was stuck in the jury duty waiting room. I had eight hours to do my homework thanks to the free wifi. I mapped out the possibilities, and think I did pretty well this time. I picked a lot of late summer movies again. Not sure how that keeps happening. At the moment, I’ve got two more weeks before I can even get a single dollar on the board. Some thoughts on my picks (in order):

“Man of Steel” – Most of the trailers have been pretty dull for this one. Plus, another superhero movie to start didn’t seem like the way to go. That is, until I finally saw an awesome trailer for this movie the night before the draft that made picking it seem like a no-brainer. Michael Shannon as General Zod in a voice-over, demanding Superman to come forward. They never show that one. Why do they never show that one? Seriously, they need to get on that.

“Despicable Me 2” – To be honest, I never saw part one. I don’t even know what those little yellow things are, but they seem irritating. Learning from the past: what is irritating to me, is box office gold. Plus, it’s due out over the 4th of July weekend.

“Monsters University” – I saw a bit of the first movie, and it was a cute and sentimental. I like cute and sentimental, plus Disney/Pixar will surely market the heck out of this one. Try to avoid this one! I dare you!

“Pacific Rim” – I was on the fence on this one. I wanted to go with “Fast and Furious 6” – I really did. It hadn’t been picked as yet, and I knew people were going to go see the hell out of it. However, Pacific Rim has giant robots, it’s coming out in IMAX, will involve cities getting smashed up, has that “WHOOOOOMP” noise in the trailer that everyone loves, is directed by Guillermo del Toro, and did I mention GIANT ROBOTS?

“The Heat” – Had to toss in an “R” rated movie, because adults see movies too. Melissa McCarthy and Paul Feig are back together, and Sandra Bullock is back on screen. I’m rooting for this one.

“Elysium” – I loved, loved, loved “District 9”, and this one seems like that movie on steroids. Plus, Matt Damon is part machine. I recently watched “Behind the Candelabra”, and if Mr. Damon plays this one half as earnestly as he played Scott Thorson, we’re all in for a treat. I’m thinking he won’t be wearing any glittery speedos in this one, but he’ll likely smash a guy through a wall while wearing high-tech body armor. I’m in!

“World’s End” – Likely that this one won’t make too much money. However, my favorite movie of all time is “Shaun of the Dead” and I had to show it some faith and love. It’s really the only movie I’m excited to see this summer. Hopefully, I’m not alone in that.

“Lone Ranger” – At this point in the draft, the pickings were getting slim. I really don’t know about this one. It kept showing up on the Summer duds list, and it’s a western. I’m not nuts about westerns, myself. Think I may have thrown a wild pitch here, kids.

“2 Guns” – Sometimes, when you start throwing wild… you can’t stop. However, ladies (and quite a few dudes) seem to love Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington, and dudes (and quite a few ladies) seem to love guns. Let’s hope these hold true. It’s not due out until August. Perhaps it will be very hot out in August, and people will want to sit in an air conditioned movie theater?

“This is the End” – Pretty much ended the game with a balk. I know it, you know it.

For worst Rotten Tomatoes score, I went with “R.I.P.D”, “The Purge” and “Syrup”. All based on trailers alone. Couldn’t even get through the trailer for the Syrup movie.

Okay, I hate the Skyfall post I did last night because I hate talking vaguely about movies. I hate it. I hate saying shit like so-and-so gave a “great performance.” It says nothing, informs no one. I might as well be saying boring shit like “beautiful cinematography” and “sweeping score.” What am I, a film critic?

So, let’s get into some Skyfall spoilers, below. Note: Skyfall spoilers will contain a great many spoilers for Skyfall.

Opening Scene: Rooftop chase on motorcycles, really exciting. Though, kind of Bourne-ish. But, everything is kind of Bourne-ish these days. Also, motorcycles are so goddamn easy to steal, have you noticed? In any given city, there are just hundreds of idling motorcycles with no one sitting on them at any given time. Leads to a chase and fight on top of a train, also exciting. When Bond is shifting gears on the bulldozer thing, you also get a nice close up of his fancy watch. Product placement!

Theme Song & Opening Credits: All very nice and Bond-y. Adele has a great voice. Bond doesn’t shoot into camera — is that the first time that hasn’t started the opening credits in a Bond film? It’s because he’s unconscious in a waterfall, so we can forgive him. I think he does it at the end.

Computers Are Magic: Silva blows up MI6 using computer hacking. He used computers to turn on the gas, or something? Reminds me of the last Die Hard, where Timothy Olyphant sent gas over the internet to blow up Bruce Willis. I can’t do anything to my house over the internet. I can’t even tell my DVR to record something because I can never remember my Comcast password.

Bond Returns: After pretending to be dead, because he’s all butthurt that M would sacrifice him for a mission, Bond comes back to work. He hasn’t shaved in a while, which is how movies tell you someone is deeply distressed. I’ve enjoyed Daniel Craig as Bond, but I think he really knocks it out of the park in Skyfall, showing some real vulnerability. Connery was a great Bond, but did we ever get a sense of what was going on inside his head?

Q: Finally, Q appears in the movies, and instead of an old cranky dude who makes gadgets, he’s a computer geek. Makes sense. A joke is made about exploding pens. Pierce Brosnan, thou hast been zinged.

Bond in China: Okay, there’s a scene where he’s following a guy who is about to assassinate someone, and Bond needs to question him. He thoughtfully waits until the guy has completed the assassination to start punching him. That felt a little odd to me. Maybe punch him before he shoots someone in the brain? There’s a cool fight all in silhouette so they don’t have to edit the crap out of it to hide the stunt doubles. Then, Bond sits there taking his time going through the guy’s things, after the guy has plummeted to the street, which will alert people, who will then find the dead guards the assassin killed, and it just seems like, hey, Bond, you might want to get the hell out of that building immediately.

Bond at the Casino: During a fight in a casino, a goon gets eaten by a gila monster komodo dragon. I thought this was kind of silly, but Kris pointed out that people in old Bond movies used to get eaten by sharks and piranha and other exotic animals all the time, so maybe it’s a callback. There are a lot of references to past Bond films and tropes in Skyfall. I do like that during the fight, Bond sees one of the komodo dragons and points to it in surprise. Like, Jesus! Do you see that giant komodo dragon, goon? It feels like a natural reaction to warn someone that they’re about to be eaten by a horrifying dinosaur, even if that someone is trying to kill you.

Bond Has Sex: Bond determines a sexy woman was sold into the sex trade as an adolescent, so of course he immediately fucks her. Seriously, Bond? You just talked to her about how she was repeatedly raped at age 12. Do you really have to bang her? Maybe don’t do that. Maybe make her some hot cocoa and get her into a nice comfortable fluffy robe and maybe, later, into therapy. Everything in this poor woman’s life is about guys trying to put dicks into her, and you’re not helping. And, having had sex with Bond, she’s going to die, obviously.

Bond Girls Always Die: Say! Here’s a thought. Can we maybe dispatch with this particular Bond tradition at this point? Is it maybe played out by now? You’ve ditched gadgets as old fashioned, so maybe it’s time to ditch the theme of women dying brutal deaths simply because they sleep with Bond? Maybe? I think it’s time.

Silva: Played by Javier Bardem, Silva is a proper Bond villain. He’s smart, weird, creepily playful, absolutely mesmerizing, and later we see he’s disfigured. Also: insane, though justifiably. He’s been through some shit after M let him get captured and tortured. Silva messes with Bond by pretending to come on to him, but Bond isn’t ruffled. I thought this was great and interesting. It felt like a real grown-up moment in series of silly fantasy action films. Silva even has his very own island hideout, like old Bond villains always used to. Only, in a great twist on the trope, Silva’s island is crumbling and shitty and abandoned. Instead of the usual opulent palace of money and pools and pillars, he’s just got a giant room full of computer servers. Amazing touch, I thought. Orbiting space stations, volcano fortresses, underwater bunkers: nah! All you need to run the world is a bunch of computers.

Silva Meant to be Captured: Silva is like Joker in The Dark Knight: being captured is all part of his elaborate plan. As with Joker, it’s a little hard to believe that everything goes down exactly as he figured it would. Even while in captivity, he is totally computering everything with hacking! He escapes, because now he wants to kill M in front of everyone, to show how bad she is at being spyboss while she’s being investigated for being a bad spyboss (she is, frankly, a pretty bad spyboss).

Ralph Fiennes: I pretty much sat around waiting for him to be evil, because that’s what happens when a new government boss shows up. But nope! He’s super nice. Good for him, and good for the movie. Very un-Bourne like! Bourne turned the American Spy vs. America’s Evil Enemies story into American Spy vs. America’s Evil Government story, which I’m tired of already. Glad Skyfall took a different route.

Skyfall: Bond’s old giant abandoned mansion in Scotland. Bond takes M there, figuring that of the 835 intricate plans Silva has, probably none of them involve Bond’s old house. I will say this: if I grew up in Skyfall, I would never have left. I would just stay there in that giant old stone house and spend my time staring out over the… I dunno, moors? Whatever. All the foggy hills. It’s damn beautiful. BEAUTIFUL CINEMATOGRAPHY. There.

Albert Finney: The caretaker of Skyfall is Albert Finney, which means we all sit there in the audience for the rest of the movie thinking loudly DO NOT HURT ALBERT FINNEY, MOVIE. SERIOUSLY. WE WOULD NOT BE COOL WITH THAT. WE ARE NOT JOKING.

Skyfall Showdown: Loved it! Silva and like 100 henchmen show up with an attack chopper, and there’s a great, exciting fight. I’m a sucker for a couple people hiding in a building while a bunch of goons try to kill them, like at the end of L.A. Confidential, so I loved this.

Note for Henchmen: Seriously, henchmen, don’t stand directly behind Bond holding a gun on him. He’s just going to grab your wrist and make you shoot things you don’t want to shoot, like other henchmen and the ice you’re standing on. Stop doing this!

The Ending: The ending is great. We’ve got Moneypenny, the hat rack, the MI6 office where Bond gets his mission briefings, and a new M… it’s like coming home, it’s the old movies made new again. And M is all, “Bond, are you ready to do some work?” And the audience is like “FUCKING YES!” and then M is like, “Well, too bad, you just failed two fucking missions! You let the hard drive get into terrorist hands and a bunch of agents died, and then you abducted M and took her to your shitty house and you let HER die. You are the WORST! Fired! But, then, I did get promoted to M, so… good work!”

Kris and I saw Skyfall last night, in IMAX!

First, a word about IMAX! Hey, IMAX! That is quite a big screen you have there. And the sound is incredible. Well done. Not so well done: charging us $35 for two tickets and still making us watch advertisements, including an advertisement for IMAX! which we are obviously already sold on because we’ve already bought $35 tickets and are sitting there waiting for the IMAX! advertisement to end so we can watch the movie we bought $35 tickets for. In IMAX!

That said, IMAX! is completely glorious and I want to see all of the rest of the movies ever made in/at it forever. IMAX!

Anyway. Skyfall! It was really good, I think. I won’t do spoilers, I’ll just say Daniel Craig continues to be a great James Bond, Judi Dench was once again great as M, and some additional characters were added to MI6, all well-cast and enjoyable. Plus, Adele’s theme and the opening credits were a return to real Bond form. Though Adele tried to rhyme “Skyfall” with “crumble.” Doesn’t quite work. Still, a million times better than Jack White’s song for the last movie.

And hurray! Finally, FUCKING FINALLY, a great Bond villain for the new Bond franchise. Javier Bardem’s character is great: unsettling, menacing, vicious, and yet at times sympathetic and funny. They created a great villain, and Bardem gave a great performance.

It’s about time. Nothing against Mads Mikkelsen in Casino Royale as Le Chiffre (French for “The Chiffre”). I think Mikkelsen is great and he did fine with the role, it just wasn’t much of a role. You can’t just give a dude a gooey eye and plop him at a card table and make him a classic Bond villain. As for Quantum of Solace, some actor whose name I don’t know played a villain whose name I don’t know and his big plan was to make Bolivian citizens mutter curse words when they got their monthly water bill. Lame.

I think they did a good job of making Skyfall a personal story for Bond and a broad story of global terrorism at the same time. It’s a bit long, it suffers from a case of Computers Can Do Everything Because of Hacking, and there’s a couple other problems with it, but I can’t discuss them without spoiling stuff. I really dug it, though.

These movies are generally not even what I necessarily consider my favorite movies. I tend not to own these movies on DVD (I don’t own Predator). A few of my favorite movies that I own —Blade Runner, Brazil, Seven, Das Boot, L.A. Confidential, No Country for Old Men — I rarely watch, maybe once every couple years. And I don’t watch them on if they’re on TV.

While I was watching Predator, I started trying to picture a movie channel line-up filled with my Always Watch movies that would keep me on the couch a full 24 hours because I can never pass up watching any of them. Here’s what I came up with.

What’s on your Always Watch line-up?

“I don’t want to talk about time travel.” — Joe (Bruce Willis), in the film Looper

“I kinda do.” — Me, in the audience of the film Looper

(Note: There will be no spoilers here, the only real information I’ll be talking about are things evident in the movie trailers.)

There were two things I knew about Looper before I saw it. Both of those things were revealed in the trailer for the film, and both of them worried me, because both of them seemed pretty stupid. I’ll get to both of those things in a minute. First, some praise!

Looper is a GOOD MOVIE. Go see it. It’s interesting, entertaining, funny, exciting, violent, cool, thought-provoking, and best of all, completely surprising, and you should definitely go and see it, despite all the paragraphs of whining you’re about to endure. Or, don’t endure them! You don’t really need to keep reading, because if you just go and see Looper, you’ll probably enjoy it. I don’t want to say much else about it, other than the two things I will go on to say, because it’s best to go in knowing as little as possible.

Now, the two things I knew about Looper before seeing it. The first thing that worried me was the general premise: in the future, the mob controls time travel, and uses it to send people back in time to be killed by hitmen. Before I saw the movie, this just seemed patently absurd. And, having seen the movie, it is still patently absurd.

Look, I can see the mob controlling, say, gambling, prostitution, drugs, weapons, maybe even politicians. Maybe even secretly controlling some sort of science, like a pharmaceutical lab or maybe some kind of high-tech gadget firm or something. But time travel? Which would be the biggest and most important scientific discovery ever? That seems about as plausible as the mob controlling space travel. I just can’t envision a future where a bunch of mafioso types walk into NASA and say, “Yeah, you gotta nice space program here, but we’re gonna be making some changes, capice? Dis is Big Vinnie. From now on, you wanna go to da moon, you wanna go into space, you wanna, I dunno, do da thing where you send a rocket to look at space rocks on Mars, badda bing, badda boom… you talk to Big Vinnie foist.” *straightens tie, walks out*

You do get a little explanation of how it works, and why the mob uses it the way it does, but the explanation is brief and, from a logical standpoint, pretty unsatisfying. But, that’s kind of okay.  Sometimes, in science-fiction movies, the fiction is more thought-out than the science, like in Back to the Future, where the focus is on the journey of Marty and his parents, and the science is just a magic car and a photograph that people disappear from a bit at a time. We accept that, or at least it doesn’t bother us too much at the time because we’re enjoying the story (though it’s definitely fun to pick it apart later). Other sci-fi films focus on the science, such as in the time travel film Primer. In Primer, the science was definitely nailed down, but the fiction, in my opinion, was crap (and here fiction includes things like storytelling and acting and making the audience give a shit about anyone on the screen).

I always want both sides of the equation to have equal heft. I want some good science, and I want some good story, and while it’s pretty rare to get both, films can work just fine with just one. Overall, I don’t think Primer is a good film but the makers really did an amazing job of logically portraying time travel, probably the best anyone has done to date, and that part of the film really works. Meanwhile, the time travel in Back to the Future is silly garbage, but the film is fun as hell and has a fantastic script.

Looper basically falls into the Back to the Future camp. The science of their time-travel is redonk, and doesn’t really try to be anything else. The quote at the top of this entry, said by Bruce Willis to his younger self, is more or less the attitude of the film. Another character says roughly the same thing, and these comments are really directed at us, the audience. The mob controls time travel, they send people back 30 years to get whacked, don’t worry about the reasons or how it works because it doesn’t, really, and even if we sort of wish it did, the story Looper tells is entertaining enough without it.

Now. The second thing from the trailer that concerned me: Joseph Gordon-Levitt is covered with facial prosthetics (see disturbing image above) to make him look like a young version of Bruce Willis, since they play the same character at different ages. Even in just a few seconds of trailer footage, I found this kind of distracting.

In the two-hour movie, I found it immensely distracting. The contact lenses, the eyeliner, whatever the hell is going on with his stupid fake eyebrows, the curved nose they stuck on him, the giant oil painting of a bottom lip they glued to his real bottom lip… all of these things just kept me staring at parts of his face for the entire movie through squinted eyes thinking, jeez, I am so distracted right now. Is that a lip or a throw-rug? EYEBROWS! EYEBROWS! Lip. Liiiiiip. Contacts. LIP! Nose. Fake nose. Eyebrows eyebrows LIIIIIIIIP.

But it’s not JUST the make-up. It’s also the constant facial contortion he’s undergoing, rigidly holding a lemon face to approximate Bruce Willis’ sour mug, and the raspy muttering Bruce Willis voice impression, and the attempt at the famous Bruce Willis smirk, and the worst part of ALL OF THESE DISTRACTING DISTRACTIONS that he STILL DOESN’T FUCKING LOOK OR SOUND ANYTHING LIKE BRUCE WILLIS.

THUSLY, there is NO POINT. We would have easily accepted the idea that they were the same person at different ages if the film just told us that. We may have thought initially, well, they don’t really look anything alike, but we wouldn’t be obsessed with it for the entire movie. (LIP. LIIIIIIIP.) We would probably just accept it. Suspending disbelief isn’t always easy, but it’s especially hard when you’re staring at an actor who you like and who you are familiar with while he does a shitty Bruce Willis impression for two hours with a face covered in plastic noses and fake eyebrows and lip-murals. AND, if you insist on covering JGL with weird, distracting make-up, why not have him play dual roles, so the young JGL is just JGL, and the old JGL is JGL covered with old-person make-up? At least that way, while one JGL is covered in stupid, unconvincing make-up, you still have one that isn’t.

Anyway. Those were my two concerns going in, and they remain my two concerns coming out, but they are both ultimately overshadowed greatly by the quality of everything else. There’s a great story to Looper, and the film has plenty of excitement, several WTF moments, some great character development, and if you can let the science go, and do your best to forget JGL is wearing a Bruce Willis mask that doesn’t look anything like Bruce Willis, I think there’s a lot to enjoy. Go see it!

I’m a big fan of the original Bourne trilogy, though by the third I felt they were treading pretty familiar ground. So how is The Bourne Legacy, the Bourne movie without Bourne? Two reviews follow, one short and concise, the other a muddled meandering mishmash of something beginning with M.

Here’s the first:

In attempting to launch a new chapter of the Bourne franchise, The Bourne Legacy sticks too closely to the beats of the original trilogy to feel fresh or new. Shaky-cam fights, rooftop and busy-street chases, and government data-mining scenes have been all been done before, and done better. The best part of this film is Rachel Weisz’s performance, which is fantastic, but Jeremy Renner, as the replacement for Matt Damon, elicits little sympathy or interest.

The second review below. Spoilers follow for all four Bourne movies, so don’t read unless you are planning to lose your memory and travel through the most recognizable cities in Europe to unravel the mystery of your past and then watch all the Bourne movies.

Before we talk about this movie, can we talk about the tagline of this movie?

The Bourne Legacy: “There was never just one.”

So, is this one referring to the number of super secret black ops agents, like Jason Bourne? Uh, yeah, we know, there were way more than one. In The Bourne Identity, there was Bourne, and three other “assets”, two of whom Bourne killed, and one who killed Chris Cooper and then was never seen again. In The Bourne Supremacy, there was one more, who Bourne visited, strangled, and blew up his apartment with a magazine-toaster bomb (and who also told Bourne “We’re the only two left.”) THEN, in The Bourne Ultimatum, there’s another one in Tangier who Bourne kills and yet another one who chases Bourne around and then decides not to shoot him on a rooftop in New York. So, by my count, going into The Bourne Legacy, there were seven. Instead of “There was never just one,” the tagline should really read:

“There was never just seven.
Or should it be were?
It should be were.
There were never just seven.
Or should it be: There never were just seven?
I dunno, they both sound kind of awkward now.”

That’s a very long tagline for a poster, but it’s more accurate.

Anyway! Let’s leave the first three Bourne movies behind and get to The Bourne Legacy, only we can’t, because the first thirty minutes of The Bourne Legacy are sort of a recap of the first three Bourne movies, detailing Treadstone, which was the government torture program that created Bourne, then Blackbriar, that program that took over Treadstone, and now there’s Outcome, which is a program like the other two only they use operatives who have been physically and mentally enhanced by “chems” (drugs). Now that Bourne has shed public light on Treadstone and Blackbriar, Edward Norton is worried that Outcome might also get revealed to the public so he decides to kill all of the agents involved in the project and all of the pharmacists who make the drugs, because there’s nothing less suspicious than a bunch of dead bodies all over the place to convince the public that Nothing Suspicious Is Going On.

After killing his covert super-agents, Edward Norton sends a drone to Alaska to kill Jeremy Renner, who manages to escape by having a wolf killed in his place, but it was a mean wolf, so it’s okay. Renner goes to find Rachel Weisz, who is a doctor he knows from the drug-making company where he gets his drugs and he wants more drugs, because they make him smart. Edward Norton controls the mind (with drugs) of one of the chemists in the science lab, and makes him kill everyone else, though Weisz escapes. So, the drugs make people smarter, and stronger, and also magically control people’s minds somehow, sometimes. The drugs in this movie are sort of like the black goo from Prometheus, they do whatever the writers need it to do in a given scene.

Renner saves Weisz from another attempt by Edward Norton to kill her, and they go to Manilla so she can inject Renner with a permanent dose of brain drugs that will mean he no longer has to take brain drugs. Meanwhile, Edward Norton tries to track them down like they do in the other movies: by sitting in a room with a bunch of computer monitors and saying things like “GET ME THAT FOOTAGE FROM THE AIRPORT” and “COME ON PEOPLE” and “PUT THAT ON MY SCREEN.” And everyone types things into computers really fast. Edward Norton finds out where they are, and decides to activate yet another agent from yet another goddamn super secret assassin agent program he also has, called Larx.

Seriously, enough. You have had four different secret killer assassin programs. The first one failed and got everyone killed, and the second one failed and got everyone killed and indicted, and the third one got everyone killed with poison and drone strikes. Do you really think the fourth one is going to work out? As far as I know, the only super soldier program that was ever any good was the one that created Captain America, and every single other one has been a complete disaster. If you need soldiers JUST CALL THE ARMY. THEY HAVE A BUNCH OF GOOD ONES.

SO! Time for a chase scene, right? Jeremy Renner jumps on a motorcycle that someone has left running and the Larx guy jumps in a police car that someone left unattended and then the Larx guy gets on a motorcycle too and then he gets on yet another motorcycle for some reason, and there’s a long chase through busy streets, and then the movie is over, and we’re like, wait, was THAT the climax of the movie? That felt like the Act Two action sequence, the one that would lead up to the big final action sequence, but I think that’s because Act One was the Bourne Trilogy recap and so Act Two, The Jeremy Renner Needs Drugs Story, felt like it was actually Act One, which meant Act Three, Let’s All Easily Steal 100 Motorcycles, felt like Act Two, so the movie felt like it had no Act Three.

Also, it turns out that the information Bourne gave to the public didn’t work and all the evil government people are fine and the only one in trouble is Joan Allen, the nice government person from the other movies, so there was no reason for Edward Norton to kill everyone anyway, so, um, good job, and why don’t you just get started on the inevitable fifth secret government assassin program, because I’m sure it will work out great.

Warrior, the mixed martial-arts drama, came to Netflix instant, and I watched it, and here are two reviews of it: the first short and spoiler-free, the second, a long floppy flood of finger-farts containing all of the spoilers for absolutely everything in the movie. First review:

While it veers into melodrama and hits a number of incredibly familiar sports-movie beats, strong acting performances and exciting, believable fight scenes turn Warrior into a decent sports film. I hope you noticed my clever wordplay back there. Because it’s a fighting film, and I said hit and beats.

Okay, onto the SPOILERY PLOT SUMMARY OF SPOILERS.

Got a sports film to make? Okay, let’s talk ingredients. You need an underdog, obvs, a guy down on his luck, needing money for something important, who has no chance of winning, but he’s a good guy. That’s Joel Edgerton, who kind of looks like Conan O’Brien’s tougher older brother, the one who smoked and drove a Mustang and dropped out of high school in 11th grade. Edgerton plays a physics teacher, the kind every student loves and respects, and he needs money to make his house payments. So, he decides to return to his roots of being a mixed martial artist, which he is good at because he knows how to grab a guy’s arm and hold it in a way that makes them want to stop punching him (NOTE: THIS WILL COME IN IMPORTANT LATER).

You also need a bad guy, a big hulking brute, and that need is met by basically everyone else in the entire film, because this is an MMA movie and everyone is huge and muscly. Tom Hardy is the main one, and he is big and hulking and a brute, and he’s been gone for years, and now he is back, and he is Joel Edgerton’s brother.

You need an aging, crusty trainer of some sort, like Nick Nolte, and you need an absentee father, also Nick Nolte, and someone should have a drinking problem, Nick Nolte again. The brothers hate each other because, something something childhood, something something WE’RE NOT BROTHERS something something YOU JUST DON’T GET IT, DO YOU something etc. Also, they both hate Nick Nolte, but Nick Nolte wants to make amends, something something I’VE NEVER SEEN MY GRANDCHILDREN something something and his eyes fill with tears a lot.

You need a concerned wife who doesn’t want Joel Edgerton to fight, and gets mad when he does, and she does not represent the views of anyone in the audience because, come on, we want to see giant dudes punching each other to death already. That’s Jennifer Morrison, being concerned and, you know, pretty naggy about shit, because that’s all they give women to do in sports films about men.

Finally, you need a big sporting thing, in this case, a sixteen man MMA tournament with a prize of five million dollars (seems kind of like a big purse for a tourney that will take a physics teacher, but whatever). Also, Tom Hardy was a Marine but he doesn’t talk about it, so you think maybe he was a bad Marine, but then it turns out he saved a bunch of guys from drowning so he was a good Marine, but then it turns out he was only there to save guys from drowning because he went AWOL, so he’s a bad Marine again, sort of, but then he went AWOL because he was the sole survivor of a friendly-fire shooting that killed his friend and wants to donate his winnings to his friend’s widow, so he is a good Marine, finally. He is also super scary and angry because of all those things that happened and he just beats the shit out of everyone in the tournament and seriously, he is scarier in this movie than he was as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. I don’t know what you call those muscles that connect your shoulders to your neck but his are big enough to fling his head into space, where it would headbutt the moon to death.

Meanwhile, Joel Edgerton is also doing well in the tourney. He is getting the shit punched out of him by guys who are way way bigger than he is, but he is good at grabbing a guy’s arm and holding it in a way that will make them stop punching him (REMEMBER?), and he does this and wins a lot, and the announcers of the tournament are first like THIS GUY IS GOING TO GET KILLED but are later more like THIS GUY IS PRETTY GOOD.

And then it’s the final match, between the two brothers! And Tom Hardy just beats the living crap out of Joel Edgerton for four rounds, BUT THEN!!! Joel Edgerton does the arm-grab he does on everyone, and Tom Hardy is a serious badass and will not tap out (that means quit), so Joel Edgerton breaks Tom Hardy’s arm!

The final round begins, and Tom Hardy is coming out to fight, but his arm is broken, so Joel Edgerton is just punching him in the face at will, but Tom Hardy won’t quit, and Joel Edgerton is like, jeez, I can’t just keep punching my own brother in the face when he is in pain like this, so he tells Tom Hardy to quit, and all the wonderful violence that has been happening is now horribly sad, and we want to just hug Tom Hardy even though he is a giant hulked-out scary muscle-monster, because he is hurting.

So, you’re probably sitting there thinking, well, this could go a few ways. Maybe the ref stops the fight and Joel Edgerton is declared the winner. Maybe they hug. Maybe the round ends and Joel Edgerton is declared the winner and then they hug. Maybe they hug, the round ends, and Tom Hardy is declared the winner. Maybe Tom Hardy, his arm broken, slumps down to the mat and taps out. Maybe Joel Edgerton slumps down to the mat and taps out so he can let his brother can win. Maybe it’s a tie and they both win!

No. No to all of those things I just pretended you were thinking. None of them are right, dummy! What ACTUALLY HAPPENS is Joel Edgerton KICKS HIS BROTHER IN THE FUCKING HEAD and then PROCEEDS TO STRANGLE HIM TO ALMOST DEATH.

Holy shit. It’s, like, WHAT. DID THAT JUST HAPPEN. Did he really, in the midst of seeing his brother’s suffering, not just his physical suffering but his real spiritual suffering, just haul off and foot-kick him in the head-skull as hard as he could? YES. THAT HAPPENED. And, shit, good job, movie, for doing that, because having your incredibly good guy character kick your other incredibly good guy character who is also his own brother in the face is, well, pretty awesome of you.

So, while he’s lovingly strangling his brother to death, Joel Edgerton tells Tom Hardy he loves him, and Tom Hardy taps out, and then they limp out of the ring together, two huge hulking brutal dudes hurt and limping and clinging to each other because, love. And Nick Nolte is all, yeah, those are my boys, and also Joel Edgerton’s wife had stopped nagging him and was at the fight cheering, so, essentially, every sports movie you’ve ever seen, but still, pretty effective, and somewhat moving, and everyone did a good job acting and fighting, plus the awesome surprising moment of someone kicking someone right in the face in the most loving way you can ever kick someone right in the face.

I skipped out of work early the other day and went to a matinee of The Dark Knight Rises, and here are two reviews: one short and spoiler free, and one long rambling spoiler-filled sack of arglebargle.

Here’s the first review:

In The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Batman comes out of a long retirement to face Bane, a supervillain who wants to destroy Gotham City. I thought it was pretty good, though I enjoyed the first two films a lot more.

Okay, onto the SUPER SPOILER plot summary, which contains SPOILERS. SUPER ONES.

Eight years after Batman takes the blame for killing Harvey Dent, crime in Gotham City is under control but Bruce Wayne is sad and won’t come out of his room and won’t do Batman things anymore. During a party in his house, Selina Kyle, a sexy cat burglar, steals his fingerprints. Meanwhile, somewhere else, a hulking criminal named Bane kills a bunch of CIA guys so he can steal a scientist. Also, in Gotham, there’s a cop named Blake who misses Batman a lot and notices that something evil is happening in the sewers under Gotham, and there’s a jerk on the board of Wayne Enterprises, and also a nice lady on the board of Wayne enterprises, and also Bruce Wayne invented a fusion reactor that he won’t use because it could be turned into a fusion bomb, and Matthew Modine is a police captain for some reason.

Bruce Wayne’s stolen fingerprints are given to Bane, who breaks into the stock exchange to use them to bankrupt Wayne Enterprises, because I guess if Bruce Wayne wants to do some stock business he has to go right onto the trading floor and stick his fingers into a computer or something. Bruce Wayne puts on his Batman clothes to chase Bane around, but Matthew Modine hates Batman and wants to catch him more than he wants to catch Bane, but Bruce Wayne escapes in his new flying Batmobile. Bane’s plan works, though, because Bruce Wayne is now broke and no one notices that Bane was doing stock market terrorism at the same moment Bruce Wayne was supposedly sticking his fingers on the DELETE ALL MY MONEY button at the stock exchange.

Alfred, meanwhile, thinks he has done an absolutely terrible job of looking after Bruce Wayne, first by letting him disappear as a young man, then by helping him be a vigilante, then by letting him rot in his room for eight years, and it’s pretty hard to disagree with all that, even though he’s very sweet and his eyes fill with tears and we want to hug him. Anyway, he quits.

Bruce Wayne is kicked out of Wayne Enterprises for having no money, so the jerk on the board is like, ha ha, I WON AT BUSINESS! But Bane is like, no, and kills him. Bruce Wayne has sex with the nice lady on the board who promises to try to win at business but in a nice way, and then Bruce leaves as Batman to track down Selina Kyle, who I don’t think they ever call Catwoman but she’s Catwoman. She traps Batman in a room with Bane, who has been kicked out of the The League of Shadows, who wanted to destroy Gotham City in the first movie, but now he’s running another The League of Shadows who wants to destroy Gotham City in this movie. Bane beats the shit out of Batman and puts him in a pit in India or something, and the only way to escape is by being really good at climbing and jumping, two things Batman probably isn’t very good at, right?

Bane takes over Gotham by exploding everything, including all the bridges and a football game, and traps all of the policemen in the sewers because Commissioner Gordon sent them to see what was going on down there, and he sent them all into the same sewer hole, all at once, in one big group, which was probably a bad idea. Bane tells Gotham he has a fusion bomb, but he won’t blow it up right away because he wants the people of Gotham to feel false hope before they die, and to help them feel hopeful he lets all of the violent prisoners out of jail and gives them guns and holds a lot of executions, which is how you make people feel hopeful, I guess. Also, blowing up football is a good way to win people over, because who even likes football? Nobody.

Batman is healed by nice people in the jail pit and learns a lesson about how to climb and jump out of a pit, which is by climbing and jumping really good, better than he ever has before. Arriving back at Gotham, he finds Catwoman and is like, even though you betrayed me and gave me to Bane to get punched, you’re a hot woman so you’re probably a good person deep down inside, so help me beat up people, and she’s like, maybe. Batman frees all the trapped policemen, who have been in the sewer for two months but are still able to put a smart tactical plan into motion, the plan being, let’s walk down the street in a big group towards a thousand criminals with automatic weapons.

Batman, having learned from their first fight that punching Bane doesn’t work because Bane is way better at punching, comes up with a new plan using a bunch of clever bat weapons, only he doesn’t, he just stupidly walks right up to Bane and tries punching him, and Bane is still better at punching. But then, Batman tries punching even harder, and Bane’s mask breaks, and Bane is like, my mask, that keeps me alive, why did I let Batman punch it so much? Even though I am better at punching he is still pretty good at punching!

The nice business lady then reveals that she is the evil daughter of Liam Neeson from the first movie, and she’s mad at Batman because he killed Liam Neeson when all Liam Neeson ever did was try to murder everyone in Gotham with insanity water. And also, Bane wasn’t really kicked out of The League Of Shadows, so ha ha, Batman, you were slightly misled about the specific link between Bane and The League of Shadows! Your humiliation is now complete. Evil lady stabs Batman and leaves to go blow up the bomb, and Batman is about to be killed by Bane when Catwoman shows up and shoots Bane with a motorcycle. So, Bane is dead, I guess.

Batman flys his airplane thing around trying to get the bomb back to his bunker to be defused, but that doesn’t work, so he crashes the truck the bomb is on and decides to fly the bomb out of the city. While the bomb ticks down to zero, everyone stands around watching the evil lady slowly die from her truck crash injuries, then they all chat a bit, then Batman and Catwoman talk a little and smooch, then Batman reveals himself to Commissioner Gordon, the one person left in the city who hasn’t figured out that Bruce Wayne is Batman, and the audience is sitting there like, HEY, DID EVERYONE FORGET? BOMB. Batman finally gets around to flying the fusion bomb out over the lake where it explodes, killing him.

Then, a million things happen in five minutes, such as Blake quitting the police and going to the Batcave and also revealing that his name is Robin, ooh, and Wayne Manor is turned into an Orhpan Home for Orphans, and Alfred sobs over Bruce Wayne’s grave because Bruce died the same day as Batman which isn’t suspicious at all, and then Alfred goes to Italy or something and Bruce Wayne is there with Selina Kyle and everyone is happy except for everyone who died and those who survived and now live in a rubble-strewn city next to a lake with a bunch of fusion in it.

So! How was it? It was pretty good. It fit in perfectly with the first two movies, though that’s maybe a problem: it fits in so well it doesn’t really give us anything new or different. Batman is still a gloomy gus, Alfred is worried and weepy, The League of Shadows from the first movie is back, the city is under siege like it was in the second movie, and it all feels like the same basic thing, which is not a bad thing, just a similar thing. Bane is an intriguing villain for a while, but after snapping his fourteenth neck he gets a little dull, and he’s never as interesting or compelling or fun as Joker was. Also, there were no colorful, cartoony gangsters, which I think Batman needs: I like him fighting crime more than I like him fighting fusion terrorism. Basically, TDKR is the first movie plus the second movie minus Joker minus gangsters.

We caught up on a few movies over the weekend, and here are some quick reviews:

Lockout: What I was hoping would be a big, dumb, fun action movie turned out to be just a big, dumb action movie. There’s a prison, in space, filled with horrible villains who are in suspended animation. The president’s daughter goes up to make sure the space prisoners’ rights aren’t being violated, and a prisoner escapes and kills the only two guards who bother to protect the big button labeled “Let All The Prisoners Out Of Stasis.” Naturally, there’s only one guy who can infiltrate the space prison to rescue the president’s daughter, a wise-cracking former special commando agent (or whatever) who is waiting to go to space prison for a crime he totally committed. Oh wait, SORRY, he didn’t commit it, in a shocking twist that’s never been done before ever.

This movie was terrible and no fun and after about forty minutes we just fast-forwarded to the end. Part of the problem, I think was that it was rated PG-13. Look, if you’re going to do a movie about horribly killing a bunch of space prisoners, make it rated R. There’s a scene where Guy Pearce puts an explosive collar around a guy’s neck and it explodes, and they don’t show it. Show it. Show all of the violenceseses. Give yourself a fighting chance to make your dumb movie at least gross-out entertaining. You have people being sucked into space and you don’t even get to see them pop. Lame.

Also, why not let Guy Pearce speak with his normal accent? He’s never been great about hiding his Aussie accent anyway, and Aussie accents are great, and an Aussie accent in space would be even greater. It might seem unlikely that a top American covert commando tactical spec-ops agent assassin (or whatever the damn hell) is Australian, but then it’s unlikely to have a prison in space, so don’t sweat it. You have Peter Stormare, too, and, come on, you’re not fooling anyone by trying to make him sound American. Let him talk how he talks, all Swedish or whatever. Not enough Swedes in space. Plus, the main two bad guys were Scottish, so having all those accents flying around (in space!) would have been fantastic. Being able to not understand any of the dialogue totally would have helped this film.

Friends With Kids: Wealthy gorgeous young-ish people in Manhattan with vaguely defined jobs dress really well and live in beautiful expansive apartments and attend fancy dinners and go jogging a lot in Central Park. But they have problems, you guys! Because raising kids is hard when you have a million dollars and live in New York and rent cabins for ski trips! The stress of interviewing all the full-time nannies you can afford just gets to you. I can totes relate because I am rich and beautiful but sometimes I’m like, AGGH, I haven’t had sex with Maya Rudolph as much as I used to so my life is garbage!

This movie is notable for having an incredible cast of some of my absolute favorite actors/comedians — Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Chris O’Dowd — and essentially doing nothing with them but having them all be kinda whiny beautiful jerks. I love Adam Scott, too, but he’s a unlikable idiot for way longer than he should have been (roughly 99.9% of the film). The director and lead actress was Jennifer Westfeldt, who has been dating Jon Hamm for years, so even if she’s bummed at making a crummy by-the-numbers romantic comedy, at least she can go home and stare at Jon Hamm. No matter how bad a day you’ve had or how bad a movie you’ve made, being able to go home and stare at Jon Hamm has to help.

Wanderlust: Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston are beautiful youngish people who live in the city (Manhattan, the city that never sleeps and also the only city that exists anywhere, ever) and are ambitious career types, but then their careers go bust and they have to go live in Atlanta with comical jerk Ken Marino, but along the way they wind up stopping at a hippie commune in Georgia and one of them winds up liking it while the other doesn’t, and then the first one doesn’t like it but the other does, and then conflict, and then resolution. Great bunch of comedians and actors: Justin Theroux, Malin Akerman, Joe Lo Truglio, Jordan Peele, Alan Alda, Todd Barry, Kerri Kenney. Lots of hippie humor. Some dongs and butts, jokes about weed and toilets, and Paul Rudd being inexplicably weird while talking to himself in the mirror. It was okay. Decent rental.