I have three questions

1. What is this?

2. Where can I get this?

3. Why can't I have it right now?

Let's All Talk About the Big Movie Thing Part 3,568,432!

That looks like it might be pretty okay? It might even be good?

I have some hopes for this movie-- tepid hopes, tempered by the stark reality that DC seems terminally incapable of making a film that is even mildly worth a damn. I love Joaquin Phoenix and Todd Haynes Soldonz Phillips is actually an inspired choice considering that almost all of his movies are about demi-criminal dirtbags looking for a laugh-- except this time he's not trying to fool us into thinking they're actually funny.

I was going to go on to say something more about the flak that this movie has been catching online and what a big, obvious target it is, but then I remember that I was 19 once and I'm a fucking media studies major. I get it. It's an almost stastical certainty that this movie is going to suck shit and it's a good opportunity for two-thousand people to simultaneously make the comment "Why would I want to watch this when I could watch Taxi Driver/Punch Drunk Love/The King of Comedy?" (as though Scorsese and Anderson don't wear their influences on their sleeves-- also, if you're going to make the that comparison, at least have the decency to bring up You Were Never Really Here, a criminally underrated Taxi Driver-inflected film staring Phoenix from 2018-- so, come on, get it together, snobs.)

And here I am bitching about people bitching, which is kind of what I was hoping to avoid. But I've have a beer in me and I'm not a very good writer, so here we are. Fuck it.

Life is too fucking short. I hope this movie is good. Not because it would be good to see DC get a win or for there to be another "smart" blockbuster movie or to see somebody do a cover-song version of Scorcese, but because a good movie, of any variety, of any caliber is a cool thing. It's good, and it is much more interesting to dissect a good movie than a bad one.

So, while we're all popping off, throwing our scalding takes out into the ether, here's my question: What if they actually get away with it?

What the. . .

I rented Assassination Nation (more on that in the future) and this was one of the trailers attached to the film.




I found it incredibly striking, so I had to find out what it was about. So, I checked out its Wikipedia page.

This movie, uh, goes some places. And now I have to see it. I mean, I read the entirety of the plot and I still have to see it just to find out if any of that is real. Because, man, what a wild fucking thing.

Gimme that grit!

Give me Destroyer, already!



I mean, as much as I'm exhausted by the idea of another bad cop pushed to the edge. . . Man, I sure could go for a movie about another bad cop pushed to the edge. At least with the movie the nightmare is over in two hours. . .

And since we're here, give me that True Detective Season 3 already. I've been good. I've been kind. Just gimme that shit and let me get my heart broken already, okay? OKAY?

PUT IT IN MY VEINS

I guess this is one of them new surprises. The last I heard of Sicario 2, all they had was a subtitle and a vague idea that it was going to be about Benicio Del Toro's character. I didn't even know it was happening?



And now? Now? Give me that drug war stuff. Give it to me now!

This is The Aesthetic

Good news-- They made another movie for me.



You're welcome.

A Good Old Child Murder Picture

I want this movie. Dracula accents and all. I want this bad.

I've been meaning to read Child 44 for years. It looks like a movie adaptation is going to have to do for the time being.

This also reminds me of a movie I watched in a high school class called Citizen X. Why I watched it in class, I haven't the foggiest (I can't even remember what class it was. Senior religion?). It is notable for two reasons: A) It has Max Von Sydow and that's always a good reason to show up, and B) It's pretty good. I guess the third reason should be "It has echoes of Child 44."Oh, and the fourth reason is look how smart I am for connecting things with other things! Give me some money!

The thing I remember most distinctly is that the film ends with a positive note: The Soviet Union breaking up, and, presumably, without the Communist Party running the show good men will actually be able to get things done. It's projected that this is going to be a time of optimism and that the worst is behind us. While, the breaking up of the USSR is a fantastic thing, it's kind of funny to think that, at some point, we thought everything was going to be okay with Russia once we got rid of that pesky politburo. Oh, the 90's. Your hope almost seems cute.

What was I saying? Oh, yeah. Child 44. Let's do this. Any excuse to listen to more Gary Oldman chewing scenery with a Russian accent is a good excuse.

James Kislingbury is a podcaster, a writer, and a friend of workers everywhere.

No, No. The OTHER WWII Fury.

I know I'm late to the party on this, but I am excited for Fury.

In preparation for what I hope is a decent movie (consider the director's track record: End of Watch is supposed to be great and Sabotage, um, not), let's go over a pair of WWII tank movies that are worth seeing:

Kelly's Heroes has greatest straight up tank fight in cinema history. And that's mostly because it might be the only tank duel in cinema history (which just can't be true, can it?).

As a film, Kelly's Heroes is more on par with something like Catch 22 than The Dirty Dozen. Or Where Eagles Dare, for that matter. It's gleeful and irreverent, and it takes the second world war about as it does a clown with his pants down. Or maybe it just doesn't take WWII movies seriously? Either way, Kelly's Heroes is a butt-load of fun and a perfect encapsulation of what Hollywood thought of the 1960's counter-culture.

It's a movie that laughs at the kind of square-jawed heroes that populate 1940's and 50's war movies.Yet it's savvy enough to know that tanks are cool and that Nazis are bad and it's fun when these things are slammed together.

I won't spoil the ending, but the entire climax of the film is built around the idea that the Tiger tank is the baddest piece of machinery ever built and that a rag tag bunch of screwballs may not be up to the task. Then it gets weird.

Then there's Sahara (the Bogart one). While a tank (an M3 Lee) is central to the plot, it really isn't about tanks. It's about the men who ride in and on them. The tank itself is a piece of shit, but it's got a kind of can-do charm of a dog with three legs. It's also notable for including just about every single member of the Allied Forces in some capacity helping our heroic tank crew along the way (it also includes both Italian and German enemies, which is about as rare of a feature in a film as a tank fight).

Sahara survives as an interesting film for a few reasons. The first, and the most important being, it's a Humphrey Bogart movie. While not all Bogart movies are created equal (there's Casablanca and The African Queen and then there's Beat the Devil and Sirocco), a good Bogart film is a great reminder of just what a presence he was as an actor. (There's a reason he's Michael Caine's favorite actor.)

The second reason is that Sahara is a perfect example of "the kind of movie they don't make any more." It's a war film, but it's light and it's loose and there is no question as to what the good guys need to do. There's a clear line in the sand as to what good guys do and what bad guys do. While it is the kind of film that helped to build up the myth of World War II, watching it, even now, it's not hard to see why we see the war the way we do. Sahara paints a picture of a war that needs to be fought and is worth fighting for. And hey, that's not such a bad thing, is it?

So, before you see Fury, go see these movies. At least we know they're good movies. And if not. . . Well, screw you. You don't want Clint Eastood and Don Wrickles on a caper? You don't want Humphrey Bogart and Jeff Bridges' dad defending your freedom? Are you so joyless?

Anyways.



With no little retinence, I am excited about Fury.

Despite Sabotage. Despite Mr. The Beef and his almost certainly mentally ill antics. Despite having recently been burnt by another special effects driven WWII movie. Despite always getting burnt by having any sort of investment in anything, I am excited. And there's a lot to be excited for. The movie has a great lead, a director who has turned out at least one impressive film in his burgeoning career, and the technology exists to make the convincing and worthwhile tank that I that we deserve.

That is until somebody finally gets the guts to adapt The Haunted Tank into a movie.

James Kislingbury makes comics, hosts podcasts, and generally just does his thing. You can follow him on twitter, too.

Shut up, Tom, I'm trying to watch this trailer

Track, World War II, and the Coen brothers? I'm down. You coming, too?

Why Aren't I Making Movies?

I just.

Man.

I gotta do something while I'm here.

Consider for a moment

Consider for a moment the last Planet of the Apes movie's trailer. Consider how terrible that thing was. Dr. Stoner finding "The Cure." An ape jumping at a helicopter for some reason. Amorphous Inception sounds. Then remember how great that movie was.

By my math this should be the greatest movie of all time.

"If your definition of a friend. . . "

". . . Is someone who tells you that a trailer for a Cormac McCarthy and Ridley Scott movie has been released, then you have no friends."



What the fuck, guys? Why were you holding this from me?

Stop Trying to Get Me to Care about Movies, Movies!

Gaaaaah. I think I want to see this. Damnit. It's like a cluster of everything I want to see in a movie. It's like they know.

NOW NOW I WANT THIS NOW

MAKE IT HAPPEN LET'S DO IT COME ON ALREADY

So, This is On TV

There's a scene in this movie where a Holocaust survivor is singled out by the Muslim terrorists, along with all of the other Jewish passengers.

Now keep in mind this is all scored to an overbearing 1980's synth soundtrack and was immediately preceded by Chuck Norris being re-recruited by the Delta Force to a score that would have seem not out of place in Team America: World Police. It's completely ridiculous and it'd be offensive if it wasn't clear that their intentions were sincere and, oh and if it hadn't actually happened in real life.

And. . . I think it got to me, even though I was laughing at a bad child actor shout "Please don't take my daddy," somehow through all of the bad music and character actors, I still got a little tingle. I guess that's a sign that this movie might just work.

Now Lee Marvin is suiting up to take back a plane chock full of hostages. Let's hope he gets out of this okay. Oh, hey, Robert Vaughn is in this movie.


That's never a bad thing.

You Had Me at "A"

Man. I really need to rewatch Winter's Bone. And No Country For Old Men. And do some laundry. And stop drinking.

Man, I really want to see whatever the hell this movie is.

I'M DRUNK EVERYBODY LISTEN TO ME!

Please go watch this movie if you have not already. You owe it to yourself.

Goddamnit. . . I really need to figure out how to steal from this movie.

Besides my loves of Powell and Pressburger (as seen here) what I love about this movie is that it combines the sort of mythological and kind of racist imagery of India with a fairly apolitical and unromantic story. It's a movie about opposites colliding (as I guess all good movies basically are) and the results are as beautifully shot as they are emotionally brilliant.

I mean, for goodness sakes, the movie is about nuns. This isn't a movie trying to titlate you or trying to hit your more vulnerable spots! It isn't about soldiers or spies or politics, it's about people just trying to do their menial and unglamorous jobs. Beyond that it is much more, but there is an intelligence to the grand romance of the picture.

Recently my lesbian and (I think) latina boss asked me what I'd do without England. I don't quite have an answer for that. I do know that without Black Narcissus, my life would be that much more gloomy.

Sub-question: Are you a Clodagh or a Ruth?

A Perfect Movie

Right now I'm working on a big, long rant about space travel, so in the mean time, I want to point out a film that you should see: The Battle of Algiers.

For those that don't know The Battle Algiers, it is an Italian directed movie about the end of French colonialism in Algeria. It documents the violent clashes, the terrorism, and the hideous tit-for-tat that eventually led to the overthrow of the French regime specifically in the city of Algiers. It's also much more than that. It's a thriller that also happens to be a highly political film-- one you could almost take any way you want. It is also as an immensely allegorical movie, but none of that meaning or weight makes the drama or the specific details of the Algerian revolution any less impactful, it's as fresh now as it was when it came out. In short, it's a classic.

For those that do know what the deal with this movie: This is me guilting you into watching it. What are you doing living a life without this movie? Do you think you are God?

And for those of you who have seen it you know that I'm stating the obvious. I might as well wax on about Breathless or Rashomon.

The overthrow of French rule in Algeria celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. I don't expect you to suddenly care one way or the other, but if that's the excuse that puts you over the edge, then that'd be just dandy.

The Battle of Algiers is currently available in a beautiful set from the Criterion Collection and the packaging alone is almost worth the purchase.

If you love politics, if you love history, if you love really stylish films, and if you just love film, you really do owe it to yourself to see this film. You're welcome ahead of time. And if you're the type of Frenchman that is still ass-hurt about Algeria, then I would recommend that you avoid The Day of the Jackal and then get over it, bro.

Snipe Hunt

Snipe Hunt:
Or Why You Really Shouldn't Watch Predators



Let me tell you: This Predators flick is no darn good. And here's why--

The Look

The visual and special effects are lacking, as well. It's bizarre to think that a sequel could actually look worse than its original 1988 counterpart, but the folks behind this film found a way. It isn't even so much the art design choices (of which I am not a massive fan), but the actual quality of the predator suits and of the digital touch-ups look terrible. The monster suits look like they fell out of a bad theme park attraction. Instead of a big fight, you half expect a sad, ugly child to want to take a photo with them.

The CGI isn't great, either. It's strange, again, that in a world where the highest grossing film of all time is Avatar, an all computer graphics bonanza, that in 2010 there are still movies that can't figure out how to make digital blood not look like crap. They found a way to do it in 1988, yet, like the Roman recipe for concrete, that is apparently lost to the ages.

I realize it isn't fair to compare this movie (an obviously relatively low budget affair) with that of a 500 million dollar film, I just think it would have been nice if they put at least 500 dollars towards some of their special effects.

That Stupid Thing Your Mouth Keeps Doing

And another thing, to speak nothing of the lousy plot, which really just consists of a loose configuration of set pieces and inter-cut with dialogue that sounds like it came from an action movie script template. I don't know how you manage to make a movie about alien hunters running an intergalactic game preserve by rote, but Robert Rodriguez and whoever directed it managed to find a way.

It's sad that is the most remarkable thing about the whole movie.

Then there's the people tasked with delivering these lines. There's the gruff and guarded soldier, there's the hick, there's the disposable black guy, there's Machete, there's Boris, there's the taciturn Japanese guy (oh, good, he found a samurai sword, I wonder where this is going). They aren't characters, they're trading cards.

And I know what you're thinking, "Oh, but James, that's a ridiculous point to make! There weren't any good characters in the original film! It was just Arnie and a bunch of muscle men spouting one-liners!"

Oh yeah? Well, fuck you**.

"Slack-jawed faggots" and other Colloquialisms

Where are the one-liners? Where's the catch phrases? Where's my sexual tyrannosaurus? Gone! Lost to time! Instead we get a bunch of half-assed monologues meant to convey that this hombres (and hombress) are mean mother fuckers that in actuality just sound like someone padding out scenes of intense special effects. The dialogue is terrible, as is the exposition.

The best lines in the movie are a quote from Ernest Hemmingway and when that prisoner calls one of the predators a "space faggot," which is not a phrase I think I'd ever have experienced without this movie.

So, thank you for that, Predators.


I'm 90% sure this didn't happen in the movie.

The Chewbacca Defense

Also, what's the logic of this movie? Are the predators omniscient? Do they perform careful studies of the human species and select from a list of candidates? Is these a board of predator elders that approve or disapprove how much of a warrior someone is? Is there a metric for that kind of a thing? Is it a number or a letter grade?

And if these predators are semi-omniscient, what's with hunting these people down? Is that not sporting or something? (Don't answer that, I'm being facetious)

Even by action movie standards the world doesn't make sense. It isn't internally consistent. People die because they have to and predators keel over because it says in the script that their time was up. In one scene a claymore mine causes an explosion on the scale of a mini-Hiroshima and a few scenes later a big sack of grenades goes off and doesn't even scratch the predator that was standing right on top of it.

This does not make sense.

Daddy Needs a New Pair of Shoes

What's worse is that it fucked up my good movie streak. I went from Elite Squad 2 to Gosford Park to Wall-E to Winter's Bone to this. . .this thing. How dare they.

How dare they.

Credit Where Credit is Due

Of course the best part of the whole movie is when Laurence Fishbourn* shows up as some kind of a mash-up between (guy) and Dennis Hopper from Apocalypse Now. Even though he doesn't fit into the film itself-- he's much too silly and clearly out-of-shape-- but, in this case, that's a good thing.

If I include the crossovers, the predator has been in five films. If I include sanity and taste, the predator is only in one good film. That's a horrible batting average. At this point I find it unlikely that this creature is ever going to dig itself out of the hole that its owners have put it in. The Alien franchise has had its years in the wilderness, but in that case it has an actual curator in the form of Ridley Scott. Predators has, what? People who want to see him fight Freddie and Jason?

I can't help but feel that at this point the predator is now stuck on this b-movie rail line that, at some point is just going to fly off of a cliff. There's a lot of horror movies that

Now it's a sub-par genre flick with dudes in rubber suits lumbering around, fighting stereotypes. . . No, wait. It was always that. But at least in 1988 it was good.


Here comes the thrilling climaaaaaaawn.

The Moral of the Story Is

So, what have we learned? Well, we learned that no matter how many good films or how complicated my tastes may have become over the years, the idea of a bunch of madmen fighting a space alien is still highly attractive to me.

I guess we also learned that a B-movie premise, once elevated, tends to descend right back down to earth if in the wrong hands.

And I think, most importantly, is I want to watch a Predator 3 (or would it be 4?).

Oh well. At least we've got Prometheus to look forward to.

Also, instead of watching Predators, go and watch this movie--



Which is completely insane and ridiculous and about as believable, but, damnit, it's got heart. And pregnant hermaphroditic lizard aliens.

*I have twice mistaken Laurence Fishburne for Morgan Freeman for some reason. Thinking about it now, Freeman's inclusion in this movie would have been amazing.

**Also, the original Predator had that crypto-gay black guy in it who went nuts when his beau died. He died singing.

Too Late to Matter: A Review of Melancholia

Too Late to Matter: A Review of Melancholia
Or
How Being Rich and Pretty Will Kill You Right Fucking Dead
by
James Kislingbury

I'm really trying extra hard to not sound like a smart ass when talking about Meloncholia. Besides being an ostensibly portentous film and is directed by Lord Jag Hole, Earl of Fuckwad-upon-the-sea, the movie deserves better than that, not only because even shitty films deserve some level of serious attention before they're thrown down the well, but this film is actually pretty good. Pretty darn good, in fact. It even ends with a big explosion, which is nice to see after the appropriately named dirge that is Melancholia.

Let's get started with the rambling, shall we?



This movie made me think of the great "Cultural Vegetables"

(or your "Cultural Vegetables", or whatever) argument. The argument itself is a more or less bullshit and I've always felt that it was invented by people who didn't want to admit that movies without robots fighting made them dumb, but it's one of these things that loom large over the whole medium. It's not a terrible argument, at all, and I've certainly encountered the exact opposite of the robot-movie pride crowd at film school (which is guys who think that scenes of somebody driving from Barstow to Mexico in real time is the height of artistry and not just boring, pretentious nonsense).

The vegetable argument stems from this idea that movies are either supposed to be fun and critically bulletproof or boring and built for the elites (read: snobs). In this world films are only meant for popular entertainment and anything that deviates from that must be the opposite (and again, for snobs). That isn't the whole argument, it's just that for the most part I've only ever seen morons press for this worldview.

It's a crock of shit that wouldn't have flown back when people like David Lean were making blockbusters about Russian poets. It speaks of something else besides the content of movies. Of course there are boring movies and there are intellectually vapid movies and every other kind of movie on other. The fact remains, though, that just because something is serious, it doesn't mean that it has to be boring. The whole point of Melancholia is to make you feel bad-- and it completely succeeds for all of the right reasons. How is a movie being compelling and emotionally engaging a vegetable? There is value in a movie being as successfully unpleasant as this one.

A great example of this is The Seventh Seal which I just re-watched on glorious Blu-Ray. While watching it, I realized even the most infamously sullen film makers of all time, Ingmar Bergman, is capable of making light and funny scenes juxtaposed between, well, scenes of a knight playing chess with Death. It's not all chess and death is what I'm getting at. This bares on Melancholia, because, like Bergman's masterpiece (or one of them), this gloomy and existentially horrific story doesn't get in the way of it being a good film and, I dare say, an entertaining one. While The Seventh Seal is far and away a better film (which doesn't need to be stated, but here we are), I think this film falls into the same class of "movies that are explicitly about the end of existence, but are still kind of fun in a weird way."

With all of that said, Melancholia doesn't have any of the irony or even mirth that Bergman's movie does, as instead of being divided among an entire troupe, it's divided in two halves, "Part One: Justine" and "Part Two: Claire," which could be negatively described as "Catastrophically Poorly Thought Out Wedding" and "Catastrophically Unlucky Celestial Event." I don't think I'm out of line in saying that the first half, with its passing resemblance to Festen, offers the most laughter and mirth (I mean for catastrophe).

There's an entire worthwhile film in the reception alone. It has ancient drunken poon-hound John Hurt dancing with a fat chick, a rageaholic Kiefer Southerland, and Udo Kier doing his Udo Kier act. Oh, and it also has Stellan Skarsgaard and Alexander Skarsgard, which nobody else finds as funny of a pair as I do.

The second half starts sometime later with the sudden discovery of a massive doom planet that is (apparently) headed directly for earth. It’s a strange shift in content, but not one in tone. There is just as much of a looming demise on the horizon in the first half as in the second half, it’s just that at the wedding it’s not literal. There’s a lot more going on in the first half, which is odd because, again, there’s a giant metaphor headed for the Earth and you’d think that would be enough to keep one’s attention.

It’s almost as if the film was assembled from two entirely different scripts. Disconnect would be a good word for it, but both halves work on their own. It’s almost like complaining that Kill Bill Vol. 1 was all over the place. That’s kind of the point. In Melancholia it does work as this bizarre split as they’re tonally and thematically similar. With that said, if the first half of the movie was dragged out to be ninety minutes long and the arrival of the planet was ignored entirely, I’d be fine with that. In fact, I might prefer it.

With all of that said, as enjoyable and technically well put together as the movie is, there are hiccups within the story that go beyond the splitting of the two halves. The script is the primary hiccup and I can't tell whether it's because the script is purposefully overwrought or because this isn't von Trier's native tongue (at least Bergman was allowed to hide behind translators for the most part). Those moments of distraction are minor and even in the scenes they occur in it doesn't interfere with the overall tone (which is, in most scenes: Deep-seated psychological gloom teetering on sudden violence). The problem with the screenplay isn't that it’s a mess it’s that it has to compete with how everything else in the movie is so incredibly well composed. It sticks out more than it should as a result. So, even if it doesn’t ring true to the ear, it does ring true to the emotions.

If there's a weak link in the cast, I regret to say that it's Skarsgard (again: The hot guy from True Blood, not the sort of doughy guy from Thor—who are apparently father and son). For whatever reason he's played as somewhere between "affable dope" and "actor who isn't sure of his lines." I can put up with a lot of ambiguity (the fact that I liked this movie sort of proves that), but that's a distracting one as it just leads to me not wondering about the character but if Skarsgard is a good actor. He probably is. Looking at the rest of the cast I would find it odd for him to sneak through as a shitty actor. All of that said, it's an odd experience to watching a scene where a husband explains to his newly-minted wife that he bought them an apple orchard and having the sudden realization that he might just be Lenny and we're two steps away from owning a rabbit house.

It's that twilight area between normal guy and full-blown retard that I seem to be getting hitched up on. Maybe, though, that's the point as who in their right might would marry a woman that distressed and, well, sort of a bitch.

There are a few other, minor hiccups along the way. Or, maybe interrogative hiccups (like, the hiccup has a higher pitch at the end, somehow). Like, what exactly happens with her husband? And if she's this depressed and fucked-up why not just put her in a fancy mental home? And why would this dope marry her in the first place? The mind boggles.

If we had an answer, though, he wouldn’t have a movie. The entire movie hinges on poorly thought-out relationships. That and a planet colliding with the Earth. I guess the basic premise does require a little bit of leeway and in the movie’s defense, it handles these things pretty well. They are just hiccups after all.

Though that can of worms makes me start wondering why this movie exists. What is this movie's purpose? If it can’t handle something as basic as why the relationships exist, then either it’s missing something or I am.

As I said I enjoyed it, I would recommend it if you want a bummer movie, but I still don't know what the point of any of it is. "Being sad is shitty and it will kill you" is not the lesson we go to movies for. We go to be told killing the Nazis was great and that nice people bag the right member of the opposite sex and that black men in fat woman suits is hilarious. Sad semi-European people, though? Well that fucking escapes me to be honest.

I guess it's a worthwhile movie in that there isn't any apparent rhyme or reason to the work other than that idea that melancholia is not goddamn good. It's either a sign of excellent direction and vision to make a movie with no real answer to it or it's a sign that you have no fucking idea what you're doing. I'd like to think it's more the former than anything else.

Maybe the lack of a satisfying answer is somehow a reflection of depression itself? Too far? Sorry. I'll take that one back.

I'm lucky that the moment I gave up on was about ten minutes from the end and at the end I felt a kind of relief that I almost exclusively reserve for movies that suck (like Outrage, which I saw about a week later in the same theater. God. What a stinker). In this case I felt it because it succeeded in the task it set out to do, which was make a horrific, brooding meditation on depression. Mission accomplished. Melancholia works exactly how it should. It’s a well acted and well made movie and yet it’s not one I would recommend anyone to rush out and see. I’m glad my friends asked me out to see it because otherwise I would have spent the night dwelling on my own home-made misery instead of someone else’s on the silver screen.

But don't just take my word for it!



Alright, let me get my Melancholia jokes out of the way (ahem):
1) I'm really surprised that they had the budget to attract and crash an entire planet into the earth.
2) When I go to a Scandinavian wedding movie I damn well expect some laughs.
3) I can't decide which lame title is funnier to me "Melonbowlia" or "Cornholia." Both suck. Both almost make me want to giggle.
4) Watching The Seventh Seal immediately before this movie was not a great choice for a number of reasons.

Good. It's all out of my system now.

SIDE NOTE: Here's another article about defending "boring" movies. Unless I already posted it. Which is likely.