Se we are about a week away from heading off to the amazing Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas and I literally couldn’t be more excited.  I have been watching old episodes on NetFlix and more than a few times have caught myself humming the fight theme song (if you don’t know what that is odds are you really shouldn’t even be reading this blog).

To say I have Star Trek on the mind lately is a bit of an understatement and last night while watching the Galileo Seven it struck me how many super cool villains and aliens they managed to create without the benefit of CGI or even a real budget.  I did some research but found that every list out there for Star Trek villains is cluttered up with all the TNG and DS9 villains, which in my opinion is kind of prosaic.  Saying that Q is super cool or the Borg is an evil race is like saying ice cream tastes good or chewing on broken glass is a bad idea.  Also, it seems like every list can’t seem to get away from the idea that the villains from Nemesis or First Contact were something more the cliche filler.  Therefore I have taken it upon myself to compose a list of the greatest villains from the the Original Series.

Actually, this isn’t so much a stretch.  If you take into account the fact that the writers were coming up with these guys without the benefit of 50 years of science fiction to fall back on these aliens (plus a few humans) are amazingly cool.  I also give them credit for writing a depth that, in spite of more movie resources, seems to be missing from a lot of modern Trek villains.  All the images, by the way, are from the Star Trek T Shirt category.

15. Mugatu, from A Private Little War.  A space yeti with a unicorn horn, spikes growing out of it’s spine, and poisonous fangs?  The only way this guy could be any cooler is if he could play the banjo and his farts cured cancer.  He’s only at number 15 because in the episode he really had a minor role, but OMG awesome.

14. Evil Kirk, from the Enemy Within.  I know I listed this episodes as one of my worst for TOS and I stand by that belief.  However, even I have to admit crazed, super sweaty cheesy lighting Kirk was pretty damned cool.

13.  The Vians, from the Empath.  I know these are pretty much the same guys from the Cage and the Menagerie, but here instead of creating fantasy worlds to get Captain Pike to mate with a super hot girl they are using torture and death to get a girl to pretty much kill herself.  If you really think aliens are above cruelty and vivisection you need to go watch Fire in the Sky.

12.  The Earps, from Spectre of the Gun.  Plus Doc Holiday.  These guys really had the whole menacing “impending doom” down to a science.  I have a few humans on this list, although technically since these guys were projections of the Melkotians they really were aliens.

11.  The Buffalo, from the Man Trap.  I can honestly say as a kid this was the grossest thing I had ever seen to date (I have since seen things that would probably cause all your internal organs to explode, but will save that for another post).  Also, the suckers on the fingers were an extremely nice touch.

10.  Evil Spock, from Mirror Mirror.  What in the universe could possible be cooler than Spock?  How about an evil Spock, with no moral hesitation to kill people?  Plus I think the beard was a really good look for Nimoy.

9.  Charlie Evans, from Charlie X.  This poor kid.  All messed up with super powers.  I just watched this episode the other night and his fate always makes me sad.

8.  The Cheronians, from Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.  Say what you want about Star Trek, but subtlety is not one of it’s defining characteristics.  When Gene Roddenberry has a point he wants made he tends to do it with a sledgehammer.  However, as a parallel for human racism these two were pretty much on the mark.

7.  Anton Karidian/Kodos the Executioner, from the Conscience of the King.  Maybe it’s because he was playing a Shakespearean actor and I always find those guys impressive, but this guy really gripped me.  Human, I know and therefore boring, but still very cool in my book.  Of course it could be said that the real villain was his daughter.

6.  The Horta, from the Devil in the Dark.  I can honestly say this was the one episode that scared the living crap out of me at age seven.  The Horta was so freaking terrifying I had a hard time watching it.  Of course, looking back on it as an adult I can see it looks like a reject from H.R. Puffinstuff, but I will say this is a perfect example of the show getting as much as possible out of no budget.  This episode actually showed what could be accomplished with excellent use of lighting.

5.  Harcourt Fenton Mudd, from Mudd’s Women and I, Mudd.  I actually got into a debate with a guy on this character.  I will admit he is a cheesy as it gets, but there is something in his rapscallion, amoral approach to life that really appeals to me.  I wish I had his panache and savvy.  I also think the crews treatment and interaction with him, especially Kirk, was really entertaining and well done.  Also, he was the first man I ever saw wearing an earring.

4.  The Romulan Commander, from Balance of Terror.  I listed this as my all time favorite episode in my list of best TOS shows, but honestly while the Romulan commander was amazingly cool I don’t think he was the best villain.  However, he definitely was one of the best and was probably the villain I most connected with.

3.  Ruk, from What are Little Girls Made Of?  It’s freaking Lurch in space!  Lurch who is both willing and capable of killing guys!  How can this be anything less than awesome???  Also, I was 6’4″ as a Freshman in high school and have always had a bad habit of looming over people.  One of my nicknames back then was Lurch, so when I saw him on Star Trek I was extremely happy.

2.  The Gorn Captain, from Arena.  I’m actually kind of disappointed in myself for my choice for numbers 2 and 1 as they are so obvious.  I hate being obvious.  However, the Gorn captain is so cool he makes my bones ache.  Big, bad, and tough as hell.  He kicked seven kinds of hell out of Kirk every time they encountered each other, only to fall to Kirks underhanded and scheming trap using black powder weapons.  “Guns don’t kill aliens.  Starship captains armed with spikes do”.

1. Khan Noonien Singh, from Space Seed.  And the next most obvious choice.  I know.  Boring boring boring.  However, Khan was truly an amazing villain.  It just goes to show what happens when you combine a great, well written character with an amazing character actor like Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino.  What a great villain.

Well, that’s my list.  Feel free to comment here if you feel I missed a good one, or if you think I might have given too much credence to one (I expect to hear about Harry Mudd shortly).  I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading this.  I had a lot of fun writing it.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu, and be sure to read any of my other Star Trek, movie review, or dating advice posts here.  If you have an off topic question or suggestion feel free to email me at david@nerdkungfu.com.  I might see a movie tonight (cheap night at the theater down the street) so look for a review tomorrow.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

I have no idea why this one came to my mind.  We are getting ready for the Star Trek convention and Dave has been gushing on about how Kirk is better than Picard, so I guess I was wondering how he would do against the great 007, James Bond.

It’s an interesting question.  Kirk has of course mastered all the shoulder roll related martial arts the galaxy has to offer.  He is the veteran of numerous fights not only against humans but aliens as well, and he must have learned something every time he got his ass handed to him by Spock.

On the other hand, James Bond is the consummate spy, trained in all the deadly arts.  Not only that, but in a weird way he is way smoother that Kirk.  Also, it is written into Kirk’s character that he upon occasion loses, whereas Bond pretty much only lets himself lose when he wants to hear the villains doomsday plan.  I don’t think he can lose an honest fight, except maybe against Jaws.

I think I’m going to have to give this one to James Bond.  He has mowed his way through any number military men, and I don’t think Kirk has the style to beat him.

The Kirk image I found in Dave’s massive Star Trek t shirt collection.

Jason

So I saw some guys playing the new 40K yesterday and that got me thinking about it again.  I also picked up a book on the Iron Hands, who if you know 40K you know are really into Dreadnaughts. Thus I come to this question:  Who would win in a fight between a Dreadnaught and en ED209?

Honestly this one seems pretty obviously in the favor of the Dreadnaught.  Centuries of battle experience, super human reflexes, and a large variety of weapon options just give it the flexibility.  However, for the sake of this fight let’s say it was not equipped with any missile launchers, lascannons, or any other good long range vehicle killers.  It think it this case it would still win, but would take a beating as it moved up to the ED209.  If you recall the ED209 had some mini missile launchers and it’s main guns seemed bolter sized.  However, I believe that once the Dreadnaught got up close enough it would be able to beat the ED209 into scrap with it’s power fist.  Not a lot the ED could do with no arms to speak of.

The image I got from Dave’s movie t shirt collection.  There isn’t much he doesn’t have, although I’m still waiting for his 40K tees.

Jason

Worth watching IMO.

I know I’m definitely going against most of the other reviewers out there and my own general inclination by saying I kind of liked this film.  It had it’s issues for sure, and if I were less favorably inclined towards the cast might have taken a more severe approach to the review, but in general I found it fun and entertaining.

I have seen a number of other reviews liken it to a sci fi Tower Heist and I think that is where the line gets drawn.  If you enjoyed Tower Heist the odds are you’ll enjoy this film. If you did not enjoy Tower Heist then no amount of humor will make this film watchable for you.

That’s not to say some of the gripes I’m reading are not legitimate, because they are.  This film is infested with plot holes, extremely low brow humor, and story points delivered in bulk from Cliche’s ‘R Us.  To say this movie is derivative of other films is like saying a footprint is derivative of a shoe.  If you are looking for new ideas, great script, compelling story, or great special effects keep on walking.  However, if you like rated R humor that does not rely on excrement jokes and enjoy Ben Stiller than by all means stop by and sit a spell (101 minutes, to be exact).

This film is the quintessential (a less upbeat reviewer might say regurgitated) alien invasion film (Mars Attacks image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category).  Evan (Ben Stiller-Tower Heist, Tropic Thunder, Zoolander) is the manager of the local Costco and loves the podunk town he lives in.  The night security guard is horrifically murdered and he takes it on himself to form a neighborhood watch.  He is joined by a few flowers of the cliche character garden: Bob (Vince Vaughn-Wedding Crasher, Dodgeball, Mr. and Mrs. Smith), a suburbanite dad with a high school mentality and a 16 year old daughter with whom he fights all the time; Franklin (Jonah Hill-21 Jump Street, Superbad, Moneyball), a sociopathic gun nut who dreams of being a cop; and Jamarcus (Richard Ayoade-mainly the I.T. Crowd and if you haven’t watched it yet go ahead and stop calling yourself a nerd) a recent transplant from the UK who wants to be more involved in the community.

The boys start patrolling and trouble arises between Evan, who wants to find the murderer, and Bob who wants to just treat it like boys night out.  A series of oddball incidents lead them to the inevitable conclusion that they are being invaded by aliens and that some of them walk among them in human form.

Honestly, that’s pretty much it.  The rest of the film is more or less comedic filler.  They find an alien device that is pretty cool.  Stuff gets blown up, cliche’s get ground like cayenne pepper, and the low brow humor takes a side trip down Stupid Lane in the last 10 minutes.  The end.

The stars.  I was honestly laughing, and so was most of the audience.  Two stars.  I am a fan of pretty much every main character actor in here, especially Richard Avoade.  I thought they all delivered a decent performance.  One star.  A couple of the recurring gags were worth the effort.  One star.  Overall a fun time watching.  Two stars.  Total: seven stars.

The black holes.  Either the writers have collectively never seen an alien invasion film and really thought they were coming up with something new and cool, or they just didn’t really give a damn.  One black hole.  Some oddball plot holes and continuity issues, as well as the inevitable alien issue of the aliens being unkillable death warriors at the beginning and then falling over to a Super Soaker at the end.  One black hole.  Cliche-a-rama, and I’m not just talking about alien invasion cliche’s.  One black hole.  When the alien weakness is revealed it is so painfully obvious that Seth Rogan and the rest of the writers were stoned when they thought of it I could smell the pot smoke.  One black hole for literally dropping face first into the gutter.  The special effects seemed to waver back and fourth between decent CGI and rubber suit a go go.  One black hole.  Total: five black holes.

So a final total of two stars.  Not the best movie I’ve seen, but at least I didn’t want to drown myself afterward.  In fact the last couple months have not been too bad for films.  Most of the are at least mediocre.  Should you see it?  Sure, if you liked Tower Heist and Attack the Block, which is what this movie is the illegitimate offspring of.  However, this movie gains nothing for being in a big theater so consider Netflix (in fact, I can pretty much guarantee this film’s viewing success if you have the forethought to arrange for alcohol and/or wacky tobaccy before watching it).  Date movie?  Meh.  Not a lot really going on to get her excited, if you know what I mean.  Too nerdy and goofy by half.  Bathroom break?  Nothing in this film really requires viewing to maintain the story continuity, but if I were to pick a moment I’d say the time Evan’s wife tries to seduce him with candles and a teddy.  Not a lot of story happening there.

Thanks for reading, and I apologize for not getting more reviews out there.  I have been super busy with Comic Con and now I have to get ready for the huge Star Trek convention I am attending in Las Vegas.  On a side note, if you happen to live in Vegas and are or know a cute nerd girl who wants to earn some money working at my booth August 8th-12th (2012) feel free to email me at david@nerdkungfu.com (you can also email me with movie questions or suggestions).  If you have comments about this review or movie feel free to post them here, and be sure to follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

I have done a few of these who would win posts and they are kind of fun.  For the most part I go with traditional combat characters but for today I am going to roll with a more comical fight: Homer Simpson versus Peter Griffin.

Now, they are both pretty stupid and quick to violence, but Peter has a certain canniness and homy wisdom that I think Homer is missing.  I think if this were a more James Bond style fight, with all kinds of plots and devices, I would give it to Peter.

On the other hand, let us not forget that Homer was at one point a professional boxer, and at another point had a job having a cannon ball shot into his stomach.  He can definitely take a punch, and in some circumstances Peter is more than a little wimpy on things like barked shins and so on.  Almost to the point of being a little bitch IMO.  I am going to have to give the regular fist fight to Homer.

This image I grabbed from Dave’s TV Show T shirts.  I love this episode.

Jason

OK, I finally got around to seeing this film, and a couple things struck me as painfully stupid.  I’m only going to as one tonight, as Dave keeps wanting me to post more frequently, but this one is bugging the hell out of me.

Here it is.  Peter Parker walks into the very high security OsCorp building, complete with some serious security guards, and manages to convince the receptionist that is is some foreign guy.  Is she so dumb that she never thought to check an ID?  Especially after he seems vague and confused as to the whole intern thing?  Then, a few minutes later another guy shows up who probably has legitimate ID and they frog march him out of the building.  At that point Peter is more or less free to roam the building at will and defeat hi tech security in order to get into the radioactive spider room.  How stupid do they think we really are?  This is just dumb.

The Spider Man picture I pulled out of Dave’s Marvel T Shirt collection.  I am a fan of those old school images.

Jason

So based on Dave’s review and my own love of Batman I went as saw this yesterday.  I enjoyed it a lot, but there was one point that bugged me during the film and has been bugging me ever since.

By the way, big spoiler coming in so if you have not yet watched the film better bail out.

Anyway, at one point Bruce Wayne is at the bottom of a prison pit.  The only way out is to climb up the pit wall and make some kind of jump or something.  They tie a rope around his waste so he won’t die when he falls.  He then has to attempt the climb over and over again.

Here’s the question.  If there is a rope that goes all the way up to the top of the pit wall why didn’t he just climb up the rope?  Or just use the rope to walk up the wall in relative safety.  They even did that in the 70′s Batman movie.  For that matter it looked like the rope was on some kind of pulley that a big dude held the end on.  Why didn’t they just pull him up to the top?  Dumb.

The image I got from Dave’s Batman t shirt collection.  He has a lot of them.

Jason

A film of many surprises.

This film did indeed surprise me in many ways, both positive and negative.  There were aspects I expected to suck that exceeded all my expectations.  Then there were aspects I thought were going to rule that ended up sucking.  There were also stealth surprises, in that aspects of the movie I had no opinion of one way or another jumped up and bit me on the ass.

The big positive surprise was Anne Hathaway as Catwoman.  I have said several times that I didn’t think she could really play either the Cat or Selina Kyle.  I didn’t think she had the role in her.  I could not have been more wrong.  She inhabits the role like she plans to raise six generations of Hathaways there and more or less dominates every scene she is in.  Her portrayal is superlative and I honestly will have a hard time seeing anyone else in the role.  Also, I have always had a thing for her (even when she was doing garbage like One Day I found her a real turn on) and no matter what she is doing in this movie she is dead sexy.

The big negative surprise was Bane.  I really expected to like him as a villain but honestly found him to be really kind of boring.  He  suffers in comparison to the Joker in the Dark Knight of course, but even without that bar to hold up I would have found him boring and two dimensional.  His plan seems vague and a little pointless, and he just doesn’t have the dialog and compelling nature of even Two Face or Scarecrow from the other movies.  He more or less translates as slightly better than a muscle bound thug.  (Bane image courtesy of the Batman T Shirts)

One of the surprises that really caught me off guard was Bane’s voice in the movie.  Somehow they made him sound suspiciously like Alfred Pennyworth with a mouth full of loose gravel  and spoken through 100 yards of steel pipe.  It was really, really disconcerting.  Honestly the whole time I felt like his voice had been dubbed over, really robbing his dialog of any import or strength.  Plus I spent about half the time trying to understand what the hell he had just said.  I’d like to not say “I’m not saying the voice doesn’t work but…” but honestly, that’s exactly what I am saying (without the but).

I have seen other critics call the story and plot ludicrous and to be fair to them, it pretty much is.  The story borrows but from but does not really tell the stories from Knightfall, Breaking the Bat, No Man’s Land, and a half dozen other Batman comic story lines and as a result fails to tell one complete story.  It definitely feel fragmented, convoluted, and lacking in continuity.  Months of movie time are covered in the space of a few minutes and very little motivation is given for any of the supporting characters to do pretty much anything.  Excellent supporting characters such as Catwoman or Alfred disappear for huge swaths of time only to reappear when the plot needs them.  However, I saw the Batman Marathon at the local Regal and saw this movie after watching Batman Begins and the Dark Knight and I can say that while TDK is a brilliant story with amazing character interaction Batman Begins is ludicrous with a capital L.  Ra’s al Ghul’s plan, if you recall, was to spend months injecting a fear causing hallucinogenic into the water supply and then microwave it into steam to cause the city to self destruct and teach the world a lesson or something.  It doesn’t get much hokier than that.

That being said, the story does seem to lack focus and drifts from story to story, even reprising Ra’s al Ghul in order to give Bane something to do.  This is a mistake in my opinion.  Bane was always much cooler and more interesting in the comics when he just had a personal axe to grind with Batman.  If you read my (brilliant, IMO) post on why The Wrath of Khan is the best of the Star Trek movies you might see what I mean.  When the bad guy’s plan is to blow up a city (or the world) Hollywood seems to think we are going to somehow be personally connected to the story and feel some kind of kinship for all the people threatened.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The fact is we connect with a specific character in the movie and feel more involved when there is some kind of personal vendetta going on.  This is one of the many reasons the Dark Knight was so cool.  Joker wanted nothing more than to screw with Batman.  The threats to the city were incidental.  When I watch a movie I want to feel like I’m Batman fighting to save my life, not one of the squirming millions of unwashed masses he is trying to protect.

All that being said, this movie is definitely worth watching.  It drags at places, and you will feel every one of the self indulgent 164 minutes (mostly in your numb butt and full bladder), but visually stunning and the action is pretty damned good.

I’m not going to get into the story too deep as I expect pretty much everyone reading this to watch it and don’t want to hand out any spoilers.  Sufficed to say Batman has been in hiding for eight years since taking the blame for the death of Harvey Dent.  Bruce Wayne has been a recluse until Catwoman pulls him back to reality by robbing his safe.  There is a lot of complicated, convoluted non-action in the first 45 minutes until Bane finally takes over the city No Man’s Land style.  All hell breaks loose, and Batman is more or less broken.  Stuff blows up.  There is a massive riot.  More stuff blows up.  The end.

The stars.  Batman movie.  Two stars.  Comic book movie.  One star.  Catwoman was pretty damned impressive, not to mention uber hot.  One star.  Almost all the supporting characters delivered at least a good performance, if not great.  One star.  Visually stunning.  Expect to see some technical Oscars for this one.  Two stars.  While the pretty much used canon as a doormat, they tried to keep all the characters except Bane true to themselves.  One star.  I thought Joseph Gordon-Levitt was a really good choice to introduce as a new character, and his role added a lot to the story.  One star.  The action was pretty impressive all around (not to mention brutal), especially any fight between Bane and Batman.  One star.  Overall entertaining as hell.  Two stars.  Total: twelve stars.

The black holes.  Long, long movie with non-action portions that seemed to really mire the plot down.  Pacing could have been tightened up a lot.  One black hole.  The main villain was pretty damned boring, which I am going to ascribe to breaking too far away from canon.  One black hole.  Bane’s voice.  One black hole.  The story was very much overly convoluted, with myriad sub plots that seemed to go no where.  Too much source material in my opinion.  One black hole.  Some off putting continuity issues, and characters that disappeared for a while.  One black hole.  Total: five black holes.

A grand total of seven stars.  Decently good, and well worth watching.  I will put this one on par with Batman Returns but well below The Dark Knight.  It is a good ending to the trilogy, but I honestly did not walk away with the sense of satisfaction I had hoped to have.  Should you see it?  Absolutely.  Spend a few extra bucks on IMAX.  This is a must see for any Batman fan and a should see for everyone else.  Just don’t expect to be riveted to the seat by a Heath Ledger like performance.  Date movie?  Only in the sense that even women should see this film.  There is nothing going on here that will encourage her to take off her clothes with you, and having you geek out next to her might actually hurt your chances.  See it with your friends IMO.  I think you will enjoy it more.  Bathroom break?  Pretty much anywhere in the first 45 minutes would be fine, but if you are looking for a time later in the film I would say any of the the first two climbing out of the pit attempts.  You will know what I mean.  Not only is Nolan joining the “excitement through repetition” crowd but that whole sub plot adds absolutely nothing to the story except for more continuity issues.

Thanks for reading, and sorry I couldn’t gush more about this film.  It was good but not gush-worthy.  Worth seeing for sure, but honestly I don’t think I am motivated to see in in a theater a second time.  I’d actually rather go see the Avengers again.  Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  Feel free to post comments about this movie or review here.  Any off topic comments or suggestions can go to david@nerdkungfu.com.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

Scarface meets Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

I am torn on this movie.  I am an Oliver Stone fan (for the most part.  We don’t need to talk about Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps or U-Turn) and can see some high quality elements in this film that could be interpreted as highly competent movie making.  However, this film is a study in contrast in that for every element that seems good there is an equal and opposite element that has to suck.  It’s like Stone is the engineer on a ship in Star Trek and has to keep the matter and anti matter engines in perfect balance (Scotty image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirts category).

The film is of course a brutal and violent drug drama, with lots of blood and torture.  However, the contrast to that is that the drug in question is marijuana.  I’m sure there are some bad M-F-ers in the pot dealership world, but when I think of pot growers and dealers all I can see is a bunch of guys sitting on a couch sucking on their bong, eating pizza, and playing Xbox (which is literally how I have found every pot dealer on the planet), especially given the fact that it is more or less legal here in California.  I’m sorry but I just cannot take the pot trade seriously enough to think of it as worthy of multiple decapitations.  In my mind it’s like if you did a high powered finance drama centered around competing rings of lemonade stands.  Even the drug use seems tame.  The main characters are sparking up every ten minutes but seem coherent and prone to violence as ever.  You just can’t compare that to Scarface sticking his head in a mountain of coke and then saying “Say hello to my little friend”.

The characters are all cartoonish exaggerations of every character you have ever seen in every movie ever.  This actually works extremely well in the form of a few of the supporting characters (Benicio del Toro and John Travolta in particular) but makes all the main characters all seem flat and uninteresting.  Blake Lively is the flattest of the two dimensional plot devices, pretty much playing the super hot stoner chick every high school pot dealer one day dreams of meeting.  She acts stoned and happy when times are good and stoned and uphappy when things are bad.  That’s pretty much it.  Of the two male leads Taylor Kitsch is the next least interesting.  His character is a burned out homicidal war vet who learns nothing, develops nothing, and does nothing besides shoot, stab, or blow up things.

Of the three Aaron Johnson’s character is both the most believable and most interesting character.  He is the brains and pretty much plays the intellectual pot head to a T.  However, as the story progresses he is called upon to do more and more horrible things to people that he would never do given an choice and thus actually develops as a character (albeit in a pretty negative direction).

Anyway, the three way romance that is supposed to be the driving motivation behind their actions felt like I was watching a documentary on the mating habits of a creature from another planet who’s entire chemistry is based on chlorine.  The supporting characters (mostly villains) were all in their own way brilliant yet at the same time laughably comical.  I can honestly say all the best scenes were ones that did not have the main characters in them.  The pacing alternated between light speed and trying to push your out-of-gas 1979 Ford Thunderbird when you have forgotten to take the parking brake off.  ***SPOILER ALERT*** The story itself was both wonderfully and overly complicated (at one point John Travolta asks Benicio del Toro “Do you understand?” in reference to some new plot twist and I found myself honestly answering “No, not really”) yet after delivering what seemed like a really cool and convoluted ending pulled a completely different and infinity stupider ending out of the dankest regions of the writers ass.

By the way, the movie is based on a 2010 novel by Dan Winslow.  I mention that only because 85% of the plot is delivered to us by Blake Lively in a dead to the world monotone monolog that sounds suspiciously like listening to books on tape.  I have always found a monolog painfully intrusive (which is why the final cut for Blade Runner will always be the best version) and this one not only breaks the fourth wall but then backs up and defiles its corpse.  It seemed every time I started to get into what was going on plot-wise there is Blake again (whom we had just seen on screen crying for pot) to jerk us out of the story.  Sorry Oliver, but a running monolog is a lazy movie makers tool in my opinion.

Another review where I go 800 words without actually talking about the story.  Ben (Aaron Johnson-Kick Ass, the Illusionist, Nowhere Boy) is a botanist and Chon (Taylor Kitsch-Battleship, John Carter, X-Men Origins) is his high school friend turned ex military sociopath.  Apparently they grow the worlds greatest pot (33% THC?  Is that even possible?  I would think that any plant, even pot, would have to have stuff like chloroform).  They share a sexual relationship with their personal narrator O (ever watch the Story of O?  70′s porn at its best.  Anyway, Blake Lively-Gossip Girl, Green Lantern, the Town) that puts the fun into dysfunctional.  They are approached by a Mexican drug cartel led by Elena (Salma Hayek-Frida, Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico) who want to partner up.  When they plan to abandon everything they have spent years building the cartel sends bad ass hit man Lado (Benicio del Toro-Snatch, Traffic, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the Usual Suspects) to kidnap O.

At that point the boys agree to the cartel’s demands but secretly start to screw with Elena by hitting her operations.  They are sort of assisted by corrupt DEA agent Dennis (John Travolta-Pulp Fiction, Face Off, Greece) who has his own agenda.  Fairly predictable betrayals and plot twists surface like stunned fish after dropping a stick of dynamite into the water.  Stuff gets blown up, guys get killed (often in horrific ways) and a really dumb ending forms out of the dregs of the script.

The stars.  The story was pretty good until the last ten minutes.  One star.  Benicio Del Toro was pretty awesome.  One star.  So was John Travolta as the weasel DEA agent.  One star.  The violence and action was embedded deep in the R rating zone and benefited from it.  (By the way, I’m not going to black hole them for this as there are plenty of other things to hit them with, but if you are going for rated R throw in more than the most minimal nudity.  If you are going to this hoping to see Blake Lively nude prepare for bitter disappointment)  One star.  The character development evinced by Ben was relatively interesting and added a something to the story.  One star.  In spite of the laughable nature of the pot trade (sorry, but all I can see is Cheech and Chong tooling around in a truck made of pot) and the comical nature of some of the characters the story itself made a lot of sense and was compelling (again, up until the end).  One star.  Overall reasonably good.  One star.  Total: seven stars.

The black holes.  It is true that I groan a lot when I am seeing movies, but when the stupid part of the movie ending surfaced literally the entire audience groaned with me.  One black hole.  The main characters were flat and for the most part kind of uninteresting.  One black hole.  The continuous monolog alternated between driving me nuts and putting me to sleep.  One black hole.  Speaking of sleeping, parts of the movie could give Ambien real competition.  One black hole.  I found many parts of this film really hard to identify with (three way romance, for one) and also can’t figure out which character I was supposed to identify with.  By the end I actually had more sympathy for Salma Hayek’s character.  One black hole.  Total: five black holes.

A grand total of two stars.  Pretty mediocre for an Oliver Stone film.  I suppose this should be taken with a grain of salt if only because the entire film was based on the cultural toxic waste dump of my childhood: Southern California beach towns.  These communities support culture only in the way a Petri dish does and in my opinion give every country that hates America a legitimate reason to do so.  However, while that might have colored my perceptions somewhat I really tried to view the movie on it’s own merits and for the most part stand by my review.  Worth seeing?  Sure.  The supporting characters alone make this movie watchable.  Benicio Del Toro and John Travolta steal any scene they are in and make for a decent viewing experience.  None of the camera work demands a large screen so feel free to NetFlix it.  Date movie?  Nope.  Super violent, with some horrific scenes that had me cringing in my seat.  Plus no real romance to latch on to and the female protagonist had all the plot bearing of a World of Warcraft quest item.  Bathroom break?  Pretty much any scene involving the main characters where they weren’t blowing stuff up.  If I had to choose I would go for the second scene with the finance guy, where they are trying to interpret all the data Dennis gave them.  Not a lot going on there.

Thanks for reading.  I am home form Comic Con and am back into full on movie mode.  I have tickets for the midnight showing of the new Dark Knight tomorrow night and am really excited.  When I find the time I will write about my Comic Con experiences, although I didn’t see a lot that wasn’t right outside of my booth.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  If you have a comment on this movie or my review feel free to post it here.  If you have an off topic question or suggestion feel free to email me at david@nerdkungfu.com.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

For those of you who don’t follow this sort of thing, Warhammer 40,000 just got their 6th Edition rulebook last week.  In the world of miniatures this is kind of a huge event, and as a fan of the game and a huge fan of the 40K backstory I have been following it closely.

So I came up with this scenario and am wondering who would win.  Space Marines are incredibly tough, with reflexes, strength, and training to put the hurt on almost anything.  Furthermore, they are to a man encased in advanced battle armor and armed with very destructive weapons (bolters, for the most part).  Finally, they would see the alien symbiote part of Venom as a xenos abomination and Eddie Brock as a heretic for consorting with xenos.

On the other hand, I honestly believe that Venom would be able to force itself in through the respirators of the power armor and choke to death or even spike the brains of the Marines inside.  His ability to enhance Eddies already high strength makes him capable of throwing a Rhino around.

It would be close, and I think it boils down to equipment.  If the Space Marine squad were armed with one or more flamers I think it would go badly for Venom.  I’m going to give this one to the Marines.

The Venom face I got from Dave’s Marvel Comic t shirts by the way.

Jason