Reviews of No Use: Randomly On Demand12 May 2008
This weekend I ended up with rather more time than normal to be spent watercoloring. Because watercoloring involves a lot of stopping and starting and letting things dry, it is done in front of the TV. But also — when not waiting for things to dry — it requires what is on the TV not to be too demanding of either attention or intellect. So I turned to my HBO On Demand movie listings and this is what happened…
Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer — This movie fit the non-intellectually demanding requirement all too well. In fact, after about half an hour I could actually feel intelligence being siphoned out of my head. I’m often given to hyperbole in my film reviews so when I come across something that really deserves, if not begs for, the strongest denunciation possible I end up at a bit of a loss. But truly, this was the worst superhero movie — and one of the worst movies of any sort — I’ve ever seen. It has eclipsed both Daredevil and Electra as well as the first Fantastic Four movie for this title.
When I was a consumer of comic books, I had always thought the Silver Surfer was (as I might have phrased it at the time) gay. He rides a surfboard? Through space? Someone thought this was cool? But even in his clunky-ass CGI form he didn’t deserve this shit. It made me sad and embarrassed for everyone involved in it and it left greasy skidmarks on my soul. Jessica Alba could not wear enough (or little enough) spandex to even begin to make up for the moral and artistic deficit this movie represents. Learn from my mistake. Never watch this.
The ungodly way this movie sucked out loud actually made it difficult to work with. I had to keep looking at the screen in disbelief every couple minutes, shocked that against all odds things had gotten still stupider.
Reno 911!: Miami — For unspecific reasons I have never gone out of my way to watch Reno 911. Which is weird, considering how many members of The State are involved. Mostly I’ve only ever seen scraps of it my DVR has caught before or after something I was recording on purpose. But it turned out that this is the perfect movie to paint to. What plot there is is so superficial and beside the point that it need not even be discussed and consists of little more than sketches, so if you tune out for fifteen minutes neither you nor the movie will be any the wiser. And I actually laughed at several different places. I can’t remember at what exactly now, but that just makes it even better, low-calorie comedy.
Also, it has Paul Rudd who I will watch do almost anything (sometimes to my own detriment) and Patton Owsalt who needs only to utter the word ‘douchenozzle’ to crack me up. And it has the boobs and swears which Comedy Central just can’t deliver. In short: perfect painting movie.
The New World — I had a vague recollection of having wanted sort of to see this when it was out in theaters. But I also remembered a couple or reasons for not having made much effort to do so. One being Colin Farrell. I just do not like Colin Farrell and I have never much liked any movie he’s been prominently displayed in. Also, I had a bad feeling this movie would be a total 1492 -style letdown. Actually, most movies that are set in some very specific historical context tend to piss me off. Mainly because your normal historical epic will only use its setting as an excuse to make fancy costumes and sets to serve as a backdrop for the same generic, bullshit love story and pointless couldn’t-care-less set piece battles and, even worse, will sometimes include Tom Cruise.
I guess maybe I would have known better in this case if I’d ever seen anything else by Terrence Malick. The New World is really, really good, ok? It sidesteps the bullshit love story trap entirely. Which is amazing since the John Smith/Pocahontas thing is the premise of the movie. But the fact that the movie resists cliche to the greatest extent possible helps a lot. And the fact that the photography is gorgeous as anything doesn’t hurt. And the fact that the script omits hitting every possible nail directly on the fucking head, so to speak. It was just excellent to see aspects of this kind of storytelling which are so often horribly mishandled not be, is what I think I’m saying.
Consequently, this was a terrible movie for painting to because I couldn’t stop looking at it after about twenty minutes. I got pretty much nothing done for its duration. And I didn’t even mind Colin Farrell.
See more: Unjustified Text, Reviews