Dude here.

My wife and I are big fans of Michael Jackson.  I’m the type of fan that knows most of his radio released songs, has one or two of his biggest albums, has seen all his videos, and still occasionally checks out old clips of him on You Tube.  She is the type of fan that has every MJ album ever (with backup copies in case something should happen to the original), along with DVD’s, box sets, and videos so obscure they’re still on Beta.  She’s also the type of fan who has heard his biggest songs so often that her favorite song is now some unknown tune from 30 years ago released only in Yugoslavia.  So the question wasn’t whether we’d enjoy Michael Jackson’s This Is It, but rather how much we’d enjoy it.

This Is It is a film comprised of footage from preparation and rehearsals for Michael Jackson’s planned series of sold-out concerts in London.  We get just a hint of the spectacle those shows would have been via some of the completed effects, a peek at the half finished vignettes and, at one point, a computer generated scene showing what would have been a giant bulldozer closing its jaws on Jackson at the end of “Earth Song”.  It’s impressive even though it’s unfinished, although it’s not nearly as impressive as Jackson himself.

Michael Jackson is the best I’ve seen him in several years, even going at half intensity.  Gone are the seemingly constant oddities surrounding him – no hospital mask, no soft baby-talk voice, no chimps.  I was struck by the stark difference between his public image, where he frequently looks uncomfortable and frail, and his semi-private persona here.  On stage, he was confident and commanding (but rarely demanding), an incredible presence that captivated the cast and crew working on the show.  Whether he was working out the vocals to “Human Nature” a cappella or kicking and gliding alone through “Billie Jean” like it was 1983 again or blistering the floor with the dance crew during “Smooth Criminal”, Jackson was undeniably happiest and most at home on stage.

His attitude and healthy demeanor made it easy to forget that these images are among the last you’ll ever see of him performing.  I never once thought about it, nor did I spend half the movie looking for signs of fatigue or failing health, a concern I had going into the film.  I just reveled in the music and admired watching Jackson teach, delight and reign over his crew, all of whom seemed in constant awe and offered comments of privilege at working with the music legend.

As you’d expect from a perfectionist, Jackson had his hand in everything.  He managed everything from choreography to lighting to CGI effects.  One of my favorite parts of the film was his work with musical director Michael Bearden on the keyboard section of “The Way You Make Me Feel”.  It’s one of those scenes that reminds me that, even though I played saxophone for several years, I was never really a musician.  True musicians have an ear for music and their own special language that I just don’t have or understand.  Their conversations are complete gibberish to me:

• MJ:  No, you’re in too early.  Hold ’til the chicka-bump.
• MB:  You don’t want it on the wah-wah?
• MJ:  No.  And after that duh-duh-pow, hit it with-
• MB:  A ticka-bang?
• MJ:  Yeah!  And try to-
• MB:  So you want some more booty in it then…
• MJ:  Exactly.  That’ll have the funk.
• MB:  So booty, chick-bump on the two-
• MJ:  Bump and the wah – that’s it!  Let it sizzle.

Say what?  After all that, it sounds the same to me.  I guess that’s why I’m not a bazillionaire pop star.  Well, that and the fat, bald dumpy look I’ve got going.

Both my wife and I loved This Is It.  Casual fans and those curious about Jackson will find it an interesting and refreshing look at the creative processes of the man so many people call a music genius.  Some of his biggest fans may leave wanting more, since many of his performances were only hints and rough drafts of what we would have seen, but it’s ultimately a good time and fascinating look into how he worked.  Besides, as the old Hollywood adage goes, always leave them wanting more.

Email me your favorite MJ songs, Yugoslavian trivia, praise or ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.

Until next time, the Dude is not in.

• Movie: Michael Jackson’s This Is It
• Genre: Documentary
• Rating: PG
• Running Time: 121 minutes
• Dude’s Rating: Hearty Round of Applause

(Dude Brockhaus lives in New Haven, IN, where his frequent crotch grabbing has nothing to do with being a Michael Jackson fan.)

• Dude’s Rating Scale

• Standing Ovation
• Hearty Round of Applause
• Golf Clap
• “Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug
• Booed
• Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage

Dude here.

Those of you who have read my earlier reviews (surely there are a couple of you out there) know that I’m no fan of horror movies.  Over the years, horror films have convinced me that saying “Candyman” fives time into a mirror will produce an angry one-handed black man, snowy TV’s can capture you and hold you prisoner in the spirit world, amputees can control their severed limbs for evil-doing if they’re angry enough, and anyone living in a rundown farmhouse is either a chainsaw wielding maniac, a mutant, a zombie, or a chainsaw wielding mutant zombie maniac.

Certain films have even altered my lifestyle.  I didn’t sleep for most of the late 80s after watching A Nightmare on Elm Street.  For months after viewing The Exorcist I carried around my own canteen of holy water, dousing any little girl who turned her head too far in any one direction.  And I don’t think I’ll ever visit Colorado since The Shining has me certain that all hotels there turn their staff into murdering, axe-swinging nutjobs.

But when I saw Amy Smart on the cast list for this week’s feature Mirrors, I risked the emotional scarring and gave it a shot.  She’s one of my favorite actresses even though she makes awful career choices and I rarely enjoy her movies…in other words, I think she’s hot.  Unfortunately, her best movies are now ten years past, when she had starring roles in 1999’s Varsity Blues and 2000’s Road Trip.  More recently she’s starred in the terribly sucky Crank movies opposite Jason Statham.  You have to work pretty hard to muck up a film featuring Amy Smart and Jason Statham, another of my favorite actors, but Crank has done it twice.  Aside from that, she’s been mostly relegated to supporting roles and bit parts.  Still, I was looking forward to seeing her in Mirrors, especially since the previews showed her dropping a towel and climbing into a hot bath.

**SPOILER ALERT**

Disappointingly, that’s about the extent of her role in this ridiculous mess, because soon after she slips into the bath, the evil bathroom mirror seizes control of her and forces her to rip off her own jaw.  Talk about ruining the moment…

It wasn’t scary, just gross.  In fact, it reminded me of Beetlejuice when the Maitlands attempt to make themselves scary ghosts by stretching their faces into ridiculous poses.  And unfortunately, most of Mirrors is the same way, relying on gore rather than generating real scares.

**END SPOILER**

Mirrors stars Keifer Sutherland as down-on-his-luck former NYPD detective Ben Carson, who quits the force and essentially his marriage after shooting a man.  We pick up Ben’s story as he’s coming back up the staircase of his shame spiral, now taking pills to aid him in his fight against alcohol abuse, once again seeking gainful employment, and looking to resuscitate his flat-lining marriage.  He takes a job as a nighttime security guard at a department store that was decimated by a fire that resulted in mass casualties. 

Through ridiculous contrivance, the store apparently still needs someone to walk through its three or four floors at night for…what, exactly?  There’s nothing of value in the place and the building needs condemned, but it still needs a security guard making rounds?  Maybe the pigeons need companionship.  Whatever the case, anyone with a modicum of horror savvy knows that places like this are evil and bad, and all those who died in the fire are likely still in there as honked off ghosts, ready to play tricks on you or steal your wallet or commit other unpleasant acts.  And they love to pick on people who are on strong prescription drugs or have a history of mental illness in the family because they know those people are halfway to crazy already, and they’ll likely write off their visions and the frightening occurrences as their own nutty brain being nutty.  Predictably, it takes Ben all of about ten seconds of his first round to see that the evil in this place resides in the mirrors, and this sets him on a quest to find out the secret behind the mirrors before the evil unloads on him and his family.

Director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes) must have been copping directly from the horror film universal playbook, because this film has a ton of standard scary movie clichés.  So let’s run down the checklist:  Down-on-his-luck and/or half crazy hero?  Check.  Abandoned or destroyed mental hospital and/or patient?  Gotchya covered.  Gory deaths of unessential characters?  Yes sir!  Spooky rundown farmhouse where inbred yokels live in isolation and their own filth?  Absolutely.  Evil demon thing bouncing crazily off the walls?  Certainly.  Nonsensical twist ending?  And how.  Mirrors has them all, but none of them are presented with any originality or creativity.  Plus, the film sells out its own premise.  It should be called Reflections, because the badness can apparently come from any reflection, whether generated by mirrors, water, or presumably the shiny head of a bald man.

It’s certainly no good but, on second thought, maybe I’m judging it too harshly.  Because it certainly couldn’t have lived up to the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen in a mirror:  my naked reflection.  If that didn’t make you shudder, you have nerves of steel.

Email me your favorite horror clichés, praise and mockery at dudeviews@yahoo.com.

Until next time, the Dude is not in.

Movie:  Mirrors

Genre:  Horror

Rating:  R

Running Time: 110 minutes

Dude’s Rating:  Booed

(Dude Brockhaus lives in New Haven, IN where his walls are adorned with Amy Smart posters.)

Dude’s Rating System

Standing Ovation

Hearty Round of Applause

Golf Clap

“Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug

Booed

Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage

Dude here.

If I’ve learned one thing from Hollywood, it’s this:  If I ever discover a small, secret door in my house, as happens to the title character in this week’s animated feature Coraline, I’m nailing it shut and putting something heavy in front of it.  Nothing good ever seems to happen when you crawl through a tiny, secret door.  Sure, things look cool at first, but eventually the alternate universe you’re playing in either unravels or turns evil and then you’re left trying to reweave the fabric of the space-time continuum or battling some flesh-eating walrus (and sometimes both), and who needs that headache?

Still, the premise makes for interesting movies in the hands of the right people.  Spike Jonze delivered on the concept in 1999 with Charlie Kaufman’s quirky oddity Being John Malkovich, and Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) delivers a nicely twisted tale here with Coraline. 

Coraline Jones, voiced by Dakota Fanning, is a lonely girl of about 11 years old who moves with her parents into an old, pink Victorian style rental house.  Early on she meets a neighbor boy named Wybie, who gives her a creepy doll with button eyes that looks just like her.  Now I don’t know about you, but the minute some weird stranger gives me a creepy doll of me is the same minute that I call the stalker police and request they bring the straightjackets and heavy meds.  But Coraline sees this development as more of an odd coincidence than a potential John Hinckley/Jodie Foster fiasco, so she tolerates, if not befriends, Wybie and his uppity black cat, who seems to be more than your average housecat.   

Coraline’s parents, Charlie and Mel (Teri Hatcher), don’t spend much time with her because they’re busy writing a gardening catalog.  While exploring the house out of sheer boredom, Coraline finds a secret door that has been wallpapered over.  Although nothing is behind it initially, later that night some bouncing kangaroo mice kick open the door from the other side, revealing a glowing tunnel to another world.  Curious Coraline decides to go exploring, and she finds a strange and wonderful alternate version of her parents and life, where everyone is a doll with button eyes.  In this world, her Other Parents lavish her with attention and cater to her every desire.  But eventually Coraline discovers things aren’t as peachy as they seem, and soon she finds herself in a battle to get back to reality.

Coraline is the first stop-motion animated film to be shot entirely in 3D, but there is a standard version as well, which is what I watched.  I really enjoyed it and so did those with me.  But I’d caution you that this is NOT a movie for young children.  Despite the animation and PG rating, it’s a pretty dark film.  If the button-eyed creepy people don’t frighten the little ones, the old scary spidery evil creature near the end probably will.  There is also a subplot involving the ghosts of dead children and their missing “eyes.”  If Coraline can find their eyes hidden in the Other world, she’ll set their souls free.   

You’ll probably know fairly quickly if your child can handle Coraline, as the Wybie character makes his entrance on a loud bike with a scary skull mask and spooky green light.  If your child doesn’t balk at that, they’ll probably be fine.  Our demented 3-year-old daughter Emma loved it, and it’s all she wants to watch now.  It’s a little disturbing actually.  I’ve hidden all my wife’s sewing supplies because I don’t want to wake in the middle of the night with Emma trying to sew buttons into my eyes so I look like Other Daddy.

Even though I now fear for my corneas, I liked the movie.  It’s visually stunning, odd and fun, and older children will enjoy it.  At times it’s like an animated Sleepy Hollow, at other times it’s more like Moulin Rouge.  I’m not sure which is eerier.  I’ve struggled since watching it to get the image of the mostly-naked bosomy old lady out of my head.  That bit of unpleasantness occurs during one of the Moulin Rouge style performances in the Other world, and it may be the most unsettling thing in the film.

Seriously, picture your grandmother on a high wire in a string bikini bottom and pasties.  Now go try and eat something.                

Email me about how much you just vomited, alternate universes you’ve visited, your praise or your ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.  

Until next time, the Dude is not in. 

Movie:  Coraline

Genre:  Animated       

Rating:  PG

Running Time: 100 minutes

Dude’s Rating:  Hearty Round of Applause

 (Dude Brockhaus lives in New Haven, IN, where he runs a farm raising kangaroo mice.)

Dude’s Rating Scale

Standing Ovation

Hearty Round of Applause

Golf Clap

“Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug

Booed

Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage

Dude here.

Several nights ago my daughter, who is now in the 7^th grade (!), came to me for help with algebra homework.  It had been a while since I had tackled algebra, but I was pretty confident and it came flooding back quickly.  In minutes I was simplifying 9y-3(y+6) and easily helping her with the difference between commutative and associative properties.  I felt good, proud that I was able to explain things in a way she understood, and pretty impressed with myself that I so quickly recalled algebra I hadn’t used in 20 years.

The next night, as I walked through the kitchen on my way to find something to eat for 2^nd supper (I usually like to go with something from the cheese family), I saw her frowning over more algebra homework.  Brimming with confidence from my glorious success the night before, I once again offered my expertise.

But I was greeted with silence.

I looked over her shoulder and saw her paper was marked with red X’s and I knew she was embarrassed over the score she got.  Looking to boost her spirits, I said “Hey, don’t worry about that.  I’ll help you correct it and save your grade.  We got through last night’s paper.”  She said, “This is last night’s paper.”

It turns out that the simplified answer to 9y-3(y+6) is not 26z-1, and I couldn’t tell the difference between algebraic properties and Monopoly properties if my life depended on it.  I had helped her miss 7 out of 10 answers.  If life had a soundtrack, at that moment they’d have been playing the “you’re a loser” music from The Price is Right.  Actually I felt about as brainless as Shelley Darlingson, the vacuous main character (played by Anna Faris of the Scary Movie franchise) in this week’s feature, The House Bunny.

Bunny begins with Shelley living the pampered life in the Disneyland of adult entertainment, the Playboy mansion!  Unfortunately, she is suddenly and unceremoniously booted from the mansion on her 27^th birthday without explanation.  She eventually finds her way to a sorority house and moves in with the Zeta Alpha Zeta girls, a group of frumpy nerdlings in danger of losing their house due to a lack of pledges.  Silliness ensues as Shelley takes it upon herself to make over the girls and the house, but will her changes help attract enough new pledges to save the sorority, or will they fall victim to the sabotage from rival house Phi Iota Mu?

Anna Faris never did much for me in the Scary Movie series, but she’s great here and quite believable as a Playboy Bunny, if you know what I mean.  Her character here is one of great vacuity and naiveté, but full of heart and generosity.  Faris plays her perfectly, and it’s no wonder she was recently named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the top 25 funniest actresses in Hollywood.  She’s matched in a great comedic performance by Emma Stone (Superbad), who also made the EW list and plays the terrifically nerdy Zeta leader Natalie.  She is brilliant here, playing Natalie as so incredibly socially awkward that I felt myself cringing and squirming (and laughing) as she would embarrass herself by nervously spouting on and on whenever she became uncomfortable.  Other supporting cast includes Colin Hanks (Orange County) as the unlikely object of Shelley’s affection, Rumer Willis and Katharine McPhee as Zeta housemates, and an underused Beverly D’Angelo as the rival Phi Iota Mu housemother.  Hugh Hefner also makes a special appearance as an old guy who surrounds himself with hordes of 20-year-old nude models and parties all day.  What a stretch.

The screenplay was written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, the same duo behind the screenplay for Legally Blonde, and those of you that enjoyed that film will probably like The House Bunny as well.  I actually enjoyed this one a little more than Blonde, but I guess that could be attributed to the hot babes and Playboy theme.  And while I’m sure I would have enjoyed the scenery an R rating would have generated, I think the comedy works better and it was a wise move to keep this in the PG-13 category.  However, for the edification of concerned parents and interested parties, there is a brief shot of Shelley’s backside.

While the film is a comedy, I learned a couple things from it.  I learned that, no matter my age, I will always laugh at the word “pooter.”  I learned that the eyes are the nipples of the face.  Finally, I learned that the age ratio of human to Playboy Bunny years is about 1:2.185.  Just don’t ask me to simplify that or tell you what algebraic property it falls under…

Email me your favorite centerfolds, funniest actresses, praise or ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.

Until next time, the Dude is not in.

Movie: The House Bunny

Genre: Comedy

Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 97 minutes

Dude’s Rating: Hearty Round of Applause

(Dude Brockhaus lives in New Haven, IN, and his meal schedule is as follows:  breakfast, snack, 2^nd breakfast, brunch, 3^rd breakfast, lunch, snack, 2^nd brunch, snack, supper, snack, snack, 2^nd supper, 3^rd brunch, snack, 4^th breakfast.)

Dude’s Rating Scale

Standing Ovation

Hearty Round of Applause

Golf Clap

“Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug

Booed

Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage

Dude here.

Last Saturday I spent the entire day home alone with my 3-year-old daughter Emmalyn.  We made it an “Emmy Day,” where we watched her shows and played her games, and what I discovered is that there is a finite amount of time you can play games with a 3-year-old before you start thinking like a 3-year-old.  You don’t get there right away, but your brain sort of regresses down to that level.  I mean, at first I felt ridiculous calling her teacher over and over because she “forgot her special toy at school.” But after three hours of pretend teacher calls it no longer mattered that she has no teacher and is not yet in preschool.  Eventually, we both had left our special toys at school and the teacher was being a dodo-face.  As the day wore on my brain checked out, and it became perfectly logical to me that the loveseat was now a school bus, we should have only pudding, cheese and gummy snacks for supper, and Handy Manny should be the only show on TV ever.  By early evening I was damn proud that mommy put my watercolor picture on the fridge because I paint so pretty.

Fortunately, Emma finally went to bed and my brain slowly began working its way back up to regular operating speed.  I think it was back around the 4^th-grade level – well on its way back to my normal 6^th-grade mindset – when we popped in Paul Blart:  Mall Cop and, quite frankly, it helped me enjoy the film much more than I should have.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of Kevin James, both in that I find him really funny and I’m a great big fat guy.  His TV show The King of Queens is one of my all-time favorites, but his movie career has been spotty at best.  He had a starring role and was pretty funny (particularly in the dance scene) in 2005’s Will Smith comedy Hitch, but his only other major live action role was in 2007’s I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, where he played opposite Adam Sandler.  And that film’s only redeeming quality was that it featured Jessica Biel in her underwear, a scene that is on a permanent replay loop in my brain.  So I had pretty low expectations, and while the film pretty much justified those expectations, I’ll be damned if I still didn’t like it anyway. 

James plays the title character Paul Blart, a security guard at a New Jersey mall who has aspirations of becoming a New Jersey State Trooper.  Although tremendously overweight, his real roadblock happens to be a case of hypoglycemia, which causes him to pass out immediately if his blood sugar gets too low.  Paul is a single father and is largely (no pun intended) disrespected and dismissed by everyone he knows, save his daughter and mother (Shirley Knight).  Early on Paul sets his sights on mall worker Amy, played by Jayma Mays of Epic Movie and TV’s Glee, even scoring a “date” that goes awkwardly awry.  But later, when the mall is overrun by bad guys and Amy is held hostage, Paul gets a chance to play the hero and prove himself to everyone.    

The film has many shortcomings, but I found myself rooting for Paul and smiling a lot.  It’s largely kid humor, although there is thankfully very little burp and fart material.  It’s mostly physical comedy, which James does very well.  It’s fun to watch a man of his size executing “special ops” maneuvers and plans.  The PG rating keeps the hostage standoff light, as the bad guys – whom, as my wife pointed out, all seem to have arrived straight from the X Games – rarely use their guns and never really even act all that menacing.  In fact, they’re mostly just armed with sarcasm and skateboards. 

Die-hard King of Queens fans will recognize a lot of extras from that show playing bit parts here, and the movie was co-written by Kevin James and Nick Bakay, who wrote many King of Queens episodes.  The film also has a great supporting character named Pahud, which will be the name of my next born son.  But they unfortunately left out what would have been the funniest character, an incoherent floor polisher.  He can only be found in a couple of the deleted scenes, which are worth a look just for him.  But that’s surprisingly my only real quibble with the movie. 

Certainly you have to expect some flaws with a movie titled Paul Blart:  Mall Cop, and there are several here.  Of the group that watched it with me, half of them fell asleep.  But kids will like it, and as long as you go into it with a certain mindset you’ll find yourself smiling a lot more than you might have guessed.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the loveseat is honking and I’m late for school.  Where’s my special toy?

Email me your funniest King of Queens lines, your favorite toy as a kid, and your praise or ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.  

Until next time, the Dude is not in. 

Movie:  Paul Blart:  Mall Cop

Genre:  Comedy        

Rating:  PG

Running Time: 87 minutes

Dude’s Rating:  Golf Clap

 (Dude Brockhaus lives in New Haven, IN, where he’s frequently mistaken for Kevin James, Jack Black, Ron Jeremy and pretty much any famous fat guy ever filmed.)

Dude’s Rating Scale

Standing Ovation

Hearty Round of Applause

Golf Clap

“Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug

Booed

Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage

Dude of Light

Dude here.

For the women out there, here’s an example of how guys operate:

I received The Reader by mail back on July 25^th.  All I knew about it was that it looked like a SERIOUS DRAMA and that Kate Winslet had won an Oscar for her role.  The disc was covered with her picture, and she looked kind of sad and ghostly white.  Thus, I stuck it next to the Blu-Ray player and didn’t give it much thought.  Many other discs came and went, including countless movies and two full seasons of the Showtime TV series Dexter, but there sat sad Kate on the Reader disc.  The calendar changed from July to August and then September, but the disc just sat there collecting dust.  I celebrated an anniversary, my daughter turned three, and a new school year began, but still the disc remained untouched and was now buried under 40 days’ worth of clutter.  Then last week during a talk with my sister, I happened to mention that I still had The Reader.  She told me, “Oh yeah?  I saw that.  It’s got a lot of nudity.”

Thirty seconds later, I was watching The Reader.

It begins with middle-aged Michael Berg, played by Ralph Fiennes, recalling his first love affair and subsequent lifelong relationship with Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet).  Through flashbacks, we learn how their torrid affair began in post-WWII Germany, when he was 15 and she was considerably older.  We also learn that Hanna is hiding some dark secrets and that she likes to be read to before boom-boom time.  The affair inevitably ends, but the two cross paths again years later when Michael is studying law and Hanna is at the center of a trial regarding Nazi war crimes.  It’s during this time that Michael faces a sobering choice between justice, love and law.

For the record, my sister was right.  There was a bunch of nakedness.  But none of it was very fun nakedness, save for one silly scene that plays like something right out of an adult film:  Uh-oh, young buff Michael has gotten himself covered in coal dust from head to toe.  Why, he can’t go home looking like that.  What will his parents think?  Sexually frustrated and frumpy Ms. Schmitz had better draw him a bath and wash his clothes.  Oops, while getting Michael’s towel, Ms. Schmitz seems to have lost her clothes as well.  I guess there’s only one thing to do now…cue the “bomp-chicka-bow-wow” music.

I nearly laughed Skittles out my nose.

Despite this, the movie is pretty good.  Winslet gives a haunting performance as Hanna Schmitz, and David Kross is strong as the young Michael Berg.  It’s a slow narrative, and although I found some of the affair scenes either odd or downright silly (see above), when the film shifted focus onto the Holocaust war crimes at the center of the second act I thought it also picked up dramatic steam and held it, even through another focus shift in the final act, where we really discover why the film is named The Reader.  Particularly well done and sobering is young Michael’s walk through an old concentration camp, filmed with low light and eerie quiet.  It’s a grim reminder of what happened there and it stirs a sickening feeling.  It’s also a reminder that anyone who ludicrously calls President Obama a Nazi should be junk-punched daily or have their tongues eaten by ravenous birds.

Finally, a quick plea to Kate Winslet:  Please, for the sake of my bank account and well-being, pick a comedy as your next film.  After reviewing both Revolutionary Road and The Reader, I’m spending a fortune on Prozac, which has left me frequently confused, jittery and with a tongue swollen to the size of a Mini Cooper.

Email me your Prozac side effect stories, favorite ridiculous adult film scenes, praise and ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.

Until next time, the Dude is not in.

Movie: The Reader

Genre: Drama

Rating: R

Running Time: 124 minutes

Dude’s Rating: Golf Clap

(Dude Brockhaus lives in New Haven, IN, where, thanks to Prozac, he spends most of his time skipping happily through fields of daisies and spotting cute fluffy cloud bunnies while topless women ride dancing unicorns that sing “On the Road Again” by Willie Nelson. )

Dude’s Rating Scale

Standing Ovation

Hearty Round of Applause

Golf Clap

“Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug

Booed

Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage

Dude here.

 I’ve always been a sucker for horror movies.  What I mean is that they scare the crap out of me.  I’d like to tell you ala Beetlejuice that I’ve seen The Exorcist 167 times and it keeps gettin’ funnier every time I see it, but the truth is that I’ve only seen The Exorcist once and I wet myself in fear.  Yes, when it comes to horror movies (and a great many other things) I’m a big, doughy wussbag.  Once when I was about 20 years old, my younger sister brought home The Amityville Horror.  Not only did I sleep with every light on for the next three months, but I insisted she take the videotape and box to her own room in case demons should leap from the VCR and feast on my innards during the night.  So I wasn’t too keen on watching this week’s subject, The Haunting in Connecticut.

 Haunting follows the story of the Campbell family.  Matt Campbell, the eldest child played by Kyle Gallner, has some form of cancer and the long drives for treatments in Connecticut begin to take their toll on his health.  Because of this, his mother Sara (Virginia Madsen) decides the family should relocate to Connecticut and finds a house there.  She’s initially thrilled because the house is large and affordable and she isn’t yet aware that there are evil things there that want to stab and mutilate her family.  It takes awhile for her to catch on too, as most of the supernatural unpleasantness is initially focused on Matt, who has trouble convincing his skeptical parents that dark entities are trying to violate his soul and drag him to hell.  They’re convinced he’s suffering from hallucinations brought on by the experimental treatments for his cancer.  Eventually the spirits become too grumpy to be ignored and the house’s dark history is revealed, leaving the family to search for answers before angry hell-beasts run off with their valuables…or something like that.

But I had the answer right away:  MOVE!  Sleep in your car, go back to your old house, find a sleazy motel, anything…because personally, I’d rather put up with a few bedbugs than evil ghosts any day of the week.  I swear to you, the first time my mop water turns into a bucket of blood I’m out the door before the mop hits the ground.  Yet the Campbell’s illogically stay in their Victorian deathtrap despite this and worse occurrences.

Still, the film is decent.  It’s based on a true story and that carries some weight with me.  It’s also creepy enough that it had me nervously wondering what that thump was upstairs about midway through.  I sent my wife to check it out – stupid cat.  And it had me convinced that some decayed, walking corpse was lurking out in the dark garage waiting to throw poisonous rats at my face the next time I went for a soda from the fridge out there.  So I sent my daughter to get it.  But the ending devolves into standard over-the-top horror cliché that plagues so many scary movies these days, and since the ending is the last thing you see – of course I didn’t see it because my eyes were closed – it ultimately leaves you disappointed. 

A day later we checked out the 2002 documentary A Haunting in Connecticut, and we all found that to be just as creepy without the unnecessary Hollywood ending.  The documentary also did a better job at explaining why the family was reluctant to move even after they realized something was terribly wrong in their house, and it features interviews and recollections with some of the actual family members.  What it doesn’t feature is an interview with the realtor who sold them the place.  What kind of a lowdown no-goodnik do you have to be to sell a haunted house to a family with young children?  Isn’t there some sort of disclosure law that says you need to tell prospective buyers that occasionally dead people walk the stairs and the shower curtain may try to eat you?  If there is no such law, maybe there ought to be.  I’m writing my congressman.

Despite the overdone final act, The Haunting in Connecticut does a reasonable job of serving up scares.  It will do nicely for those of you who like to be scared but can’t stomach and/or abhor the “torture porn” movies like Saw, a film I didn’t find scary at all, just gross and depressing.  My wife still hasn’t forgiven me for renting that one several years ago.        

Email me your ghost stories, suggestions, praise and ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.  

Until next time, the Dude is not in. 

Movie:  The Haunting in Connecticut

Genre:  Horror

Rating:  PG-13

Running Time: 92 minutes

Dude’s Rating:  Golf Clap

(Dude Brockhaus lives in New Haven, IN with his wife Mackenzie and three of their own little hell-beasts.)

Dude’s Rating System

 Standing Ovation

Hearty Round of Applause

Golf Clap

“Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug

Booed

Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage

Dude here.

You know, living with an autistic 4-year-old is pretty challenging.  My son develops odd quirks that come and go, sometimes vanishing for months and then reappearing out of the blue.  For a while he was obsessed with light switches, repeatedly flipping them on and off while laughing hysterically.  Once that abated, he moved on to slamming cabinet doors over and over while squealing with glee.  Lately he’s been taking things apart, including some things that are beyond my ability to reassemble…not that it matters, because as soon as we do put his latest project back together we find it in pieces again about an hour later.  His most impressive deconstruction effort has been a metal wagon, where he removed the wheels and rear axle by hand.

Lately I’ve been itching to prank my wife by turning the boy loose in my daughter’s room for an hour or two and giving him a shot at disassembling her baby dolls.  How creepy/great would that be?  Then I’d call her up and let her freak out at the baby doll casualties, complete with the decapitated one that still opens its eyes when you move the head.  I imagine the end result would look a lot like the carnage in Rambo, the simplistically titled latest installment in the Sylvester Stallone film franchise.

You have to be in a properly demented frame of mind to enjoy the barbaric, gruesome violence of Rambo and I must have been there because I had a great time watching Sly mow down an entire village of bad guys.  I lost track of the number of times I delightedly yelled “OHH!!” as some faceless bad guy actually lost his face when Rambo fed him a platter of exploding grenades with a side of machete.

We’re talking gross, mindless violence here so the plot is largely inconsequential.  But for those curious, here it is:  John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has apparently “retired” to Thailand, where he lives quietly, says nothing and spends his time capturing snakes for local entertainers.  He also operates a boat shuttle service along the river.  That’s right; Rambo has become a cruise captain.  One day a group of Christian missionaries arrive looking for a lift up the river into Burma, where they hope to help the war-ravaged villagers by providing some humanitarian aid and other niceties.  Rambo tries to tell them that this is a silly idea, they won’t make a difference and they’ll likely be killed or captured or tortured or, more probably, all three.  He explains this by simply telling them “Go home.”  But the missionaries will hear none of it, and eventually the pretty blonde girl of the group (played by Julie Benz of Dexter) convinces Rambo to get them into Burma by asking nicely while wearing a white top in a pouring rainstorm.  Of course Rambo is prophetic, and the missionaries are in the village for about three seconds before they’re abducted by the murderous Burmese army.

Eventually the church sends a group of mercenaries after the missing missionaries, and they convince Rambo – regrettably without the use of a pretty blonde in a wet top – to ferry them down the river so they can track down the missing humanitarians.  Rambo decides to tag along and the vengeance begins!  One of the mercenaries is played by Tim Kang, probably now best known as Cho from The Mentalist.  It’s fun to see him in a starkly different role from his straight laced TV character.

Despite my overall enjoyment of the movie, I’ve struggled with where it should be slotted on my ratings scale.  I can’t really slot it with other films I’ve given a “Hearty Round of Applause” or I’d have about as much credibility left as Glenn Beck.  But it also seems ridiculous to give Rambo a “Golf Clap” or “Meh.”  I mean, he’s frickin’ Rambo!  You give Rambo a “Golf Clap” and he’ll feed you your own hands.  So I’ve decided to cop out and craft an entirely new ratings scale just for this film.  From worst to best:

Hangnail – for when I wish I was the one taking a machete to the cranium instead of suffering through this piece of garbage.

Bad Sunburn – decent action, but where’s all the blood and guts?

Severe Laceration – good bloody action, but not enough people left holding onto their own intestines

Exploding Face – now we’re talkin’!

Rambo slots right into the Exploding Face category.  Once the slow plot got out of the way, it was a fun, disgusting action flick that left a smile on my face.  It’s also a quick film, clocking in at just 92 minutes that includes 13 minutes of the most ridiculously slow-scrolling closing credits of all time.  Seriously, I’ve been on vacations shorter than that.  Even Titanic, a 3-hour epic that won 11 Oscars, got their credits done faster.  Then again, who am I to complain?  It took me three weeks just to write this article.

You can always email me your picks for longest movie credits at dudeviews@yahoo.com.  Until next time, the Dude is not in.

Movie: Rambo

Genre: Action

Rating: R

Running Time: 92 minutes

Dude’s Rating: Exploding Face

(Dude Brockhaus is from New Haven, IN, and frequently would like to shuttle his destructive son up the river to Burma.)

Dude here.

If you’ll allow me a moment of self congratulation, I’d like to tell you what an incredible run of luck I’ve been on lately. Since I began this column a few weeks ago, there’s been an incredible response to it, some of it positive! It has been linked by other sites and can be found by Googling “Dude’s reviews.” Essentially it’s gone global. While I’ll stop short of saying I’ve put Busco on the map, I think it can be said that I do have a map and Busco is on it.

I truly have received email (at dudeviews@yahoo.com) from all over the planet, and although none of them have actually pertained to this column’s content, I did get the following bit of great news from Mrs. Rita Criswell of London: I have won one million pounds in the UK National Online Lottery! As you can imagine I was thrilled, particularly since I’ve never heard of nor entered the UK National Online Lottery. That made my week until I got even better news a couple days later. Mr. Abdulaziz Jabi, Bill and Exchange Dept. manager of Bank of Africa in Burkina Faso, sent me an email to inform me that he was authorized to transfer 15 million U.S. dollars to my bank account in the next 10 business days! No further explanation was given, but it’s $15 million, so who cares?! I quickly fired off my banking information to Abdulaziz Jabi, told the UK to suck it (and man, did that feel great) and then went out and bought a Ferrari Enzo super car, which turned out to be giant space robot sent here to protect me from other evil giant space robots hell-bent on extracting my brain because it’s imprinted with some ancient super giant space robot lore that will allow them to destroy humanity and eat our sun and harvest its power.

The Dude

If you bought any of that, you’ll like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which is what I recently went to see with my wife for our 5th anniversary…at her insistence. And though I couldn’t love her more for not making me sit through My Sister’s Keeper or something similarly gag- inducing, my gratitude waned pretty quickly as Transformers unfolded.

Revenge of the Fallen is the sequel to 2007’s Transformers, a Micheal Bay explodathon that didn’t grab me at the time, but somehow managed to weasel its way into my psyche deeply enough that I feel compelled to watch it every time it’s on a movie channel. It’s like Jerry Fletcher’s “Catcher in the Rye” compulsion in Conspiracy Theory. When it comes on HBO, I start looking for black helicopters … which are exploding and transforming all over the place in Revenge of the Fallen.

Fallen picks up a couple years after Transformers ended. The Decepticons have been hiding out on Earth, while Optimus Prime and the Autobots have formed a Decepticon hunting alliance with the humans called NEST. Our human hero Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) has continued his relationship with smokin’ hot Mikaela (Megan Fox), although they’re on rocky ground as Sam heads off to college. The Decepticons discover that Sam has a shard of the destroyed AllSpark, and it has imprinted ancient robot symbols on his brain that can lead them to the secret Earth location of a Sun Harvester, built on Earth nearly 20,000 years ago by a super bad robot they call The Fallen. So they regroup, resurrect Megatron from the bottom of the ocean and then blow up lots of stuff.

I know this sounds ridiculous (and it is) but before you dismiss it completely, please remember that we’re talking about a movie featuring giant warring space robots. I don’t think anyone goes to a Transformers movie looking for Oscar caliber narrative. There are dropped and unresolved subplots here, unnecessary characters, and two incredibly annoying new Autobots who speak some sort of jive, none if it even close to as funny as the Airplane guys. But the plot hardly matters here and, since that’s the case, this movie delivers.

If you liked 2007’s Transformers, you’ll likely appreciate this one. I felt the same way leaving this movie as I did after that one — teeming with ambivalence. It’s not terrible only because it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s not very good either. Ultimately though, it provides what it promises: great big action, shiny robots obliterating each other, and a hot babe with heaping cleavage running through explosions in the desert. It’s hard to complain too much about that. All your favorite characters are back as well, including Kevin Dunn and Julie White as Sam’s over-the-top odd parents, John Turturro in goofball mode as Agent Simmons, and Josh Duhamel as Major Lennox, who largely gets lost in the shuffle here.

Just five weeks into its release this movie was already the 10th highest grossing film of all time, so a third installment seems likely. Optimus Prime is gold plated and rolling in money now. And speaking of rolling in money, I wonder what happened to Abdulaziz Jabi? It’s been three weeks, I haven’t heard a thing since I sent him my bank account number, and I still don’t have my $15 million. My Ferrari Enzo told me I’ve been scammed and repossessed itself by walking back to the dealership a few days ago, but I’m holding out hope that it’s a computer glitch … because I’ve never known anyone in the banking industry to be untrustworthy.

Email me with your scam stories, suggestions and comments at dudeviews@yahoo.com. Until next time, the Dude is not in.

Movie: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Genre: Sci-fi Action
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 150 minutes
Dude’s Rating: “Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug

(Dude Brockhaus is from New Haven, Ind., and he reminds you to NEVER send your banking info out to anyone ever. Not even your bank.)

Dude’s Rating System:

• Standing Ovation
• Hearty Round of Applause
• Golf Clap
• “Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug
• Booed

Dude here.

You know, I had no idea what a Gran Torino was until I recently watched the Clint Eastwood drama of the same name. I would have guessed it was a southern California beach town. As it turns out, it’s a car. That came as no shock to me though, as I’m the kind of guy who identifies cars by color rather than make and model. I’m also the type that will drive along ignoring that new whining sound coming from the passenger side front until the whining sound becomes a whistle, the whistle a howl, the howl a thump, the thump a shimmy, and the shimmy a grinding metal-on-metal sparkling spectacular followed by a $900 mechanic bill that could have been avoided if I’d gone to my brothers-in-law back when it was only a whine so they could tell me, just by listening, that I needed a new quad hemi intake cylinder pump and it would’ve cost me $10 and a six-pack for the labor. (I’m sure there’s no such thing as a quad hemi intake cylinder pump, but when they’re talking cars they might as well be speaking Punjabi, because I’m about as well versed in both languages.)

The Dude

In other words, I am the exact opposite of Clint Eastwood’s character in Gran Torino. He plays a bigoted, unhappy curmudgeon named Walt Kowalski, a newly widowed Korean War veteran who can’t stand his family, his neighbors or just about anyone aside from his dog. I, on the other hand, have lots of family and friends that I like, my wife is still alive, and I can’t stand my dog. Walt has an old school work ethic and still mows his well-manicured lawn with one of those old rotating blade two-wheeled cutting jobbies. I use a riding mower and don’t bother mowing until the grass is tall enough that jungle cats have moved in. Walt has an enormous collection of tools and knows exactly where each one is and what each one does. I have a pair of scissors, a screwdriver and some gum, and if you asked me to hand you a 3/16″ binker ratchet I’d have no idea that you were making fun of me.

Now alone, Walt spends a lot of his time on his front porch, resenting everything within eyesight. Because of their proximity and Walt’s personal experiences, the neighboring Hmong family is often the object of his ire. Things don’t improve early on when Walt catches the neighbor boy Thao (played by Bee Vang) trying to steal his mint condition 1972 Gran Torino. But when Walt later saves Thao from a gang attack, the two begin to form a relationship and learn life lessons from each other.

Walt Kowalski is a character Clint Eastwood has played a thousand times, but he does it so well that no one seems to tire of it, much like Jack Nicholson in anything since 1990. I didn’t tire of it either, although he literally growls a lot in this film and I found that a little over the top. Bee Vang, which sounds German for an inappropriate insect part, does a fine job as Thao, although my favorite character was his sister Sue, a feisty and charming teenager played by Ahney Her. Sue is the first one to open up to Walt and damper his cynicism, and she’s one of those movie kids that has the wisdom and insight of a person that’s lived 150 years. I don’t see that worldly wisdom in my kids yet. In fact, I had to stop my boy from eating a dirty potato chip he found lying on the ground next to a cigarette butt at the zoo. Then again, he’s only four. Maybe by the time he’s a teenager, he’ll be firing off learned, philosophical poetry every ten minutes, although our current teenager doesn’t spout any such wisdom either. She mostly just says “frickin’” a lot.

I do recommend Gran Torino. It’s a good, entertaining drama and provokes some thought on prejudice and character. Clint Eastwood delivers a solid performance again despite the growling, and there is a good mix of both Million Dollar Baby and Dirty Harry Eastwood here. I also really enjoyed Ahney Her’s performance and the dialogue had me laughing out loud at times. Plus, they had a really cool green car in it. I have no idea what kind of car it was though.

As always, you can email me your comments, suggestions, praise and ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.

Until next time, the Dude is not in.

Movie: Gran Torino
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Running Time: 116 minutes
Dude’s Rating: Hearty Round of Applause

(Dude’s real name is Brian Brockhaus. He lives in New Haven with his wife and three children, drives a metallic gold car and has no idea what a variable speed scroll saw is.)

Dude’s Rating Scale:

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• Standing Ovation
• Hearty Round of Applause
• Golf Clap
• “Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug
• Booed

Dude here.

I love games. Any game – board, video, word, sex – you name it, I’ll play it and stomp you at it. So when my sister recently bought the board game version of Twilight and brought it over to play against my wife and daughter, I was determined to play even though I’d never seen the film or read the books by Stephanie Meyer. Undaunted and full of confidence, I sat down and proceeded to kick the crap out of these supposed Twilight trivia masters.

The Dude

Actually, I finished dead last. But I did make it through three quarters of the game before someone else won, using only info that I picked up from other answers. So I felt pretty good about that. But leave it to my wife to ruin a good mood, and she did exactly that when she said, “Hey! Let’s watch the movie now! You could review it!” I started to groan that I hate vampire movies and that this movie seemed like a chick flick, but before I could open my mouth the Blu-ray player was already displaying the title screen. I quickly grabbed for the remote, but my wife hissed at me and my daughter bit me on the ankle. Simultaneously, my sister lassoed me with a bungee cord and pulled out a samurai sword. I took this to mean that they were serious. Life has taught me many lessons over the years, but the one I’ve learned most often is to know when I am beaten. So I sat quietly and they started the movie.

Twilight follows 17-year-old Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) as she relocates from living with her mother in Phoenix to living with her father in Forks, Washington. Bella seems to have a good relationship with both of her parents, which is pretty refreshing for a teenager, particularly when the parents are divorced and live so far apart. Once at Forks, she becomes interested in and catches the ire and eye of hunky, mysterious and reclusive Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Bella becomes determined to unravel the mystery surrounding Edward and his family, and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything here by telling you they’re vampires.

Thinking back, I can only recall one vampire movie I’ve ever liked, and that was From Dusk Till Dawn. But I only liked that movie because George Clooney was so frickin’ cool and it had some great dialogue. I didn’t give one red rat crap about the vampires. Twilight wasn’t bad though, as it was more about the romance between Bella and Edward than blood sucking and stakes through the heart, which apparently doesn’t work on Stephanie Meyer vampires anyway. There was still a fair amount of vampiric tomfoolery, but it didn’t overwhelm me and make me roll my eyes too often or emit heavy, exasperated sighs.

Still, it wasn’t my cup of tea…or blood, in this case. I can’t say I liked it better than the unrelated, vampireless 1998 Twilight starring Paul Newman and featuring a topless Reese Witherspoon. But then again, all I remember from that movie was that it featured a topless Reese Witherspoon and it had nothing to do with vampires. Regardless, I’m giving this one a polite golf clap, meaning I can appreciate that it’s a decent film, but I probably won’t be watching it again. But I think Stephanie Meyer fans and some vampire fans will enjoy it. My wife, sister and daughter loved it, and I think I just made it through the entire review without going for the obvious “For a vampire movie, it didn’t suck” joke.

Ah, crap. Well, I almost made it. Until next time, the Dude is not in.

You can always email me your review requests, suggestions, praise and ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com. Surely there’s someone out there to demand a review of Girls Gone Wild: Spring Break, isn’t there? Throw me a bone here people, because pretty soon I’m going to need to explain that charge on the credit card.

Movie: Twilight
Genre: Vampire/Thriller
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 122 minutes
Dude’s Rating: Golf Clap

(Dude goes by the name Brian Brockhaus in the real world, and he lives with his wife and three fangless children in New Haven.)

The Dude’s Rating System:

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• Standing Ovation
• Hearty Round of Applause
• Golf Clap
• “Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug
• Booed
• Lustily Booed, Mocked and/or Pelted With Garbage

Dude’s Discount Movie Review

The Love Guru

Dude here.

The first genitalia joke occurs about ten seconds into The Love Guru and I’d suggest that, if you don’t laugh there, you’re wise to hit the “Stop” button because things won’t be getting any prettier. Unfortunately, I didn’t laugh. This Mike Myers comedy was showing every sign of living down to its potential.

The Dude

Mike Myers plays a character named Guru Pitka, who aspires to become the next Deepak Chopra. Pitka is recruited by Toronto Maples Leafs owner, Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) to help the team. It seems the team is struggling because star player, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) just hasn’t been the same player since splitting with his wife, who is now shacking up with rival goalie Jacques “Le Coq” Grandes (Justin Timberlake). If Pitka can get Roanoke and the Leafs back on track in time to win the Stanley Cup, he’ll be rewarded with an appearance on Oprah and on his way to becoming the world’s top guru.

I know many of you Austin Powers fans may be tempted to give this a shot, and some of you may like it because it has a LOT of the same humor and jokes. I loved the first Austin Powers film, but the repetitive jokes were getting tired by Goldmember. Really, how many times can we be expected to laugh at Verne Troyer’s (a.k.a. “Mini Me”) height, poop jokes, and groin punches? Well, actually groin punches are still pretty funny … just not in this movie. But there’s a groin punch in What Happens in Vegas that made beverage shoot out of my nose.

The film was pretty bad, but at least I had Jessica Alba to ogle. (She should be punching her agent in the face hourly for getting her into this mess and Good Luck Chuck.) There were also some moderately fun musical numbers, including a Bollywood send-up of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5″. And, believe it or not, Justin Timberlake was pretty decent here. The few smiles coaxed out of me were a result of his character. But these things were not enough to save the film from disaster.

And what a disaster! This thing rivaled Chernobyl. It had humping elephants, a urine-soaked mop fight and, most ridiculously, the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Stanley Cup Finals. It also has a slew of celebrity cameos and bit parts, including Stephen Colbert, Val Kilmer, Jessica Simpson, and Mike Myers as himself. I don’t know what Myers had on those poor souls in order to blackmail them into an appearance here, but it must have been really bad…like sex tape scandal bad or kitten poisoning bad.

What I’m saying here is, if you have the choice between sitting through The Love Guru or eating a flaming cactus, give some hard consideration to that second option. You’ll thank me for it. Until next time, the Dude is not in.

Movie: The Love Guru

Genre: Comedy (kind of)

Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 87 minutes

Dude’s Rating: Booed

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As always, you can post your comments on this review below or email your thoughts, suggestions, mockery and requests to dudeviews@yahoo.com.

(Dude’s real name is Brian Brockhaus, and he lives in New Haven with his wife, three children, a dog, a cat, and some humping elephants.)

The Dude Reviews: ‘Public Enemies’

Dude here.

The last film I went to see was the John Dillinger action thriller Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger and Christian Bale as lawman Melvin Purvis.

With me for the viewing was my sister, who will never be allowed to see a movie with me again. First of all, she wouldn’t allow me to order my ticket by saying “One for Pubic Enemas, please.” (In retrospect, I can see how she might have made the right call on that one.) Then she openly mocked my last-second audible at the snack bar where I switched my order from Barq’s Root Beer to Mr. Pibb right before the drink guy pushed the button. (It was the right call, by the way.) She also refused to let me stand up and cheer any time the movie mentioned or referenced Indiana. That’s probably because of her many years living in Ohio, a state no one likes but her. Finally, she made me eat these horrendously bizarre Skittles where the center of the Skittle is filled with odd junk even though the outside shell looks like a normal Skittle. I swear one of the red ones had an avocado/cauliflower center.

The Dude

Anyway, the movie was pretty good, but it seems that it could have been great. It was a reasonably fun telling of Dillinger’s crime spree and relationship with Billie Frechette (played here by Marion Cotillard) over the last year of his life from 1933 to 1934, although director Michael Mann (Ali, The Aviator) did take some liberties with dates and locations. I also never really got a sense of Dillinger’s widely reported public popularity from the film. It never really touched on how Public Enemy No. 1 could “hide out” so publicly. Maybe Mann was relying on the viewer having a certain basic knowledge of Dillinger coming in, but that also works against the film because I think true Dillinger buffs will find it inaccurate and disappointing. Particularly puzzling is the inaccuracy of Baby Face Nelson’s demise, portrayed in the film much earlier than it occurred in history.

There is no back story for any character. The film starts with a prison break in 1933 in Michigan City, IN and rolls on from there. The bank robberies and subsequent shoot-outs are loud, obnoxious fun, but scenes involving Dillinger’s courtship of Frechette are ho-hum. The action really picks up when Melvin Purvis brings in a bunch of Texas lawmen to help round up Dillinger’s gang by any means necessary. Is there anything more badass than a group of 1930s Texas lawmen?

Disappointingly, the movie leaves out a lot of the area tales, really only visiting Indiana for a couple prison breaks. They made our 1930s Indiana prisons look about as difficult to escape as a shoebox with the lid off, which apparently they were. And maybe they still are, given the recent escape of three inmates from the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. There is also no scenes involving any of the police station robberies in Auburn, Peru or Warsaw. You don’t see many police station robberies anymore. Modern era criminals are a bunch of wussies.

Historical gaffes and omissions aside, it’s still a fun action film. Depp and Bale are always good, and I also liked Billy Crudup (Almost Famous) as J. Edgar Hoover, although the subplot about Hoover’s attempts to establish the FBI feels underwritten. They probably had to cut some of it to keep the running time under three hours. Plus, I really wanted Billy Crudup to scream “I am a golden god!!” like he did in Almost Famous, a movie I’ve seen more than anyone on this planet. Alas, no such luck. I guess J. Edgar Hoover must have never said that. But given the other historical liberties taken, would it really have compromised the film that much to script it in there somewhere, maybe during the Senate subcommittee scene? How great would that have been?

Senator McKellar: Your bureau stinks! No more funding.

Hoover: I AM A GOLDEN GOD!!

Hmm. Maybe I’m not quite ready for Hollywood screenwriting. Anyway, I think Public Enemies will satiate action fans but leave Dillinger fans wanting more.

I’m not sure what I’ll be reviewing next, although we’ll be returning to the Netflix account and our bargain discount movie roots. I’m pretty sure The Love Guru is near the top of the queue, so it could be a brutal session. You can always email me your review requests, suggestions, praise and ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com. Or, simply add your comments below.

Until next time, the Dude is not in.

• Movie: Public Enemies
• Genre: Action/Gangster
• Rating: R
• Running Time: 143 minutes
• Dude’s Rating: Hearty Round of Applause

Dude’s Discount Movie Review: ‘Up’

Dude here. I’ve done it! After a few agonizing minutes of debate, I have finally settled on what I think is a fair way to assess the videos I’m going to review here. I’ve decided to rate them based on my reaction as the credits roll, and I’ve broken them down into six categories:

• Standing Ovation – for my absolute favorites that I’ll watch repeatedly
• Hearty Round of Applause – for movies I really enjoyed and would watch again
  

  The Dude
• Golf Clap – for films I can appreciate as not terrible
• “Meh” & a Shoulder Shrug - for films I sat through and probably rolled my eyes at a few times
• Booed - for films that stink worse than wet dog
• Lustily Booed, Mocked and/or Pelted With Garbage - I’ll dive into a river of lava before watching this junk again

With this handy ratings guide, you can now just skip to the bottom and ignore all the junk I shoehorn into the middle to fill out a column! You owe me one…

Recently my wife and I decided to take our two youngest children to their first movie. Despite my insistence that we see The Hangover, my wife overruled me and talked me into seeing Up, the latest creation from the goldmine that is Pixar. So we loaded up our 2-year-old daughter and our 4-year-old son, who is autistic and doesn’t typically do well with new experiences, and headed to the theater. After a rough start with the boy screaming his head off, we settled into our seats.

I’m not a big fan of animated movies. I can appreciate the ones that are well done, like Cars and Kung Fu Panda, but they’ve never been “must-see” films for me. However, I thought WALL-E was terrific and I also really enjoyed Up. The movie is the story of 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner) who, in an effort to escape the modern world, realize a lifelong dream, and fulfill a childhood promise to his recently departed wife, ties a massive amount of balloons to his house and floats away to a lost land in South America. Inadvertently accompanying Carl on his adventure is Russell, an 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer trying to earn his merit badge for helping the elderly. Together the pair experiences a fantastic adventure, complete with talking dogs and a rare bird named Kevin that has a surprise of its own.

It’s too bad dogs can’t really talk, then maybe my dog could offer me some sort of rationalization for when he knocks over the garbage and strews it across the kitchen. By the way, if you’re mulling over getting a dog, you might just want to dump garbage all over your floors, urinate on anything with fabric, and dig a thousand holes in your lawn and save yourself the vaccination fees and vet bills. But I digress …

Up is very funny, but also has moments of poignancy that will tug at your heartstrings. Early in the film, when they quickly flash through Carl’s life, you’d better have your Kleenex handy or be wearing long sleeves. And Russell is a tremendously likeable and sympathetic character; an overweight, likely unpopular kid from a broken home who, despite the adversity he may face, is always positive and happy and concerned about others. It takes awhile for Russell to chisel away at Carl’s gruff exterior, but viewers will see it coming from a mile away since Carl was a very similar boy in his day.

While Up was great fun for me, the question is “Will your kids like it?” Judging by my kids, they will love it. We went to the regular version, as I had great doubts about our little ones wearing glasses for 1.6 hours. (We have trouble getting our 2-year-old to wear clothes for 1.6 hours. I hope she grows out of that.) But there is a 3D version that slightly older children will love. Even in the standard version, the animation is so incredible that you can see right where the 3D enhancement would have been. My 4-year-old actually watched about a third of the film before falling asleep, but since he rarely watches any TV or movies, I count that as a ringing endorsement. My 2-year-old sat through nearly all of it before getting restless during the action-packed final act when, despite my attempts to shush her, she loudly and repeatedly informed me that I’m a butthead. I’m beginning to regret teaching her that word

• Movie: Up
• Genre: Animated
• Rating: PG
• Running Time: 96 minutes
• Dude’s Rating: Standing Ovation

(The Dude lives in New Haven with his family and a garbage-loving, urine-soaking, hole-digging canine that Dude sometimes dreams of tying to a massive amount of balloons headed for South America. Email him at dudeviews@yahoo.com or add your comments below.)

This week’s Review: Revolutionary Road

Dude here.

When I was recently asked to submit a movie review for Busco Voice, I was pretty excited. After all, I like writing and I watch movies sometimes. What other qualifications could there be? Plus, The Voice would pay for my movie tickets and I’d finally have a convenient excuse to leave my wife and children at home and sneak off to a weekly movie. Furthermore, what a great supplemental income! So I crunched some numbers, outlined my ideas, and submitted a budget proposal of $1,000 per week and an annual salary request of $30k. The Voice countered with a budget of $0 and no salary, which I grudgingly accepted, and here we are.

The Dude

However, since I have no budget, I will rarely be reviewing new releases. Instead, I will be reviewing movies that arrive via my Netflix account. They’ll often be over a year old, but the plus side is that you’ll likely be able to find them in the $1 rental section at the local video store (in Churubusco – K & K Video & Books) and they’re almost guaranteed to be available since anyone with any semblance of a social life will have already seen them. This week’s review is Revolutionary Road, a video I almost always mistakenly call “Reservation Road.”

Before we get to this depressing tale of 1950s suburban living, we should probably cover some things about me that may help you understand, and possibly even enjoy, this column. First, many people call me Dude. This is due to my love of the cinematic epic that is The Big Lebowski. If you have not seen this film, stop reading and get thyself to the video store RIGHT NOW. Second, if you’re looking for a serious, technical critique of films whereby I break down crucial scenes shot by shot or provide some inspired insight into the filmmaker’s symbolism and deep philosophical meaning, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. This will be more about the experience of viewing the video and will often include unfair generalizations, humorous anecdotes, and frequent mockery.

This week’s video features Kate Winslet reuniting with Leonardo DiCaprio for the first time since Titanic, a movie I saw in the theater more times than anyone in America. Now you’d think that Kate and Leo couldn’t have found a more depressing movie to headline than Titanic. After all, the ship sinks and 1,500 people die. Yet, incredibly, they actually managed to out-do themselves. The happiest part of Revolutionary Road occurs in the first five minutes of the film when they briefly flash back to the meeting of Frank (DiCaprio) and April Wheeler (Winslet). After that, I recommend you start popping the antidepressants, because by the 15-minute mark Frank nearly punches April in the face.

The Wheelers internally resent and blame each other for their failed dreams and their lives mired in the endless monotony of suburbia. Frank is going through the motions at a job he hates, and April is a failed actress now stuck playing the role of housewife and mother. The Wheelers have two children, but we rarely see the children in the film. Eventually the Wheelers decide a change is needed and concoct a plan to move to France and start fresh. But when circumstances change and the plan is thrown into jeopardy, will the Wheelers hold it together or unravel completely?

Bah, who cares?

I didn’t like the movie at all. I suppose that’s not surprising, as it’s directed by Sam Mendes. Mendes was also behind the film American Beauty, another depressing, bleak film about unhappy suburban mopes. I didn’t like that movie either, despite all the accolades and rave reviews it received. Revolutionary Road is a very similar film and the characters are a couple of unlikable wieners. They should have named them Frank and April Wiener…but maybe that would have been too obvious. They whine and complain and yell at each other but fail to see the blessings they do have. But the leads are played well and supported by Michael Shannon in an Oscar-nominated role as a nutball who has the Wheelers’ relationship figured out within 30 seconds of their first meeting. Shannon plays a great nutball, and even though he was nominated for this role, I thought the whack-job he played in 2006’s Bug was better. Kathy Bates also has a supporting role as an annoying, gossipy realtor.

I know Revolutionary Road was nominated for two other Oscars as well, but they were for costume and art design or some such nonsense, so those hardly count. I’d recommend you save your dollar and leave this video on the shelf, unless Leaving Las Vegas or Schindler’s List made you giddy, then you might enjoy it. I’ll give it a “C-”, but since I haven’t yet determined whether I’m using letter grades or stars, I’m not sure that means anything. At any rate, I’ll not be watching it again anytime soon.

In the next column, despite great personal expense, I’ll actually be reviewing two new movies. I’ve seen both Up and Public Enemies and I’ll have comments on both. Also, if you have any requests or suggestions on videos you’d like reviewed, you can email them to me and I’ll try and get to it.

However, since Busco Voice asked me write this column two months ago, it could be early 2010 before it gets done. But patience is a virtue, right? Until next time, the Dude is not in.

Movie: Revolutionary Road
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Running Time: 119 minutes
Dude’s Rating: C-

(The Dude lives in New Haven with his lovely wife, Mick, and three adorable children and does not consider himself to be mired in the endless monotony of suburbia. Email him at dudeviews@yahoo.com or add your comments below.)