The Pledge: Day 30, or Thanks For Talking Me Through This

So, it's the final day of my no movies, TV, video games pledge, and I'm thinking of quitting early.

"What?" I can hear you say. "How could you betray us like that, Gabe?"

Don't think of it as betrayal. Think of it as time off for good behavior. I've been very productive this month. Well, comparatively, anyway. I've gotten a lot of stuff done, and even more stuff half-done.

"But Gabe," you say, "why not close the month strong and finish up some of those half-finished projects you just now mentioned?"

Jeeze, if I'd known you were going to give me the third degree, I wouldn't have said anything! Anyway, I'm sick today! Do you have any idea how awful it is to be sick and stuck in bed with nothing to do? It's the worst! It's almost as bad as being in a funk on a Saturday!

"But Gabe," you say, "you could always read a book or listen to some music. Perhaps you could queue up one of those internet podcasts you discovered this month."

Hey, who told you about those? Seriously, I want to know who you've been talking to! You think it's okay to go snooping around in my private life just because I tell you about it in my blog?

"Gabe, Gabe," you say, "you're missing the point. All I'm saying is, aren't there things you could be doing besides watching TV? You've done so well up 'til now. It'd be a shame to blow it all on the last day."

Well, I guess so. I just really miss watching TV is all. But you're right. I shouldn't give up when I'm so close to the finish line. All right, you've convinced me. I'll stick it out for the rest of the day. But I'm warning you, when midnight rolls around, all bets are off.

"That's fine," you say. "That's just fine. Just stick with it, okay?"

Okay. Thanks for talking me through it. You were right all along. I need to finish what I started. And don't worry, I will get around to finishing up those half-finished projects. But it'll have to wait until I feel better. That cool?

"Sure," you say.

Thanks.

Movie Review: "Lockout", or Well, I Guess I'm Kinda Glad They Didn't Call It "Escape From Space"

Lockout
2012, Rated PG-13
Written by Stephen St. Leger and James Mather (Screenplay), and Luc Besson (Screenplay and Original Idea)
Directed by James Mather and Stephen St. Leger
Starring Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace, Peter Stormare, Vincent Regan, and Joseph Gilgun

Did I mention that I like to watch movies with my son? I think I may have touched on that already, but in case you're one of the just slightly over 7 billion people who haven't been following this blog avidly since its inception, let me bring you up to speed.

If The Lost Boys taught us anything, it's that boys of a certain age need guidance. Well, boys of any age, really, but especially young fellas just starting to navigate the oh-so-treacherous waters of a little nightmare known as puberty. That is the point in a lad's life where he will begin either his inexorable slide down the slippery slope of ignorance into the bog of douchebaggery, or his steady ascent of the golden ladder of learning to the summit of Mt. Wisdom. Or he could just sit around, playing video games and masturbating himself into the mire of mediocrity, but that's a scenario nobody wants to see played out.

As a father, it is, of course, my sacred duty to set my son on the right path. With that in mind, we have begun the weekly tradition of watching the great manly films of history together. This naturally began with the Die Hard series, and has in recent months progressed into the Snake Plissken series, of which Escape From New York and Escape From L.A. are the centerpieces.

Okay, I can hear some of you crying "foul" already, so let's just nip this thing in the bud before it turns ugly. Right now you're saying, "What about Eastwood's Man With No Name?" or, "Hey, there was nobody manlier than John Wayne!" and even, "Have we already forgotten the manly works of Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney?" Listen, I have to start with my generation's manly films. That's just how this thing works. The only way to impart something meaningful to a child is to be genuine about it, and as much as I love A Fistful of Dollars and Rio Bravo, those weren't the movies that wowed me as a kid. Sure, later - as an adult - they blew me away, but the movies that shaped my view of the masculine ideal had stars like Bruce Willis, Patrick Swayze, Sylvester Stallone, and Kurt Russell. So get off your damn high horse and teach your own kids about Angels With Dirty Faces if that's what moved you. As for me and my son, we will watch '80s action.

So, getting back to the story...

It took all of about ten seconds of post-opening credits screen time for my son to decide that Snake Plisskin was his new hero (or anti-hero, if you like). This should come as no surprise to anybody who's seen the movies. Snake is a sort of "perfect storm" of testosterone, mystery, and danger. He's tough as nails and everyone knows it; his origins are hinted at, but never explained; he's so anti-authority that he'd rather face life in the worst prison there ever was than let the suits push him around; and he's not even afraid of Lee Van Cleef! On top of it all, the stories Carpenter and Russell crafted around him are so giddily over-the-top that not only is there no opportunity to get bored, but by the time the credits roll, the viewer is left in a sort of stunned, sensory overload daze that - once brain function has been re-established - can only really be described through mumbling rasps, amongst which, "awesome" is the only distinct word.

Still, I only consider N.Y. and L.A. to be the centerpieces of the Snake Plissken series. The further sequels are unofficial, and more in the vein of parallel universes, but I still look at them as philosophical brothers (or a sister and a brother, if you prefer) to the original duology.

Doomsday, the 2008 Neil Marshall film, could easily have been retitled Escape From Scotland, and is so blatant in its emulation of the Plissken films as to even use the same opening credit font as Escape From New York. The movie bears such staple Escape features a heavily fortified wall that allows nobody in or out of the secure zone, a dystopian corrupt bureaucracy that cares only for covering its own ass, and even a monocular heroine whom - in a wink so hard someone's eye probably exploded - they named "Eve." There's even the requisite unfair gladiatorial arena battle to the death. Basically, it's the logical descendent of the Escape series, and succeeds - in my book, anyway - with flying colors.

Lockout, not so much.

Quick setup, just so you know where this is all going: On a mission to determine wether inmates of the world's only low-orbit, super-max prison are being subjected to inhumane circumstances, the President's daughter (Maggie Grace) is taken captive when the prisoners escape their stasis pods and take over the prison. Ex-CIA agent Snow (Guy Pearce), recently convicted of treason he didn't commit, is offered his freedom if he can infiltrate the space station and rescue the girl from the two madmen (Vincent Regan and Joseph Gilgun) who are leading the uprising.

Okay, so when I heard they were making Escape From Space (i.e., Lockout) it was a given that my son and I would end up watching it together eventually. He hasn't seen Doomsday yet - the level of graphic brutality in the film is, in my opinion, a tad much for a twelve year-old - but I know that it will only be a handful of years until we're both sitting on my couch, laughing maniacally at the black absurdity of the adventure Snake's spiritual little sister finds herself wrapped up in. When I learned that Lockout had received a PG-13 rating, my feelings were split: On the one hand, I was happy because it meant I could take my son to see it right away; on the other hand, a PG-13 rating meant a neutered storyline, necessarily devoid of the darker elements that made the previous 3 Escape movies so memorable. Still, for my son's sake - and in a rare flare of my own stubborn optimism - I decided that we had to give it a shot.

I was both pleasantly surprised and disappointed, in almost equal measures.

If a stranger said to me, "You know what kind of movie I want to see? I want an action movie set in a dystopian future, where this kinda awesome tough guy goes on some kind of rescue mission into some hell-on-earth wasteland that's walled off from the rest of society," I'd say, "You want to watch Escape From New York." If that stranger then said, "Nope, I've already seen that one. But I liked it, and I want something like that," then I'd say, "Oh, then you should definitely watch Escape From L.A." If the stranger followed that up with, "Yeah, I saw that one too. Good movie - not Escape From New York, but still good - but I want to see something new," then I'd have to reply, "Well then, I think Doomsday is the movie for you, my friend." Now, if the stranger persisted, saying something like, "I know, right! Friggin' Doomsday was awesome! Yeah, but I just gotta see something new, and it really has to be in that same sorta vein. You know anything like that?" Then I would be quick to respond, "Well, if you just have to have that same sort of thing, I guess Lockout was okay."

It doesn't rank high on the list. Still, it's not utterly without merit.

My main beef with Lockout is the fact that it feels like a studio head said, "Hey, you know what I hear a lot of people really love? Those 'escaping from New York' movies. You know, the ones where the guy has to go in and save someone trapped inside this giant prison? We should make our own one of those, only it should have a real budget. None of this 'cult-underground' crap. This should be a real picture." Then they made Lockout. Let me count the ways in which it fails.

1. Maggie Grace does nothing for me. She's pretty enough to look at, I guess, but she has no charm; no presence. She was my least favorite character on Lost, and has done nothing in the intervening years to convince me that my initial assessment of her was wrong. Almost any other actress would have been just as good in this role, if not better.

2. What about the inmates? Out of a space station-full of maniac criminals, how is it that only two of them manage to be even remotely interesting? Even the tiniest hint of characterization among the prison population would have done wonders for my opinion of this movie. Sadly - the two leaders of the rebellion aside - it is nowhere to be found.

3. Why the hell is this place so heavily fortified? Don't get me wrong, I know believability has never played a large role in the Escape movies, but come on! There is exactly ONE super-max space prison in existence, and we're led to believe that - aside from the international space station - there isn't much else up there. Space exploration can't have advanced all that much, since the reason the President's daughter is visiting the prison is that she believes researchers are conducting experiments into the effects of deep space exploration on the human body. So why is the station's outside armed to the teeth? If they're still researching space exploration, one would assume that it's still not a huge industry. So, where's the external threat? Someone planning a jailbreak? Here's a simple solution: Don't open the airlock! Problem solved! Nobody's going to go blasting holes in a space station where somebody they're trying to rescue is housed. This whole thing just confused the hell out of me.

4. For a sci-fi movie, this place is dullsville. I know it's a whiny gripe, but the sets in this movie are, for the most part, just plain boring. Earth looks like stock footage from a Bladerunner wannabe's b-roll, and the space prison interiors look like they just recycled the sets from (INSERT ANY SPACE STATION MOVIE TITLE HERE). Once we get outside the prison, things start looking good, but those shots are so few and far between that they don't manage to counteract the cumulative blah of the rest of the movie.

5. Where have all the badasses gone? I mean, seriously? If you're going to build a house on Badass Blvd., you'd think you'd put more than one room in it. Snow is a fine tough guy, but where's his opposite number? Alex (Vincent Regan) is supposed to be some criminal mastermind, but lacks the charisma and ruthlessness necessary to even get past the velvet rope at Club Antagonist. Hydell (Joseph Gilgun) is a maniac, but gets neutered and relegated to the role of sidekick by the lackluster Alex. Langral (Peter Stormare) looks like the perfect corrupt government operative thug, but loses his teeth in the third act. Someone (I think it was Samuel L. Jackson - and he would know) once said that if you've got a great villain, you might have a good story on your hands. These villains lack greatness.

It's a bleak picture I'm painting, I know, but it's not all bad. The movie does have some bright spots. Guy Pearce is always fun to watch, and I like the fact that he's playing against the Snake Plissken type here. Snake was always quiet and brooding, but Pearce's Snow is chatty and sarcastic, always ready with a witty retort. He sort of reminds me of Bruce Campbell's Brisco County Jr., only a little less campy. And despite the stock interiors, when we go outside (well, in space anyway) things do start to look pretty good. The action is mostly ridiculous fun, and the final escape is so over-the-top that I actually found myself giggling giddily as I watched it play out. It's all absolutely absurd, but that's always been the fun of the Escape movies.

My son enjoyed it, of course. I knew he would, and I deliberately didn't dampen the fun for him by nitpicking the movie to death. Despite my skepticism - and the justification thereof - I went into the movie wanting to like it, and I guess I could say that I did. I liked it. But that's it. No fireworks.

So, will I be adding Lockout to my collection when it hits the home market? Yeah, but only because I'm pretty merciful on this kind of film. It definitely goes at the bottom of the Escape From stack.

But really, even the bottom of that stack is a fun place to be.

The Pledge: Day 11, or When Do the Folks from Guinness Get Here?

Well, my productivity continues, though morale is not at what you'd call an all-time high. I swear, I can hear the TV calling to me at night like the ghost of a dead lover.

"Gaaaaaabe... Gaaaaaaabe... Where are you, Gaaaaaaaabe? Don't you love me anymore, Gaaaaaaaabe?"

I'll tell you, when you've been lying awake in bed for three hours, that gets annoying.

But like I said, productivity is up. As I've stated elsewhere (Twitter, Facebook) I think I set a world record for publishing rejection this weekend. I submitted a story (American Machine) to Ideomancer on Saturday morning, thinking that, with the story's mix of ideas and character (something the submission page of the magazine's website said was one of the main things they were looking for), it would be a good fit with them. Sunday night, after returning home from my nephew's birthday party, I found my rejection letter in my inbox. After less than 48 hours.

"Strong characters and the setting has potential," wrote the fiction editor, "but I didn't feel there was enough plot here for a 2000+-word story."

You know, I got depressed for weeks after my first rejection, and though this is only my second, I can feel my skin getting thicker. More than that, though, I think it helped that the editor explained her reasons for rejecting the story. That first rejection was just a form letter. It could very well have been the not knowing that drove me so crazy afterwards. This rejection, at least I know. She's a plot person. I can understand that.

And it didn't hurt that she said I wrote strong characters. I knew it already, but a little outside confirmation never hurts.

So that's where I'm at. I know you were dying to know.

Taking the pledge...

I've sworn off TV, movies, and video games for the month of April. No joke. Those of you who know me are aghast, I'm sure. Don't worry. If you come over to my house to visit, I'll still watch a movie with you. I've just decided not to indulge in any electronic entertainment (other than e-books, facebook, and Twitter) while I'm alone.

I'm only 4 days in, so my view may be a little skewed, but so far I'm split between feeling like I'm in hell, and feeling like I've never been more productive. All I want to do right now is sit down and watch a movie. Any movie. I just want to zone out for a while. At the same time, let's take a look at what I've gotten done, shall we? Oh, and to give it a little context, I'll compare my accomplishments of the last 4 days with my accomplishments of the previous 2 weeks.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS, 4/1/12 - 4/4/12 (4 days)

-Wrote, rewrote, and published this blog entry.
-Designed, drew, and uploaded banner for my facebook page.
-Finished polish of short story, printed it, prepped it, and submitted it to Leading Edge Magazine.
-Wrote, polished, and posted movie review of Fright Night (2011 remake)
-Repacked and shipped my son's Amazon return (This may not seem like a big deal to you, but believe me, this could have dragged on for weeks before I finally got around to it).
-Insulated, sheeted, and laid sub-floor in my front porch addition.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS, 3/18/12 - 3/31/12 (2 weeks)

-Moved my movie reviews over to my main blog.
-Set up Twitter account and facebook page for StinkerFest
-Wrote cover letter for and polished 1/3 of my short story.

Accomplished 6 things in 4 days vs. Accomplished 2 things and partially accomplished a 3rd in 2 weeks. Compelling statistics, even for a slacker like me.

And yet, despite the undeniable uptick in productivity, my inner slacker weeps every time I walk past my TV without turning it on.

Sigh.

One day at a time, sweet Jesus...

Movie Review: "Fright Night 3-D", or This Is Not the Kind of Total Immersion Therapy I Had In Mind

Fright Night
2011, Rated R
Written by Marti Noxon (Screenplay) and Tom Holland (Story and 1985 Screenplay)
Directed by Craig Gillespie
Starring Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrel, Imogen Poots, David Tennant, and Toni Collette

The first thing you need to know is that my wife is terrified of vampires. The second is that it's all the fault of the 1985 horror/comedy Fright Night. She will argue with you to this day that it is the scariest movie ever made, and, flying in the face of all reason and common sense, she is completely serious.

Vampires are a mixed bag for me. As a kid, the first proper horror movie I ever saw was 1987's The Lost Boys, and it was love at first sight. That movie had it all: rock star vampires; motorcycles; comics; surf nazis; Grandpa; the sweetest mullet to ever grace the big screen; and not one, but two Coreys. From that moment on, I thought vampires were the coolest monsters on earth. Until I grew up, that is.

I blame Ann Rice. Sure, I liked Interview With the Vampire, but let's face it, whatever tough guy cool vampires had, she managed to dress up in drag and parade down main street, confusing the hell out of everybody. I'm sorry if it comes off as homophobic, but Ann Rice's vampires belong in a gay pride parade, not a horror con, and the worst part is that they were hugely popular. It was all downhill from there. Despite the occasional bright spot (From Dusk til Dawn, John Carpenter's Vampires, and 30 Days of Night come to mind) within a decade, vampires had degenerated to the level of Twilight. Need I say more?

Taking both my and my wife's attitude on vampires into consideration, I wasn't quite sure what to think when she came home last Friday with a copy of the 2011 remake of Fright Night under her arm, saying she got it for us to watch together this weekend. On top of our mutual distrust of modern vampire flicks, neither my wife nor I are huge fans of remakes (quite the opposite, in fact). And with her fear of the source material and my fear of subjecting myself to another Lost Boys: The Tribe, of all the horror remakes Hollywood has vomited out since Michael Bay remade The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Fright Night is the one I never figured would put in an appearance at my house. All of this begged the question, Why?

Maybe for her it's one of those radical, lock-yourself-in-a-box-with-the-thing-you're-most-afraid-of-so-you-can-overcome-your-fear-of-it forms of therapy. Maybe for me it was supposed to be one of those lock-yourself-in-a-box-with-the-thing-you're-most-prejudiced-against-so-you-can-overcome-your-fear-of-it forms of therapy. I'm still not sure, but I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the result.

When I saw the previews for Fright Night, I was anything but hopeful. The original Fright Night was and is a beloved piece of horror history, and rather than the campy fun of that film, it looked like the filmmakers had gone the post-Scream-trying-too-hard-to-recapture-the-glory-of-the-old-days-and-completely-missing-what-made-them-great-in-the-first-place route. (Once again, see Lost Boys: The Tribe if you have any questions. Actually, don't. Just take my word for it: It sucks. And not in a good way.) Colin Farrel looked completely miscast and Anton Yelchin is anything but my idea of a leading man - or a leading teen, for that matter. Tack onto that the tired old 3-D-gimmicks-flying-at-the-screen factor, and you can count me out, thank you so very, very much indeedee.

Imagine my surprise when the movie was actually watchable! Not just watchable, but pretty good, even! I'm not going to go so far as to say it was great, or even to say I strongly recommend it, but if you - like me - have been pining for a good, old-fashioned vampire flick to come along and kick things back onto the right track, this might just be your movie.

I will say this much against it: 3-D gimmickry is dead to me.

I like the new 3-D. I plan on getting a 3-D TV as soon as I can (which, at my current rate of saving, should be some time shortly before I retire), but I hate those "3-D shots" they shoehorn in just to justify using the technology. I hate them because they're not there to serve the story. They're there to sell the technology, and nothing more. That type of William Castle-esque audience condescension, I have no use for.

3-D is fun technology, and serves the magic of cinema just fine without having to slap us in the face. "3-D shots" only serve to ruin a movie by breaking the 4th wall and screaming at us, "Hey, dummy! You're watching a movie in 3-D! Remember?" This effect is only amplified when you're not watching the move in 3-D, and these nonsensical shots of things flying at the screen appear, thrusting you back, out of the world of the movie. I hate this. Do you get my point, or am I not being clear? Maybe I could have it jump out at you in 3-D!

So, techno-schlockery aside, Fright Night really did win me over. I was a doubter, and was pleasantly surprised to have my doubts allayed. It's not a perfect movie. Jerry's (Colin Farrel) behavior is certainly erratic and at times defies rationality. But the truth is that, as far as the bar has fallen, any vampire movie that can show me a good time - plenty of thrills, a few laughs, and characters whose deaths I don't pray for from their first moments onscreen - is pretty much a winner in my book. Will I watch it again? Despite all expectations to the contrary, yeah. I will.

So I guess the therapy worked. Well, for my part at least.

I stay up and do a little writing when the movie is over. By the time I finally roll into bed, it's well after midnight. The bedside lamp is on, and I reach over to turn it off.

"Don't," says my wife, grabbing my arm. "I had a nightmare. Leave it on."

Maybe immersion therapy wasn't the right choice for her. Look on the bright side, honey: At least the terrifying monsters weren't JUMPING OUT AT YOU in THREE-DEE!!!

Movie Reviews: "The Tree of Life" and "Die Hard 2: Die Harder", or Art of the Highest and Lowest Orders

The Tree of Life
2011, Rated PG-13
Written and Directed by Terrence Malick
Starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, and Sean Penn

An old friend was supposed to drop by tonight, but in typical him fashion, he called and cancelled. Some B.S. about his wife going into labor or something like that. And after I took the night off of work and everything! People can be so inconsiderate.

But I'm determined that the night not be a total loss, so I call up a couple of buddies from a writer's group I attend each week, and it turns out they've got about as much going on as I do. I've been talking up Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life to them for a couple of months now, so I ask them if they'd like to come over and make a party of it. They agree and by 6:30 the coffee table is covered in chips & dips, we're sitting on my couch hip to hip, and I pick up the remote and hit the skip button so we don't have to bother with preview clips.

In truth, saying we "made a party of it" might be a tad misleading. The crunching of fried tortillas and the squish of salsa and bean dip is so incongruous with the film that in less than twenty minutes we've abandoned the snacks entirely. I did warn them that this movie wasn't casual viewing. It's an investment. You can't be shuffling back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, grabbing sodas and refilling dippin' bowls as you pick up what's going on onscreen with your left ear and listen to your wife's questions about whether you remembered to snake the bathtub drain with your right. This movie requires your full attention at all times. But it's worth it.

I've told friends and relatives before, and now I'm telling you that, in no uncertain terms, The Tree of Life is the best movie of the last 10 years. It's not even a competition. The only film I can think of that even comes close is 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and even that gets left in the dust when compared with the grandeur, ambition, and resonance of this picture. I don't like to throw around the word "genius" - too many people are too eager to attribute it to filmmakers who don't deserve it - but it's the only word that seems adequate.

Don't misunderstand me. The Tree of Life is not my favorite film of the last 10 years. There's a difference between "favorite" and "best". It's not the movie that I derive the most pleasure from watching. That honor - shocking as it might seem - probably belongs to the 2007 Lonely Island farce, Hot Rod. Like the films of Kubrick or Bergman, The Tree of Life is an investment, as I've already said, and there are times when I'm too spent to invest in a movie. So it's not my favorite film of the last decade. It's just the best. It's the one that takes filmmaking in a new direction, gives us something we've never seen before, exploits the power of film in a way that no other film has, tells us a story we couldn't have gotten through any other medium, and pulls it all off without a single hitch.

The movie is both grand in scope and intimate in execution, telling no less than the story of the meaning of life through both human and universal archetype, as well as character study and personal vignette. The fact that it tells this story with the quality of actual memory - that being a disjointed narrative, sometimes lacking context, but maintaining an overall coherency - is an artistic accomplishment that I can only marvel at. Malick isn't the first filmmaker to attempt this, but he is - in my experience, which I will admit, is far from exhaustive - the first to achieve it. If I'm wrong, please let me know. I'd love to see the film that could compete.

After the credits roll, the cost of the film shows in all of us. We're spent; emotionally and intellectually exhausted, and all we can manage between us is a collective, "Wow." We don't discuss much. We all have to go think about it for a while. I bid my usually talkative friends adieu with little more than pleasantries by way of parting words. I don't think any of us are capable of mustering much else, and even if we could, it seems like anything we could say would be weak and perfunctory.

John Waters - no Terrence Malick, but an important filmmaker in his own, twisted right - once said that he can tell whether or not an audience likes a movie by how quickly they get up and leave once the credits roll. If I'd seen this movie in a theater, I can pretty much guarantee that, unless I had someone there prodding me to get up and move, I wouldn't've been able to stand until the screen went blank and the lights came up. Even then, it would've been reluctantly. Is there any higher praise for a movie than that? Maybe, but I can't think of what it would be.

Later that day, in a 180 degree thematic turn...

Die Hard 2: Die Harder
1990, Rated R
Written by Steven E. de Souza and Doug Richardson (Screenplay) and Walter Wager (Novel, 58 Minutes)
Directed by Renny Harlin
Starring Bruce Willis, William Atherton, Bonnie Bedelia, William Sadler, and Art Evans

So, after my son went gaga for Die Hard 1: Die Regular Hard, it was inevitable that we'd end up sitting down together before the mixed blessing that is Die Hard 2: Die Harder. I warn him before I even put the disc in.

"Okay, I'm not gonna lie," I say. "This is nowhere near as good as the first one."

"Cuz sequels are never as good as the originals, right?" he says.

Did I mention that he soaks up my every word like a sponge, even when - actually, I should say especially when - I'm sure he's nowhere nearby? And ever since he discovered the Metal Gear games, he's taken to sneaking around the house unnoticed and lurking in darkened corners. If this were soviet Russia, I'd have been executed by now for all the stuff he's overheard. The burden of fatherhood, I guess. Sigh.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Die Hard 2.

Die Harder is easily my least favorite of the series, but that shouldn't be taken to mean I don't like it. At their worst, the Die Hard movies are better than 99% of the action genre as a whole. But this first sequel is definitely the ugly step-sister of the family.

The conclusion my son and I both end up coming to (he agreeing with me mere seconds after I voice the opinion, if you can believe it *wink, wink*) is that the movie is a perfect storm of schlock. What makes it great is that it so unabashedly embraces being bad. Hardly a second goes by that you can't point out some element of the film that would give a nitpicker fits. At one point I start howling with laughter and my son begs me for an explanation. I point out no less than four of the ridiculous suspensions of logic necessary to have made it through the three minute scene we've just watched (the one culminating in John McClane saving his butt by dropping it in an ejector seat and throwing the switch), and now we're both laughing.

But the sheer intellectual vacuity of the script cannot compare to the movie's crown jewel of crap, which is the so-called acting of Art Evans as airport communications director Leslie Barnes. Those of you who know are probably simultaneously cringing and grinning as you read this. How to describe his performance? It's as if he's reading the script for the first time off of a teleprompter and the director is printing the first take. At one point I actually pause the movie so my son and I can try to deliver a line as woodenly as Art just has, but neither of us can manage it. The acting is so bad that it almost circumnavigates the spectrum and becomes good again. If I thought he were doing it on purpose, I'd say - with no irony whatsoever - that he was genius, but methinks that'd be giving him a tad too much credit. In the end, neither my son nor I can tell whether Art's performance is the worst part of this move or the best. The fact that we have to ask the question probably answers it, but I'll let you decide.

Final thoughts: Die Hard 2 is corny, unrealistic, and downright laughable. McClane's trademark "Yipee-kay-yay" gets shoehorned in for the sake of grasping at the glory of the last time 'round, but ultimately it feels forced. Still, my boy and I have a lot of laughs and spend more time than you might think gripping the arms of the sofa from the tension of what we're watching, and when it's over, we're left with scenes and lines that we'll be quoting and laughing over for the next several days, if not years to come. Is it the best movie we've watched together? Not by a long shot. But do we regret watching it? Not for a yipee-kay-yay-motherf***in' second.

Movie Review: "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", or There's Something I Want To Tell You About Timmy and Me

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
2011, Rated R
Written by Steven Zaillian (Screenplay) and Stieg Larsson (Novel)
Directed by David Fincher
Starring Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, and Stellan Skarsgard

I'm sitting at a table in a restaurant called The Brewery downing a shot of whiskey to go with my deep fried pickles. I'm on a man-date with my pal Timmy, and there is nothing - I repeat, nothing - gay about what's going on here. It's my birthday - or near enough that it'll suffice - and Timmy has grown the best mustache I've seen in a long time just for the occasion, and has decided to take me out to celebrate. I stress, there is nothing gay about this.

Just in case you were wondering, I'm not secretly gay. I know I'm not secretly gay, because if I were gay, I would not be secretly gay. I'd be in an open, committed relationship with a guy named Martin, campaigning for legalized gay marriage together. But Martin is already in an open, committed relationship, so I'm not gay. I'll just have to keep campaigning for legalized gay marriage by myself. Sigh.

Seriously though, despite what you might think, the deep fried pickles aren't half bad. When I go out to eat somewhere new, I like to try something I've never tried before. I get a local beer, a local whiskey, and a house specialty so I can justify the drinking with the catch-all disclaimer, "to wash it all down." Tonight the house specialty is deep fried pickles, though the names of the beer and whiskey seem to have escaped me. If I drink enough of them, the deep fried pickles might even escape me, but let's hope it doesn't come to that.

I love hangin' out with Timmy. He's the best non-gay-man-date-on-my-birthday friend I have. Well, this year anyway. We talk local beers, local whiskeys, and house specialties for a while before we finally get down to the nitty gritty.

"Tim," I say, "I'm jealous as hell of your mustache."

It really is a work of art. Thick but not bushy. It rolls over his upper lip in a neat arc, stopping just short of interfering with the passage of a deep fried pickle. Like ol' Timmy himself, the mustache is reserved but cool.

My mustache is much the same, in the sense that it reflects my character. It grows out in seven different directions, never quite finding the right one. The edges both swoop to the right as if I'm caught in a strong wind, so I always come off looking disheveled and out of sorts. Which I usually am. Striving desperately to be cool, my mustache manages only to be strange and disconcerting. Like I said, it reflects my character.

Wrapped securely in our beer blankets, we spill out onto the street and start making for the theater. We've decided beforehand to see David Fincher's remake of the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The trailer claims it's "THE FEEL BAD MOVIE OF CHRISTMAS." What better way to celebrate reaching the official age of Hobbit adulthood?

Did I mention there is nothing gay about this man-date? I feel the need to stress that as, when we arrived at the theater and Timmy stepped up to pay, the girl at the register looked at me and said, "Is he your sugar daddy?" Where do people get stuff like this? Why can't two straight guys go out to dinner and a movie, then stop off for ice cream without people getting the wrong idea?

Ugh!

Going in, I have no real idea of what to expect. I've seen the preview and heard some of the buzz, but the preview revealed absolutely nothing to someone unfamiliar with the story, and buzz tends to become exactly that after you've heard it for a while; little more than a nonsensical background drone. So I'm going in with very few preconceptions beyond that the titular Girl (Rooney Mara) is kinda freaky looking. As I am soon to discover, she's not the only freaky thing about this movie.

For all the buzz and rumors, the film is actually surprisingly tame. Most of it is just a straight-ahead mystery about a disgraced reporter and a disturbed twentysomething who team up to figure out the truth behind the decades old disappearance of the niece of some rich Swede (Christopher Plummer). The vast majority of this movie is nothing out of the ordinary, except to the extent that quality filmmaking and solid storytelling are out of the ordinary in modern Hollywood. However, the 2% of this film that does take a turn for the disturbing doesn't just veer towards it; this is a high speed, head-on collision with the sick and wrong.

It doesn't feel out of place. I just want to make that clear. At no point do I feel like the deviant awfulness I'm watching has been shoehorned in for shock value. I'm just warning you. If you have the capacity to be shocked and horrified by a piece of fiction, you will be. If that doesn't sound like your kind of film, it probably isn't. Maybe some Mormon bootlegger will release a CleanFlicks version for you to download. And let me just say that, however high your tolerance for the violent and obscene, if these scenes don't bother you, you should seek psychological counseling right away, because you - like me - are most likely a danger to yourself and others.

Having said all that, director David Fincher proves once again that he is at the top of his game. Despite scenes of brutality that it turns my stomach to even recall, this film's faults are so miniscule as to only be classifiable as nitpicks. And I only came up with three. One hundred fifty-eight minutes of film, and I found three things to gripe about. I have to say, for a film not made by Star Trek nerds, that's pretty darn good. Not that it will stop me from going into them in detail. Right now.

1. Meddle of kronor

Early in the movie, Daniel Craig is sitting in a coffee shop and a news report comes on the TV describing a recent court ruling. The reporter says the defendant was fined, "six hundred thousand Swedish kronor." Now, I realize there is more than one country that uses kronor as its currency, and they are not interchangeable. There are Danish kroner and Icelandic kronur and Norwegian kroner and many other variants (including my favorite, the Estonian kroon), but the thing that aggravates me is that the movie is set in Sweden. Doesn't it make sense that, in Sweden at least, they would just say "six hundred thousand kronor," and assume you knew that they were referring to the local variety? When portraying a bank heist in an American movie, the robbers don't say things like, "Yeah Vinnie, I hear there's over four million US dollars in the vault." So how will audiences know they're not referring to Canadian dollars? God forbid we trust them to be smart enough to figure it out for themselves!

2. It's 20 degrees outside and I'm freezing!

There's a moment in the film when, (and I'm assuming here) for purposes of scene-setting, we are treated to a close up shot of a thermometer that shows the temperature to be somewhere in the low twenties. Trouble is, unless they meant to imply that the temperature was a balmy twentysomething degrees celsius, (seventy-one-ish degrees fahrenheit; doubtful, considering the thermometer was caked in ice and dusted with snow) the thermometer was displaying the temperature in fahrenheit! "But maybe they use fahrenheit thermometers in Sweden," you may be saying. "You can't just assume they measure the temperature in celsius! Have you ever been there?" Well, no. It's true, I've never been to Sweden. However, since the unit of measurement known as "celsius" was named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, I think it's a safe bet that this was - like "Swedish kronor" - another move aimed at dumbing things down for American audiences, because they simply wouldn't be able to understand (or possibly wouldn't accept) the idea of a celsius thermometer.

3. Things that make you go BOOOOOOOM!

Ever seen a propane tank explode? I haven't seen one in person, but I've seen them go up on YouTube. It's fairly impressive, and that's just the tiny kind you use to feed your gas grill. There was a story from Canada two years ago where one of the big ones (the kind you use to fuel your furnace) exploded and leveled an entire house, flinging debris hundreds of feet and shaking neighboring houses to the point that residents feared their homes were collapsing under the weight of packed snow. If you've seen the news footage, the snow was easily eight or ten feet deep, which may be all that protected the nearby houses from being leveled as well. Given these circumstances, I feel my desire not to be anywhere near one of these tanks, should it blow, to be completely justified. No doubt David Fincher would think me overly cautious. When he blew one up in the film, he had no qualms about placing his actress less than ten yards from the epicenter of the blast, and it didn't even sway her on her feet! So clearly I'm just a worry wart. Doesn't change things. I still don't want to be anywhere near one if it goes up. Sue me.

Alright, alright, so maybe I am just a nitpicker who has to find a reason to gripe about a movie, but when I really like a movie, little things like that just drive me crazy. It isn't that they're so bad, it's that the rest of the film is so good. It's like this: If you're looking at a burn victim (and I mean no disrespect to burn victims, so don't get hot under the collar) you're probably not going to be that shocked if they've got a nasty cold sore on their lip. But if Kim Kardashian showed up on the cover of Cosmo' with that same cold sore, her dress is the last thing you're going to be commenting on.

(For the record: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm soooooooo sorry for dragging a Kardashian into this, but she is so overexposed that I simply cannot recall the face of anyone else who has ever graced a magazine cover. I know I gave up all my punk cred when I mentioned her name, but please don't hold this against me! I'm a victim as much as you are!)

But yeah, I liked it. How could I not? I love movies and I have absolutely no horror threshold when it comes to them. In the end it meets the most important of all standards in fiction: It's an interesting story, well told.

As we leave the theater, our beer blankets are gone and the chill in the air has grown a nasty set of teeth. I feel like I'm in Sweden again, this time transported by an escalator and automatic doors rather than the magic of cinema. If only I had a thermometer to tell me the temperature. It'd have to be fahrenheit, of course. The audience wouldn't know how to handle one that displayed celsius, and I don't know the conversion formula anyway.

We're parked three blocks down, by the restaurant. We step into the crosswalk and a blast of icy wind ushers us forward. Timmy shivers. Did I mention that he forgot to bring his coat?

"You want to borrow my coat?" I say.

Timmy is wearing a t-shirt and shorts. Did I mention that it was warmer when we left the house?

"Naw, I'm okay," he says.

"Come on," I say. "I'll be alright. I've got three layers on under it."

"I'm fine," he says as another gust hits us and he rubs his arms for warmth. "Price I pay for not planning ahead."

I finally just take my jacket off and drape it over his shoulders. He says he doesn't need it, but he doesn't exactly throw it back at me. I'm fine. I've got my sweater and long johns to keep me warm. I'm just glad to repay the kindness of a friend who was thoughtful enough to take me out for my birthday.

I repeat, there is nothing gay about any of this.

Well, not too gay anyway.