Spider-Man 2 (the second, second one)

I finally watched The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (aka the shitty reboot Spider-Man with prettier people in it). I have a lot of opinions about this movie, but I don't feel like typing a lot, so I'll just let the conversations I had with my best friends sum it up for you...

So my best friend watched it before me and her summary sparked my interest immediately:

Clickable: http://uproxx.com/gammasquad/2014/05/the-amazing-spider-man-2-vs-batman-robin-which-is-worse/ 

So this weekend I finally rented it and sat down for a treat, and got to chat with another good friend about it as I was watching...

And the answer to that is no, these characters can't be normal or flawed or remotely relatable. In the scene discussed above, Peter's parents are basically taking a private jet to flee the country after saving the world with their science information or something, but then a villain beats them up and crashes the plane, thus killing them. 

Then back to modern-day, Spider-Man is engaging in a car chase where he's trying to recover some science-y looking tubes, and he exchanges shitty lines with a villain bearing a forehead tattoo. 

Stay tuned for more on this guy....

As Spider-Man chases forehead tattoo guy, Gwen Stacy is preparing to give their graduation speech (because she's super smart and the valedictorian). Her speech starts off talking about how they're all feeling invincible, but shit changes.

Later on, Gwen and Spider-Man break up because he feels like a dick for breaking his oath to her dying father. (In case you don't remember, that oath was to not date Gwen because Spider-Man's work is dangerous and she could get killed.)

Spider-Man also lies a lot to Aunt May and gets into weird arguments about laundry and personal hygiene because he's really bad at pulling off this double-life as a superhero thing.

Some more shit happens, like brooding and being a super hero and more brooding. I start to realize how awful the music is.

And then more shit happens, mostly involving Jamie Fox as a creepy nerd who works at Oscorp and starts to fantasize about being BFFs with Spider-Man. And then...

... Jamie Fox gets electrocuted in a tank of eels at work, thus turning him into a crazy dude who can manipulate electricity. 

Meanwhile, Spider-Man and Gwen meet up to try and be friends, but then he accidentally reveals that he's been a fucking creep who followed her around:

So then they break up for realsies. Spider-Man stays super depressed and decides to try and figure out what happened to his parents to make himself feel better. 

Along the way, he meets up with the lovely and talented Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborn (aka the only redeeming thing about this movie). 

They rekindle a long-lost bromance and all is well. Except that Dane's dad died and he is also dying. He efficiently recaps the last movie for us:

And then he reveals that he wants Spider-Man's blood because he thinks it's like unicorn blood in Harry Potter that will save his life, but Spider-Man doesn't want to give it to him.

Dane basically says, "Fuck you" and then some other shit happens and eventually he decides to team up with Jamie Fox. Meanwhile, Spider-Man is figuring out his roots. 

And that's all you really need to know about Spider-Man's dad's hidden super cave in the subway. 

The dynamic duo of Dane and Jamie eventually figure out that there is a hidden place with the Spider-Man serum, and Dane takes it and turns into the Green Goblin. Oops. 

Eventually, Jamie goes off on his own to kill Spider-Man and shit gets real. And remember that earlier comment about the music? It got even better. As they're fighting, Jamie Fox's electro powers start playing music to match the soundtrack. And Spider-Man breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge it. 

 As they fight/play EDM, the power keeps going off and coming back. Continuity errors abound. 

Back at Spider-Man's fight scene, Gwen pops up and won't go the fuck away because she thinks she can basically do what she did in the last movie again, which is to help save the day with her big science brain. That goes well. 

And surprise surprise, they manage to bring her graduation speech back into the fold again, just to really drive that point home. 

Spider-Man is sad for a few minutes, but then decides he can't be a pussy anymore and he should get back to fighting crime. And remember that comment about the tattoo forehead guy? He's back, breaking into banks in a robot suit.

 And that's basically it.

Premium Rush: 2 fast, 2 fixie

You know that moment when a single line from a movie sums up the whole thing perfectly? For Premium Rush, that moment came when Michael Shannon (playing dirty cop, Bobby Monday) drives his sedan recklessly down the street and proclaims, "Haha! I'm chasing a bicycle!"

Fixed the tagline for you

So what more is there to say about this movie? Well, the lovely Joseph Gordon Levitt is NYC bike messenger, Wilee (don't get me started on the name), who is totes hipper than you and rides a fixie with no brakes because "brakes are death!"

Might as well be pulling the trigger on a loaded gun.

This works out for Wilee because he's a savant at figuring out routes through traffic that won't kill him. He also loves telling other people how they should get rid of their brakes and touting his superior bike knowledge, though for some reason he doesn't know how to properly lock up a bike in a way that would prevent anyone from stealing it. But this is movie land and nobody fucks with Wilee's ride.

Due to his mastery at all things bike-realted, Wilee is called to deliver a special envelope. What's inside the envelope you ask? A ticket with a smiley face drawn on it. But it gets better! The ticket is actually worth the cost of smuggling a small Asian child into the U.S.

To clarify, some woman is trying to bring her son to the U.S. illegally because legal channels suck and are slow. So she turns to some seedy, underground Asian banking system that uses recycled paper and Sharpies instead of checks (or any other logical form of currency tracking) to send money to a child smuggler. 

You think I'd trust my money with Wells Fargo? Fuck that

What should be a simple envelope delivery takes a wrong turn when Bobby Monday goes on a mission to steal the ticket. Bobby was gambling in some seedy, underground Asian casino and now he owes them money. To avoid getting his head sliced off with a samurai sword, Bobby tries to steal the ticket to pay off his debt.

Unfortunately for him, Wilee's sweet bike moves and liberal use of the epithet "douchebag" are too much to handle. But eventually Bobby catches a lucky break: Wilee's bike instincts fail him and he gets hit by a car.

See, this is where brakes would have been handy

Bobby somehow convinces the EMTs to let him torture Wilee in the back of the ambulance because he's a cop and cops can do whatever the fuck they want. Bobby uses this time wisely and lectures Wilee on the obnoxiousness of the terms "douchebag" and "suck it", making a plea to spare the kids of America the obscenity.

Along the way to the hospital Bobby asks the EMTs to make a pit stop and let him take the guy that just got hit by a car somewhere other than the emergency room. Naturally they agree. Bobby thinks Wilee is going to give him the ticket, but instead Wilee steals a BMX bike and rides away. Oops!

Wilee finally makes it to the child smuggler and his bike gang helps him out by forming a flash mob in an alley and taunting Bobby for being so terrible at chasing bicycles. And to top it all off and get his sweet revenge, Wilee gets into Bobby's face and says, "Suck it, douchebag." BURN!

After the ticket is delivered the smuggler calls China and the child is allowed to get on a boat to America. Everyone is happy, except Bobby, who promptly gets shot in the head by the Asian casino thugs and dies. The end.

Good job, screenwriters!

Men In Black III—Neuralyze me now

Men In Black III is like one of those bad "Throwback Thursday" photos. Old friends tag you in a forgotten snapshot from high school to remind you of good times past, but instead of making you nostalgic, you question whether or not you always looked that stupid.

The movie opens up with a dominatrix skank carrying a suspiciously jiggly cake into a prison. The guards read her "Boris" back tattoo and realize she's there to visit an inmate called Boris The Animal, and after making some bad jokes about cake and STDs they let her in.

Big mistake. An alien bug jumps out of the jello cake and kills the guards, freeing Boris, who looks like a one-armed, homeless, steampunk Tim Curry, but is actually Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords.

The hiphopopotamus is in the house

The alien bug crawls into a hole in Boris' remaining hand that looks like a vagina with teeth, and together they kill more guards. They steals some weapons and then blow a hole in the prison walls that sucks everyone into space, because this prison is on the moon and fuck physics.

This is exactly what happened to Neil Armstrong when he stepped out of Apollo 11

Now that Boris is out of prison he explains his intricate plan: "I'm going back in time to kill a man before he takes my arm!" Who is that man? The suspense kills.

Back on Earth, Agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) are up to their old shenanigans, wiping the public's memory about alien events and making increasingly poor cover stories for them to believe. It's still the same old "sociable, funny J" versus "surly, serious K."

But as much as things are the same, time has passed and some things have changed. For example, the "intergalactic kegger" guy from the first film is now dead. It's pretty inconsequential to the plot overall, but Agent K gives a shitty eulogy and then they're back to work.

Their alien crime investigations bring Will and K to a Chinese restaurant run by Wu from Deadwood (conveniently, his character here is also named Wu). Apparently alien Asians are just as bad at running restaurants as Earth Asians because Wu is feeding his customers dog and cat meat alien fish instead of chicken Earth fish. Yay stereotypes!

"Cocksucka screenwriters!"

Will makes a joke about being "fish slapped" and then they realize Boris and his cronies are all over the restaurant. They fight and make aliens explode, and eventually Will and K escape by dropping down an alley holding a door above their heads like a makeshift parachute. Normally this would be a terrible idea, but they have the strongest arms in the world and are able to hold on to the door as it bangs into fire escapes and it helps break their fall.

Boris yells after them, "You don't know it K, but you're already dead!" OMG, that means, Agent K is the one who took Boris' arm! (I know you're just as surprised as I was.)

Will is the only one left who doesn't realize the connection between K and Boris, so he Bings it and finds out that in addition to taking Boris' arm back in the day, K made the whole Boris race go extinct. So really, you can't blame the dude for holding a grudge.

Will goes home to his giant pug glamor shot to think about the meaning of life and gets a call from a drunk K, who now wants to explain his past with Boris. Will is too busy playing video games and being an angsty teenager to care, so K says, "Fuck this," opens a secret closet with guns to go kill Boris, but disappears instead.

Pug life

When Will goes to work the next day he's living in an alternate reality where he craves chocolate milk, K doesn't exist, and Will Arnett (a.k.a GOB) is his partner at work.

Franklin Comes Alive!

Even though GOB is amazing and they could have hilarious banter together, Will misses curmudgeon-y K. Will and his coworkers figure out that Boris must have traveled back in time and killed K, so Will has to go back and save him.

Will goes to a pawn shop and gets a pimped out stopwatch that doubles as a time machine and he travels to the 60s to save K. It ends up looking like Mad Men + Will Smith, meaning the cops are racist and Will is as sassy as ever.

He ends up meeting the young Agent K (a.k.a Josh Brolin, a.k.a. the most respectable part of this movie). Josh is skeptical of Will and almost fries his brain in an enormous neuralyzer, but ultimately they team up to find and kill Boris.

Along the way they run into Bill Hader, who is Andy Warhol/an MIB agent, and Griffin, a dude who can see into the future and basically saves their asses for the rest of the film. 

Thank god for Griffin because this post is already too long

Eventually young Agent K and Will find and kill Boris and save the world. Sadly some black guy that helped them along the way dies, and it turns out to be Will's dad for no real reason.

Will makes it back to the present day and Agent K is alive and old again. They eat pie together and all is right with the world. Well, that is until the new theme song starts playing....

Pitbull is always ruining things.

I mean, I don't even have to make any more jokes here, just read some of these amazing lyrics:

Let's excuse me baby
Go, yeah you baby
Back, ooh you groovy baby
In, let's make a movie baby
Time, excuse me baby

Or...

Give credit where credit is due don’t cha
Know that I don't give a number two

Okay world, now you know: Pitbull doesn't give a number two about anything!

The rest of this movie was tolerable, but I wish I could forget that song ever happened.

See, this song is what happens when you revive 90s franchises and pass on the opportunity for more Will Smith rap.

Take Me Home Tonight.... Or actually, don't

Topher Grace movie. Need I say more? He's like the male equivalent of Katherine Heigl. When I see either of those names on a movie I know that it will be terrible, most people will like it, and I will begrudgingly watch it after a glass (or two) of wine.

Take Me Home Tonight is a fake 80s movie about Topher Grace, a loser who is hung up on a girl he pretended to kiss once in high school. His twin sister is Anna Farris, and to make anyone believe they could actually be related they uglied her up a bit.

Toph has a sad life: He graduated from MIT, but fucked up so bad that he’s working at a video rental store (remember those?). His BFF is a middle-aged creepy car salesman named Barry.

Who has two index fingers is registered under Megan's Law? This guy!

They’ve somehow known each other since 5th grade, which I infer to mean Toph was molested by Barry behind the elementary school.

Anyway, the aforementioned girl that Toph is unheathily obsessed with comes back to town and he is plotting his revenge a way to get into her pants. For some reason he calls this girl “The Frederking,” which, in addition to being her last name, sounds like a European dictator.

The Frederking really wants to rent a VHS so she goose-steps into Toph’s work. He pretends not to be creepily obsessed with her and that he’s an investment banker with Goldman Sachs. She’s a dummy and falls for it and invites him to a party.

His tiny brain explodes at the thought of getting laid, so he becomes even crazier and decides to steal a car from the dealership Barry was recently fired from. The cops in this town are slow, so Barry and Toph drive to the party and Barry brings along a stash of coke he found in the glovebox, because its the 80s and that’s what people in the 80s would do. Topher lectures Barry about not doing the coke, but he’s a drinking a wine cooler so obviously he has no business giving anybody life advice.

As soon as Toph leaves with his wine cooler Barry does all the coke and gets into a dance off. Because of course he does. Because it’s another excuse to make this movie scream 80s with more of the most obvious 80s music and ridiculous outfits and cliche dance moves. Barry goes Karate Kid on the other guy and Goth Michelle Tratchenberg is impressed.

Gross + Gross = Tru <3 4evr

Eventually Toph finds The Frederking and it's as awkward as it should be, but instead of leaving quietly he gives her the heimlich maneuver when she isn’t choking. The Frederking is charmed and they dance.

Some 80s bro (which is apparently exactly the same as a modern day bro) proposes to Anna Faris at what is essentially a frat party. All the Keystone Light goes to her head and she says yes as a shitty cover of Come On Eileen plays over a montage. Toph hates the bro and tries to talk his sister out of the engagement. In this movie they pretend she’s smart enough to get into Cambridge, and he thinks she’s throwing her life away, because he’s all about women’s lib.

Up yours, typecasting!

After lecturing his sister he scoots off to a different party with The Frederking, where he continues his women’s lib tirade and manages to get her creepy boss to back off by making up a story about a sexual harassment case at Goldman Sachs.

The Frederking confesses to Toph that she hates her job, and he’s all, “OMG, me 2!” And then they steal that thing from 500 Days of Summer where they scream “penis” in public because that's a game that is classic and timeless and will never die.

Toph and The Frederking leave the party and play truth or dare, but they don’t know how to play the fucking game properly. In case you were home schooled, the game goes like this:

THAT’S HOW YOU PLAY. But these assholes just ordered the other person to do things. That’s not a game! But anyway, after that they fuck on a trampoline, which isn’t nearly as exciting as it sounds.

Toph finally confesses that he works at a video store and The Frederking is pissed that she slept with such a plebe.

Barry convinces Toph to do coke to make himself feel better, but he ends up crashing the car they stole. And Toph's cop dad beats him up and threatens Toph to get a real job. And then Toph cries like a little bitch.

Cop dad lets the guys off the hook, so they go straight back to the party. Then Toph decides to roll around in a big metal ball, not unlike a hamster. He makes a crappy speech, says “Fuck it,” then rolls down a hill and destroys everything. The ball falls into a pool and Toph almost drowns. Neat!

Apparently riding in big metal balls is very a alpha male thing to do, because he manages to get The Frederking to like him again. Then everyone else gets their happy ending too. Barry hooks up with Goth Michelle Tratchenberg, and Anna Faris breaks up with the douchey bro.

So, the moral of the story is: coke will make you a crazy dancer and stealing cars and plot points from other movies has very little consequence.

Movie posters are also terrible

Wow, movie posters are as unoriginal as the plots of the movies themselves. See evidence below, and check out the whole collection to give you even more reasons to make fun of the movies next time you hit the theater.

Nic Cage/Jason Statham staples

Back to back to barf

Spoiler alert: Someone dies in this movie

Limitless: Idiots to the max!

There are some movies that you learn to love over time. The more you think about it, the better it gets. You examine all the layers and realize how complex the story is and an appreciation grows. This movie is the exact opposite of that.

On its face, this is a thoroughly entertaining movie. As it progresses, however, it gets increasingly stupid. And the more I think about it, the more problems I have with this movie.

It starts off with Bradley Cooper looking like a homeless drug addict.

Will work for hairbrush

His girlfriend is sick and tired of telling her friends that he's not actually homeless, so she dumps him and moves on to greener and cleaner pastures.

B. Coop runs into his ex-brother-in-law/drug dealer and gets to try a new drug that helps users access all of their brain power at once. I guess free samples aren't just for Costco anymore. Anyway, Coop is super depressed because his life sucks and since he has nothing to lose he takes the mystery drug called NZT. AND IT'S AMAZING. The drug gives him OCD symptoms and he cleans his apartment and then writes part of a novel.

Whoa, I can read the Matrix.

The NZT finally got Coop off his lazy ass and he realizes that he wants to be productive all the time. Instead of getting his shit together, he goes begging for more drugs. To nobody's surprise, his dealer gets killed before Coop can get his drugs. But it takes him about 30 seconds to find the stash, so life is good. The cops don't even see the bulging bag of pills shoved down his pants, and he's free to go.

With this enormous stash of miracle drugs, Coop can do anything; he charms the pants off everyone he meets, learns new languages and makes millions in the stock market. He even gets his girlfriend back because he finally took a shower.

Life is peachy, but only with the drugs. Without the drugs he's just a big dummy again. Eventually he he starts taking two pills a day and then he has black out episodes. For example, he couldn't remember how he got from one part of town to another, or whether or not he killed a hooker in a hotel room. That's annoying!

Instead of trying to figure out if he actually murdered someone, he tries to find out if the pills are going to kill him. And survey says: yes, definitely going to die. And the kicker is that he'll die from withdrawal, so he can't stop taking the NZT. What a dilemma!

Since he might die, B. Coop confesses to his girlfriend and makes her pick up his stash. Another NZT addict follows her and tries to kill her for the drugs. She speed dials Coop and he tells her take NZT to help her figure out what to do. It works like a charm. She looks around to find something to defend herself with, and she definitely makes the right choice:

She swings the little girl around and slices her attacker in the face with the ice skates. The little girl is probably scarred for life. Good job!

More people try to kill Coop for the drugs, but fueled with NZT he can outsmart them all. And actually, even without the drugs he kills one of them who was on NZT, which makes absolutely no sense based on the premise of this movie. The drugs make it so you can figure out everything faster than everyone else, but a drug addict experiencing withdrawal symptoms is somehow able to outsmart a guy feeling the full effects of the drugs? I don't think so.

Anyway, Coop somehow manages to kill his NZT-fueled attacker, and to get high again he has another brilliant plan: HE DRINKS THE BLOOD FROM THE GUY HE JUST KILLED. Ewwww. He laps it up like a dog. And even though Coop was using two pills a day, somehow a few sips of blood pump him up like a full dose... huh? Movie science blows my mind.

A year later, Coop has forgotten his blood-drinking, hooker-killing days and is running for senator of New York, and then maybe for president.

Actually, he's pretty tame for a politician

Running for president can take a long time, and there was only a limited stash of NZT to keep him smart/alive. But no sweat, Coop's drug-infused brain solved the problem: he hired a chemist to make more drugs. Or maybe he weaned himself off, while somehow maintaining his super-enhanced brain power (I'm pretty sure that was a lie). It was an ambiguous ending and I don't really know which one actually happened. Whatever, I don't even care. I just want to know when his gay sex scandal will surface.

Early review: Tower Heist

I recently went to watch 30 Minutes or Less, which was a thumbs up, but I was forced to watch some trailers first, some of which looked so terrible that even I won't watch them. One of those movies is Tower Heist.

Someone's finally making a comedy about ponzi schemes! Thank god! Oh, wait... nevermind, nobody wanted that. And actually The Other Guys kinda did that already (sort of).

At least I learned one thing from this: If you want to steal money, you have to know a black guy. The black guy will know what to do! Ben Stiller hasn't even seen this guy since they were in daycare together, but his racist assumptions gut instincts were right. The black guy steals all the time!

Okay, okay, I know, it's Eddie Murphy, but he's definitely blacker than everyone else. Except maybe Gabourey Sidibe.

Also, apparently if you are a multimillionaire, you definitely hide your assets in same kind of safe my mom uses to keep her jewelry in before she goes on vacation for a week. Who bothers with offshore accounts and money laundering these days?

Actually, maybe you should go see this movie. It seems like a fail-proof how-to guide to pulling off a perfect robbery, and racial stereotypes are always hilarious. I'm totally going to see this with my black friend.