We gave our jack of all trades, Orestes “H. is for Tom Baker Hatin’ Bidmead” Xistos a couple of tenners and a list of films to review. This piece of shit is what we got. A free CD and a pint if you can point out all the references to other films.
Johnny English Reborn
Cast: Mr. Bean, Scully, Emma Frost, that sexy dude from The Wire (no, not Omar).
Once upon a time, there was a secret agent called Mr. Bean that played a bumbling fool on national tv, misleading the Russkies (stupid Warsaw pact dissidents!) and the like. One tragic day, a mad rogue agent (played by Jeremy Clarkson) goes and 86s Mr. Bean‘s spy partner, Teddy.
Traumatised by the death of his plushy friend (and who wouldn’t?), Bean goes into retirement into a Tibetan Origami shop. While learning to meditate to calculate the price of tea in China, he gets called back to his agency, which is now sponsored by Acer.
Uh.
His new boss is Dana Scully, who just had enough of Fox Mulder and now is actually furthering her career while Fox shags anything with a skirt in California. You could say he’s fornicating California. I’ll be here all week.
So, Dana (looking very shaggable) tells Bean to do some shit. I dunno, I was eating popcorn. Then that very hot guy from The Wire (who also is very shaggable) tells Bean to watch out for Omar. Bean gets paired up with Comic Relief and they both go to China, teaming up with Jackie Chan to stop that old dude from The Full Monty from kidnapping the daughter of the British Ambassador.
After having Comic Relief (played by Chris Tucker) yell in a very high pitched whine and kicking some ass, it is revealed that the ringleader of an international group of terrorist is led by Gwyneth Paltrow, so they have to fly to The movie ends on a delicious cliffhanger, as the whistling of ‘A hunting we will go’ means that our heroes are in trouble. Everyone in the theatre gasps when all three heroes get shot dead by Omar. They were warned that Omar is coming…
In a nutshell: /\(*.*)/\ WHAT A TWIST.
The Rum Diary
Cast:Raoul Duke, that blondie from The Core, a sexy blonde and the singer from Green Day.
After getting a big check from Garry Trudeau, Raoul Duke finally moves to his dream city, San Juan. Sadly, he was too drunk and ends up in Vice City. Pairing up with Tommy Vercetti (Benicio del Toro), they both fight crime, helped by a little lizard with crooked neck (played by Giovanni Ribisi).
Things do turn for the worse with the arrival of that blonde dude from The Core. You see, he was lobbying for cigarettes but got his face half-burned by some pale faced hippie with green hair (what a joker!), so he went mad with power. Becoming the DA of Vice City is first step into world domination (of course).
So, Raoul Duke and Tommy enlist Dean Corso, Ichabod Crane and some Keith Richards impersonator to steal all the gold in the governor’s mansion. Why? Because, you know, gold! There, Raoul meets the beautiful (and temperamental) Elaine Threepwood, a recently divorced socialité. He courts her and they get hitched and all that, but their honeymoon is ruined by Freddy Krueger. Fuck that noise.
In the end, Tommy Vercetti blasts a hole in Freddy Krueger with his bare hands. Don’t fuck with Ray Liotta, son.
In a nutshell: We can’t stop here, this is Rum county!
Justice
Cast: Emma Frost, Nicolas “Not The Beeeeeees” Cage, Nicolas Cage’s hairpiece, Detective Edmund Exley, Rollo Tomassi.
Nicolas Cage play Nicolas Cage, an English teacher in New Orliiiins who has a bunch of racial stereotypes as students. One fine day, while he is playing chess with that idiot from Lost (no, not Jack), his wife gets turned into a giant diamond by Kevin Bacon.
A skinhead who offers Nicolas Cage two things: to get revenge on Kevin Bacon and to kill every single Youtube compilation of him overacting. He agrees. But it comes with a price and the price is that now he must do as Leonard Shelby tells him to do. In a game of Simon Says across New Orleans, Cage has to pair up with Andrew Sterling (Sam The Man Jackson) as they defuse a shitload of bombs.
There’s a very intense final shootout in Scarface‘s mansion, and although Sam Jackson doesn’t make it (he’s had it with this motherfucking films using his motherfucking ways to kill motherfuckers, motherfucker!), Nicolas Cage gets a bazooka and shoots bombs (Knowing, Bangkok Dangerous, National Treasure 1, 2 and 3: Electric Nicoloo), killing all the skinheads (who actually were zombies).
In a surprising twist ending, Nicolas Cage goes and hands over his academy award to someone else.
In a nutshell: Nicolas Cage goes Bronson.
Immortals 3D.
Cast: Superman, some hot chick who totally gets nekkid, Stephen Dorff, The Gods, The Titans, Mickey Rourke and a lot of LSD in Tarsem’s water bottle.
What the fuck is Tarsem smoking, yo? Can I have some?
Ok, here it goes: this Greek dude (who looks totally shaggable) has some sort of superpower. He gets a couple of gifts from the Gods and he has to stop some Titans from Clashing, because, shit, Sam Worthington can’t act, that’s why.
So, he’s assigned a couple of friends on his quest: 5 expendable characters whose name I never gave a shit and Stephen Dorff playing himself. Just ’cause.
There’s a lot (and I DO MEAN THIS) of beheadings, shreddings, piercings, stabbings, spearings, sandalinfacings, disintegratings to please the discerning videogame enthusiast, while enough references to paintings to please the discerning art geek. All this surely to make us wait for that moment. The one the trailers showed to me and made me want to see this film. The one beloved moment in CINEMATIC HISTORY that was the reason the Lumiere brothers actually stopped going to whorehouses to drink absinthe and give us the gift of cinema:
Liam Neeson in a shiny armour yelling RELEASE THE KRAKEN!
Alas, this scene never happened. Aren’t you pissed off that these filmmakers, these sneaky conniving motherfuckers put so many fucking good scenes in the trailers and then they NEVER HAPPEN? The tire scene in Twister. The laser sight shit in Predators. The final fight in a place on fire in The Saint. So many cool scenes and we get nada! Nothing.
Look, I’m just a simple inanimate object that snorts powdered milk and injects itself with Jalfrezi curry, you know, just a normal one. I pay my taxes and shag bus drivers like any normal citizen. All I want when I go to the cinema is to see, nay, experience THE ONE TRUE MONEY SHOT you promised me.
And you promised me Liam Neeson in a shiny armour yelling RELEASE THE KRAKEN. I swear I saw it. That’s my raison d’être.
So please, Tarsem, go back and film Liam Neeson in a shiny armour and a latex chicken hat yelling RELEASE THE KRAKEN.
Here, I’ll help you, here’s three ideas:
In a nutshell: Kratos is a pussy-o.
Contagion
Stephen, Stephen, what am I going to do with you? Besides calling you Stephen when you are called Steven. Several times you’ve broken my cow heart by saying you were going to retire but you always come back to the fold, Al Pacino Style. THEY ALWAYS DRAG YOU IN, LULZ! Is it George Clooney’s sexy eyes? I would.
Anyways, the movie… Okay, so Gwyneth Paltrow plays a character from Glee and she gets infected by a deadly virus (played brilliantly by Chris Martin). After kicking the bucket in front of her husband (played by Jason Bourne) we get a few cute storylines with people from CSI: End of the World, Titanic and that French chick from Taxi.
In an ode to Swine Flu (and its surrounding panic), we get technobabble thrown our way. People not white nor American die. Americans die. Main characters die. Wiley Coyote dies. Even Omar snuffs it. What’s this, Shakespeare? Larry Fishburne does manage to convince everyone that, yes, The Matrix sequels weren’t that good but, man, they looked cool or what?
While everyone is running around and panicking and talking about budgets and putting microbes in petri dishes, we get Jude Law portraying your typical blogger: dashing, good looking, crooked teeth, making loads of money (yeah, sure) and being a general nag and getting real investigators and real media (Fox news, uh?) into trouble.
There’s also more storylines and they go nowhere. Some old dude that I like in movies appears for, like 3 minutes, does something VERY important to the plot and then he disappears. Marion Cotillard looks worried for 2 minutes then disappears for the rest of the movie. She doesn’t regret a thing, though.
Through the magic of a vacune called A. Pullingoutofitsarsitis, they manage to create a vaccine that obviously is first given to the Americans (as a giveaway with every Happy Meal. McDonald’s – I’m inoculating it!) then to the main characters who aren’t American (except the British or the French… booh!).
The ending is a heavy handed attempt at saying: companies bad, bloggers bad, alternative medicine bad… something… good? I dunno, I stopped giving a shit when I noticed that Jason Bourne wasn’t kicking the virus via shaky cam dropkicks. Seriously. Is it too late to go and see Johnny English Reborn again?
In a nutshell: Hey… Traffic was good.
Next week: We ponder what is worst: being married to Chris Martin, smelling of rutabagas at your work or stepping on yellow pudding.
Words: Orestes “Maddafacow” Xistos.
Sloucher.org 