THE BANALITY OF MODERN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD:

It’s hard to argue for bourgeoisie values – the counter-culture is the culture. Perhaps a cynical, self-referential generation that was allowed to watch David Bowie freak them out in Labyrinth hopes to vaccinate their children from counter culture with the Rebecca Blacks and Selena Gomezes of the world. Unlike with real vaccines, this year in children's films may actually cause autism. I watched the Winnie the Pooh movie. Literally nothing happens. By the end, I was counting cards and obsessed with the Beatles. And I no longer liked Tigger.

When I look out into the Occupy movement, the Tea Party, and everyone in between, I have to hope that one thing unites us all…that underneath the dreadlocks on the self-proclaimed vanguard of the 99% as well as under the Axe-hair sprayed uber-douche ‘do of the elusive 1%, there is a cry welling up in all Americans, and that one day, we will all cry in unison, “No mo’ Gnomeo”

Gnomeo & Juliet
Mars Needs Moms
Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2
Hop
Soul Surfer
Hoodwinked Too: Hood Versus Evil
Mr Popper’s Penguins
Cars 2
Winnie the Pooh
Spy Kids: All the Time in the World
Dolphin Tale
Happy Feet 2
Alvin & the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

MOST UNNECESSARY SEQUEL (Non-Children’s Film ONLY)
* The Hangover 2 – For crazy party locations, all that’s left is Rio and the Moonbase. Little-known fact: Ed Helms was led to believe that Cedar Rapids was a Hangover prequel.
* Final Destination 5 x Paranormal Activity 3 = Final Paranormal Activity Destination 15.
* Harry Potter 7: 2 – OK…it was necessary; 7 Part 1 was not
Pirates of the Caribbean 4 / The Rum Diary – Johnny Depp is now permanently employed pretending to be Keith Richards and Hunter S. Thompson.
* New Year’s Eve – It’s depressing to think how many holidays we have left to ruin with an ensemble cast and a Hallmark script.

WINNER: Pirates of the Caribbean 4. Out of nowhere, the first film was shockingly good. Since then, Disney has stripped the movies of all of their joy and wit. Part 3 should have ended it; nearly 3 hours of movie for nothing but to get to the concept fight in the whirlpool. Instead, I was snookered into believing that a few years off and the very welcome additions of the dude from Deadwood and Penelope Cruz might change course. No such luck; everything is there – the actors, the music, the set-up. There’s just no creativity left. You can’t get to Bond level of serialization with around 5 consecutive hours of dud and counting. FREE JOHNNY DEPP!

BEST TWIST:
The Lincoln Lawyer
Unknown
WINNER: Unknown – So all along, you knew it was Liam Neeson, you just didn’t know how.

WORST TWIST:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – I hadn’t read the book, but everyone knew Stellan Skarsgard was a bad guy.

THE HELEN MIRREN AWARD FOR MOST RIDICULOUS ASS KICKER
Hanna
Your Highness
Sucker Punch
WINNER: Your Highness

This one was tough…Sucker Punch is a dream sequence. Hanna has the explanation of having been trained all her life as a killer, but there’s a scene with a few cuts where she’s twirling a 200 pound security guard in full riot gear like he’s a gnatty beach towel. Nevertheless, I pick Your Highness. Natalie Portman still has that Black Swan-pallid “maintenance purge” sheen that makes you uncomfortable to look at her for fear that esophageal corrosion or osteoporosis will become contagious.


NARRATIVE STYLES I CAN DO WITHOUT:
Hyper-link Narrative - Contagion

If ever there was a subject that deserved hyper-link narrative, it was this. And yet, it doesn’t work here either. The reason is simple: Hyperlink prevents you from connecting with any of the characters. If the movie were all Laurence Fishburne and Kate Winslet, I could be convinced to care when Kate Winslet dies. Instead, she’s got about 10 minutes of face time before she’s dying.

Contagion goes on to make several specific mistakes, one in chasing a globalists’ wet dream too hard and the other in not doing so hard enough. For, at the end of the movie, we learn that the killer bug that Gwenyth Paltrow, evil, adultress corporate exec that she is, catches was in fact created by Ms. Paltrow’s own corporation because it cleared some rainforest, which led the bat to fly to the pig farm, blah blah blah. So, instead of leaving us with a public health message of “hey, this shit might happen, it’s random, scary, and there’s nothing to be done about it,” we instead get, “Well, the problem is really the corporations.” Yawn.

Then again, the movie makes the classic Independence Day error of setting everything in the United States. If you’re going to use the globalist’s preferred narrative style, you can’t set almost everything in the US when the disease is killing all over the globe.

BEST POORLY EXECUTED IDEA MOST IN NEED OF A PROFESSIONAL:
* Red Riding Hood – Tim Burton. There are a lot of movies Tim Burton should make. Phantom of the Opera for example - he's Edward Scissorhands with music.
* Limitless – An Editor. A writer with writer's bloc dreams up a drug to fix it and writes his movie about that; this clever hook turns into a wandering plot that spirals out of control as he carries this on to a stream of consciousness conclusion that makes no sense.
* Thor & Captain America – The hungrier Marvel of 5 years ago
* Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – Whoever wrote the first movie
* Harry Potter 7: 2 – The final battle is graffitied with anti-climactic moments, the worst of which is the end of Helena Bonham Carter in what amounts to wand-borne patty-cake on a table.
* Cowboys & Aliens – Someone with a sense of humor
* The Muppets – Someone to realize that we just wanted the Muppet Show, not 2 hours of build-up. Someone to realize that we wanted this to springboard the re-launch of the TV show. Barber shop quarter Nirvana – brilliant.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT FOR WHY THE TERRORISTS HATE US:
* Sucker Punch – This movie came out around the time the Arab Spring started…something had to give. Between the relentless din of Helen Mirren Award nominees kicking nazi/monster/etc. ass, this movie makes the unconscionable decision of trying to go ultra-serious. The result is about 20 minutes of extremely uncomfortable sex slave drama spliced with an hour plus of action shooter video game footage which, and I swear I’m not making this up, is supposed to symbolize the place a girl goes when she’s forced to dance for lecherous old men. Even serial killers would find this movie bizarre.

WORST REMAKE OF AN IDEA-LESS HOLLYWOOD:
The Smurfs
Conan the Barbarian
Footloose
The Thing
The Three Musketeers
Fright Night

WINNER: Conan the Barbarian. The Smurfs never had any ideas to begin with. Nor did Footloose. Horror remakes are nigh on obligatory, and may have led Russian scientists into digging a several mile ice hole. That leaves the Three Musketeers and Conan. The Three Musketeers seems like something Hollywood does reflexively – “Hey, it’s been like 5 years, shouldn’t we make another Musketeers movie?”

But Conan? No excuse. The first Conan was a movie with real ideas, a star like nothing you’d seen before (roided out Arnold), ridiculous nudity, perhaps the greatest film score of all time, and Mongol Darth Vader as the bad guy. In short, it is awesome in every way. So to remake it, they took out all the ideas, found somebody who is only slightly more imposing than Paul Bettany, dialed down the nudity to Ashcroftian FBI levels, ditched the music and the uber-villain. What’s left is a less-cinematic version of The Immortals.

The difference can summed up as follows:
Best line from the real Conan: "Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life? Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."
2011 Version: Conan: "I live, I love, I slay, and I am content."