Sucker Punch: A blow to the brain

I watched this movie and I don't know what the hell just happened. It's more confusing than Inception. But instead of a maze within a dream within a dream down an elevator, it's a turd wrapped in a shitty screenplay in a pinball machine. Oh, and it has the worst soundtrack I've ever heard in my life.

Basically, if you manage to keep watching past the opening montage, don't expect things to get better.

But the cast looked so promising!

Based on how I understood the plot, Babydoll (Emily Browning) loses her mother and is left to the care of her abusive (step?)father. He tries to kill and/or rape her and her sister, and Babydoll escapes and tries to shoot him. The trajectory on that bullet defies physics; it somehow manages to miss the target two feet directly in front of her, hit a hanging lightbulb and then swerve to the floor where her sister is sitting and kills her sister instead. Oops.

Babydoll pusses out and doesn't shoot her (step?)father, so he takes her to a mental institution. The doctors talk about giving her a lobotomy and then a few moments later she's hanging out with a bunch of other patients,  but they seem more like whores than patients. And apparently they kind of are whores.

The girls are forced to dance for guys, and Carla Gugino is their dance instructor. She makes Babydoll dance, but instead of seeing her dance we get to see her fantasy of killing poorly rendered CGI robots for a few minutes. She also dreams up some old man who tells her how to escape the asylum/brothel. After killing the robots she returns to reality in the dance studio and apparently she was dancing so seductively that even the girls got boners.

This is even better than Step Up

Some creep with a weird moustache talks about how much money he is going to make by having Babydoll dance for the "high roller," but little does he know that she is planning her exit and she wants to bring the other whores with her. They're kinda skeptical, but they go for it anyway because it's hard out there for a pimp mentally unstable prostitute.

Babydoll's elaborate plan involves photocopying a map, obtaining a lighter, and stealing a kitchen knife and a key. And I thought Azkaban had tight security!

In order to steal all of this shit the whores make Babydoll dance in front of the guys to distract them. When she dances it brings everyone into her fantasy world where the old man from her first dream guides them and gives great advice, such as, "Don't ever write a check with your mouth you can't cash with your ass."

In the fantasy land they perceive their tasks to be like combat missions and they use samurai swords and robot suits to kill zombie Nazis. (I know, I can't believe how stupid that sounds either.)

Can we paint Hello Kitty on the tank next?

I guess these action scenes are supposed to be badass and make the girls look powerful, but that is the worst impersonation of feminism I have ever seen. They're essentially comparing pickpocketing to a war zone in terms of difficulty for these girls, and all the while they're dressed like they're into Sailor Moon cosplay.

Cool gun charms, bro

Anyway, somehow they manage to get through these grueling tasks and get what they need, but every once in a while a whore gets stabbed or shot and dies. I don't really understand how Mr. Moustache manages to have so much control over these girls because he's about the same size as Vanessa Hudgens and his idea of intimidation is raising his voice like he's upset that his roommate didn't take out the trash.

Ugh, gross! Why do I always have to be the one to shoot the whores?

The moustachioed brothel owner eventually tries to rape Babydoll, but she stabs him, steals his key and gets away rape-free. Babydoll and the only other surviving whore, Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), manage to get out of the asylum/brothel, but a gaggle of dudes block the path to the gate. Babydoll martyrs herself for the sake of Sweet Pea and this time she distracts the guys by kicking them in the balls.

Out of nowhere, Babydoll is back in the asylum, in a chair ready to get a lobotomy from Jon Hamm. He hammers an ice pick into her brain and then Carla Gugino walks in, but apparently she's a psychologist and not a dance instructor. And the moustachioed brothel owner is an employee at the asylum. Hey, I guess they really were in the asylum all along! Ugh.

This fantasy within a fantasy scooped out of a catbox business was trying way too hard to be cool and clever. No, Zack Snyder, I don't want to go back and catch all the clues separating fantasy from reality and talk about how smart you were for planting all of them. I think I'd keep more brain cells if I just got a lobotomy. Jon Hamm, where's that ice pick?

The Mechanic

If you watch movies with anyone with a Y-chromosome—or if you are one of those folks yourself—inevitably you will watch at least one movie starring Jason Statham. That's a fact, look it up.

If you're really lucky, you might get to watch this gem called The Mechanic.

Riverdance helps my aim.

Contrary to what the title would lead you to believe, Statham is actually a hit man (quelle suprise), but for some reason they call it a mechanic. The only explanation offered is something to the effect of, "Mechanics fix problems." Um, yeah... Basically Statham does stuff like killing people in pools and turning them into human puppets that look like they're still swimming.

Being a mechanic also involves checking out job postings on Craigslist. Statham clicks on a post that looks like the coding is fucked up, but a few clickity-clicks later and it turns out the page was just encrypted and it has his next hit man assignment.

Oh shit! His assignment is to kill his BFF/mentor Donald Sutherland! And by the way, Sutherland is also wheelchair bound, so, you know, double-whammy. Even Statham has reservations about killing a cripple. Statham gets on his phone ASAP and speed dials his boss to demand a meeting to clear this shit up.

Apparently the best way to have a meeting is to get flown in by a private jet for a 15 minute conversation with the boss. And that's why we have global warming. Thanks a lot, Jason Statham. Anyway, he agrees to kill Donald because he thinks he killed other people. So much for being a loyal friend.

Statham loves a good joke so he tricks Donald Sutherland into rolling his wheelchair down a flight of stairs to the parking garage so he can kill him.

Statham is planning on making Sutherland's death look like an accident, but Donald would rather be shot than look like a pussy. Statham obliges.

After the funeral for some reason Statham is taking care of Don's estate or something and meets with the son, Ben Foster. Ben doesn't realize that Statham killed his dad, so he asks to be buddies and wants to learn all about being a hit man. Obviously, Statham doesn't want to do it, but he needs a hot young boy to lure one of his targets, so he enlists Ben and a chihuahua as sexy bait.

Studying for Hit Man 101

After a training montage involving a lot of shooting in the woods and reading medical books, Ben is ready to be a hit man. He kinda fucks up, but he manages to kill the guy he was seducing, so I guess it's all good. After that Ben and Statham are a dynamic duo and kill some more dudes, like a fat cult leader and other assholes that deserve to die.

Eventually Statham finds out that his boss framed Donald Sutherland, so instead of reflecting upon his poor judgment and career choices he decides to kill his boss. Obviously this entails killing a bunch of his minions first.

Ouchie

The big boss isn't impressed and he says the BEST LINE EVER:
"I'm going to put a price on your head so big that when you look in the mirror your reflection's gonna want to shoot you in the face!"

Whoa, watch out, Statham!

Eventually Statham and Ben hunt down the boss, crash his car and shoot him in the face. A lot. With machine guns. I'm pretty sure his face was hamburger afterward.

Once the boss is killed it seems like Statham and Ben should be BFFs, but instead they try to blow each other up. Guess who wins?

Duh.

Life As We Know It: Go kill yourself

I had a similar expression on my face while watching this movie

Raising kids? Ew, gross, get away from me.

That's pretty much the premise of this movie.

Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel are forced into raising their goddaughter because their BFFs—Christina Hendricks and some dude—died in a car crash and willed their offspring to the biggest idiots they knew. And those idiots had a bad date together recently and they really hate each other! How much worse can this get?!

Way worse. In addition to caring for the fetus, these two are asked to live together rent free in their dead friends' McMansion. "WHY MEEEEEE?!"

Even though they'd rather swallow razor blades than raise this kid together, they do it anyway.

I know, Josh, I don't get it either

To state the obvious, having a kid ruins their lives. Katherine Heigl owns a bakery (called Fraiche, which she insists on pronouncing Fraysh) and she wants to expand her business and hook up with a hot customer, but the baby puts everything on hold.

Josh Duhamel... well, who cares about what he was doing with his life because he's a total dick the whole time and his character's name is Messer. MESSER.

While doing their best not to kill the kid, Heigl somehow ends up with shit on her face. How could you not feel or smell that? I think the writers just really wanted an excuse to make her look like a fool. "Who cares if it doesn't make sense? Katherine Heigl will have shit on her face!" Brilliant.

Eventually they kind of get the hang of the whole baby business and then they only kind of hate each other (meaning they want to screw each other). Then one day Heigl finds out their pediatrician is the hottie from her bakery. Score! They start dating and he's smart, rich, good with kids and has a normal name: everything that Messer isn't.

But for some stupid reason she screws it all up and falls for Messer. Then they get in a fight and he moves away and she sticks with the doctor. They have an awesome life together until Messer visits for Thanksgiving and they confess their idiotic love.

"You're the only one who understands how much I hated this baby!"
"My bakery has such a dumb name, and you have a dumb name! I think it's a sign that we're meant to be together!"

And then the baby realizes it's doomed to be stuck with these morons as its primary influence in life and tries to kill itself... At least that's what it should have done, but it probably lacked the fine motor skills to tie a noose.

Unstoppable. But totally pausable and fast-forwardable

Let's start this blog off with a bang!
...Or an unfulfilled promise of crashes and explosions. You know, either/or.

So, if you were thinking of watching this movie (which was apparently inspired by true events, meaning it's true that trains usually won't stop themselves) you're better off just watching this instead:



If you still care about this movie, let me change your mind.

In case you didn't know, the premise is this: A runaway train has explosive cargo and Chris Pine and Denzel Washington have to prevent this super-likely disaster.

"But how did the train get away in the first place?!" you're asking.

The fat kid from "Boy Meets World" starts the train, jumps off for some reason and isn't agile enough to catch up to it again. Oops. And normally there is some safety switch, but that accidentally got knocked out of place. Double oops.

Note the word "walk," not "run." Not the guy you want to call to chase down a train.

Thank god Chris Pine is here to save the day! But, uh oh, things might not be as easy as they seem. He's the newbie at the train yard and big boss Denzel thinks he's a punk. And it's probably true. He keeps making sketchy cell phone calls at work. Kids these days... And I'm pretty sure that line or a variation thereof was actually used in the movie. The SNL skit wasn't an exaggeration: they actually argue about the generation gap while driving a train (not the runaway one, obviously, but another one that might crash into it). Ugh.

For about two seconds there is fake suspense because the movie folks want you to believe that this train might crash into a bunch of kids on a field trip. But that takes place about 30 minutes into the movie, so it was obvious there was no real threat. It probably would have been more entertaining if they just went for it.

I don't mean to sound cruel, I don't want kids to die in real life, but this is a movie and I want to be entertained. This wasn't even at the so-bad-it's-funny stage, it was just bad and boring. In fact, I'd love to bore you with the details and let you know what happened, but shortly after this riveting plot point I actually fell asleep.

According to my friend, though, Chris and Denzel work out their differences and the train is stopped, making the title of this movie a fucking misnomer.