Paperaxle Reviews "Rock of Ages"

On Memorial Day, my wife and were standing on top of the Empire State Building in New York City (true story! Pictures on Facebook!), trying to decide what to do next. She suggested a Broadway show, specifically "Rock of Ages", so we took the elevator 86 floors down to the street, walked down to the theater to get tickets, and since it was a holiday and most theaters were "dark"... the show was closed for that day. (But across the street was "Phantom of the Opera" , which was open, so it wasn't a total loss...)

 

As fate would have it, I was able to catch an advance screening of this movie earlier this week, so for those of you who have/want tickets to see this at a screening next week, or for the more fortunate who can wait a while (a loong while!), here's what you can expect from the movie...

The movie takes place in 1987 on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Coincidentally, I was working in Los Angeles during most of that year, and spent quite a bit of time on the Sunset Strip (mainly at Mel's Drive-In, which was the location used for the movie "American Graffiti"), just up the road from the Tower Records location (which closed in 2006) and the Chateau Marmont (used in the movie as Tom Cruise/Stacee Jaxx' hotel room, and where John Belushi fatally learned in 1982 that "speedball" was not a sport). But I digress...

 

Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough) is riding a bus from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Hollywood in hopes to make it as a singer. After a big round of "Sister Christian" (Night Ranger - 1984) sung by everyone on the bus, she makes it to Hollywood, where her suitcase full of vinyl records is stolen (and how can anyone lift a suitcase full of records? According to FAA regulations, you would need a bank loan just to pay to get that thing on an airplane!). Fortunately, Drew Boley (Diego Boneta), a bartender who works at a nearby nightclub "The Bourbon Room" has seen the incident, and offers Sherrie a job working in the bar working as a waitress.

Meanwhile, The Bourbon Room is under attack by a group of women who want to shut down the bar. Led by Mayor Whitmore's wife, Patricia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), the bar is a hotspot of evil rock and roll music, which is corrupting the youth along the Sunset Strip. (And how come, since these women are against rockinroll - it's pronounced as one word in this movie... do they have to sing "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" - Pat Benatar - 1989! - to make their point? Isn't that defeating the purpose?) 

The only way to save The Bourbon Room, run by Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin) and Lonny Barnett (Russell Brand) is to get Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) to perform, to raise the needed money to keep the bar from being demolished. As luck would have it, Stacee is without an opening act, and Drew is called upon to perform, which he does by singing "I Wanna Rock" (Twisted Sister - 1984). Ultimately, Stacee's performance can't save the Room, because Stacee's manager, Paul Gill (Paul Giamiatti) has worked the contract in such a way that, although the concert is a success, the Room now owes them $6 dollars!

 

Other stuff happens in the first hour. Stacee is interviewed by Constance Sack (Malin Akerman), a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine, who later publishes a not so nice article about him. Drew and Sherri fall in love at the Tower Records store. (And I don't remember this particular Tower Records store being this heavy in dealing with vinyl records in 1987... I remember them mostly dealing with the new way to listen to music at that time... which were as compact disc. And record albums wrapped in plastic and selling for $9.44? I remember buying them at $12.95 that year, when I could find them!)

 

But after the first hour, the novelty wore off, and I was looking for an ending to this movie. And that's about the time that Dennis and Lonny have their big love scene, set to "Can't Fight This Feeling" (REO Speedwagon - 1984). This is the point where I said to my wife "I'm going home to feed our pet turtle. But first I need to stop by Petsmart to buy one to feed. See you later!", but I was forced to stay. You guys watching this movie... when you hear this song... make an excuse to leave... and don't say I didn't warn you!

So, to make a long story short, Gill wants to sign Drew to be in a new boy band (ZZ-GuyEE - double the Z, double the E, double the flavor), which I guess predates the year when boy bands were actually popular (Backstreet Boys - 1993?). Drew and Sherri have a major break-up, Sherri goes to work for the "Venus Club" (for Gentlemen), the boy band is a failure, Hulk beats up Loki, and agents J and K save the world from being blown up by aliens. (You don't think I'm gonna tell you how it's ends? C'mon... I had to watch the whole thing! You don't get off that easy!)

Don't get me wrong... there are some funny parts to this movie, but overall... it's got a lot of campy humor to it. Sort of like a Batman TV show marathon, with music. It's a bit over the top for me, because a little can go a long way, and in this case, a lot went a short way. But the movie also wears on you. Too much singing and dancing. I remember when I was working in LA back then... not once did I come to the office and have co-workers sing and dance to "Working for the Weekend" (Loverboy -1981). And of all the bars I used to hit in LA... not one of them was like The Bourbon Room. I remember bars being more like Teknopop and Herbie Hancock ("Rockit" - 1983) instead of the big hair band music. And what's the point of setting this in a specific year? Only two of the twenty-four songs were even released in 1987!

Overall, I'd give this movie three signal bars on a disposable cell phone, and that's only because of the novelty and some of the humor. Tom Cruise did a great job as Stacee (although I could have lived my entire life without seeing him in a thong), and Julianne Hough was memorable as Sherrie. Both Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand started out pretty good, and then got embarrassing as the movie went on. 

And another thing... women are being used in the movie way too much as human Q-Tips... Tom Cruise must have the cleanest ears in Hollywood...

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Fifty Shades of Grey

Have you been looking for your inner goddess and can't seem to find her? Well don't turn to EL James' hit book Fifty Shades of Grey for any satisfaction whatsoever. My book club chose to follow the craze and read this book like every other woman in America right now. Of the five of us not a single person liked it. It was THAT bad!

If you've been living under a rock (or just avoid magazines, newspapers, MSN homepages, television, and the like) you may not know what book I'm reviewing. The first of a trilogy (yep, there are two more in this series!), EL James writes of a young coed named Anastasia Steele. She is not only young but also naïve, silly, and downright annoying. She meets a slightly older man named Christian Grey who is rich, good-looking, and more controlling and abusive than Stanley was to Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire. I don't get the attraction but somehow Christian casts his spell on Anastasia and before she knows it, she has signed a nondisclosure agreement to have really weird sex with a man who is hiding his past. The most unfortunate thing about this story is that it goes nowhere. Seriously, nothing happens in this book. Ana shares the very odd details of losing her virginity and tragically uses phrases like “holy cow” and “inner goddess” as if she is in junior high school. Ugh.

I cannot defend this book in any way and I certainly recommend avoiding the temptation to read what everyone else is reading. It's not kinky, sexy, erotic...it's just plain bad writing about two twenty-somethings who contribute to an abusive relationship. Not exactly good times. On that note, avoid the bandwagon and skip this book. You'll thank me later.

Happy reading! ~Cherry

Paperaxle Review: "John Carter"

Take two scoops of “Buck Rogers”, a half cup of “Cowboys and Aliens”, a dash of early Superman (strange visitor from another planet who initially couldn’t fly, but could leap an eighth of a mile), a pinch of Conan and a smidgen of “Where the Wild Things Are”, mix well and you get the recipe for the new movie “John Carter”.

I was initially hoping it was about what happens to the doctor played by Noah Wyle in the television series “ER”, because during the last year or two of that program, that was the only character that I even liked. But it’s not that John Carter. No… this John Carter is a Civil War veteran who in 1881 discovers a mysterious “cave of gold” in the Arizona Territory which somehow transports him to the planet Mars (also known as “Barsoom”, which sounds like a bad cartoon sound effect used in Mad Magazine to describe an explosion).

Once on Barsoom/Mars, Carter (played by Taylor Kitsch) finds he has “superpowers” due to the lighter gravity of the planet. His strength has increased ten-fold and can now leap over tall buildings in a single bound. In a nutshell, the entire plot consists of one band of warriors pitted against another band of warriors, with our boy Johnny caught in the middle, and all he wants to do is get back home to Earth. To describe much more of the story would be beyond my capabilities, because I started getting lost a little bit in keeping the details straight.

During his adventures, Carter meets (and falls in love with) the princess of Helium, Dejah Thoris (played by Lynn Collins) and even adopts a “dog” named Woola, who provides the comic relief in this movie. There are several well placed “easter eggs” in this movie, most notably that of the character Edgar Rice Burroughs (who in real life, actually created John Carter of Mars, as well as Tarzan of the Apes).

The screenplay (by the director Andrew Stanton, as well as Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book of 2000 “The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay”) is very well written, with moments of true humor and thrilling action. Any fault I find with this 132 minute movie is due to a minor flare up of my “wince-o-meter” which went into overdrive during the last 20 minutes or so of the movie. Things wrapped up a little too quickly, with a few unexplained questions that weren’t addressed. It was like the screenwriters didn’t know if they should have a sequel or not, so they covered their bets.

The movie is in 3-D, which it didn’t need to be, and is rated PG-13, probably for some violence and gore. I’d give this one three “Barsooms”… it’s enjoyable with great special effects and the story is good enough to want to see more of the characters. I’d even go a little bit higher if the ending wasn’t so rushed.

Paperaxle Reviews "Contagion"

Whatever you might have heard about this movie, it isn't true. It's not a thriller, it's not scary and there really are things that spread like fear, like grape jelly on a warm peanut butter sandwich.

Here's the whole plot... people react to a virus that has spread over a course of a few days. Some people die, some people don't. Some people panic, some people react calmly. And some people stay awake through this movie, and some people leave the theater.

Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns home from a business trip in Hong Kong. While in Hong Kong, she catches an illness, which she spreads to her lover during a layover in Chicago, and then to her family in Minneapolis. Within a couple of days, she is dead, her son is dead, but her husband Thomas (Matt Damon) is mysteriously immune to the disease.

But that isn't the whole story. There are subplots within the movie, like Alan Krumwiede's (Jude Law) crusade to find the truth behind a supposed government cover-up of the disease. Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) is trying to combat the disease in Malaysia. Drs. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) and Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) are trying to work through the Atlanta Center for Disease Control to find a cure.

But none of this matters, because... and I'll go ahead and spoil it for you right now... although they do find a cure by the end of the movie, it will be over a year before the cure is available to everyone. Millions of people die, and there is no real resolution to the movie. There is no sense of fear, no race to find a cure is depicted in the movie, and the big reveal at the end is how the disease began. By that time, we don't care.

There is no sense of urgency in this 115 minute movie, and you find yourself checking your watch several times in two hours. I'll give this one some hand sanitizer and a box of Kleenex. Avoid this one like the plague.

Paperaxle Reviews "Moneyball"

Chico Escuela may bemoan the fact that "Baseball... been berra berra good... to me", but to Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, baseball hasn't always been kind. Beane played for four major league teams in five years, and always as a reserve outfielder, with a career batting average of just .219 and only three home runs. He left major league baseball in 1990 after failing to make the major league roster that year, and went to work for the A's, first as an advance scout, and then as general manager.

It was while Beane was GM during the 90's that he was told by the new owners of the A's that payroll would be drastically slashed. In 2001, where the majority of the story takes place, the New York Yankees had a payroll of $115 million per year, while the A's had just $36 million to work with. As a result, three of the major players on that team who became free agents that year left for the greener pastures of other major league teams.

It was during a visit to the offices of the Cleveland Indians that Beane meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a whiz kid who developed a specialized computer program that determines undervalued baseball players, and their affordability, which Beane then uses to rebuild his crippled baseball team. Beane has to convince the owners that baseball can be run by computers instead of scouting agents and field managers, and the A's can create a baseball team at a fraction of the cost of other major league teams.

Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who is the manager of the team disagrees, and continuously fights with Beane over player placement on the team. Howe will not budge, and the players cannot play on the positions that are assigned to them by Beane and his computer program. Halfway though the season, the A's are the worst team in baseball...

Then it gets better. And to say anymore, especially to those of you unfamiliar with the Oakland A's, will just ruin the story for you. If you have to know what happens to the Athletics during the 2001-2002 baseball season, then google it. You'll be surprised.

Moneyball is one of those movies you'll hate to admit that you like. I don't follow baseball, don't know anything about players, or teams, or even what a baseball is made of. But I really liked this movie. It is funny (not in a "Major League" kinda way though), suspenseful (will Beane's computer program win a Series for the A's?), and you'll be rooting for this movie like you would for your home team as you sit behind home plate.

The movie runs about 135 minutes, and will be in theaters on September 23rd. I'm giving this one four balls and no strikes. Grab some peanuts and some Cracker Jacks and settle in for nine innings of a great movie.

Paperaxle Reviews "Colombiana"

Luc Besson is the one of the greatest action movie writers you've never heard of. Chances are that you've seen at least one of his movies, whether it's from the "Transporter" series, or "The Fifth Element", or the movie "Taken" with Liam Neeson. This year's offering from Mr. Besson is "Colombiana", with Zoe Saldana ("Avatar") as his new action hero(ine), and Mr. Besson is starting to show he is becoming a little stale writing the same types of movies over and over.

Zoe plays Cataleya Restrepo, a young girl who lives in Bogota, Columbia, who witnesses her parents murder, and sets out to avenge their deaths. She escapes to the US Embassy in Columbia, who then fly her to Miami for protection, and then escapes Miami to take the first train outta there to Chicago, where she meets her uncle Marco (played by Jordi Molla) who trains her to be an assassin. Fourteen years later, Cataleya has murdered 22 people who were related to her parents' murder, and the death toll isn't over yet.

The movie appears to be pretty formulaic, because it's a simple tale of revenge. There are some good ideas in the movie, like the scenes where she "breaks" into jail to murder one of the people on her hit list, and some good action sequences, but at the end of the day, this is just another "super assassin" who can do anything and never get seriously hurt. Although I did like the movie, I don't know if I can recommend it highly enough to watch in a theater. I've seen bits and pieces of these types of movies before, and the movie doesn't offer enough new stuff to make it worthwhile. And Zoe Saldana doesn't really cut it as an action star.

Best thing I can say... if you like these types of movies, and can't wait for a DVD release, then there are worse options than this. It's only 101 minutes long, and it's rated PG-13, so there is no nudity or real excessive scenes of violence. As such, it rates only a couple of Death Wishes and that's it. Better Luc next time, Mr. Besson.

Couple of buzzworthy items that came across my desk this week...

1. When is the last time you saw a good Nicholas Cage movie where he plays a superhero with his head on fire? Well, here's another one... http://ghostrider2movietrailer.blogspot.com/ You'll believe a superhero can piss fire!

2. Seen the new trailer for "Tower Heist" yet? It's the new movie with Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy... www.towerheist.net/#/home Could be the best Eddie Murphy film since.... since... has Eddie Murphy ever made a good film?

Paperaxle Reviews "Warrior"

I saw this at an "invitational screening" the other day, and was asked to provide a few comments to the advertising agency to describe the movie. I told them "The best mixed martial arts movie ever! With plenty of heart and soul, and characters who remain with you longer than an ugly bruise! Look out Rocky, the Conlon brothers are in town!"

I just wanted to sound like a movie critic. And I gave them something they really wanted to hear. I don't even like these type of UFC movies, even going so far as saying "You can't even spell the word FUCK without using the letters U, F and C!"

This movie doesn't open until September 9th, and I was leery of giving a review of this movie so early, but the advertising agency told me "Please go ahead and write a review! We really want the word to get out for this film!" I mean, I cannot write a review of the movie "Real Steel" this early, although I saw the movie four months ago, because the producers don't want me to give too much away.

So here goes...

Tom Conlon (Tom Hardy) is the youngest son of an alcoholic former boxer, Paddy Conlon (played by Nick Nolte) who after going AWOL in Iraq, returns home to seek training from his father for an ultimate Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) tournament, being held in Atlantic City. It's a five million dollar, winner-take-all event, with participants as far away as Russia competing in this.

Tom's brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former Physics teacher for a Pittsburgh high school and married with two daughters, is facing foreclosure of his house and stands to lose everything. He is suspended from teaching after he is caught fighting in a local tournament to help support his family, and now has no income to pay his bills.

Several years before, Paddy (who at that time was a washed up drunk) broke up his family and left, taking Brendan and leaving Tom with his mother, leaving the entire family estranged from each other. This ultimate MMA tournament will unite what is left of the family (the mother having died previously), although there is no love between either of the brothers towards their father. Paddy wants to reunite his family, but the brothers (except for being Tom's trainer) don't want anything to do with him.

The top 16 MMA fighters are in Atlantic City to compete, and the brothers are among them. With a setup like this, you know that somehow the brothers will be forced to fight each other, on a number of different levels (physically and mentally), and it will happen. Sounds like a rehashed plot of any number of fight movies you've seen, and to a degree it is, but it's whats done with the plot that really makes it outstanding.

I highly recommend this (approximate) 130 minute film, even hoping that Nick Nolte is nominated for an Academy Award. My wife, who owns a martial arts studio, couldn't stop raving about the movie, and was yelling all though the movie "Nice takedown!", so you know that the fighting scenes are authentic. It's easily the best movie either of us has seen this year, and it will be up for Oscar contention come next year.

Giving this one four armbars and a triangle choke. I never expected this movie to be as good as it was. You guys have something to look forward to in this one. Remember me come next March and the Academy Awards.