Gran Torino (2008)

Even though he's old and retired, somehow Clint Eastwood is still this incredible badass. His character is this old Korean war vet that just wants people to stop annoying him. Basically, an all American goodfellow living in the burbs.
But his neighborhood is changing, and lots of poor minorities and weird looking asian people are moving in, turning his hometown into a slummy gang ridden place. Nigger gangs, gook gangs in ricers, mexicans, shitty white kids with giant T-shirts, the works. Particularly unappealing to him is the Hmong family living next door, which he finds to be brunt, dirty, and spineless. But one day, some asian punks start messing with the Hmongs and the story escalates into a series of beatdowns and skirmishes with the gangsters.

As you would expect, Clint Eastwood is the main attraction. His character is old and snappy and has incredibly racist lines, which portray him not as a biggot but simply as 1950's old fashioned. Everyone and everything pisses him off, especially the riceball gangsters, which remind him of the people he killed in Korea. Because of the gratuitous racism and the negative portrayal of minorities in Gran Torino, it is easy to label this a racist movie. Reviewers and journalists saying that are simply whining, as I found this movie to be very ethnically accurate. Yes, just because you're a minority does not mean you are incapable of doing bad things. And no, just because Clint Eastwood comes to the rescue does not vouch for the superiority of whites. In the story, white people and asian people are juxtaposed and and then summarily criticized for being stupid.

A retired Clint Eastwood helps some asian kids escape gang violence and a Ford car is involved.
Rating: 75%

He's Just Not That Into You (2009)

Into you.

I was about to tear my shirt off and go apeshit in the theatre, for a number of reasons. First, that's my one goal in life. Second, just the AMOUNT of single, dateless young women just packed into that one room on Valentines day, all tittering and gasping and talking and loudly going "awww" during the whole movie. These Valentines Day Victims, women who are conditioned to feel like failures for not having someone to shoot cum at them on Feb 14th, form aggregate groups that all head off to the latest romantic comedy with armfuls of chocolate snacks and refuse to move their purses off an empty fucking chair to give two seats to an actual fucking couple out of spite. So we sit in the way-ass-front row and the Jennifer Aniston is GETTING HUGE and Drew Barrymore is about to fucking eat me to fill her giant squirrel cheeks.

For the first half-hour or so, it seems as if the movie is lecturing women on the "watch-out" signs for men who don't really care about them. The first one, "He isn't calling you," is obvious, OK. Women need to know not to wait forever for a phone call that will never come. Cool.

The second warning sign, aimed directly at happy couples: "He's not marrying you." HOLY BACK THE FUCK UP, BATMAN. WHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT IS THIS. YOU ARE INJECTING PURE POISONOUS THOUGHTS INTO A ROOMFUL OF FUCKING WOMENS' TINY MINDS AND AND AND YEARGGHGHHHHH

So I'm standing there with my shirt off and I'm holding a theatre chair with a frumpy dateless teenage girl in it over my head, ready to throw it through Matthew Maconnaghey's teeth when the movie's all "Stop, calm down, hold up there, son. That's not what I'm about. This isn't some evil plot to make mens' lives miserable. I'm more than just a lame date movie." So I listen to the voices and keep watching.

Turns out the movie is based on a book written by a guy AND a girl, so instead of being an estrogen-fest, it focuses on the actual thoughts processes of the male characters. That's good, because the women in the movie are all fucking insane.

So, I chained him in my basement next to a phone. Do you think he'll call me?

Female Characters:

-A psycho stalker girl who scares every man away with her obsessive behavior.

-A forty-something chick who's been with her boyfriend for SEVEN YEARS and still thinks he's going to ditch her solely because he doesn't believe in marriage.

-A chick who forced her college boyfriend to marry her after they graduated, nags him constantly and refuses to have sex (so of course he cheats on her.)

-The hot slut who he cheats on her with (and calls him a horrible person for doing so.)

-Drew Barrymore.

All aboard the doucheboat, toot toot! Captain Affleck reporting for duty.

Interestingly, the male characters, to me, all seem like pretty decent guys. Their only problems are the women in their lives (and in Kris Kristofferson's case, clogged arteries). That's how the movie finally gets you, it appeals to your gender and forces you to take sides. You can root for your side and watch the other side fuck up. Any woman who watches this film will say the same thing, only they'll say the women are all likeable and the guys are all total dicks. It's just like real life!

Not everyone ends up coupled and happy at the movie's end, which keeps the saccharine levels low enough to tolerate. Really, the movie is much more of a commentary on how fucked up human relationships are then it is a romantic comedy, so I ended up kinda liking it. Also, there's an ultra-realistic sequence where someone deletes their MySpace account. It's just like deleting your MySpace in real life! I pumped my fist into the air like I was at a KISS concert. YEAH!

Also, for some reason this movie is set in Baltimore. Baltimore? I would have thought New York or possibly Seattle, judging by the characters and their apartments. It's white as a fucking snowstorm in this movie, and everyone's successful. Everything I previously knew about Baltimore I learned from The Wire, and there were significantly less smack dealings, murders and black people than I would have expected.

My rating: B+ (watchable...surprisingly)
Girl rating: A- (not everyone got hitched, boo hoo)
Ballz rating: fake and gay. more gay than fake.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

You wouldn't think so from the giddy impression of the title, but this was just really depressing to me. It's about a dysfunctional, strife ridden family that goes on a roadtrip to attend the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. Family members include a gaunt nihilist kid that hates everyone, a struggling salesman, their dirty old grandpa, and a weird looking 10 year old girl that is fulfilling her dream of entering Little Miss Sunshine, which is basically a preteen barbie contest. Steve Carell plays a discredited literary scholar and a homosexual recovering from attempted suicide that accompanies them to the pageant because he can't be left alone.

Generally, the people in this family aren't doing great. At home, they are able to internalize their personal problems, but when they set out on the road, they are forced to face all their life difficulties. Over the course of the movie, they struggle to fulfill their aspirations and are all rejected. Some, slowly without knowing it, others, suddenly and traumatically encounter barriers they cannot surmount. Ultimately, they come to peace with what they can't do in life, either because the dream was dumb and irrational or because they realize there are better ways to meet the same end.

wow that is great acting
Rating: 75%

coming up: DragonBall Evolution

Oh god. This director is taking a HUGE risk by diving headfirst into a nebulous area of human irrational behavior. DBZ is a disease. To date, there have already been 18+ other dragonball movies. There are 508 episodes of dragonball TV episodes. Don't forget the gajillion dbz music videos scored with Linkin Park and the 100+ internet memes spawned by dbz stupidity.

So, this movie faces a number of difficult obstacles.
First, it faces being clobbered as a complete cliche. Powering up, screaming, and fireballs just don't seem to cut it in hollywood anymore.

Second, it must exceed the expectations of people who are already familiar with dbz. That is going to be really difficult. Dragonball is the king of being over the top, ridiculously huge, and retardedly buff. I have no idea how they are going to surmount this. For example, how do you live-action this?


Third, it must appeal to people who have no idea what dbz is. Plot elements such as floating in midair and Piccolo's green skin and giant shoulder pads need to be explained. That will create an impossibly steep learning curve for the newly introduced and facing this, they are most likely going to find it just ridiculous.

Finally, the director has a choice: Should the dbz movie be based on Japanese or American motifs? You can't have it both ways so the production must definitively follow one of the two.


American Version: A Hollywood movie must be appealing to ordinary Americans, so this is a natural choice. Goku could be in highschool and trying to get a date for the prom when Piccolo blows up his gym. That would be perfect. On the other hand, that kind of kills the point of calling this movie "DB Evolution", when it should in fact be called "Superman Vs Green Guy with Balls in His Other Pants Pocket". Uggh.

Making DB Evolution in Japanese fashion would be true to it's roots and would resonate well with preexisting fans. The danger with this choice is that the story would then have to be super retarded and would be too mild compared to the other dragonball movies about buff metal people that punch hard. However, it would definitely give dbz fans what they want to see. This is what that version would probably look like.
This is very accurate.
This movie is fucked.
Predicted Tomato Rating: 15%

Baccano (2007)

A train robbery. That singular event is what this anime is all about. A group of thugs are robbing a passenger train. Wait, now it appears that there are multiple groups of people robbing this train at the same time. Furthermore, some psychopathic killers that escaped from an asylum and bathe in people's blood have decided to board this train. Also, the conductor is a murderer. NOW, throw in Alchemy! BOOM! BACCCANOOOO!!!

Baccano is about mob life during the Great Depression. There are a bunch of mobs with Italian surnames and there are many members in each of these mob organizations. You have to know them all to understand the story. Sorry, but you just have to. This requires a cumbersome amount of memorization, so to help you with this, the intro video has a visual slideshow of the characters and their dispositions.

The first few episodes of any anime are always a drag. That is because you always have so much difficulty understanding what the fuck is going on. Oh god, now the story is being shown in reverse sequence. Backward and sequentially interrupted, like in Memento. So you are watching the third episode and now you've seen the ending, but you don't know how it happened or why everyone is obsessed with this fucking train. Why why why does anime do this. It starts off great, has some good fights, and then ends with fairies and unicorns getting sodomized by Piccaso. Christ sake.

Rating: 40%