movies!

[jlh]

So I went to see Red on Saturday morning, and I'll talk about that in a spoilery way under the cut, but before that I saw previews for four movies, only one of which looked like it had any chance to be any good, and I'm like, this is why people aren't seeing movies, Hollywood! Because they SUCK!:

• The Green Hornet actually looks really good. I'm looking forward to it. I think this might be awesome!Seth Rogen (as seen in Freaks & Geeks, Pineapple Express and, so I hear, Funny People) as opposed to annoying!Seth Rogen as seen in Knocked Up. Kato is the coolest, as ever, and I'll be requesting Kato fic for Yuletide.
  
• The Dilemna, which you might have heard about because they had a preview that used "gay" as a perjorative, and everyone got pissy and so they cut it. I'm unsurprised that the word was in there because this "comedy" looks like a misogynistic piece of crap and where there's misogyny, homophobia often isn't far behind. In the film--directed by Ron Howard! Why, Ron? Why?--Vince Vaughan and Kevin James (you know, the King of Queens, costar of that awful Adam Sandler movie where they were firefighters pretending to be gay for the health benefits) are BFFs and Vince is kinda jealous of KJ's marriage to Winona Ryder--in that "omg they have the most perfect relationship EVER" kind of way. (Vince is with Jennifer Connelly, who, props for doing a comedy honey but bummer that this is where you ended up.) Then he catches Winona making out with Channing Tatum and tells her that he has to tell KJ, as his BFF. And suddenly she turns from (slightly less manic but still pixie) dream girl to total nightmare, and says she'll just deny it and tell KJ that Vince is lying and also made a move on her. The rest of the trailer is a horrible battle of "wits" between Winona and Vince, in the ugliest way possible. Yuck.
  Oh and Queen Latifah is there as Vince and KJ's client for their motor design business; her appearance in the preview is to let them know, in a professional setting, that she loves the way their washing machine motor works because sitting on it would give her an orgasm.
  Yeah.
  
• The Fighter, which looks like a pretty standard working class boxing movie where Marky Mark's ex-wife and child are living with a guy who's a better provider and he thinks this next fight will finally make him a contender (his ex is like, yeah, tell me another one) and his trainer is his ne'er-do-well brother (skinny!Christian Bale, and man does weight make a huge difference in his face) but then he gets set up in a fight he shouldn't have been in and gets clobbered but some impresario sees him in that fight and gives him an offer to actually develop him only of course the Boss says he'll have to ditch his brother, and then his brother ends up in jail (whether this precedes ditching and makes it unnecessary, or is a result of ditching is unclear but probably ultimately unimportant) but the brother gets out in time for the Big Fight.
  Also, of course, there's a girl to give him a new chance on love, this time Amy Adams who he rescues in a bar from some jerk who won't leave her alone even though Amy seems like the kind of girl who can usually handle this. Their way is sexy but rocky in some unspecified way that is probably similar to the way he fucked up his marriage, and then Christian Bale comes to her house and says, "we're all he has" and she says that at the fight "I'll be in his corner." Which, come on people--that is a hacky fucking line.
  
• Drive Angry in 3D might possibly be the worst Nicolas Cage movie ever. (I know!) So Nic is a bad guy who was in Hell, but breaks out because some satanic cult got their hands on his daughter, killed her right after she gave birth, and ran off with his granddaughter. He wants revenge, and he drives around the South (of course we're in the South) seeking it, in a muscle car. (One wonders where the Wincester brothers are when you need them.) He's being chased himself by "Satan's right hand man" which, wouldn't he be Satan's left-hand man? Anyway, this means Nic can make the smart remark that Satan really can't do anything to him, since he's already been in Hell and plans on going back as soon as he gets his revenge. Satan's Admin also gets to make clever remarks to annoying people he sees, as when he tells two young men, "You I'll see in 70 years; you I'll see in six months."
  Nic is of course joined on his journey by a young blonde woman in daisy duke shorts who knows how to fight and how to fix cars. (For those interested, she's the blonde from And Still the Darkness, and I'm not seeing that either.) The blonde tells him that she's totally with him on his journey for revenge, for no real reason though perhaps she was bored. Many things explode.

Okay, on to an actually good movie: RED! Non spoilery: It's a lot of fun! If you like comedic action movies and you like Bruce Willis, go see it. If you really can't stand Bruce's schtick, don't. It's not as awesome as a Die Hard movie--not nearly as many action set pieces, not as tight and twisty of a plot--but it's really fun, not at all dumb as much as really straight forward, and is stuffed full of great performances, as opposed to just one-liners and explosions.

Spoilery below!

How is Karl so awesome? moments:

1. "Cute hair"
   
2. Sad eyes when he realizes that Frank is in his house.
   
3. Sitting on his desk after the beatdown.
   
4. His expression when Joe is shot and he knows that he doesn't have complete control of the situation. "Who fired the shot?" [That moment was a huge relief to ME; I tried to spoil myself for whether he flips to Frank's side or not, and at that moment I knew he would.]
   
5. Sitting in the empty ballroom waiting for Frank to call him, because he knows he will.
   
6. Giving Frank the key.
   
7. "Fuck you, Cynthia."
   
8. Being totally capable of cleaning up the mess.
   
9. His first scene, where he's calmly talking to his wife about domestic issues and assuring her that he'll be home on time from work while he plants bio evidence in a bathroom, then wanders into the living room and finishes assassinating some dude.

ALSO, omg the Russian going off into the sunset with Helen Mirren. That was the most lovely thing, when he was like, "when she shot me in the chest I knew she loved me, or she would have shot me in the head." SO ADORABLE. I want prequel fic of THEM.

As for the predictability, I don't know if anyone thought it would be mega twisty, but I'm not sure if predictable is the word I'd use. Like, I didn't realize right away that the Russian was Helen's old lover. I did know that Joe was toast as soon as he said "stage 4 liver cancer." (Ugh, black guy dead, WHY?) Richard Dreyfus played the same annoying villain he's been working since The American President. And I'm still not entirely sure why he wanted the VP shot—what was that about?