Stoker (2013)

I was told that "Stoker" was a work of some impressive skill, which was something I found no cause to doubt given that the directer, Chan-wook Park is a man whose works I have greatly enjoyed in the past, particularly "Oldboy" and "Thirst." Comparisons to Hitchcock were rampant and thrown around so much when discussing "Stoker" that I felt like ducking lest I be struck by a fat man flying through the air. With all the praise, I was expecting something pretty solid.

Man was I not on board for this one. I hated "Stoker." I hated it hard. I hated it nearly worse than any other film I've seen this year, and it almost made the very exclusive "I hit the STOP button club." This film was insufferable.

The best way I can describe "Stoker" is that it's what would happen if Terrence Malick made a thriller and was forced to include a plot, I"m sure against his will and kicking and screaming the entire time. Like Malick's films it has similar flowery prose, glacial pace, cryptic storyline, baffling performances, and ham-fisted symbolism that would be a bit more effective if it weren't so overt. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it pretentious, as that's probably too harsh of a word, but it most definitely is obtuse and quite pleased with itself. So it's parked down the street just a couple doors down from pretentious.

Holy crap! Uncle Charlie is the kid's mother!?

I'm not saying it's terrible, though. It's just not my kind of movie. I suppose this is one enjoyed by people who like to throw out to phrase "I like movies that make me think," whatever that's supposed to mean. Personally I don't need a movie to be pretentious or artsy to get my brain fired up because I always think about whatever it is that I'm watching, often to my own detriment. Those that are artsy I usually find to be obnoxious because they're trying too hard. Again, that's just me.

Um...symbolism?

"Stoker" is about an 18-year old girl named India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska), whose father has just died in a car crash. At the funeral, she meets her uncle Charles (Matthew Goode), who then proceeds to stay with India and her mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman). Charles is a man of the "I am obviously a psychopath" variety, which is most telling because he comes across like a mash-up of a Killbot from Omicron Persei 8, Dracula and Norman Bates. Actually there's not a small amount of Anthony Perkins in Goode's performance, something I'm sure wasn't unintentional.

As with every movie with the same kind of "The Stepfather"-ish setup, I am always intensely annoyed by the fact that nobody seems to be concerned that the clearly crazy person is crazy. Most of the problems presented could easily be solved by someone noticing that Charles is a creepy whack-job. But "Stoker" addresses this by basically having everyone be crazy, so Charles' weirdness gets a bit lost in the fold. Touche, I suppose.

"Oh hey, India. What's up? I'm just going to tap on the glass with these here pruning shears and then open and close them really quickly in your face while staring straight at you and smirking like "OH MAN I'M GOING TO DICE YOU UP WITH THESE LOL." That's what people do, right? I'm acting normal right now, aren't I? Hey where are you going?"

We learn in a twist that India is also insane, and that the arrival of Charles essentially coxed her inner psycho out, which is the lynchpin of the film. I guess crazy runs in the family. This would have been somewhat shocking had Mia Wasikowska not also played her part as an alien who learned human behavior by observing mannequins and Damion from "The Omen." I really don't know why I'm supposed to be surprised by India pleasuring herself in the shower after snapping a guy's neck. Hell, I was waiting for her to rip out a random passerby's entrails with her teeth and play jump-rope with them at any minute from the start of the damn movie.

No, I don't feel bad for not posting "Spoiler Alert" for that. She is clearly psychopathic.

And that's about it. Clearly crazy uncle shows up, rich white people problems happen, clearly crazy main character becomes more crazy, people die, nobody is surprised. I really don't know what the whole point of the damn thing was. To be honest I'm not a huge fan of Hitchcock, but there's no way "Stoker" is worthy of comparisons to his work. And that's taking into consideration that "Stoker" is a rip-off of "Shadow of a Doubt."

The trailer makes this film look far more thrilling than it really is.

THE BOTTOM LINE - It may have pretty things to look at, including some creative transitions between scenes, but the fact that "Stoker" is admittedly stylistically pleasant doesn't change the fact that it's dull and plodding with performances too weird for it's own good. I can see someone liking it but I very nearly couldn't finish the damn thing.

Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)

This must be the month of "crappy snoozefests with too much CGI" given the movies I've seen lately. Between "After Earth," "Oz the Great and Powerful," "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters" and now "Jack the Giant Slayer," I should have made June a themed month or something. This is getting really old, man. I need to shake it up or something. All this expensive but meaningless schlock is starting to wear on my nerves.

"Jack the Giant Slayer" isn't honestly as bad as those other films were. It's nowhere near the CGI-frosted horrors of "Oz the Great and Powerful" or the laughably pathetic acting of "After Earth." That much credit I must give it. It's probably the least bad of the four films on that list. Even while "Hansel and Gretel" was honestly a little more entertaining, I cared more about the protagonists in "Jack the Giant Slayer" since they were actually kind of likeable.

That doesn't mean it was good though. It just means that I wasn't pissed off when the credits started rolling. And the reason I wasn't pissed off was because it wasn't worth it to be since "Jack the Giant Slayer" is such a nothing of a movie as to barely be worth having any emotion at all over it.

What can I say about this? You already know the story. Jack (Nicholas Hoult) is a farm-boy who ends up trading a horse for magic beans, they grow into a giant beanstalk, they climb up the beanstalk, there's a land of giants up there, the giants come down and attack the kingdom, Jack and everyone else defeats them, happily ever after, the end. Just add a whole lot of CGI and a useless princess to rescue to it and you've got your movie. Great, let's move on, shall we?

Alright fine, I can't end it there. Talking about something too much is in my nature, after all. Jack is a standard hero-type who is bland as all hell because there isn't anything particularly special about him besides the fact that his name is in the title of the film. I liked Nicholas Hoult as Beast in "X-Men First Class," but there isn't much for him to do here besides gape at the majesty of the CGI landscapes and grin like a dope every time the princess Isabella (Eleanor Tomlinson) is on screen. Whatever.

They had a lot of leather hoodies in ye olde Darke Age, did they?

The far more interesting character is Elmont (Ewan McGregor), a soldier who is tasked with looking after Isabella, and who leads the expedition up the beanstalk to the land of the giants. Out of everyone there, Elmont is hands-down the most proactive member of the cast and under any other circumstance I'd just assume he was the main character. But alas, he is not. Elmont, a bad-ass who takes charge and performs more heroic actions than Jack does is relegated to being merely a background character who pops in every once in a while to be awesome and then leaves.

He and that glorious mustache are too good for this movie.

There is a side plot involving a dude named Roderick (Stanley Tucci), who I guess is the king's adviser or something, and his attempt at controlling the giants with a magical crown so that he can take over the world. I'm assuming he's the king's adviser since it's always the king's adviser who ends up being totally whacked and evil and traitorous. Why kings even had advisers I have no idea. All they do is turn on you.

All the Roderick stuff just ends up being kind of pointless in the end anyway. He doesn't get much accomplished and fails pretty catastrophically during an exceptionally short reign over the giants. But you knew that was coming anyway. I thought the whole thing was a pretty stupid plan from the get-go considering that the giants are far from immortal or unstoppable, and their numbers aren't exactly overwhelming. Roderick couldn't take over the world with just them even if his plan had worked.

Roderick also is not helped by his incredibly obnoxious and frankly confusing assistant, Wicke (Ewen Bremmer) who is this psychopathic wormy dude whom I believe is supposed to be intimidating but is more annoying than anything else, especially so when he starts killing off characters cooler than himself. But thankfully the film sends him down the gullet of a giant in the beginning of the second act, so we're not dealing with him for long. But since it's PG-13 we can't even have a satisfying death scene for him, because the movie always abruptly cuts away from any significant violence just before it happens. This is common throughout the film, makes it look watered down and wussy, and gets really annoying really fast.

By the way, at no point am I buying that Stanley Tucci is a threat to the king when the king is played by Ian McShane. Ian McShane passes more intimidating things through his GI tract than Stanley Tucci and his little minion. Although "Jack the Giant Slayer" makes McShane, the Eternal Bad Ass himself look ridiculous in chintzy golden armor that looks like paper mache, and keeps it pretty low key. So there is little of Al Swearengen to be found here. What a waste.

Seeing Ian McShane in that absurd outfit causes me physical pain.

I can't even get excited about Bill Nighy playing the head giant, Fallon, although his voice work is, as usual, excellent. That classic Nighy quirkiness is present, although Fallon, like everyone else, is such a cardboard cutout of a stock character that it really doesn't matter that Bill is doing a great job. Again, what a waste.

I totally believe that giant is real. Not at all fake looking. Nope.

I think the most significant idea that "Jack the Giant Slayer" had was to imply at the very end of the movie that civilization advanced to our modern age without hot air balloons, blimps, airplanes, satellites, or a day without total cloud cover considering that the last shot of the film shows a very real and still there land of the giants floating in the sky and out of sight past the clouds. Whatever. It's a dumb ending to a pointless film. I can't even get that mad at it since it doesn't matter.

A standard trailer for a standard movie.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Jack the Giant Slayer" is a pretty looking fairy tale as told through the lenses of the most standard and stock movie making machine you could assemble. It's got skill and craftsmanship on the technical side, but there's no imagination or innovation in the script, and like "Oz the Great and Powerful," it has virtually no soul. It's another 9-figure budget extravaganza that left me feeling like I wasted my time.