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.

(For any newcomers, a quick word: My wife, Kris, writes a column here every Friday under the heading “Lady Business.” — Chris)

Iâ€ve never been cool a day in my life. I’ve been known to have my very occasional moments of coolness, but they end in a heartbeat. One moment, Iâ€m letting a witty rejoinder fly. The next, Iâ€m typing the phrase “witty rejoinder”. It’s tragic, really.

There was a time in college (and slightly after) where I wanted to be cool so badly that I did the unthinkable. I dated a hipster…for seven long years. Imagine living for seven years talking about Einstürzende Neubauten, Beat Poets, Brian Eno, Peter Greenaway and David Lynch. We would watch Robocop or Predator, but only ironically. It was a dark time.

When I look back, I see that Peter Greenawayâ€s movies are insanely beautiful, and late 1980â€s/early 1990â€s Industrial music was pretty darned awesome. I just felt like I was living in a box. Donâ€t put Robocop in a corner!

The other night, as someone who shall remain nameless was playing video games, I decided to open up the cool box and give Twin Peaks a try as itâ€s available on Netflix instant streaming. Why not? Well, I got about 20 minutes into the thing before I became achingly depressed and fell asleep. Being cool is a lot of work. Itâ€s long silences. Itâ€s quirky oddities. Itâ€s tiring. Apparently, thereâ€s a lady in there with a log. There may or may not be a little person who talks backwards. (I could be confusing this with the movie.) Being cool takes way more effort than Iâ€m willing to put in.

Then, I found Escape from New York was also on instant streaming and it wasnâ€t trying so hard. It has a simple idea: put a young, kinda hot Kurt Russell into tight pants, slap on an eye patch and make him say adorably over-the-top quippy things for a mere 99 minutes.

What I love about Escape from New York is that itâ€s just so damned implausible. The plot involves the idea that in 1988, the crime rate rises 400%. By 1997, Manhattan is a walled up maximum security prison. We’re meant to believe in a mere nine years, the people of Manhattan – some that have invested $750,000 in a one bedroom apartment – have just walked away without question. Then again, there’s not much explanation of anything in this movie. For instance: how they feed the prisoners, who would have voted for Donald Pleasence, or why everyone in the movie seems to know who Snake Plissken is. The movie just IS. Get on board, already!

The little moments make this movie. For instance, our hero talks in a strangely high-pitched voice (this may have something to do with his super tight cargo pants). A character named Romero has perhaps the most fantastic hair in all of filmdom. The accessories are fabulous. They shove the president into an improbably teensy escape pod. Adrienne Barbeau’s boobs defy logic for the entire movie. They drive around in a station wagon that looks like the Griswold’s Family Truckster. The prisoners somehow managed to invent a car that runs on steam! Prisoners are apparently issued guns and spray paint upon arriving. There’s the obligatory scene where two seconds are left on a bomb timer. The best part was when I got to have a sweet little remembrance of what a cassette tape looks like.

No more being cool for me. Now, I feel something starring Burt Reynolds needs a viewing to keep me grounded.

Itâ€s Always Sunny

Americaâ€s Got Talent

Iâ€ve come up with some games to make the best of a sad situation and keep myself entertained without having to actually leave the house,  live my life or be social.

What are they doing right now? – I play this a lot with the Real Housewives series because Bravo has them on 24/7. When I see it on the guide, I take a guess as to whatâ€s going on in the show and change the channel to find out if Iâ€m correct. You can be as creative as you like. For the Housewives, the choices usually are:

A woman talking into a cell phone while holding it in front of her face.
Several women fighting with each other and waving wine around.
Several women discussing the previous nightâ€s fight over lunch.
An exterior shot of a house the size of your high-school. Beige, of course.
A commercial for tampons.

Mixed Martial Arts is also great for this. Choices can be:

Fighters dancing around and flinching away from punches.
Fighters locked together in what appears to be humping with extreme violence.
Fighters pacing around the floor with nervous energy. 
A shot of the ring with a bloody mat. 
A commercial for Axe.

Can you believe this value? – We get two home shopping networks for some reason. I used to love Tivo because it let you choose the channels wanted to receive and I could always block them. However, we now have whatever our cable company is calling itself nowâ€s DVR and I canâ€t figure out how to block the channels. So, I turned home shopping into a game. The way you play is, you see how many ways a salesperson can describe a certain item without repeating themselves. I must warn you, these people are GOOD. I once watched two women describing an outdoor/gardening shoe without repeating themselves for nearly 20 minutes. I was mesmerized. I may have also been hepped up on cold medicine, or just tremendously bored. I canâ€t recall which.

Where have I seen that actor before? – As an avid Law and Order rerun watcher, I tend to run across a dearth of people that look familiar that I canâ€t quite place. I think every actor was on there at least once. That casting director must know EVERYBODY. It also explains the fact that when Jerry Orbachâ€s photo popped up in the Oscars montage the year he died, the room went nuts. However, I digress. For this game, you either have to have a good brain for faces, or access to the IMDB website. It also helps to have a pause button on your TV, and to have seen a lot of Seinfeld episodes.

Blind Instant Streaming – Sometimes, I find that I spend far too much time choosing something from the Netflix Instant Streaming menu. So, Iâ€ll close my eyes and hit the buttons like crazy. Whatever movie I land on, I have to watch for at least five minutes. I must admit that this game is mostly for laughs, because it inevitably lands on something so criminally awful that I canâ€t bring myself to press play.

And she was all… –  On our honeymoon, we watched a Spanish dubbed version of Junior, made up some dialogue and ended up with the line “I canâ€t believe I drank the baby.” (I donâ€t think I fully understood how Mr. Schwarzenegger was intended to get pregnant in the film.) Of course, donâ€t limit yourself to talking over shows in a foreign language. Just put the TV on mute, and start gabbing away at anything. The best things seem to be soap operas, and shows aimed at teens.

TV and I are so close that we finish each other’s sentences -  Sometimes, the menu cuts off the title of a show. The game here is to figure out the rest of the title before clicking the info button. I’m always wrong. My favorite channel for this is Lifetime. One time, it just said “Love’s…” which pretty much opens the box for anything. For instance (taking into account that its Lifetime), “Love’s…Brutal Beating at the Hands of  a Man That Seemed Perfect at First” or “Love’s…Forbidden Tempation Ruins Your Marriage and You’re Left to Pick Up the Pieces on Your Own Because Men Are Selfish!”. Turns out, it was “Love’s Deadly Triangle”. So close!

Some selections on Netflix Instant you might want to watch, or re-watch (probably only if you’re in the U.S.):

They Live: What a weird, terrible, awesome movie this is. Horrifying “acting” by Rowdy Roddy Piper, hit-you-over-the-head social commentary, outstandingly poor production values, but still somewhat of a landmark sci-fi film, somehow. The long, quiet scene where Piper tries on the glasses that reveal the alien infiltration is still one of the best sci-fi scenes ever put to film, and the alleyway fight scene between Piper and Keith David, which goes on for about twenty-three minutes, then ends, then continues for eighty-six more minutes, is just hilarious. The rest is pretty much garbage, but highly watchable garbage.

(Just a note: I once saw Roddy Piper in an airport buying bottled water in a gift shop. After he left, I went up to the little Asian woman behind the register, and said excitedly, “Do you know who that was! That was Roddy Piper! Roddy Piper!” She looked at me, confused, then offered me a notepad and said “Writing paper?”)

Animal Kingdom: Watched this recently one night when I couldn’t sleep: an award-winning Australian crime drama. Great performances, lots of tension, but has that a-bit-too-slow indie pace to it. Decent movie, though. Wish it had subtitles, as some of the accents were hard to decipher. Based in part on the Walsh Street police shootings in Melbourne in the 1980’s.

The Twilight Zone: All the episodes! Apart from the classics, a lot of these are kind of clunky, campy, and heavily padded — just get to the end reveal, already! They’re still mostly enjoyable, though, and I’ll say this: Rod Serling was a hell of a wordsmith. Often his narrated intros and outros are the best parts. Comedian Chris Hardwick said the show could have been called “Nice Try, Asshole!”, and if you say this aloud at the end of most episodes, it usually fits.

The Way of the Gun: After Christopher McQuarrie won an Oscar for writing The Usual Suspects, he set out to write a crime film featuring “characters who don’t go out of their way to ingratiate themselves to you, who aren’t traditionally sympathetic.” He pretty much succeeded, as there’s really no one likeable, at all, in this movie. But I still kind of like it. There’s an early scene in which one of the “heroes” punches Sarah Silverman in the face, and then a time machine appears and someone from 2011 pops out and says “Thank you.”

The Edge: A condescending rich jerk and a sleazebag photographer wind up lost in the woods, squabbling incessantly over a supermodel despite the fact that a GIANT DAMN BEAR is trying to eat them both. There’s something great about that premise. The film isn’t actually great, but it’s good, and it’s one of those I just have to watch every so often, because how often do you get to see Anthony Hopkins calling a giant bear a “motherfucker”? Hardly ever.

Paranormal Activity: What scares me more than scary things is the idea that a scary thing might be about to scare me. Like how Roy from the I.T. Crowd feels about balloons: “They explode suddenly, and unexpectedly. They are filled with the capacity to give me a little fright, and I find that unbearable.” That’s what Paranormal Activity is, sitting there scared of being about to be scared, and I thought it was pretty effective at that.

Luther: A BBC cop drama starring Idris Elba as an unconventional detective (I think pretty much all detectives are unconventional at this point). I only watched the first episode, and it wasn’t great by any means, but a) I’ve heard they get better, and b) Idris Elba is amazing in it. There’s a moment in the first episode where he realizes his wife may be about to dump him, and the panic that shows in his eyes should net him some sort of award. Best Panicky Eyes in a Dramatic Television Series, or something. I have to admit, though, it’s still a little weird to hear him speaking with his natural accent after watching him as Stringer Bell on The Wire for so long.

I discovered Party Down last week on Netflix Instant. I’d been aware of it for a while, actually, but I wasn’t a big fan of anyone in the cast until I’d come to really enjoy Adam Scott on Parks and Recreation this season. So, I finally decided to sit down and check it out, and wound up watching all twenty episodes in the span of a few days. It’s great, which sucks, because it got cancelled a while back.

Party Down is a about a catering company in Los Angeles, staffed by slackers, cynics, and delusional actors. There’s Henry (Adam Scott), an actor who achieved a measure of fame by reciting a catch phrase (“Are we having fun yet?”) in a series of beer commercials, but found himself unable to distance himself from it and has all but given up on acting. There’s Casey (Lizzy Kaplan), an aspiring stand-up comedian going through a divorce while trying to break into mainstream comedy. Roman (Martin Starr) is a bitter, pedantic, unpublished writer of “hard” sci-fi, and his foil is the brain-dead but handsome direct-to-DVD actor Kyle (Ryan Hansen). Constance (Jane Lynch) is a good-natured yet spacey former actor, though she is replaced toward the end of season one, first by Jennifer Coolidge and then by Megan Mullally. Trying to manage and inspire them is the positive but powerless oaf Ron Donald (Ken Marino) whose dream is to gain the respect of his employees and own a restaurant franchise called Soup-R-Crackers.

Each week, Party Down caters a different event: one episode takes place at a funeral for a (not so) upstanding citizen, another is a sweet sixteen for a spoiled rich kid who discovers she doesn’t have any friends. There’s a draft party for a college football player who can’t seem to get drafted, and a birthday party for Steve Gutenberg turns into a reading of Roman’s lackluster sci-fi screenplay. At each event, the crew drinks, smokes pot, eats the food they’re supposed to be serving, and otherwise slouches through their duties with the absolute minimum of effort.

There’s plenty of crude humor (among the events they cater is a neighborhood sex party, a pornographic video awards party, and a singles event for the elderly), and loads of cynicism, but there’s some real heart buried in all the dick jokes, which, makes it a shame that Party Down was cancelled after only two seasons.  Henry’s initial despair and his eventual turnaround as he becomes involved with Casey, and Ron’s clueless earnestness — he caters his own high-school reunion, foolishly thinking he’ll impress his former classmates — can be somewhat touching at times, though the moment it appears to be approaching any real sentimentality, the show thankfully veers back into comedy.

I tried to find some good clips on YouTube, but there’s nothing on there that really demonstrates what makes the show so enjoyable (although there are a few complete episodes on there). You’ll just have to watch them all on Netflix Instant or rent them.

Some more of my favorite picks for your Netflix Instant viewing pleasure.

Easy A: The really nice thing about Netflix Instant is that it makes it easy to check out movies you’d probably never see otherwise, like this teen comedy based on The Scarlet Letter. I’d heard some good things about it but it’s probably something I’d never rent or see in a theater. We watched it this weekend, and it’s a fun film: Emma Stone is great as a high school girl who rides rumors of her promiscuity to new highs and then lows, and Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson steal every scene they’re in as her goofball hippie parents.

A Bunch of James Bond Movies: These were added recently to celebrate the 50th anniversary of James Bond, and I suspect they won’t be up indefinitely. But, at the moment, you can watch Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Never Say Never Again, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, and Licence to Kill. That’s a weekend killer right there.

Black Dynamite: Kris mentioned it her last post, and it’s one of our favorites. This homage to blacksploitation films of the 1970’s made less than $300 thousand dollars at the box office but is one of the greatest spoofs of all time and hilarious start to finish. And, if you’re already a fan, the Nerdist podcast recently featured a panel with the actors and writers that’s worth a listen.

Farscape: I’ve never seen this sci-fi show, but it was recommended by a commenter the last time I posted a Stream Cuisine. His review: “Farscape. Farscape. Farscape. Farscape. Farscape.” That’s a strong argument.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus: This movie is terrible in the way you want movies to be terrible. Filmed for the SyFy channel over the course of almost two weeks, it features 80’s pop star Debbie Gibson as a scientist trying to save the world from a giant prehistoric shark and an octopus the size of an aircraft carrier. Can you believe that nonsense? Debbie Gibson as a scientist? I did a write-up for it for my other long-neglected site last year.

Dreamscape: Remember this 80’s film? It was great, huh? Starring Dennis Quaid as a psychic who learns to enter people’s dreams, he must protect the President of the United States from an assassin sent into his dream to kill him because he’s gone soft on nuclear war. Ah, the 80’s, when all we had to worry about was the entire earth being destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Those were such simple times. With the dream-invading film Inception being such a huge hit, I’m sort of surprised Dreamscape isn’t being remade already.

The Tick: The short-lived live action television show from 2001, based on the comic book about a clueless superhero and his band of equally clueless superhero friends. Died well before its time.

Netflix, I’m convinced, is the greatest invention of all time. It took a tedious, nigh-impossible chore — going to a video store, picking out a movie, coming home, watching it, and then going back to the store to return it — and made it as easy as ticking a box on the internet and opening and closing an envelope.

Naturally, opening and closing that envelope become too much goddamn work, so Netflix quickly reinvented the greatest invention of all time, and came up with Netflix Instant, which lets you strean movies and TV shows on your PC and TV just moments after you decide you want to watch them.

The catalog of streaming entertainment isn’t entirely fantastic, but it’s constantly growing and changing, so from time to time I’ll post about the better stuff I’m watching, so you can watch it (in the U.S., at least) if you haven’t already.

That Mitchell & Web Look (Seasons 1, 2 and 3)

Sketch comedy by Robert Mitchell and David Webb. Clever, rude, insightful, silly, almost always funny if a little over-reliant on recurring characters. Like all sketch comedy, it’s hit-or-miss, but they’re fully aware of it, even featuring a sketch where they discuss how to order the sequence of hits and misses in the show. I think this is the best sketch comedy since Mr. Show. That’s Numberwang!

Exit Through The Gift Shop

I admit I never got the big deal about Banksy, but I sort of do after streaming this documentary, which I never would have rented because I never got the big deal about Banksy. Meet an unusual fellow who videotapes everything in his life, watch him infiltrate the underground street art community, and see him somehow become the toast of Los Angeles as a street artist himself. If you only watch one documentary from 2010 (like I did) watch this one.

Futurama, Volume 5

Volumes 1-4 have been streaming for ages, and while I own them on DVD, this means I don’t have to fuck around opening the boxes and looking for the discs I want and losing precious seconds inserting them into the DVD player like some kind of caveman from two years ago. Volume 5, which aired recently on Comedy Central, is already online and streaming. Not a lot of instant classics, but a few strong episodes, like “The Late Philip J. Fry” and “The Prisoner of Benda” are worth a second, third, and fourth viewing.

Firefly/Serenity

I recently sold my box-set of the single season of Firefly, and then immediately pined for them. Luckily, Netflix saved me from having to slink back to Dimple Records to re-purchase them by having them available to stream. Shiny!

Serenity, the film made specifically so Firefly fans would shut the hell up about the show being canceled, isn’t great, but at least you can see the useless characters from the show die. (I am fully prepared to argue about why these characters are useless and deserved to die.)

The Larry Sanders Show (all seasons)

I didn’t watch much of this when it was on, and after streaming about eight episodes recently, I’ve decided I don’t entirely love it. Still, it’s evident how influential it was, considering how many of the best TV comedies these days are single-camera, no-laugh-track affairs.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

I never, ever, ever would have rented this, but I streamed it one day because otherwise I might have had to do something productive. It’s great, fun, and charming, and since it’s not a Pixar film it won’t make a shameless and transparent attempt to cause you to weep uncontrollably (though it does have its sentimental moments).

If you’re watching anything good on Netflix Instant, let me know in the comments.

Aliens! They be invadin’ all the time. Am I right? Ladies, back me up on this.

I’ve seen three alien invasion movies in the past month or so: Skyline, Battle: Los Angeles, and Monsters, but before we get to them I want to highlight a few things about alien invasion movies in general.

There are three main rules that make up most alien invasion films:

1) The aliens have a poorly conceived attack plan
2) The aliens go door-to-door looking for humans (there are billions of us and we have a bunch of doors: this is gonna take a while)
3) The aliens have a glaring weakness that humans can exploit

Take War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise edition): It’s got all three elements. 1) The alien’s attack plan is to bury their attack machines under the ground thousands of years before humans are even around, then wait for us to evolve tanks and fighter jets before trying to take over the planet. Extreme procrastination. 2) They get out of their invulnerable tripods and spend twenty minutes looking for Tom Cruise hiding in a basement. 3) They die because they’re allergic to Earth-cooties.

Signs has all three in spades; in fact, the aliens in this movie are the dumbest ever created. 1) They announce their plans to attack by creating crop circles and waiting for everyone on Earth to realize the attack is about to begin. 2) They then skulk around some strategic locations like Mel Gibson’s farmhouse and a Brazilian child’s birthday party so everyone can see them. Also, they’re naked, which comes into play in: 3) They’re allergic to water. So, everyone knows they’re attacking, they’re allergic to 75% of the planet, and they walk around naked attacking us individually.  They are finally defeated by a little girl’s glass of water and a pantry door.

Now, to the more recent alien invasion movies. Spoilers, naturally, if you haven’t seen them.

Battle: Los Angeles

Summary: Aaron Eckhart is an aging military veteran who is about to retire and is haunted by a past failed mission, which is subtly indicated by a character in the movie basically blurting out “Hey, Aaron Eckhart, you’re an aging military veteran who is about the retire and you are haunted by a past failed mission!” It’s really about that blunt. Aliens start plunking down into the ocean off the coast of Los Angeles, then wade into shore and start killing everyone. Aaron Eckhart redeems himself for his past failed mission where he got a bunch of soldiers killed by leading his new platoon of soldiers on the alien attack mission and getting a bunch of them killed, then figures out everything about the aliens, like how to kill them (shoot them in their bodies). This movie is awful.

Stupid Attack Plan:  Yes! Slowly walking around the streets shooting us one at a time with guns? I’m not saying it doesn’t work, but surely you aliens have some sort of giant bombs or poison gas or something. Luckily for them, our Army is dumber: they think it’s a ground invasion only, somehow forgetting that the aliens had to fly through a bunch of outer space to get to earth and may have a couple spaceships with them.

Door-to-Door Search: Yes! They try to break into a police station to get the people inside it, and can’t even manage that: they’re foiled by a couple soldiers and a veterinarian.

Exploitable Weakness: Yes! The spaceships are all controlled by a single main spaceship thing that if you explode it, none of the other spaceships will work. Remember, if you’re traveling thousands of light-years to attack a planet, bring some spare main spaceship things with you.

Skyline

Summary: Giant alien lens flares land in LA and start sucking people up. Meanwhile, some rich young attractive  people go to the roof of their apartment building where they are almost killed by aliens and then decide to go to the parking garage where they are almost killed by aliens so they go back to the roof about six more times and are almost killed by aliens each time so they mainly sit in the apartment arguing about whether or not they should go to the roof again, which they do fourteen more times. The Army shows up and nukes an alien spacecraft but the aliens fix it, and then the Army figures maybe they should put three soldiers on a roof with a bazooka, because if the nukes don’t work then that clearly will.

Eventually, two of the attractive people go to the roof yet again and the aliens get them, finally. Also, one of them is pregnant, and she tells her boyfriend, and at first he’s all “Gross!” but then he’s all “I love you so much that even if my brain is sucked out and put into an alien robot I will fight to defend our baby,” and that happens and he does. This movie is awful.

Stupid Attack Plan: Yes and no! Sucking humans up with light works great, but they give up on it almost immediately and start stomping around in the streets and moving on to:

Door-To-Door Search: Yes, for what feels like hours. Including one alien robot spending five solid minutes slowly creeping around one apartment just to abduct an old man and his yappy dog. I hope he got chewed out by the boss alien robot. “You were gone for a half-hour and all you have is this old guy and his Jack Russell?”

Exploitable Weakness: Sort of! The aliens did not count on that one guy’s love for his preggo girlfriend, which inspires him to punch alien robots to death with his fists. Luckily, he appears to be the only human in love with someone, because no one else puts up much of a fight.

Monsters

A NASA space probe is bringing back alien germs from one of Jupiter’s moons and breaks up in the atmosphere, scattering alien goo all over Mexico. The alien microbes find Mexico perfectly to their liking, and grow to enormous proportions and stomp all over the place, and most of Mexico is quarantined. A scuzzy photojournalist is down in Mexico trying to take pictures of dead people to sell to the newspapers, and a media magnate’s privileged daughter is also in Mexico (for some reason), and her dad orders the dirt-bag photographer to see that she safely makes it back to America. The jerk photographer eventually grows less jerky, the pretty girl… well, she doesn’t change much, but she stays pretty and starts to like the less-jerky-growing guy, so that’s nice. We eventually see the giant weird aliens and learn what they’re all about.

This movie is actually not bad, more of an low-budget indie road movie set against the backdrop of a giant alien invasion. It’s on Netflix Instant, and you might want to check it out. It’s a little dull in parts but has some effective scenes and is a pretty refreshing, low-key sci-fi flick.

Stupid Attack Plan: Nope! The aliens were shanghaied by NASA, and they’re just wandering around doing their alien thing. It’s the earthlings that have all the hang-ups, man.

Door-To-Door Search: Not really! There is a scene where a giant alien sticks his tentacle into a gas station food mart, but he might just be looking for stale Ring-Dings and lottery scratch-off tickets.

Exploitable Weakness: No! It’s not clear how effective air strikes are on the aliens, but the giant wall built along the border doesn’t keep them out of the United States. If you’re as clever as I am you may detect some incredibly subtle social commentary here.

For decades, filmmakers have looked ahead to the 21st Century, imagining it as a time of wonder and technological advancement. And here we are, wading balls-deep in the very future they so fervently imagined. The Future Was Then will examine various filmmakers’ visions and predictions of a future that we are now living in, and see how they stack up against reality.

Our first film is Freejack, the 1992 Emilio Estevez time-travel film that takes place in the distant, futuristic world of 2009. Keep in mind, I’ll just be looking objectively at the predictions the filmmakers, not actually reviewing the film itself, though it should be noted that the film in this case completely sucks.

Film: Freejack

Made in/Set in: 1992/2009

The Future 2009 Was: Fuck-ugly cars, video phones, and devices capable of transporting people into the future so rich old people could steal their bodies.

The Actual 2009 Was: The International Year of Natural Fibres. Hum. Okay. Technology-wise, Windows 7 was released and works okay, I guess.

Plot Summary: Emilio Estevez is a race-car driver in 1991 who is whisked into the future of 2009 moments before he dies in a fiery crash. This process is known as “bonejacking”: stealing the body of someone about to die, transporting it into the future, and letting some old rich guy use it. Emilio manages to escape the clutches of the bonejackers before they can sedate him and goes on the lam, something that apparently happens so often there’s a name for these escapees: “Freejacks.” Emilio jacks freely all over the goddamn place, trying to find his 1991 girlfriend, Rene Russo, who doesn’t appear to have aged one whit in the 18 years since Emilo “died”.

Pursuing Emilio is Mick Jagger, the head bonejacker, who drives a tank and supervises a bunch of inept, go-cart driving thugs. Emilio eventually learns that Rene Russo’s boss, Anthony Hopkins, is the one who ordered Emilio’s body to be brought to the future, because Hopkins is dying and needs a new body. He is also in love with Rene Russo and figures the best way to seduce her is by using the body of her dead boyfriend. That’s not creepy or anything. Hopkins, whose mind has been downloaded into a computer, tries to take over Emilio’s body, but the process is interrupted and Emilio is free to continue his unconvincing relationship with his old (literally) girlfriend.

How well did Freejack predict the future of 2009?

Automatic Doors: Here in the film’s 2009, you can say “door” and your door will open. Wow. I’d like to point out that as far back as the 1950’s, we had automatic doors that would open and you didn’t even have to say “door” to activate them, so that seems like a step back.

There are also automatic lights in Freejack. Walk into a room and the lights go on! They got that right: we have automatic lights in our breakroom at work. Sometimes if I’m sitting in there reading the paper for a while, the lights will turn off  and I’ll have to wave my arms around until they turn back on. When this happens, I’ll say something futuristic, like: “Goddamn it, stupid lights.”

Cars: Cars in Freejack seem to come in a few different types: the bonejackers drive red go-carts, the cops drive blue motorcycles controlled by unmarked buttons, and the rich are driven around in giant ugly bubble limousines with a little uncovered pod in the front so the chauffeur gets wet if it rains, just to remind him he’s a lower form of life. The film also features a champagne delivery truck so rich people can have fresh champagne at a moment’s notice. They certainly are rich, those rich.

I haven’t seen any ugly bubble limos driving around in the real future, but the 2010 Ford Transit Connect is an eyesore of futuristic proportions.

Time Travel: We currently cannot transport people from 1992 into 2009, and that goes double for Emilio Estevez, who doesn’t have a single film credit in ’09. In 2010, he had to resort to jacking his own bones: his only credit is a film he wrote and directed himself.

The Spiritual Switchboard: This is the name of the massive computer that Anthony Hopkins’ brain is being kept alive in on the 200th floor of his building (in the future, buildings are SUPERTALL). We still can’t download our brains into computers and I don’t really want to try: my own computer is still convinced that the iPod I plug into it every single day is, in fact, a digital camera. I wouldn’t trust it to know what to do with my brain. It’d probably try to install ringtones in it.

Video Phones: If there’s one thing people in the past thought we’d be using in the future, it was video phones. Thing is, they thought we’d be using it for every call, no matter how trivial, when in reality we mainly use it for attending boring business meetings in another city or for showing our wangs to random strangers on Chat Roulette.

Mick Jagger: Score one for the film! We’ve still got Mick Jagger here in the future, and he’s still pretty darn cool.

Gosh, Things Are Expensive: Mick Jagger states that the cost of transporting a living body 18 years into the future costs $17 million. That really doesn’t sound like enough. For instance, it cost $30 million just to make the shitty film Freejack. (Its domestic gross? $17 million! Weird.)

Sectors: As Emilio is Freejacking here and there, he’s described by those chasing him as entering various “sectors.” Sci-fi futures are always full of sectors, for some reason. I guess city planners are just too busy signing for champagne deliveries to name roads and neighborhoods.

Suicide Assistance: There’s a billboard shown advertising suicide assistance, since the future is so terrible everyone wants to kill themselves, especially limo drivers because they’re so tired of getting rained on (seriously, the limo driver in the movie blows himself up with a grenade). This may be in the film because California voted on it in 1992, the same year Freejack was made, though it didn’t pass: only 46% of the state was in favor of killing themselves. Come on, California! We can do better!

Prediction Score: 2/10

Film Score: 1/10