Rated R for Rambo level violence. Growing up in the '80s, the Rambo films were like our Saw. We describe them for how brutal they can be. When a new Rambo movie comes out, you expect massive gore on a level that would go toe-to-toe with the goriest horror movies. There's also sex trafficing and some problematic characterizations of the Mexican people. It feels like a movie that probably should grow a little bit, so keep that in mind. R.
DIRECTOR: Adrian Grunberg I wish I could get excited to write about a movie where a white guy takes a bunch of weapons against a group of Latinos, but it seems like poor timing. Admittedly, while I was watching the movie, I also thought, "Is there a good time to be excited about this?" Probably not. I don't think that Sylvester Stallone is outright politically a bad guy, but I do think that John Rambo went from being fairly progressive to being a little bit more uncomfortable than I'm willing to enjoy. Before I go on a diatribe, I do want to say that the movie kind of sucks to begin with. It's a bummer because the last Rambo movie was actually a good dismount for the character. We're getting these movies very much like Logan. We want to have an epilogue for our character that shows that the character still has power in a swan song. I actually really like that story. We've grown with this character and we want to have one last brawl when the character isn't in his prime. But the last Rambo film did that. We got Old Man Rambo in the last movie. He got that moment to show that he still has it. Also, it didn't hurt that in the previous movie, Rambo was living abroad. I'll go into that later. But a second epilogue, especially when it isn't as good as the previous one, really weakens the franchise as a whole. This definitely feels like it is pretty off brand for Rambo. I'm not a Rambo purist. I've seen each movie once. I shotgunned the first four in a weekend and then never returned. I have strong opinions that probably water down pretty quick. But Last Blood feels like a random adventure for John Rambo that is given a bit more weight because the movie tells us that it has weight. One of my least favorite James Bond movies is Licence to Kill, which is actually the next Bond movie in the lineup. (Look forward to that!) Licence to Kill and Rambo: Last Blood have a lot in common. Rambo is distantly removed from the grand stories of the previous movies. (It's fair that it's actually called Last Blood because First Blood oddly enough has really small stakes.) While I applaud going smaller with a story for Rambo's last outing. it also is a puzzle piece that really doesn't feel like the rest of the story. I'm walking around in circles to say that the movie isn't really very good. It's a movie that foreshadows exactly how it is going to play out by showing tunnels that are silly and a lot of torture porn that leads to a big conclusion. It's pretty lazy in everything it does, including fridging the female lead of the film. Okay, the movie is begging me to talk about the lazy politics of Rambo: Last Blood. It's a big reason about why it sucks. This is a movie about fridging. I probably have mentioned it in another thing I've written, but let me explain fridging a character. In the first character arc for Kyle Rayner's Green Lantern comic, Kyle had a pretty amazing girlfriend. Kyle didn't want to be the Green Lantern when the ring was offered to him. But his girlfriend is murdered and stuffed in a fridge. Basically, the only good that the female character is good for is dying, and thus motivating the male hero to embrace his destiny. That's Rambo: Last Blood. Yeah, the "rescue the princess" trope is a bit of a problem too, but I'll take that any day over the fridging trope. Let's use Rambo: Last Blood as it was intended, as the final swan song for John Rambo. You have this female character that, since the last move, has lived with John and has learned to take care of herself. Why have her being horribly raped, mutilated, and then killed? What if she was Rambo's spiritual successor? Rambo's aging out of his character. Imagine if Carmen makes the mistake to look for her father and the sex traffickers get the drop on her. So far, so good. (I can't believe I just wrote that, but give me a moment of context.) Now, in the course of the film, Carmen wakes up, realizes her situation, and starts dropping some John Rambo / Kevin McCallister style death traps allowing her to escape. So it becomes a race to get Carmen. Carmen can hold her own, but John Rambo acts as the cavalry? He has to go to Mexico (why not America?) and catch up with Carmen, who is not-quite-Robin-but-future-Batman-in-training. It becomes a race across country lines and the two have to fight off these bad guys. HOW MUCH BETTER IS THAT MOVIE? You can still use your silly tunnels. Have them make it back and have the final standoff there. That works. But this movie is just ick all around. It's not like the Rambo movies are great pieces of art. But First Blood had something to say. Heck, I kind of want to write about First Blood juxtaposed to the talks about police brutality right now. That movie seems like it is a call to arms (pun not intended) to change society. This movie is just kind of gross. I'm not denying that the Mexican sex trafficking industry doesn't exist. It totally does. But it feels like the movie is so afraid of actually criticizing anything...American? Why can't Rambo go against good old fashioned racists? Instead, the movie plays up a pretty xenophobic concept. The movie gets that Mexico-sepia shading that every movie since Traffic has gotten. Mexico comes this place of "otherness". One of the things that was bugging me that I've kind of let go of was the idea that there are no Mexican heroes in this story. That's not true, in retrospect. We have a reporter and a doctor who are fighting the good fight. But their defined by their complete impotence to do anything about the situation. These two characters are fighting the good fight. They have been in the trenches for a long time. In comes John Rambo and just rips everyone apart. (Okay, first he gets wrecked and then rips everyone apart.) John Rambo is not a man of nuance, nor should he be. But the actual resistance looks adorable compared to John Rambo. This all kind of now falls on me. I've been really burned out and hollowed out by gun violence. It means that a lot of action movies don't do the same things for me anymore. I don't know why I give some movies a pass. But Rambo films absolutely glorify gun violence. The lone man with a gun mythos is really put on a pedestal in these films. It's the reason that I don't really like The Punisher anymore. But because this movie makes a really bad conclusion to a long running franchise, one that already had a perfectly good ending, coupled with the very uncomfortable politics running throughout the film, I get why everyone kind of panned it. I wanted to be the voice of dissent on this one. I wanted to be the guy who liked Rambo: Last Blood. But I don't even have content to talk about. The movie is terribly lopsided. Rambo does absolutely dumb things throughout until the end. It's short and it treats its female lead horribly. What is there really to like in this movie? It seems like a big step backward not only for the franchise, but for filmmaking in general. The best thing it probably has for it is that it panders to an audience that gets excited for gross things.
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Rated R, because it's Kevin Smith doing a Jay and Bob movie. It's got all the language. That language is often used to describe sexual acts. There's nudity and it's just overloaded with drug use. This is for the folks who don't know Jay and Silent Bob. These guys ruled supreme in the '90s, so maybe there's a generation that completely missed the boat with these characters. It's raunchy to the extreme, so keep that in mind. Hard R.
DIRECTOR: Kevin Smith I didn't write yesterday because of the June 2 social media blackout. So I said, "I'll get up early and write two." Then I stayed up late last night and jumped between playing Telltale's Batman: The Enemy Within and scrolling through the atrocities happening in the world right now. So I got up later than I planned and then realized that I don't feel like writing about Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. It's not exactly against Kevin Smith and his films. I actually totally admire the guy for doing what he likes to do. It's just that this might not be the movie to channel some of the outrage and sleepiness I have brewing right now. Also, I looked at the list of movies I watched last week and there's not much to look forward to. These trends happen and I probably need to kick myself in the butt for the next round of movies. Sorry, Mr. Smith, but Jay and Silent Bob Reboot probably won't get the attention it deserves. As Kevin Smith's View-Askewniverse keeps rolling along, its audience may be getting more and more specific and catered to. Like many college students, there was a time in my life that I absolutely adored the works of Kevin Smith. For me, there were three films that I would watch on repeat: Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy. Dogma was out, but it didn't do anything for me except notice that he was trying too hard to upset Catholics. I think it was Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back that allowed me to retire with these characters amicably. It was almost a swan song to a fandom. There wasn't anything wrong with it. In fact, I have very fond memories of going to that movie and I remember guffawing. But Smith put the lid on these characters and it was what I needed to discover other films. This is a time in my life where I was watching the same movies over and over again, pre-video rental days. (The irony is that it involved becoming an ACTUAL clerk in a video store to kill my relationship with Jay and Silent Bob.) Part of me was aware that I was a poser. I'm still almost completely straight edge. I've never done a drug and I have no desire to do drugs. I never slept around or think of people in the philosophy of Jay and Bob. But because Jay and Silent Bob were so opposite from my personality, I suppose there is something rebellious about hanging out with these two stoners. In that time, my tastes have really changed. I watched Clerks II and got little out of it. (I think I bought a used copy for some reason. I might actually own this movie despite everything that I just wrote.) I rented Red State and Cop Out. I then realized, "Kevin Smith's movies may not be for me." Smith himself is pretty self-flagellating. He comments that he's not a very good director. I'm not necessarily in that camp. He's actually moved out of his comfort zone long ago. But I realized that I like Kevin Smith: The Personality more than Kevin Smith: The Filmmaker. Now, I would completely lose respect for the guy if he ever stops making movies. It's his love of what he likes that is contagious. But I also realize that he's a guy who is making movies for his fans...and only his fans. Nothing really says that more than Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. One of the thing about Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is that it is a love letter to the die hard fans. It is self-referential and super-insular, riding on its own hype for a lot of the movie. It is what it is because it was meant to be the retirement of Jay and Silent Bob. Kevin Smith was going to go on and do other things and these characters were saying goodbye. It stops the movie from becoming great, but it fulfills its goal of closing the door on the universe that Smith has created. But Smith has made two other films in this series since then and he's doing the same tricks. That means we're getting a lot of the same stuff, rehashed. (No pun intended.) But that's in the title. The movie is a giant commentary on how Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is practically the exact same film as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. He's aware of it. So it all comes down to this question: Is the joke of making the same movie twice something that's worth watching? The answer all comes down to the audience. While I got off the Jay and Bob boat a while ago, I know that there are fans that aggressively will like anything that Kevin Smith puts out. I mean, I'm pretty sure a lot of this movie involved crowd-funding, so building a movie around that audience actually makes a ton of sense. It's just that I really wanted this movie to make me fall in love with Jay and Silent Bob again. Part of that comes from evolving the character. Remember how I love Kevin Smith the Personality. This movie is really an attempt to merge the two. As part of that, it is way to inside baseball. The movie really pokes fun at Kevin Smith's post-Jay and Bob career, which is cute for a little bit. But the movie really just packs too many clowns and references inside the clown car. Every single thing that Kevin Smith has ever made makes an appearance. It's really an altar for everything that he's made in the past. The movie really feels a lot like "Hey, remember this? What about this?" On a personal level, that has to be cathartic to Smith. I know that Smith and Ben Affleck had a falling apart post Strike Back and seeing them work together is actually pretty great. But Smith used to be a guy who was really known for his writing. He was someone who was able to really write some amazing stories. His run on Daredevil was one of my favorite books. The same holds true for his Green Arrow stories. He's an amazing writer, but he tends to really lean hard into what his fanbase really finds entertaining. Part of it is that he finds it entertaining as well. These are inside jokes that his crew riff about and he kind of just puts it on screen. For me, now an outsider, I only get some chuckles out of it. There isn't anymore raucous guffaws. It's really like being at a party where everyone is laughing, but I just mildly chuckle. I get the joke, but I don't have the emotional resonance for where that story originated. He's a talented guy and I kind of want to see him challenge himself a little bit more. So can I look at the movie distanced from my knowledge of Jay and Silent Bob? Probably not. But if I did, I like the idea of Jay looking into what it means to be a father. These stories are about aging. Kevin Smith, for as much repetition this movie involves, is a very different dude than he was in his hay-day. The same probably holds true for the majority of the people involved in this film. Using the loudmouthed Jay as his avatar, Smith is able to comment on the value of parenthood and how perhaps using a non-traditional parenting model to do so. I love that he loves his kid. I don't know why it is important if people I don't know have great relationships with their families, but it brings me joy. Sorry for being so human. I can't possibly know the arguments that those two get into in reality, but it seems like Harley Quinn Smith genuinely loves and gets her dad. The best thing to take out of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is that, despite the fact that it still completely worships the works of Kevin Smith, it is also a celebration of Smith's greatest creation, a daughter that seems to love him. Putting Harley Quinn Smith at the center of this film is its real triumph. I know that the movie is just full of the kids of the creators. When the movie distances itself from the silliness that the movie has adopted, it actually has some pretty great moments. While I don't really love it as much as I used to, Chasing Amy is probably considered an objectively great movie. It's hard to really claim it as a Jay and Bob movie, but they are in it. Chasing Amy works because it is a vulnerable film. Follow my logic here. Kevin Smith has something really vulnerable to say about being a dad. He has made a vulnerable film before, so why not do it now? These great insights into parenthood might actually work a lot better in a quiet film rather than something that really reads exactly like the previous to Jay and Silent Bob films. Again, I don't want to be that guy, but the movies that I dug back in the day were very different films from one another. Clerks and Mallrats feel like two different directors took the same characters and put their own spins on then. Chasing Amy is drastically different than anything else in the series. Maybe it is because he was learning. But a story about Jay meeting his adult child really might have a lot of legs given a more somber Chasing Amy vibe. Instead, we get these really absurd storytelling moments where nothing really matters all that much. There's a few moments that get touching, but they are instantly covered up by catchphrases and drug jokes. It's a bummer because I'm not against more Jay and Bob movies. I'm against easy Jay and Bob movies. I would love him to put his heart out there and brave wide audiences instead of appealing to people who already like him. Because that number has to be dwindling down as tastes change. Rated PG despite a lot of violence. Like, there wasn't much educational in this movie. There isn't exactly a phenomenal moral that I can take away from the movie. It's pew-pew-pew for an hour-and-a-half. But I also didn't feel like the violence was graphic. I never really had to shelter my kids from what was on screen, which may be a commentary on how Americans view violence in media. It's mostly fine. It's animated violence and I think most people are cooler with lasers instead of guns. PG.
DIRECTOR: Dave Filoni This isn't the first time watching this movie. I keep hearing from my students and from my hardcore Star Wars fans that Star Wars: Clone Wars, the TV show, fixes the prequels. It makes them so much better apparently. I watched Filoni's other show, Rebels, and kind of enjoyed it. It wasn't perfect, but it was a watchable show for the most part. But Star Wars: Clone Wars has seven seasons plus this movie. I keep watching this movie, hoping it gets me excited to power through a weak first season...and it doesn't. I want to like this movie so much. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse proved that film franchises can take risks and expand into animation with as much or greater success than the live action films. I remember seeing previews about the theatrical release of this movie and thought that it was going to be a big deal. Why weren't people losing their minds over this movie? Well, I kind of get why. For all of its space battles and pew-pewing, the movie overall feels like a pilot for a TV show sooner than it feels like a fleshed out movie. This is an attempt at marketing. I get the importance that Star Wars was going to make the jump from cinema to television and that there was an interest to get audiences excited about that prospect, but this feel much more like a studio stunt than it does a well-developed film. If this was a pilot, I might be more forgiving for what it is. But as a film, man, this has a lot of stuff to deal with. Frankly, it's just boring. There's a pacing that is more in line with what we would see in television episodes. There's all this cool stuff that, like with The Rise of Skywalker, ultimately has little emotional investment. Part of that is on me. I have a really hard time wtih the prequel trilogy. If you read my stuff on the prequel movies, it is because the movies were never really tailored to me. But the central flaw of approaching a film like The Clone Wars is that I don't really understand what we're fighting for in this one. I know that Obi-Wan, Anakin, Asoka, and the Jedi are the good guys, but that's really about it? Really, the film sets the stakes way too small for the film. The Clone Wars television program, from what I can tell, is meant to take a war that mostly happens off-screen and actually explain the beat-by-beat moments for it. It's fictional military history, in a way. Lucas's Clone Wars in the films have a really convoluted good guy / bad guy system. One of the elements of dramatic irony is that we all know that the clone troopers are the beta test for stormtroopers. We know that the Jedi are unaware that they are fighting the wrong battle. But then, who are we supposed to be rooting for? The only thing that makes us attached to any kind of sense of right and wrong are characters that we're supposed to care for. Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2-D2, and C-3PO are there's as indicators of whom we are supposed to be rooting for. But this dramatic irony just lowers the stakes over all. To begin with, if this is fictional military history, this is one battle in a much longer war. We know that the Jedi can't win the war because of this battle. We know that if they lose this battle, there's still a long war ahead of them. This one moment doesn't really mean anything. On top of that, even if the film telegraphs that this battle is important by SAYING it is important, we know that the whole war ultimately is a ruse. There is no winning. That's actually a really cool concept to show in film, but the movie never really explores the futility of war and battles. Rather, it treats its central goal as something noble, despite the fact that this is all of Palpatine's impossible plan. Because the film is really kind of three episodes squished together, I'm going to pick what the central goal based on how much screen time each battle gets. If I had to, gun to head, decide on which plot is the central thread, it has to be the return of Jabba the Hutt's son. (What happens to this kid? I'm sure that there's probably an entire line of extended universe books about Stinky and the adventures that stop him from appearing in Return of the Jedi.) Regardless of whether or not they return Stinky (I'm writing these words and thinking about how I have yet to write about The Seven Samurai), changing Jabba's mind means that they can travel through certain space? Who really cares? Filoni is smart to make the conflict about the life of a child, but the motivation is mind-numbingly boring. Also, let's give props to Clone Wars for getting a baby Jabba out before baby Yoda ever was a thing. By making this a theatrical release, there's a really big problem. The jump from TV to film is always a problem area. Most movies based on television shows take place after the show is over. Okay, except for The X-Files: Fight the Future. It's not perfect. We tend to watch stories for character growth. By the time that the film comes out, the arcs have already been completed. What this does to the characters is a little bit limited. The film acts as a test for the character's growth. Has the person really changed? Will a larger budget mean that the conflict will be testing the character on a greater level? I'm really looking at the Star Trek films. Star Trek: First Contact took the arc that the series had given when Picard recovered from becoming Locutus and amped it up. That's really fun for fans of the show, but it doesn't do much for a new audience. But there's a bigger problem that Clone Wars kind of introduces. As a pilot, the characters are really limited in the amount of growth that the characters can really have from the outset. The point of Anakin Skywalker is that he's meant to slowly take baby steps over the course of seven seasons towards becoming Darth Vader. (That's not even all that fair because I'm sure that Dave Filoni didn't know that he was going to have seven guaranteed seasons.) Instead, we have to have these moments that are small moments of growth. Anakin starts the film not wanting a padawan. He's above teaching. When he's given Asoka Tano, someone I've been promised is worth the effort, boy, is his life chaotic! He didn't even want to be a teacher and now he has a student who clashes with him? Man alive, how are they going to get along? Well, like the rest of the Star Wars prequels, it kind of just light-switches. Pilots tend to do this. They introduce a conflict that often take years to resolve. Instead, we get this artificial growth that really means nothing. There's no greater realization that Anakin has to make when it comes to accepting Asoka as his padawan. Instead of being this reflection on his own character, he's simply aware of his responsibility and Asoka basic aptitude. It's an engineered conflict. It's kind of the difference between Lethal Weapon, the film, and Lethal Weapon, the show. Can we talk about Ziro the Hutt? Boy, that's a problematic character. First of all, it's an uncomfortable stereotype. But secondly, what is it with the Star Wars movies and their desperate attempt to tie into Earth standards? I guess I was cool with Mos Eisley, because the idea of a bar seems universal. But in Attack of the Clones we had Dex and his diner. Then there are death sticks? Ziro seems really out of place in the Star Wars universe, especially when it comes to the Hutts. Part of the argument could be that Ziro is meant to be overt and obvious so we get the message. But on the other hand, Ziro is pretty gross as a character. He's completely unsympathetic, and that's coming from someone who is supposed to share traits with Jabba the Hutt. Why is this character even in the movie? There's nothing funny about the characterization, even without the problematic stereotype. It's this moment that is so eye-rolling that it actually might be my biggest takeaway from the movie. There's all these cool fight sequences with Obi-Wan and an Inquisitor (I think) and the only thing I can remember in detail is Ziro the Hutt and Stinky. That's really weird. Star Wars: The Clone Wars has the proper scope without the proper story. I hear that this changes over the course of the show. But the film does very little to change my mind about powering through season one. My wife was bored with it. My kids aren't super excited to watch it. I think it might have been just enough of a burnout to justify ever continuing on with Star Wars. I actually believe that I might enjoy The Clone Wars if I give it the largest chance I've ever given a TV show. But 1) do I have time to do that? 2) Aren't there a lot of other things I would rather watch? 3) What if I'm still pretty let down by the Star Wars prequels. I don't know. I have some decisions to make. |
Film is great. It can challenge us. It can entertain us. It can puzzle us. It can awaken us.
AuthorMr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies. They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved. Archives
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