Hexed

Damned if you do and Damned if You Don't... Jonah Hex never lives up to its potential
By
Morgan P Salvo


It all made sense during Jonah Hex’s ending credits that this PG-13 tease had Neveldine & Taylor (responsible for Crank/Gamer) written all over it. But then it made even more sense to find out they dropped out and whoever took over left the good ideas on the cutting room floor. Based on a DC comic Hex is the newest comic-book-character-turned-anti-hero movie. Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) is an old west scar-faced drifter, bounty hunter and stoic gunslinger who can track down anyone...and anything. Jonah's violent history is steeped in perplexing myth and legend, and has left him with one foot in the natural world and one on the “other” side. Hex is hired to stop dangerous terrorist Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), the very same man who murdered his wife and family, so of course revenge becomes the driving motive.
 After a quick origin in unnecessary cutout animation with scattershot narration throughout, the dusty plot never materializes past the vengeance theme. Hex was underdone in parts and way overdone in others. Fire seemed to be a theme, but after the bullet hailing Gatling gun in the first major scene it felt like they blew their fiery wad. Barely 81 minutes long (including credits), the end product plays like a highlights reel connecting the dots to previously filmed explosive action sequences. For a lame finale Turnball’s warmonger army attacks the nation’s capitol on Fourth of July. The weapons of mass destruction are cannon balls that look like oversized bowling balls and are detonated by glowing golden orbs.
A lot was left undeveloped, including flesh-burning talking corpses, the fact that horses, crows and dogs inexplicably follow Hex and especially the fighting acid-spitting snake-man. The only super hero power Hex has is the ability to talk to the dead cowboy-style and come up with some dang good one-liners.

Brolin just keeps getting better. No one could’ve pulled off this role as well. He’s tough and ornery while literally doing it tongue in cheek (through his branded scarred face we see his teeth and tongue). Megan Fox is shot in “Porn-meets-Cosmo” soft lens in every close up. Fox is like a sexpot with a charisma vacuum, surprisingly empty and lifeless. Michael Fassbender (Ingorious Basterds) has the most fun as the knife-wielding tattooed psychopath. Malkovich exudes all his villainy in a Southern dialect, like an evil version of Grizzly Adams meets Tennessee Williams. The list of cameos is more proof of cutting room floor trash. Michael Shannon (Bug) is a fighting ring impresario with “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” screen time while Tom Wompat (yes that Dukes of Hazzard Wompat!) chews up a few seconds, along with Will Arnett (Arrested Development), Wes Bentley (American Beauty), and Adain Quinn.
Apparently when Neveldine & Taylor abandoned the project, director Jimmy Hayward-- an animation vet (Horton Hears a Who!) took over in a slip shot way, conducting last-minute reshoots and failing to capture the tone of a ghoulish gunslinger that would have come naturally to Sam Raimi or Robert Rodriguez. Hex is violent and brutal, yet lacking any blood or gore. All killing scenes were done off camera. I thought if you stuck a guy’s head in a whirling propeller that we would see more than a shot of his feet twitching. That’s the kind of stuff we did in high school film class.
Thankfully composer Marco Beltrami and the band Mastodon come thru with some decent sonic blasts and a frenetic spaghetti western heavy metal score.
The tagline of the Hex is “Revenge Gets Ugly” except it just gets mediocre. But even with all its glaring faults, gleaming potential and guts ripped out Hex had the feel of a decent TV show. And if it had been a cliff-hanger, I would probably watch it again next week.

Jonah Hex
Starring Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender
Directed by Jimmy Hayward
2 stars

Correction...The Kung Fu Baby or where is Ralph Macchio when we need him?

Everything is Kung Fu and Irritating as Hell in Karate Kid
By
Morgan P Salvo


I never saw the first Karate Kid or its sequels. Sure some bits and pieces on TV but that’s it. Now in a remake world where all dreams come true and schmaltzy sentimentality reign supreme we have our 2010 version. Although I assume there was karate in the original this one is devoid of any or as Jackie Chan says “everything is Kung Fu”
This movie starts off bad and never recovers. 12 or under you might enjoy this KK otherwise prepare yourself for a ton of disappointment.Beginning with possibly the worst credit music on the planet and no reason behind the single mom (Taraji P. Henson) and her child Dre’s (Jaden Smith) move to China we remain clueless as to why anything is happening. There was not one second of this film where I didn’t feel I was watching a movie or I wasn’t watching actors act. It was one scene after another of sheer set up.
Jackie Chan is the maintenance guy who gives kung-fu lessons to Dre so he can gain inner peace, strength and defend himself against bullies. Predictability Is the name of the game here as we see bully kicking-ass , Rap music for basketball, Evil kung fu academy, the most ridiculous cornball kiss in film history, blonde kid channeling Jodie Foster from Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Chi-eternal-energy-cobra-ledge-dance, phony fire rub, crybaby drunken car bashing –fu… even the “Feeling Strong Now” montage was extremely weak. This story is supposed to be about a teenager not a smug boy. We get tired of Smith’s cuteness and never buy him as a coming of age 12 year old fighting machine.
Chan as on old guy defending young thugs looks and worked better than his usual hammy acrobatic stuff. Chan mastered the humorous-buffoonery- Kung-fu in Drunken Master but thanks to Hollywood’s paychecks has become a parody of himself. Chan stays serious and heartfelt without doing his grinning imbecile routine. Henson is just stereotypical backdrop And Smith looks and acts like he’s showing off in his co-producer actor parents' living room. With his stoic little pouting act he becomes so annoying after a while you just do not care what happens to him . The evil kung fu school teacher looks like George Takei’s (Star Trek’s Sulu) evil twin
I thought I might have been meditating myself throughout this thing but I was simply bored senseless. As the images passed before me I realized I had planned the rest of my weekend. Ok maybe I’m too harsh on a kid’s movie but this was a manipulation of everything it touched with shallow messages and gargantuan sappiness. The only redeemable quote is the old Zen ditty: “Being still and doing nothing is not the same thing”
Suspense is minimal leading to the grand finale kung fu tournament. The camera zooms and spins around so much that I completely lost interest during the climactic fight scene. Face it even in the lame Rocky sequels had long camera takes exposing some solid fighting scenes.

Cute all over with the exception of Chan’s acting restraint there are no surprises in this cheesy schmaltz –fest. I left with only two burning questions: WHY did they ever move to China and where’s the damn Karate?

The Karate Kid
Starring Jackie Chan, Jaden Smith, Taraji P. Henson
Directed by Harald Zwart
1 star for Chan’s restraint

Splice of Life

Science and Dysfunctional Parenting Don’t Mix
by
Morgan P Salvo


Don’t expect horror from this dysfunctional freak-show. Splice is not scary and only pretends to be a psychological thriller. It’s a “what if” scenario focusing on scientists who play God, splice together some DNA stew, and then decide to raise the prototype like parents. They watch it grow, try to teach it, but give up and…have sex with it. I’m not remotely kidding. Even with its international credits Splice still comes off like a bad American movie about really bad parenting.
Starting off promising the credits are spelled in veins popping out of embryo-like skin, and the actors peer in at you as the experiment. Bio-technology at the N.E.R.D. laboratories has created a new species of lumpy penis-headed slugs named Fred and Ginger. Top-notch scientists and live-in lovers Clive and Elsa (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) are on the verge of the next breakthrough using human DNA but are blocked by corporate big wigs so they go rogue and proceed with the experiment in secrecy.
Before you can say zygote they have their mutant child, which at birth looks like a manta ray with a butt on its head. After that it’s a chicken-footed-lamb-faced-cat-eyed-skinned-rabbit monstrosity straight out of David Lynch’s Eraserhead. The creature named “Dren” (nerd spelled backwards) wearing a little girls blue dress is completely laughable. The plot takes a few turns but spends too much time in origin and only hints at back-story for the two protagonists. Too many easy questions arise, like how can they get away with all this secret lab work undetected?
With obvious nods to Frankenstein (Bride of Frankenstein actors were Colin Clive and Elsa Lanchester) co-writer/ director Vincenzo Natali (Cube) makes a slick-looking flick about dangers of gene splicing, with nothing really explained. Natali's disjointed approach leaves the viewer left with an annoying sense that more interesting paths were bypassed for a narrative that offers few surprises.

Polley and Brody make the most of their emoting skills with the pedestrian dialogue. Polley gets progressively demented while weepy-eyed Brody wears about a dozen hip logo t-shirts. Commanding both pity and awe, Delphine Chaneac plays the grown up Dren and even under a ton of CGI and makeup has us feeling the pain of her dismal plight..
When Dren is moved to abandoned barn where we wait for suspense or scary horror pay-off--- we get an overt amount of time is spent on tortuous parenting. As if mindreading the audience, “tedious” and its anagram “outside” are actually spelled out in scrabble form by Dren, begging for her freedom. I felt like I was watching Alien meets exploitation Nazi camp version of Leave it to Beaver. Dren gets naked, and then it gets really warped. Clive turns alien-sex-fiend and this messed up morality play just gets stupider.



The sleepwalking tone betrays this movie. Whereas Moon was touted as a phantasmal sci-fi flick it successfully accomplished a weird psychological profile and social commentary. Under the guise of horror, Splice hacks together the notion that people just don’t get along until it’s too late. The children are the ones who suffer, especially when made out of a test tube.
The ridiculous gender bending twist ending that you see coming a mile way takes away from any social commentary or even horror values. When Dren turns into a Jeepers Creepers’ version of a devilish gargoyle-like chimera and then has transgender rape-sex all bets are off. Instead of taking a real chance, the finale devolves into a generic genre ending. It should have played out as a more self aware cult flick. Missing were hotrods, bikers and go-go dancers. It screams sequel but no one will care. This might sound good in the retelling but Splice is an experiment gone awry.

Splice
Starring Adrian Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chaneac
Directed by Vincenzo Natali
1 ½ stars

Dagger of Mass Deception: Waste of Time

Some Video Games are Better Left Alone
by
Morgan P Salvo

Joining the ranks of flicks vying for worst movie of the year award is Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Persia is like a bad combo of Pirates of the Caribbean and The Mummy. Making Disney adventures out of a videogame is a testament to producer Bruckheimer’s money-making schemes, but I can only assume that this is the most boring video game ever.
Beginning with a credo of destiny mumbo jumbo, this sword-and-sandal adventure takes place in the golden-hued sixth-century Persian Empire (now Iran) and focuses on the trials and tribulations of Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), an orphan plucked from the streets by a king (Ronald Pickup). In an only thinly veiled metaphor, the Persians invade a holy city to seize weapons of less-than-mass destruction (fancy swords) on false pretenses and bad intelligence. Thrown into the mix are Dastan’s two stepbrothers, Garsiv and Tus (Toby Kebbell/ Richard Coyle) and their evil uncle (Ben Kinglsey). The plot hinges on a time machine-like dagger; one press of a button on the handle sends the holder back in time…or time goes back…or time spins around in a smoldering golden whirlwind. Yes, it’s that confusing. The dagger comes in to play when Princess “pouty lips” Tamina (Gemma Atherton) is captured then escapes. Treacherous deceit and dagger pursuit ensues.

Relying on springboard-martial-arts acrobatics, director Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Donnie Brasco) tries to deliver a throwback to Douglas Fairbanks movies. I used to love this kind of stuff when I was a kid, but I think the high-tech wizardry and the Jackie Chan-like moves will be viewed as old hat by most kids. Every action scene that seemed like it mattered was interrupted by jump cuts to a few minutes later. Nothing really gels. The part when the dagger sends things back into time is so confusingly shot that it almost defies description: a fiery cyclone of squiggly golden particles, then some kind of flashback superimposed over a flash forward and then back to real time with creepy montage footage of previous scenes surrounded by flames.
The writing was equally to blame. Dull interaction between the principle characters weighs down any attempt at humor. The characters summarize all the action to date every chance they get.
Ever since the goofy Bubble Boy role, Gyllenhaal has been trying to reinvent himself. We’ve seen him as the hateful dick in Jarhead and making out with Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. Here, Jake is sorely miscast. He looks good and buff, but his facial expressions belie his acting instincts—he’s too “indie” to come off as Errol Flynn. Reduced to reaction shots, he smirks and rolls his eyes in a way that’s too small for this big production. We need to see more bravado, not wimpy side glances and an inconsistent British accent. Then there’s Alfred Molina hamming it up like he walked onstage as Falstaff, bellowing contemporary dialogue about being a small businessman and avoiding paying taxes. Ben Kingsley is utterly wasted, merely sleepwalking in tons of mascara while grimacing with his King of Siam look. The now apparently typecast Atherton (Clash of the Titans) actually spices things up once in a while, if that tells you anything.
The Middle Eastern-flair music with a thousand bouzoukis is way over the top. The sentimentally sappy “Born Free” theme music is laughable and the credits’ Celtic ballad sung by Alanis Morrisette made as much sense as the time traveling dagger. Unfortunately, Prince of Persia isn’t “so-bad-its-good.” Rather, it’s a stretch of the imagination and a big waste of time. I was never so thankful when a movie was over. The sands of time be damned! I wouldn’t want to relive this one.

Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kinglsey, Alfred Molina, Gemma Atherton
Directed by Mike Newell
1/2 star