Rent (2005)

The writer who adapted the screenplay for Rent had some serious brass ones, I've got to say. I can just imagine the producer coming up to good ol' Stephen Chbosky saying "Hey, Stephen. I've got a job that only you can handle. I need you to take the most irritating, unlikable characters imaginable and make them the protagonists of a musical. Got it? Good."

Seriously, what were they thinking when they made this into a movie? The whole plot revolves around a bunch of bohemian hipsters demanding free rent in New York City from their friend. We start the movie establishing that this big, bad corporate lackey is kicking our friendly cast of hobos out on the street after they haven't paid rent in over a year! A YEAR! What a jerk, right? Not at all like my nice landlord who would have me out on my ass if I missed a month's rent but hey, I'm not in New York, the land of generosity.

There have been weirder plots though, that have succeeded based on their characters. Well, let's just take a look at these guys, shall we? Our main guy is Roger, a "musician" with HIV who just wants to write one last song before he dies. I say musician in quotes because the movie takes place over a year. (yet another one where they don't pay rent at all. So landlord is up to two years with only one half-hearted attempt to kick them out) This guy has an entire year to write one damn song and comes up with nothing. That's right. The movie ends without him ever having one more song. So, then, WHAT THE HELL WAS HE DOING???

Roger falls in love with Mimi, a perfect love interest for our boring, lazy main character if I ever saw one. She's a stripper junkie who also happens to have HIV and arbitrarily breaks into our main character's apartment so that she can have him light her candle and she can continue shooting up heroin. Roger spurns her advances and we are made to feel he's the jerk in this relationship. Apparently, in the world of Rent, having hardcore drug addicts as potential life partners is a good thing and not support group-worthy.

Mark is Roger's roommate. He's a filmmaker although that should probably also have quotation marks around it but I'll let him slide since at one point in the film, he does actually get a job and film stuff. His whole deal is he wants to make a documentary about life with his bunch of AIDS-ridden hobos. He's relatively down to Earth and practical about things, understanding that he just can't live for free forever like everyone else seems to be doing. He gets a job working for a TV show at one point but this is shown to be evil and selling out. By the end, Mark gets disgusted at his sell out lifestyle of working for a living and quits so that he can continue making his shitty documentary which, as we see by the end of the movie, is just a jumbled mess of smiling pictures with no sound. Congratulations, Mark! You made the worst film every created! Good job!

Next we've got Maureen. Wikipedia calls her a protest artist but I couldn't tell the entire time I watched the movie. An early plotline is she's putting on a one-woman show to protest a building being torn down. Let me talk a bit about this show for a second. I majored in English in college so I'm no stranger to interpreting metaphors and symbolism. Hell, I spent four and a half years of my life doing it constantly. Still, watching her one-woman show, I had no idea what the fuck she was doing or talking about. Nothing seemed to have anything to do with anything as she sings a song about a cow jumping over the moon. I don't know... Somehow, this God awful show stops them from tearing down the building but then she never does anything again for the rest of the movie. Some protest artist. I know plenty of people who protest more than this but don't call it their job.

The other characters aren't bad for anything other than going along with all of this nonsense but in some ways, that makes it even worse. They aren't bat-shit crazy which gives us some perspective in the ridiculous lifestyle the rest of these characters are living. We've got Angel and Collins who both are clearly bohemian too but they at least do things. Angel is a street performer with mad drumming skills and Collins is a professor (the play says an anarchist professor, but still) so they do things. The rest of these characters accomplish nothing over the course of their year. Eventually, Mimi and Roger get together to have their surely abusive relationship. Mark shows his friends his awful film which they all smile about, no doubt wondering how someone wasted their life so completely. Maureen and her lover, Joanne, reconcile after fighting about an already abusive relationship involving cheating and mental abuse. Finally, Collins has managed to move past Angel's death by hacking ATM's to give hobos free money. A real feel-good ending, right?

Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher's greatest sin is that it's just so forgettable. Cliche plot, mediocre writing and some iffy directing all come together to make a hailstorm of bleh.

From the very first scene, Ol' Jackie never stood a chance. Tell me if you've heard this one before: A guy wants someone dead so, he gets a sniper to take out the target. The sniper, being a real class act, decides that the best way to cover up the murder is by murdering a bunch of random folks along with the real target so that the cops can't determine the cause of the killing. I don't know why this sounds familiar to you, it's not as though it was already done here or here or in any of these.

Come on, I hear you saying, you can't judge the movie because it had one cliche. Everything these days has some, usually obvious, inspiration from something else. Oh, you naive reader who is somehow talking to me while I'm writing this, Jack Reacher doesn't just have this one cliche. It's gonna be a dirty job but someone has got to dive down the rabbit hole and pick out each and every cliche this movie has.

1. Killer framed an innocent man for the killings.
2. Sniper is a meditative, almost silent character.
3. (former) Cop who doesn't play by the rules.
4. Protagonist starts off the movie after implied sex with some chick.
5. Main character is coming out of hiding for one, last job (looking forward to Jack Reacher: Never Go Back!)
6. Female love interest is a lawyer because her Dad is a lawyer (heaven forbid a woman gets a high-paying job by her own merits!)
7. Female love interest has serious daddy issues.
8. Protagonist deduces everything immediately because of some incredibly minute detail a la Sherlock Holmes.
9. Protagonist turns down sex with hot girl because reasons... Morality? Honor? (I know she was supposed to be underage but the actress was 19 and they were in a bar, it wouldn't have been a ridiculous assumption for her to be over 18.)
10. Protagonist gives five guys attacking him the opportunity to walk away.
11. Protagonist beats up five guys by himself.
12. The only bad guy actually doing anything is actually the sidekick for the real big baddie.
13. Russian speaks in philosophical bullshit and/or about how he can eat frostbite for breakfast and that somehow makes him more useful.
14. "You have failed me for the last time!" (To be fair, this scene did involve biting a dude's fingers off. That was fun.)
15. Protagonist feels regret because someone died because he was getting too close to the truth.
16. Car chase,
17. Protagonist writes down significant plot points and folds up paper, waiting for other characters to figure it out first.
18. Protagonist has to prove his skills to a plot character by shootin' real, real good.
19. Real estate scam somehow equals action movie plot. (It's freakin' incredible how common this is: Real Estate Scam Trope Page)
20. Plot twist! The guy we thought was the criminal wasn't the criminal after all!
21. Dirty cop is helping the baddies.
22. Dirty cop is working with Russian mob boss. (duh)
23. Elevator betrayal scene.
24. Kidnapped female love interest.
25. "You think I'm a hero? I'm not a hero." (I'm an anti-hero! Which is completely and totally different!)
26. Final epic gunfight where the bad guys suddenly forget how to aim.
27. Protagonist relies on sidekick who takes a dramatically long time accomplishing his goal. 
28. Anti-hero kills bad guy because bad guy is above the law.
29. Protagonist beats up abusive guy for character development... at the very end of the movie... Just had to get one more cliche in there?
30. The whole thing is a vehicle for Tom Cruise to be an action hero.

Wouldn't it be great, though, if cliche's were this movie's only flaw? Nah, it also has it's fair share of ridiculousness. First of all, fun fact: Did you know you can't bite your own finger off barring extenuating circumstances? Here's a link http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15231/does-it-take-the-same-force-to-bite-through-a-finger-as-a-carrot. The first answer has links to the studies showing that the newton force required just isn't possible from the human jaw. The more you know.

Anyway, the whole premise of the movie is based around the idea that this former sniper, a known killer who got away with his crime because it was too complicated, I guess, decided that for his defense after being framed, he'd request the army cop who busted him in the first place. Good idea! I know the best way to be proven innocent will be to request the person who hates me more than anyone else alive. Jack Reacher then discovers the shenanigans because he was watching the news one night. He makes it out to Philly and somehow knows that he's been requested and is on the case. That's... convenient. So you're telling me that the whole plot of this movie hinged on whether or not Jack Reacher would happen to be watching the news one night?

There are plenty of nitpicky problems throughout the plot but I want to jump right at the big bad one. The antagonist's motive is literally never explained. In fact, none of them are! First, we've got Jai Courtney (who seems to be showing up in my movies a lot lately...), a sniper working for the Russian mobster and the actual murderer who set everything in motion. He just blindly follows the Zec (sorry, I'll stop calling him the Russian guy) without any real motive for doing so. He's clearly willing to give his life for this cause but we never know why.

Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad if we knew what the Zec's motives were. We could then just assume that Jai follows him because he shares his beliefs or is in it for the money. However, at the end, the Zec specifically says how it isn't about the money. He says he just takes because he can. What kind of a motive is that? You are a badass former Siberian prisoner so you made a shady real estate business because you like taking things? Worst motive ever.

Then there is David Oyelowo, the dirty cop who betrayed them to help this evil real estate business commit their heinous real estate acts. The only hint we're given as to his motives is the line "Do you think I had a choice?" To which she responds, "Didn't you?", essentially contradicting the only bit of information about him we get through the entire movie.

So there you have it, three bad guys and not one of them has any clear motive whatsoever. The closest we get is someone likes to take things. Who knows what he likes to take? Just things, I suppose. You know what I like to take? Better movies!

Devil

I have to start off giving Devil some credit. First of all, the movie avoided many of the cliches of the horror movie genre. Secondly, the movie isn't another possession film! Yay! The third was that it was mercifully short. Let's take a look at the latest entry in the saga of M. Night Shyamalan's dying career.

1) Devil Wastes a Ton of Time on Things that Aren't Important

Horror movies have hit a pretty gruesome rut lately. They're all either slashers, torture porn or bad ghost stories. Or J-Pop. Some movies have managed to buck this trend like Tucker and Dale vs. Evil which gloriously mocks slasher films completely. Oh but it's not really horror, is it? The Woman in Black does a pretty good job using classic horror stylings to present a decent horror flick. Still, the genre hasn't had any game changers in quite a while.

Along comes Devil, going to revolutionize the genre, right? I mean, the guy clearly understands horror, right? He had The Sixth Sense and... well... Signs wasn't bad, I guess. Then he had The Happening- okay, yeah I have no hope for this movie.

The movie starts off showing us a suicide where a person falls on a van. We then find the detectives investigating the "crime scene" (is it really a crime? They already know it's a jumper. They say so themselves.) when one of them realizes, this isn't really the crime scene! No, the van must have rolled after having a body fall on it because apparently, bodies hitting the roof of your car will make your E-brakes stop working. The detective says, no, it couldn't have been this tiny building. They had to have jumped from that skyscraper because it's tall! "Oh, but... detective... maybe they jumped from that other skyscraper just over th-" NO!

The partner is apparently the only intelligent one in this group as he points out that the van is now at a different angle than the building's parking. Don't you know anything, silly, silly partner with no name? These construction barriers are meant to deflect trucks! Therefore, the van obviously hit this angled barrier and bounced into the driveway. Duh. Physics for the win! Oh and don't worry that it didn't hit another car during the morning rush hour in the middle of city, it was just luck.

So, off we go to the building where the van came from and find that a window is broken way high up above. Some janitor is cleaning up glass outside with a broom (because that's the efficient way to clean up giant shards of glass) when they ask him if a window broke. No, of course not Officer, I always just come outside in the morning, smash some glass on the ground and spend the rest of the day cleaning it up. Next question, does the window face this direction? Are you fucking stupid??? You are stepping in broken glass on the ground underneath a building with a hole in it, what do you think?

So we're 20 minutes into the movie at this point when suddenly, the director remembered this is a horror movie. Cue giant pane of glass falling directly on the cops! Oh no! Whew, diving main character saves the day, immediately is back on his feet in the next scene and says, you better secure that scene and walks away. I can't even- I can't- I just can't. Moving on.

Let's go up to the scene of the "crime" where there's a giant hole in a pane of glass. Fun fact about glass in large buildings, they're designed to not shatter. I'm not saying that they wouldn't shatter when they hit the ground from 300 feet up, I don't know, but the force of someone hurling themselves at a glass pane in a modern skyscraper would, at best, take the whole pane with it. Just saying. So anyway, we now have determined that, yes, indeed, this is a big hole in the pane of glass and something may or may not have fallen from it. Great police work folks! Let's call it a day.

That's literally it before we are introduced to people stuck in the elevator. That was 30 minutes of an 80 minute movie and do you know what it has to do with the rest of the movie? NOTHING. The suicide is literally never mentioned again for the rest of the film and nothing regarding the big ass hole in the glass or the glass on the ground ever comes up again. Thanks for wasting all our time!

2) Devil isn't Scary 

When I said above that this movie avoids horror cliches, I really meant it. In fact, it avoids the biggest cliche of all in horror films: being scary. So we're thirty minutes into the damn movie and literally nothing important has happened at all but now, we have five folks stuck on an elevator together hanging up 20-some floors above open space. If that description didn't scare you, congratulations! You can make it through this whole movie without so much as a shudder. Because that's basically all that happens for most of the movie. They keep telling you how they're in an elevator high up on the building, as though we were too stupid to remember it from 5 minutes earlier when they told us the last time.

Every so often, as though on a timer, the lights flicker and one of the folks winds up dead. Of course, this all happens in the pitch black of the elevator so for us watching along at home, we just get to sit at darkness for thirty seconds, hear some sound effects that don't seem at all related to what's going on, and then wait to see who died.

Maybe this premise would be scary if we cared at all about the people on the elevator but we really don't. None of them are interesting in the least primarily because we learn almost nothing about any of them. There's a black security guard (yes, it is worth mentioning his race because all he is is a series of "oh, no you didn't." and "ah hell no."), a war vet who kinda looks like Chris Pratt, a girl with fancy clothes, an old woman who whines and an indian dude who wants to sell you mattresses. This is not a joke, I literally told you everything we learn about every character in the entire movie. That, and they all are jerks.

3) Stupid, Pointless Death Scenes

Remember that Devil is a horror movie. That means, fools gotta die. Apparently the five people getting knocked off in the elevator wasn't enough for them so they added a few extra death scenes outside of the elevator. These play out basically like watching the kids from Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. One guy is going down to the elevator when he falls and dies. Another moron decides touching the pool of water with sparks flying out of it looks like fun. Not only are these not scary in the least but they are completely pointless to the storyline. They don't hinder anyone nor do they accomplish anything and the deaths both seem like either an accident or stupidity. When was the last time you got scared reading The Darwin Awards?

4) The Twist!

Our good buddy M. Night wrote this piece of trash so it's got to have a twist in it. Turns out that the old woman who died early on is actually the Devil! This may have been scary if the hispanic guy hasn't been telling us this for literally the whole damn movie. So when it happens and the old lady gets back up with all black eyes, it's not scary so much as affirming since it's what most of us guessed anyway.

Getting out of this movie for a minute, this has been M. Night's problem since the beginning. He loves his plot twists but doesn't seem to understand how they work at all. For a twist to work, it has to be something foreshadowed or hiding in plain sight so that when you watch it a second time, you realize all the things leading up to that which you just missed. Look at Sixth Sense which literally tells you the twist at the beginning and then tricks you into doubting what you learned. Look at Fight Club which has you making assumptions that you know what you're seeing when you really don't. These movies understand the art of the twist. M. Night just throws random curveballs that come out of nowhere and don't feel as they have any oomph because they're basically just deus ex machinas.

Well, we find out that our sole survivor was the one responsible for killing the main character's family which he hasn't been able to stop talking about for a while now. Bummer. But it's cool because he forgives the elevator guy and the Devil says, "Damn" and disappears. The end. That's all folks.

There is a message though, in all of this nonsense. A universal lesson that we should all take to heart after watching this film. We need to make better choices about what movies to watch.

I, Frankenstein

I understand that I, Frankenstein has two basic traits: 1) it is meant to be mindless, stupid action and 2) it's based around pseudo-mythology and is not meant to be grounded in reality. Still, any movie, no matter how far fetched and crazy, has to maintain an internal sense of consistency and logic yet I, Frankenstein has neither. Here are my biggest problems with this movie.

1) The Main Character is Not Well Defined

Frankenstein's monster, named Adam for the movie because characterization, is a mythological creature and thus, his abilities aren't defined by common sense. When dealing with action movies based around real people, this is just a given. We don't need to be told that if John McClane gets shot in the heart, he's gonna die, because we know our own limitations. We know that if Judge Dredd falls several hundred stories, he's gonna be having a bad day, because we would be too.

When you start leaving reality for characters like monsters, super heroes or any kind of fictional being, these limitations have to be defined for us since we don't know what they are inherently capable of. This is one of the major problems with the Superman character since he basically has no limitations other than the most overused plot device in all of history but list the ways you know to kill a vampire. Vampires are inherently scary and powerful but they don't seem invincible since there are established ways to kill them. Even the Twilight series manages this effectively.

Yet even what Twilight knows to do, I, Frankenstein fails at miserably. In the very beginning of the movie, we hear that Adam is immune to the cold. We also know that he doesn't age but anything beyond this is up in the air. If he gets shot, does he die? If not, why do none of his enemies try to shoot him at any point in the movie? He's apparently able to die if he falls four stories but he never seems the least bit nervous when the gargoyles are carrying him up above the entire city, even when said gargoyles are known to be trying to kill him. Why is he brave now but looks like a scared puppy when he's hanging on to the edge of the four story building? Hell, a regular Joe could survive a fall from four stories, landing on their feet. They'd be having a bad day, sure, but they could survive it especially if they have super strength like he is said to have.

This problem isn't just with Adam. It stretches to the ang- I mean- gargoyles too. It's established early on that any weapon with a special symbol on it can be used to kill demons and nothing else will work. Adam even asks the question, how do you kill a Gargoyle and nobody answers him. Understandable, they don't want to give away the trick to killing their own kind to someone who they don't trust. But later, we see one of these angel- dammit- gargoyles killed by his own weapon. Apparently the holy symbol will kill them too? Why? Aren't they sent from God? Why would holy things kill them too? Or maybe they just get killed any way that normal people get killed. An axe through the gut will do that. So, then why are the angels- fuck it, they're angels- so much weaker than the demons and why are the demons having such a hard time killing them? And why don't they use guns?

2) There's No Sense of Scale

There's this war going on, right? Right under the noses of humans, angels and demons are fighting a war on a global scale. All over the world, they are fighting for the lives of humans (I guess, they never really say for sure) and this eternal battle has been waged forever. Or at least, that's what they tell us. But based on what we see, you'd be stupid to believe them.

For one, despite them telling us the war is fought the whole world over, both sides appear to have their headquarters in the same city. Not only that but judging from the fight scene at the end, they're only a few minutes away from each other. I'd love to speak to the tactician who decided placing the demon's research facility so damn close to the enemy's main base.

It's not even as though this could have been an accident since the demon's mount an attack on the angel's main base minutes into the movie. They don't say anything about having just learned this information so they must have known about it all along. And why don't the angels just move out when they know their base has been compromised? It's not exactly a good idea to stay right next to your enemies, especially when you're on the defensive.

The state of their forces don't really make any sense either. The angels keep saying how they aren't getting any new forces and the demons never seem to run out of numbers. Whenever we see battles though, the demons get shredded. The attack on the angel's church results in 16 dead angels, according to Jai Courtney, but we see probably hundreds of demons get killed. It's stated, too, that when they die, each side can't bring those forces back. So... what's going on here?

"Don't save me, Adam. I want to be with [insert name of lover here]. The order forbids it though."

Hmm... Queen? I think I figured out your problem.

3) Everyone is so STUPID

Who knows why these folks are all so dumb but they seem to forget everything they ever learn and are unable to deduce anything for themselves unless the answer is expressly told to them. The demon's goal is established relatively early in the movie and this is what most of the stupidity revolves around.

Basically, they can't keep getting more troops, right? (even though the demon's seem to have no problem throwing away all their people over and over again.) The demon lord's solution for this is to reanimate dead corpses that the demon's can possess. If the demon's possess corpses, it doesn't help much but if they are alive: self-regenerating army. That could be useful. (except numbers never seem to be your problem...)

In order to do this, the demon prince has gotten two human scientists to figure out how to reanimate dead corpses with electricity. Meanwhile, he has another guy down below them drawing Satan stars on dead bodies, because plot.

So, the angels capture Adam at the beginning of the movie because the demons are after him for this purpose and take him back along with a journal found on Dr. Frankenstein's body. Brief aside here, how the hell did Adam not know this journal was here when he carried the guy's body back from the arctic circle? What, he never felt that giant book and it never fell out? After two seconds of reading, they recognize this guy is Frankenstein's monster and take him back because he's important and he could be used to make a regenerating army.

This all makes sense, right? Except later, when Adam explains to the angels what the demons are planning, they are surprised by this. Why are they surprised? Shouldn't they have known this all along? If they didn't know, then why the hell did they capture Adam in the first place? By not understanding the relevance of reanimating dead corpses, you just threw your implied motives for the ENTIRE MOVIE out the window. Hell, they've held onto this journal for 200 years because, why? You didn't think it was important?

Meanwhile, the demon's scientists are working on electrocuting dead rats because science when they are given Dr. Frankenstein's journal. It's worth noting that apparently, the demons are really powerful but could only afford two scientists for this war altering plan that's been in the making for centuries. Alright moving on, they see that Dr. Frankenstein used electric eels as part of his plan. Oh, electric eels, of course! I never would have thought to use the one living creature that generates it's own electricity to create a living creature with electricity! They spend several minutes explaining to us- I mean- each other that it takes six electric eels generating 500 volts each to create a living human being. I, being the careful, thoughtful viewer that I am, noted this information as I was certain it would be useful in the future, right? Well, when it came time for scientist A to bring a human back to life using her newfound information, she stuck the body back into the machine they'd been using before and typed into the computer: 15000.

15000? What? Why is that there? What does that mean? Apparently, they spent several minutes creating this whole fictional way to bring people back to life for their story and then ignored it completely for the movie's climax. This then allows the demons to reanimate their thousands of dead corpses they'd been hiding underneath the building in a big floating body farm (how do those bodies get there?) because she entered this number into her computer. So, her computer is the one in charge of the body farm down there? But she didn't know about it? How does she not know what she herself has been doing for who knows how long? I mean, this computer has apparently been setup to automatically activate the system when you type in 15000 (since nobody does anything between when she enters this number and when the bodies start being reanimated) so I guess the computer was programmed with that number already in it. Then the inevitable action movie progress bar starts up with a percentage of how long it will take for bodies to be reanimated (because they didn't know how to bring dead people back to life but they definitely knew how long it would take to bring them back when they found out) which goes nowhere because it just reaches 100% before anything else happens.

Adam isn't immune from the stupidity plague either. When he finds his missing journal that he's been searching for but didn't know anything about... it's in the hands of hot scientist lady. He takes the journal from her before being chased from the building by demons. He slaughtered a whole bunch in that last battle but now he's scared because there are six or seven in front of him and that's worse than the several hundred he faced before. He then follows the hot scientist lady into a back alley where he asks her to come with him to help him with the book because he's too dumb... wait... Back up about half an hour. 

We have a scene with him leaving the angel's base because he says "You only make the mistake of trusting people once." Apparently not because now you are trusting some random woman you haven't said a word to who we know is working for the demons because... why? She's hot? I guess that's the reason because they share a moment when he first busts into the room and that's the only interaction they've had. She follows him because, okay, she's a scientist and she's curious. It's a dumb move but I guess it makes sense. He then starts telling her about how angels and demons have been fighting forever and that her boss is a demon. She says he's crazy but continues to follow him anyway. Apparently being the leading scientist in the field of electrophysiology doesn't make you all that smart after all. Must not be a very competitive field.

4) The Ending

In movies like this, deus ex machinas are basically to be expected. When everything is at its worst, something will fly out of nowhere to save the day. For this movie that may have been literal. Instead, we are treated with what is likely the worst deux ex machina ever invented by man.

Adam has been defeated by the demon lord and he is chanting his demon summoning chant to put demon souls in all the newly animated corpses, with Adam as his chief. And it works. Demon souls come up, possess everyone and we even see one of the new corpses turn into a demon. A demon soul comes up and possesses Adam, too. He then kneels before his new lord before making a dramatic statement and killing him. So... wait, he's not possessed? Why? We saw him get possessed why did he beat it? Who knows. Who cares? This terrible movie is over, can't we just rejoice in that? No, wait... it's not over. We have to have a scene letting us know that Adam cares about scientist chick who now loves him. That makes sense. Who wouldn't love a guy made up of eight dead corpses who now may or may not be demon possessed? Then, we get to see Adam standing on a building before dramatically telling the camera, I, Frankenstein. Because, you know, that's the movie's title. Get it? Did you get it? I think you got it.