GeekReads

The end of the year is coming up fast, and if I have any hope of clearing out my backlog of reviews then I’d better get cracking – there’s still a few to go. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this, but it was one of my writing goals for this year to review every movie that I watch in the cinema, and every book I read. The odd video game or other thing would stick its head in here and there, on rare occasions when the writing bug would take hold.

The missing text for the bottom three pictures are "Weeny", "Whiney" and "Schmoe"

Onto the review. Horrible Bossees doesn’t so much have a plot as a framework on which a number of jokes are hung. These range from mildly annoying to genuinely amusing. My guess is that the movie was a contrivance allowing the screenplay writers to give themselves carte blanche to have a bunch of suburban middle-class white men to make inappropriate social comments.

The three eponymous bosses are extreme cariacatures of treacherousness, libidinousness, and nepotistic…ness. Each is paired up with one of our hapless heroes: Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day) and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis). In a style reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz – lacks a certain je ne sais qua that would allow him to escape his situation. It’s in these dire straits that the trio half-jokingly formulate a plan to assassinate their superiors, and the movie takes a turn for the better.

Enter Jamie Foxx as a shady hitman. The scenes with him in it almost justifies the existence this movie (to say nothing of Jennifer Aniston’s, um… appearances – whatever you choose to read into that word).

What makes the movie border on intolerable is the way that Dave’s whiney voice increases in pitch throughout the whole movie until by the end his screechings give Chris Rock a run for his money.

Kevin Spacey, as Nick’s boss Dave Harken, did well with what he was given; he plays the snarky bad guy with ease. Colin Farrell’s talents were completely wasted (har har) in the role of drug addled Bobby Pellitt, Kurt’s nemesis, and Aniston tries desperately to reinvent herself as a sexy middle-aged woman, although she has obviously had herself cosmetically altered to have the body of someone much younger. Still, her acting was as unmoving as her gravity defying bosoms, and as wooden as the nether regions of those who watched this for its smut potential.

Watch this one if you’ll be happy for 15 minutes of genuine belly laughs to justify the other hour-and-a-half of crude, lewd, “dude” humour.

I don't recall even seeing any posters for this movie. Just picked out this one at random.

Everett: I’m with the FBI.

Kid: What? Behavioural Science Unit?

Everett: No, Narcotics.

Kid: Bah, drugs.

The dog's a Red Kelpie, in case you're interested

Red Dog is the movie that Australia should have been. It’s a perfect storm of quintessential Australiana: mateship, multiculturalism, the outback, Strine, natural resources, and the Aussie-larrikin sense of humour. It paints a detailed portrait of both the country and its people, without resorting to caricatures or stereotypes like Baz Luhrman did (well, it does a little bit, but I’ll explain below).

Although it purports to be based a real, true blue story, the plot follows a very similar template to the Hachiko story, which was also recently filmed by Hollywood as Hachiko: A Dog’s Story with Richard Gere (I haven’t seen that one, although I’m willing to bet that this movie doggy-doos all over it, in line with my usual tirade about all the good things that Hollywood goes out of its way to ruin). Essentially, it’s about a dog that demonstrates the epitome of canine faithfulness after its master dies.

Because the story is made out to be a legend and told in flashbacks, the characters are all slightly comical (e.g. three Eastern Europeans characters with surnames ending in -ski are referred to as “The Ski Patrol”), but it doesn’t detract too much because you expect legends to be somewhat hyperbolic. The characters might be overplayed, the humour and emotions definitely aren’t – the script never tries to extort a laugh or a tear from you, and casually and confidently lets the audience decide for itself how it should feel.

Whether you’re a dog person or not, Red Dog is part of that rare breed: the charming Australian movie (but having said that, Aussie movies seem to be on the up and up) and definitely worth watching.

Hey just so you know, GeekReads is still alive (barely). Been so busy lately with my September ad-French-ure series that I haven’t had much time for anything else. Never fear, there’s a decent backlog of stuff that I’ll gradually work my way through once that’s over and done with. For now, here’s a two-for-one.

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So many meanings, so few letters

Easy A is a breakout role for Emma Stone – she’s what you would get if you take Lindsay Lohan’s innocence from her “Mean Girls” days, add a bit of Jodie Foster’s look, and inject a good-size dollop of Shirley Manson’s hair and spunk. She plays Olive Penderghast, the invisible, nerdy girl at school that nobody notices. Yeah, right. A very token gesture is made at the beginning of the movie to make her out to be dorky-looking, but that’s dispensed with almost immediately as she takes a giant step towards infamy in helping a gay classmate to stop being tormented by pretending to sleep with him – making way for the flashy, trashy costumes and the ‘tude as she revels in her new-found popularity/notoriety as the school slut. This inevitably spirals out of control, and she finds herself unable to deal with the attention that she suddenly starts receiving from every direction.

The movie is Hollywood in a nutshell – in a good sense of the word. It’s got: characters that straddle the border between real and stereotype; a smart, sassy script with wit and timing; a glossy and attractive cast that’s easy on the eyes; and a moral clarity, despite the fact that the pious are portrayed as the “enemy”. All of these are combined together in a package with proportions as perfect as Olive’s.  Another stand-out is Thomas Haden-Church as Olive’s English teacher Mr. Griffith – I don’t know why I find him funny, but I crack up every time I see him (and I wasn’t even a big Ned and Stacey fan).

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I prefer this poster. The other one makes the movie look like "Sister Act meets Scream"

Ben Affleck’s an odd one. He’s got this aura of crapness about him, and yet he still persists in being a relatively well-known celebrity. I don’t know whether it’s residual good will from Good Will Hunting, or even hand-me-down cred from his friendship with Matt Damon, but he simply refuses to disappear no matter how many disasters he appears in (and there have been many).

Affleck tries his hand at directing in The Town, and despite my inglorious introduction above, it’s not crap. He also plays the lead role of Irish bank robber Doug MacRay, who falls in love with a victim from one of his heists. This provides the tension throughout the movie as the various forces (police, FBI, gang bosses) conspire to bring his secret into the light.

One thing that I found interesting is the lengths to which the scriptwriters went to try and make the heists believable. Audiences today must be very sceptical from being brought up on a diet of CSI and its ilk, because great lengths were taken to show how careful the robbers were in covering their tracks: throwing bleach around to remove DNA evidence, ensuring that all mobile phones are not simply confiscated but destroyed, planting random hair to throw the police off the trail, etc. Robbing banks isn’t just about wearing gloves and not leaving fingerprints any more.

I’m usually pretty good with accents, but I admit that I struggled with the Boston/Irish one in this movie, and missed a bit of the dialogue.

An epic of epic epicness indeed.

In some ways Scott Pilgrim vs. the World‘s is like a Pilgrim’s Progress for Gen Y – a modern morality tale about love and self-esteem cleverly masked by fast-moving scenes and dialogue dripping with wit and irony. In order to win the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers, Scott must defeat her “seven evil exes” in videogame styled combat.

Scott Pilgrim is directed by Edgar Wright – the guy behind Spaced, Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead – so as you would expect, the movie is a triumph of fan service, pop culture references, comic-book cred and general awesomeness. The unfortunate side-effect of this of course, is that the movie has only very limited appeal to anybody who’s mental age is more than 16 – evidenced by its terrible box office earnings (in spite of largely favourable reviews).

Michael Cera in the lead role is a contentious but unsurprising choice, since he must be the only currently bankable actor with the right amounts of charisma and dorkiness to play the role of Scott. Other highlights were Ellen Wong as Knives Chau, who looks like she stepped right off the pages of a Japanese manga, and Kieren Culkin as Wallace, Scott’s gay roommate, who deadpans all of his (hilarious) lines and steals every scene that he’s in.

Frenetically paced and possessing of the highest meme density of any movie I’ve watched so far, don’t forget to put on your 80′s geek hat when you go and see it.

Here’s the trailer: