Predators - Take

When I was a kid, I would play a game. Every time I watched a movie like Alien or Predator, (and in the wake of those two movies, there were a lot of movies like them) I would try to guess the order of the characters’ deaths. Maybe that sounds a little morbid for a ten-year-old, but I got pretty good at it after a while. I haven’t played that game in years, but Predators got me off the bench. Thank you, Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal, for bringing out the troubled ten-year-old in me one more time.

As most people who care to know such things already know, Robert Rodriguez wrote a treatment for this movie like a kabillion years ago. The people who make decisions about stuff like this, in their infinite wisdom, threw it in a drawer and greenlit a series of movies that turned two of the most iconic movie monsters of the last generation into, um, well…jokes. And not the good kind. I mean, like Margaret Cho-level. Then some executive went digging through some dusty filing cabinets to see what 40-year-old King Features Syndicate cartoon they could copy-paste Kevin James into and went, “Holy crap!” Then he called his buddy, Ronnie Metzler, over in production.

GUY

Ronnie, it’s me!

RONNIE

Hey, man. What’s shaking?

GUY

What if I told you that we’re sitting on a 

treatment for a wildly popular genre property 

by a well-known and (usually) very talented 

filmmaker who has enormous pull and appeal 

with genre audiences?

RONNIE

I’d say throw that sucker back in a drawer and 

let’s throw a monkeyful of money at the crabfest 

(yes, crab) that will become known as AVP:R, 

because after seeing it, the audience won’t even 

be able to muster the will to speak whole words, 

let alone complete sentences!”

GUY

Did I mention the property is from the 80s?

RONNIE 

Try back after we run these franchises so far into the 

ground that they only come up to steal and eat Eloi!

And so the treatment sat untouched for another four years, until another young hotshot executive found it after a particularly uncomfortable bout of illicit lovemaking (filing cabinets got sharp edges) with Valerie, the girl from marketing. He didn’t even bother to put his pants back on, but stood there, his wrinkled, powder-blue dress shirt the only thing covering his Christian shame, and called Brent in Development.

BUD 

Brent! You’re not going to 

believewhat I just found!

BRENT

Buddy, she’s nailed every guy here. 

It’s like a game of Battleship with 

her. I wouldn’t get too excited.

BUD

No, no, no! Robert Rodriguez wrote a 

sequel to Predator that doesn’t suck like a 

Night at the Roxbury! Wait…Battleship?

And so it was that in quick order, it was decided the Rodriguez would serve as the godfather to the project and oversee a hand-picked group of filmmakers to revise and update his vision of a group of human killing machines who are abducted and airdropped onto an alien planet, where they’re hunted by Predators….for sport! And perhaps profit, but the films never really get into the commercial side of what I can only assume is the lucrative business of human disenspine-ening.

They don’t need to. This flick is what monster movies are supposed to be, and what they haven’t been since, oh, let’s say Pitch Black: this mofo is frickin’ fun.  I’m very much over the whole eighties nostalgia thing, but for this flick, I can make an exception. No disrespect to Danny Glover, but this is the sequel Predator should have always had.

Relative newcomer director Nimrod Antal demonstrated he could navigate tight, tense character relationships in the immensely solid, if underseen Armored, and he rises to the task here as well. This is the first monster movie I’ve seen in fifteen years where the filmmakers seem to have bothered to look up the meanings of “suspense” and “storytelling.” Not that the movie is high-falutin’ in the least. This sucker revels in its simple premise and B-movie roots. There’s plenty of action, blood, gore, and creatures (the Predator-world “dogs” are particularly thrilling to ten-year-old me), but Rodriguez and Antal are smart enough to know that that all means jack unless you give a shit about the characters. And to that end, they gave us actors (not that the original Predator needed them. Did just fine without, thanks). Adrien Brody is an unlikely leading man in any film (except The Pianist), but especially this one. The one sticking point for me is probably that he’s miscast. He does his full-on best, but he can’t not be him.

The end result of getting competent, invested people on both sides of the camera is that they know how to set up an immersive fantasy where you, as an audience member, aren’t yanked out of the story every five minutes by stupid filmmaking choices. In short, a good movie lets you forget that you’re watching a movie so you can just go along for the ride. This goes double for sci-fi, and triple for summer movies. They’re supposed to be the epitome of escapism.

And it so it goes with Predators. We follow Brody’s character, Royce, as he literally appears out of thin air and falls to the jungle floor, where he meets a motley crew of killers, assassins and murderers from all different backgrounds. It’s like a model U.N. of badasses. From there, I get to start playing my game as the entire cohort tries to figure out where they are, who they can trust, and how they can escape while trying to avoid being turned into macho nachos with biceps sauce. Yes, even the token lady is macho. Topher Grace, on the other hand, not so much. It’s a great mix of antiheroes, a bunch of gritty, gruesome solo artists who have to come together and form a supergroup to keep their spinesnskulls from ending up on a laquered wooden panel in some alien’s rec room. It’s the Dirty Dozen in a spacejungle. This flick is a pure, unabashed testosterone fantasy, and it is a blast (from shoulder-mounted laser cannon).

Four out of five future Governors!

Toy Story 3: Take

Take the hankies out of the toy chest, you're going to need them for Pixar's third (and final?) outing with the toys that launched them into sky, eclipsing and redefining what it meant to be a Disney animated film for the last decade.

Often with sequels there comes the dubious sink in the soul, that worry that the movie you loved so much the first or second time is going to be pimped out and under-produced (I'm looking at you, "Cinderella II: Dreams Come True"!), but I had faith that Lasseter, Unkrich (his hand-picked directing successor) and co. would never sell out their beloved toys. Sometimes in this life, faith is rewarded. "Toy Story 3" is every bit as charming, smart, exciting, and heart-true as its predecessors.

It's been 11 years and nothing's skipped a beat. There's no sign of fatigue or age in the work done or in the source material. In fact I found, and think much of the audience may as well, that more than the previous entries, "3" elicits a unique and less-explored emotional landscape. The strange land of growing up. The bridge between the ages; burned to ensure maturation or preserved at the risk of stagnation/ostracization?

Which is not to say the movie is some sort of top-heavy rumination on times and things lost. "Toy Story 3" is as much if not more adventurous a yarn than the predecessors. The toys' donation to a local daycare (and if this film is anything to go by I'll never be setting foot in one of those again) pops the cork on the wellspring for new characters that so closely resemble the fuzzy memories of my youth I found myself wondering if indeed perhaps my sister HAD owned a Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear.

I may have to sit on this notion for a while to stand behind it but as of this writing I think that the "Toy Story" trilogy, thanks to the amazing third installment, may go down as my all time favorite and creatively fulfilling film trilogy of all time.

Get Him to the Greek: Doubletake

I was probably the only person in the world who didn't like Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. When I saw Mike Myers's opus I was frustrated because the movie didn't seem to know what it was. Was it a James Bond Parody, a skewing of the '60s, or was it just a wacky romp? I needed the film to make the decision.

I felt very much the same way with Get Him to the Greek. The trailers led me to believe, and get excited for, a crazy, over the top, manic ride of the insane Aldous Snow tormenting poor music intern Aaron Green, with one scene of P. Diddy chasing them down a hallway. What the movie was, unfortunately, was a the tale of a sad rock and roll star who, yes drinks and at least talks about doing heroin, but is also extremely verbose and reasonable. We also are offered up a lot of characters who say "this is crazy" and then just go along with whatever. And some extremely unbelievable rock songs which are both tepid and too wacky to be believed. (The hit song is the "The Clap"? Really?)

In the end the one scene that satisfied was Sean Combs chasing Aldous and Aaron down a hallway, because it was actually funny, wacky, and interesting. The rest of the movie, which leads to Aldous learning a lesson about himself and his sobriety, can just go die.

Lessons don't take the place of comedy, Judd Apataw -where ever you are.

I give this movie one Bedtime Bear.

Get Him to the Greek: Take

“Get Him to the Greek!”

If I have to hear that phrase one more time I might but quit movies forever. You know those trailers that trick you with scenes that don’t make it into the final move? Well, welcome to the mother of them all. The trailers for “Get Him to the Greek”, make it seem like there is dialogue: Lizzy Moss talking about Gossip Girl, P Diddy asking about Cher, but it’s all a lie. The only words spoken, I repeat, THE ONLY WORDS SPOKEN IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE ARE: Get. Him. To. The. Greek.
Sure, they are said by a variety of different characters (Jonah Hill, Sean Combs, Russell Brand et al), in a variety of different tones and emoting different meanings ala:

“Get him to the Greek!”
“Get him to the Greek?”
“GET him to the GREEK!!!!”
“get him to the greek…….”

Over and over again.

No one ever questions why this phrase seems to be all the characters in THIS MOVIE can utter, it’s just accepted along with the raucous good time Aldous Snow is having. I suppose it’s mean to show us that words are meaningless and actions are the only things you should judge a character on- but for this reviewer it was nothing more then living torture.

Thanks a lot Apatow. Who ever you are.

I give this movie one frustrated Archie.