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!