God, Deliver Us From This Disappointing Shit.

PRIEST (2011)

Priest Does Ikea: Slot A, meet Slot fucking B.

Just once this year, I want to walk out of a movie theater and not feel like I paid $13 to get sodomized by a chainsaw. I thought Priest would be the movie to bring an end to this disappointing string of bullshit that the movie industry has been peddling like rainbow unicorn flavored acid. The trailer was promising, the concept was epic, the actors were all names I know and love. So what went wrong? I showed up in time. I paid for my ticket. I stubbornly opted for the 2D version of the film rather than the arm-and-a-leg priced 3D version, firstly because I'm a cheap bastard, and secondly because I'm sick and tired of movies that think they can replace any sort of logical plot with a waste basket of special effects. I'm not asking for a lot here. I named my blog "The Smoking Pen", I call my movies "badass", I eat poorly crafted action movies for breakfast and thoroughly enjoy them. I'm really, really not asking for a lot. Give me a couple good explosions, a couple well choreographed fights, a pair of tits and a band of morally ambiguous character I can care about and I'm good to go. I'm not asking for an epic Lord Of The Rings style plot. I'm not asking for characters with back stories that stretch all the way to their slippery push into this world. I'm not even asking for solid, airtight logic. I'm the kind of person that looks forward to the cheap crap summer movies churn out. I'm just asking for a good fucking movie. That's it. That's all I want. Something I can walk away from with a satisfied feeling in my uterus. Is that so much to ask for?

Yes. Apparently it really, really is. And, funny enough, it's a movie called Priest that made me lose all faith in 2011 cinema. Priest isn't simply a bad movie. A bad movie I could live with. Priest was a dick slap in the face. It promised so much--the premise, the action scenes, the way the trailers pushed this as the epic movie of the year. The concept is good: John Wayne meets vampires. Despite the fact that the Church, the Big Brother of this world, has claimed vampires no longer exist, there's a vampire kidnapping in which a little Lucy is whisked away. A little Lucy who happens to be the daughter of a wayward warrior Priest (Paul Bettany), the man who has to now go against the heavy hand of the Church to recover the lost girl. He's joined on his quest by Lucy's lover Hick (Cam Gigandet) and his Priestess companion (Maggie Q). Together, they set out to recover the lost Lucy before it's too late and vanquish the evil ex-Priest now-vampire (Karl Urban). Sounds cool, right? Right. And then this happens:

I. Do Not Explaineth Thine Universe.

Just because the most compelling part of your movie is the fact that it takes place in a dystopian hyper-religious world under threat of vampires, doesn't mean you actually have to expand on that dystopian hyper-religious world under threat of vampires. At all. Apparently, it's okay to throw a bunch of words around like familiars and hope the audience figure it out from context. And it's okay to say that vampires can't go out in the sunlight, and then have these half-human half-vampire things roaming around in the day time. And it's okay to have this vast, sprawling landscape of various settlements that don't quite make sense, but you included a five minute cartoon of vague exposition in the beginning, so you know what? Audiences can suck it. Literally.

In truthfulness, I blame the laziness of this movie on the myth of the ADD Generation. The fact that kids can't sit still long enough for a movie to start. It's said that in the first 15-20 minutes of your movie, the introductions should be over and the movie should really take off. Anything longer than that, more often than not, drags. However, filmmakers these days seem to have ditched those introductory 15-20 minutes all together. Instead of taking their time to flesh out a world, give our characters a little history, breath some life into that dull script, the movie give us a quick expositional cartoon blip and cuts straight into the action. Anything that might slow the movie down--flashbacks about the order of the Priests, a deeper relationship between Hicks and Lucy, a little internal battle of faith for the Priest--has to go. All of that shit that might, god forbid, make the audience care. Nah. Stuff a couple gooey vampires in their face and they'll be happy. Honestly? We will wait for a good movie to develop. I have a lot more patience for a drawn out beginning and a good couple hours than 90 minutes of eye vomit.  

II. Ditch Actors, Go With Cardboard.

"I watch sand...it hurts my eyes."

Cam Gigandet plays the Sheriff Hicks, who comes from the middle of buttfuck nowhere in this uninspiring landscape. Hicks spends his time chasing off lowlives and looking at the white sand "and stuff" (literal quote from movie). He complains that it hurts his eyes. Gee, dipshit, I wonder what happens when you stare at white desert sand for hours on end? Who wrote this, Prequel George Lucas My love is softer than sand which is rough and I don't like sand but I like you? The most depressing part? Hicks is the most compelling character of the entire movie. And he's a fucking Twilight actor, so he will forever have to try harder to impress me than most actors.

The acting gets worse, the script writing gets worse, and the names vanish. Our main character is simply "Priest". His chick friend is Priestess. The villain is Black Hat, clearly named by the writer's one year old son who's eager to show off the few words of vocabulary he knows. And how could anyone forget Brave Priest, Strong Priest, Bold Priest, and my favorite, Flashback Priest. They weren't even trying to get us to relate to these characters.

And there's the Priest himself. Didn't he just pop nicely out of that microwavable character container? He's already lost his faith in the Church, so we don't have to deal with anything messy like a character conflict. Instead, he seems to have been suspended in time, glaring at everyone in the city, waiting for some random kid to come around and tell him his daughter's been stolen. Because, you know. It's not like he can actually take the time to go out and visit her, what with his busy glaring schedule. What do we know about Priest? He's lost his faith in the Church, he seems a little shaky on the whole God thing too, in fact, he doesn't have much of a reason at all to be a Priest except that he's really fucking good at killing things. And he does it all instinctually, so he has no qualms with the fact that he's a lean, mean, killing machine. He feels bad for letting go of his friend's hand when he should've held on, but that's really the only thing that plagues him. We have no idea why he feels so bad about it anyway, it's not like we have any reason to believe they were particularly friendly with one another. All we really know is that he adheres to some abstract samurai code, but doesn't really care about anything except killing vampires, and Lucy is just a convenient way to kill some more. Note to self: you can pay tribute to The Searchers all you want, but only John Wayne can get away with that shit. 

III. Put Thine Bitches In Their Place.

Let's face it. The trailers made the chick look badass. But empowering women is really, really boring. So here's what we're going to do instead. We're going to take the Priestess, who, by the way, has willingly submitted herself to be a Priestess and fully accepted the fact that she's taken a vow of chastity. Great. So this woman with full command over her sexuality has decided that God is overrated, and what she really wants out of this life is to fuck our protagonist, hard. Paul Bettany is not a bad looking dude, and neither is a cardboard cutout of Kate Moennig, yet still I am somehow not inspired to make passionate love with hard papery material. Fine. You know what. We're an action movie, we need someone to moon over our hero, I get it. I'm on board with you. I'll even give you the benefit of the doubt for your lame ass courting scenes, which go something like this...

Sometimes, I have bad dreams....

But sometimes, I have GOOD DREAMS. WINK.

But then it goes a step further. This movie wants her to be the sex pot AND the badass woman hero. Which is fine, except for the fact that they refuse to let her be badass. Oh, she's got the moves. She's got the gadgets. She's a warrior woman dance of death. So let's throw the Special Education School Of Vampires at her. While the hero is busy dealing death to millions of deadly vampires, she's watching the car and pushing away the retard half-vampire things (can someone please explain what the fuck a familiar is anyway?). Why do I feel like I'm repeating myself...?

IV. There Is Fast....And Then There Is NITRO.

So you think your horsepower is impressive? You think that you're a badass because you went a couple miles over the speed limit in Italy? Well. You clearly haven't ridden a battery powered motorcycle...thing. It does speed. Climbs up the MPH meter like a beast. But when you're trying to outrun a speeding train filled with blind vampires, you need more than 200 MPH. You need NITRO. Nitro does not have a miles per hour because nitro IS it's own unit of measure. Nitro is tearing up the road, bitches fast. Nitro is your motorcycle on powerthirst. It's like the speed of lightspeed, but like...it bends light...and...um...it's like...BETTER. Than you. And your mom. 

V. Foreshadowing Is For Thou Pussies.

Remember when Indiana Jones told everyone his one greatest weakness was snakes, and then ended up forced in a small room covered in them? Remember when the Narrator from Fight Club went to a doctor for his insomnia, and then his lack of sleep ended up being one of the main origins of his issues? Remember every single time Q told James Bond "whatever you do, don't push the red button"?

Well. Priest has decided that it's completely okay with having the gun on the mantle the first act, and leaving it untouched for the rest of the movie. Literally half the film is spent on this single dilemma: what are they going to do if they find Lucy has already become infected? The Priest vows he'll kill her, yet Hicks in turn vows he'll kill the Priest before he has the chance. Good, healthy character tension, right? So we've established their relationship, we've established the tension, we've built it up to it's final climax, and...absolutely nothing happened. Lucy never got bitten. Which means all those arguments and all the effort they put into the conflict was purely hypothetical and ultimately meaningless. 

Verdict? There's campy, and then there's we just couldn't give a crap. I left the movie theatre and on my way out, I ran down the up escalator. Those 30 seconds were more thrilling and entertaining than the last 90 minutes I spent feeling my brain drip out of my ears. So save yourself the money and run down the up escalator for a couple hours instead. 

TRAILERS: Hanna/Priest

TRAILER: Hanna

Saoirse Ronan as Hanna.

Since it's been a while since I've frothed at the mouth over a trailer, I thought I'd stick in two that've peaked my interest. Starting with Hanna, staring Saoirse Ronan (also known as the fanfuckingtastic girl in Lovely Bones (2009)), Eric Bana (who's just always amazing), and Cate Blanchett (who I've finally stopped calling Galadriel). Clearly, this isn't exactly a kids movie, but it does kind of ring in the tune of a young adult novel, what with the main character being a young girl (or maybe I just read too many violent young adult novels when I was little). And frankly, it's nice for kids to have that sort of image up. I'm not saying "Yay, let's show our children how to be violent!" but rather, I like the fact that it's a young woman taking control of her life and going on this "adventure" of sorts all on her own. It's the same reason I'm admittedly psyched for Sucker Punch. It's about time we let women, especially young women, in on the little secret that they can kick as much ass as the big boys, and they don't have to put out to do it. 

TRAILER: Priest

The second trailers rings a bit of a different tune. Priest is yet another graphic-novel-turned-movie, so there's no way they can go wrong, right? Right? Well, so far, I don't see how it can disappoint. Priests, those sweet little holy men, kicking major vampire ass? Rock on. I'm there. Plus, finally we have have vampires that are--god forbid--scary! These aren't your pretty sparkly vampires who are only interested in repeating high school for three hundred years because they're too fucking stupid to even get into college at least. These vampires are mean, ugly, unholy beasts of the underworld. Plus, Paul Bettany? Karl Urban? Cam Gigandet? Paul Bettany? How could this NOT be good? The actors are great, the action looks great, and the world looks really fleshed out and believable. I'm so there.

My only problem is the 3D bit. If I can find it in 2D, I'm snagging that viewing. Because I'm so damn tired of 3D. I don't know how many of you live in New York, but it's $18 here. That's right. $18. I could student rush a Broadway show for just about that much. Plus, 3D does absolutely nothing to me except occasionally make me dizzy since I'm one of those sit-in-the-front-row types. Honestly, if you don't have the imagination to picture this vast, creative world without having it stick out at you like a pop-up book, why are you going to the movies? Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm really just riding out the craze at this point.

Fight Now, Cry Later.

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (1996)

Image snagged from HDWarez

In the spirit of October being Halloween month, I think it's about time I got some motherfucking monster movies under my belt. And so, I begin with one of my favorites: the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino mash up From Dusk Till Dawn. As someone who watches movies, well, for the movie, I feel it's my duty to give you a preface for all those who haven't seen this. If you haven't seen From Dusk Till Dawn and have very little idea what it's about, DON'T READ THIS REVIEW. In fact, don't read ANY reviews. Don't read reviews, or descriptions, don't even watch the trailer. My experience with this movie runs like this: I went to the video store (ah, the age of actually physically holding movies in your hand before you take them home), saw Quentin Tarantino's name on the cover, and popped it in my player. I jumped into the movie without any idea with what it was about. And so, as it took off, I invested myself in the criminals-on-the-run aspect. In the hostage situation. In the two sets of characters the story runs with. And then, halfway through, once they're at the Titty Twister and the movie turns into a...well...completely and utterly different genre, I was caught totally off guard. And fucking loved it. So, this is the last time I'll say it, if you're still reading and you haven't seem this movie, what's wrong with you? The time to stop starts here.

Movie poster from impawards.com

Now. All the rest of you ramblers. Let's get rambling. This movie in my mind is a Grindhouse pre-Grindhouse. It's Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's first real badass baby (not counting Tarantino's segment in Four Rooms, while that was badass in it's own right, wasn't so much a feature film). It's proof that the two really should never stop making movies together. The first half is pure Tarantino. The long stretches of seemingly casual conversation, perfect character studies condensed into a single flowing conversation, layered with a building tension or a sudden dramatic twist. The beginning shot with the Texas Ranger (who cares if Michael Parks is typecasted in every Tarantino movie? He's fucking gold) is a perfect example of what seems to be simple conversation, layered suddenly with the threat of the Gecko Brother's entrance. 

While George Clooney usually makes it impossible NOT to love him, this is hands down my favorite of his roles (yes, even better than Ocean's 13). Seth Gecko is a cool cat; he's intimidating, but trustworthy, and he's got a cool as fuck tattoo. He's the one person you don't want to fuck with, yet at the same time you can't help but want to be his friend. It's no surprise that someone who could pull off that role would land the spot of a retranslated Odysseus in the Coen Brother's O, Brother, Where Art Thou?. His charisma demands the attention of every scene. At the same time, Quentin surprisingly matches Clooney's performance, as Seth's twisted and paranoid brother Richie Gecko. Tarantino seems to have an uncanny knack for playing uncontrollable rapists. I'm not sure whether I should be worried. Nonetheless, the two have an amazing chemistry, especially delivered when Richie takes advantage of the hostage, leaving Seth to rub his nose in it (sidenote: the splicing of the hostage's body with Seth's repulsed expression? Chills. And it's hard to freak me out).

On the flip side, we have the Partridge Family. Harvey Keitel plays Jacob, the "Mean Motherfucking Servant Of God" preacher who's lost his faith after the death of his wife. As usual, Keitel delivers, quiet but calculating, the voice of reason in every situation. After the Wolf, Jacob, and Mr. White, if Keitel told me to jump a bridge, I'd jump it. Jacob is taking care of his two kids, Kate (played by a young Juliette Lewis) and his adopted chinese son Scott (played by Ernest Liu who, unsurprisingly, did not go on to be a star, but to his credit, he gave the role everything it required). This family of three gets turned upside down once they have a run in with the Gecko brothers and are forced to help them down past the border of Mexico. 

This is NOT a psycho.

Lo and behold, halfway through the movie, the trailer tugs on passed the border and the odd group reaches the Titty Twister. And the story's over and everyone lives happily ever after. Right. Right? Wrong. Rodriguez steps in. And suddenly, what was an amazing fucking crime movie about dodging the cops and holding hostages turns into an amazing fucking vampire/creature/whateverthefuckthosethingsare movie. Rodriguez comes in campy, twisted, and bloody as the smoking hot strippers suddenly turn the tables on the wolf-eyed men--prey eats predator. It's, in my mind, the perfect combination: Rodriguez gives us a full strip tease delivered by none other than the beautiful Salma Hayek (with a SNAKE. C'mon, people), and then returns favor to the ladies who rip the power back from the men between their bloody fangs. The vampires are savage, brutal, and disgusting--they won't lift their pinky fingers as they sip blood from crystal glasses or sparkle in the sunlight. These blood thirsty bastards are straight up classic vampire--they burn when sunlight hits them, they're wary of crosses, they turn into bats, and they're straight up Nosferatu ugly. These vampires will not be your friends and they will not be your lovers. In fact, Seth Gecko offers the best advice anyone has ever given in a creature film when he says: "fight now, cry later!"

With great actors, a great script, and to top it all off, a great soundtrack (Tito & Tarantula, the band from the Titty Twister, match the tone of movie beautifully), it's very hard for this movie not to make anyone's favorite's list. Do yourself a favor and rewatch it this Halloween.