Screenhead

Admittedly, when I went into New Moon this morning, I wasn’t expecting anything good.  My experience with Twilight was only a few months old, and it still hurt to think about that slow sludgy mess of sparkly emo boi vampires dragging the genre down with it.

But when I grit my teeth and walked in,  what I got was something somewhat different from what I was expecting.

Just to catch you up on the plot, we’re still with screechy loser Bella Swan and her sparkly emo boi vampire boyfriend Edward.  Only now, we discover that werewolves are also thrown in the mix (it was probably supposed to be a surprise but they tipped their own hand on this point MONTHS ago) and for some reason, both vampire Edward and relative newcomer werewolf Jacob Black are all very much into this pasty cipher of a girl who seems to exist for no other reason than to give the teenage girl fans in the audience an easy point for self-insertion.

Yes, there’s still plenty wrong with this whole thing.  One, none of these people can act worth a fart in a stiff wind–Kristen Stewart still seems dazed by the whole thing and is acting like she’s been suffering a concussion since about ten minutes into the first movie.  Robert Pattinson is a willowy mess–when he takes his shirt off and reveals his new “six pack” it looks like nothing so much as a man in desperate need of a SANDWICH.  Taylor Lautner is the girliest macho man I’ve ever SEEN.  He’s trying DESPERATELY hard to be some kind of bad-ass but then everything he tries is toned down so hard for the consumption of the tweenagers in the audience.  It’s like someone told him, “Be a bad boy, but don’t actually be THREATENING.”  He’s doing his best, I think, but he’s doing it under terribly strained conditions.

Also, why isn’t White Wolf suing holy hell out of Summit, Stephenie Meyer, et al for copyright violation?  I remember the nature-boy werewolves and cosmopolitan corporate vampires back when I was one of the handful of people playing the Rage card game back in 1995!  Now all of a sudden it’s a major motion picture and I don’t think White Wolf’s getting any taste on this.  They DO still have the license at last report even if it’s been sold more times than real estate.

But, like I said originally, this was better than I expected.  If for no other reason than the only way it could be much worse is if Stephenie Meyer personally came to theaters at random and gouged out the eyes of one of the viewers.  There was more action in this, and a developing storyline that still seems rather limited (White Wolf, for Pete’s sake, it’s werewolves versus vampires.  You did ALL this long before them!), but is actually somewhat bearable.

There’s still plenty of slow parts in this, though, and lots of reason to be unhappy, though not nearly as many as the FIRST Twilight installment gave us.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, naturally, agrees with me and hands over a five out of ten to a vampire franchise that may well be starting to look up.  If it continues improving at this rate, Breaking Dawn’s going to be a non-stop bloodbath and even I’ll be impressed.

Oh man, this movie is creepy.  I would not want to be human in this social system.  I’d gladly be a vampire. 

Daybreakersstars Ethan Hawke who plays Edward Dalton, a researcher in the year 2019, in which an unknown plague has transformed the world’s population into vampires. As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. 

However, a covert group of vampires makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race

All right, folks, strap in and keep your remotes handy because today I’m going to talk about Heat, one of the longest movies you’ll ever love.

The folks out at Warner Brothers sent me a copy of Heat, and you might be wondering why I’m talking about a movie this old.  Well, it’s not like some of you haven’t heard of it, but it was just released on Blu-ray, so we’ve got a responsibility to cover it.

Heat features Val Kilmer and the gigantic concentrated awesome heap that is Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the same movie.  It’s about a career thief who leads a team of thieves through an incredible robbery that nets the team just over a million and a half bucks in bearer bonds.  The bonds were insured, so the only real victim here is the insurance company, and we’ve all been able to agree that they could have used a kick in the slats since 1995 anyway.  Anyway, the fun really starts when the team tries to sell back the stolen bonds instead of laundering them.

Heat is a long–VERY long!–and incredibly involving tale of deceit, thievery and murder that’s actually very engrossing.  I’d actually seen this one maybe five or six times over the last (nearly) fifteen years, so it was a welcome treat.  But you will have to brace yourself adequately.  Clear your calendar, get your snacks together in advance, because this is a LONG movie.  Nearly THREE HOURS worth of long, in fact.

But the critical takeaway here is that it’s also really, REALLY exciting.

The Screenhead Ten Scale loves my taste in movies and hands this a seven out of ten for being a solid actioner with a lot of twists, even if it’s a bit too long.

Last night, mischief and mayhem ensued when midnight screenings of Fight Club were held in Los Angeles and New York!  The theaters were boarded up and free coffee and donuts were served in the back like a support group, and everyone received a “hello my name is” sticker! 

Remember, Screenhead is holding a giveaway for the Fight Club 10^th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray disc now!

It’s a perfect time for Christmas movies to start coming out, seeing as the decorations have been up in the stores since like September.  And so, we’re tackling Four Christmases today, a movie that shows that sometimes, time with the family is the best gift of all.

Even if you don’t notice it at first.

This time, a young couple who’s not terribly interested in getting married, usually manages to duck their family obligations around the holidays by making up elaborate stories and going off to various getaways instead.   But a surprise San Francisco fogbank socks in the airport irrevocably, and so the four are left forced to spend Christmas in the last place on earth they want to…with their families.

Families.  FOUR of them.  Both of their families are divorced, and thus, they’ll have to spend four Christmases in just one day.

What’s so unnerving about this movie is that it veers so wildly between hilarious and awkward that it almost can’t decide whether it’s supposed to be funny or uncomfortable.  It’s like the fat kid at school…he’s trying desperately to be funny, but it’s actually just about as sad.

Each of the families is deranged for its own reason, and believe me, they’re deranged.  The least of the deranged is a family of backwoods amateur ultimate fighters.  It gets worse from there.

It’s awkward.  It’s painful, in spots.  But it’s also got a lot of humor and warmth to it.  There’s lots to enjoy here.  We’ve all seen this kind of thing before. This is Christmas at its absolute.  Family, friends, lovers, growth.  Life.

Four Christmases is like LIFE.

And as such, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives this strange little allegory a six out of ten.  There’s lots to like here, and there’s lots to feel uncomfortable about.  It IS life.  Take it for what it’s worth.

Crazy Heart looks good, pure Jeff Bridges at his best. 

Crazy Heart is written and directed by Scott Cooper as his directorial debut. The movie stars Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall.

Four-time Academy Award nominee Jeff Bridges stars as the richly comic, semi-tragic romantic anti-hero Bad Blake. He is a broken-down, hard-living country music singer who’s had way too many marriages, far too many years on the road and one too many drinks way too many times.

And yet, Bad can’t help but reach for salvation with the help of Jean (Golden Globe nominee Maggie Gyllenhaal), a journalist who discovers the real man behind the musician.  As he struggles down the road of redemption, Bad learns the hard way just how tough life can be on one man’s crazy heart.

It’s a surprise to say but Expired, which The Asylum sent me a copy of,  may well be the scariest thing that The Asylum has ever released, and it’s not even a horror flick.

See, apparently, sometime while I wasn’t looking, The Asylum started to go after offbeat comedies and romantic drama, and it’s the latter that we’ll be referencing today.  Expired, however, is a romantic drama of the worst sort–the kind that won’t stop hurting.

In Expired, two horrendously deformed personalities–a total doormat of a woman and a complete jackass of a man–manage to find each other and engage in a tumultuous relationship that takes them through fights and death and bereavement and a horrendous New Years Eve featuring karaoke that has probably been banned by the Geneva Convention.  But will these two prove a match made in Hell?  Or will they realize that they’re both complete wastes of life and go their separate ways?

I’ve never watched a movie that hurt quite so badly as Expired did.

I spent insane amounts of time screaming at my television.  I never wanted a character dead quite so many times, either, as I wanted THESE two dead.  They were like needles.  Needles in my EYES.  By the hour mark I was shrieking in agony, wishing this would finally end.

And eventually, it did.  But by then, I was feeling so badly for pretty much everyone involved, but most badly for myself who had to sit through this misery tour, that I was glad to eject the DVD it came on.

I wondered, what kind of masochist would subject themselves, voluntarily, to watch a movie where a guy tries to score with a woman literally the SAME NIGHT HER MOTHER DIED.  And what kind of cynic would fail to be amazed that she ACTUALLY LET HIM GET SOME.

And it’s like this for the whole movie.  It’s a hundred and seven minutes of some of the most horrendous relationship I’ve ever seen.  These two halfwits make Bobby and Whitney look like Ozzie and Harriet.

Oh, sure, you want to believe that they’re both getting better, in their way.  And you can actually start to see that, after a fashion.  But it’s just too little, too late.  The damage is done.  This movie is downright painful to watch for entirely too little payoff.

The Screenhead Ten Scale’s off in a corner retching right now, but it told me to pass on that it gave this horrendous misery tour a two out of ten.  Wait…it just said something about “rewarding effort”, which is fair enough.  It DID try, after all.  It just didn’t end well at all.

Jeff Bridges plays Bad Blake as a broken-down, hard-living country music singer. He’s been married way too many times, had far too many years on the road and one too many drinks, too many times. Still, Bad reaches out for salvation with the guidance and support of Jean, a journalist who brings to light the real man behind the musician.

There is a  lot of Oscar talk for Bridges, which is justly deserved.

Crazy Heart is written and directed by actor and filmmaker Scott Cooper, making his directorial debut with this film. Fox Searchlight is releasing Crazy Heart to limited theaters starting on December 11, 2009.

The Map Reader is being billed as a comedy-drama, but leans more toward drama. The story is about Michael (Jordan Selwyn) – a 16-year-old whose passion for maps helps him escape his ordinary life and enjoy a state of isolation from those around him. Yet, three women each play an important part in his life  – his single mother Amelia (Rebecca Gibney), a blind 20-year-old called Mary (Bonnie Soper) and Alison (Mikaila Hutchinson), a friend whose ‘grace betrays darker secrets’ of an abusive father.

Filmmaker Harold Brodie is an American living in New Zealand and the idea of a boy who absorbs himself in maps comes from his own captivation as a child. I bring the trailer The Map Reader to Screenhead because it debuted to sell out theatres at the Austin Film Festival and won the Spirit of the Independent award at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival.