Snap Judgment

Well, here I am, over a day late. (A few months and a day, actually, but who's counting?)

(No, seriously, I hear someone counting back there and I want to know who the hell it is. You think time and witty ripostes grow on trees in the Nickverse?)

(Sheesh.)

Anyway! Let's see what we got.


Bangkok Dangerous (rated R, directed by Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang, written by Jason Richman)

This one sure looks like a slam-dunk, humorwise. Good thing; I'm kind of out of practice on the whole snap-judgmenting thing and I'm not going to turn down an easy softball pitch for my grand reopening. So would you look at those direc-- aw, CRAP, I already made a joke about Oxide Pang's hilariously chemical suffixy name. Damn you, PopWhore archive! Well, thank goodness the title is even sillier. What is that, exactly? Is that how verb-averse mothers warn their children about the perils of visiting Thailand? "Bangkok dangerous! Hotels overpriced! Hookers likely transvestite!" (I know, I know. Reeeallly didn't compare to a good Oxide joke. I'll try another.) The upside to all this is that it's now fairly clear that Nic Cage will sign on to absolutely any script that features him holding some kind of weapon, riding a motorcycle, having long hair, walking around, or breathing. I mean, does he actually have an agent anymore, or does his business contact number just ring a random line somewhere in Bangladesh where a guy named Fakhruddin Bill picks up the phone and says "How may I offer you excellent service in committing Nicolas Cage to appear in whatever crappy film you have in mind?" and maybe throws in a little "While I access this information, may I share with you some advantages of upgrading to Nicolas Cage Gold Service?"


Everybody Wants To Be Italian (rated R, written/directed by Jason Todd Ipson)

So, the movie's title and credits are supposed to be the Leaning Tower of Pisa and some of the cast are trying to hold it up. They're going with that, huh. Tell me, is this minor touch of marketing brilliance supposed to distract me from the fact that DAN CORTESE is in this movie? Because I am a man who holds pop-culture grudges, and if the bulk of Mr. Cortese's screentime isn't devoted to apologizing for those Burger King commercials and the popularization of "extreme" sports (in addition to the word "extreme" in general), then I ain't buying a ticket. Also: this guy's first movie was called The First Vampire: Don't Fall For The Devil's Illusions. Also: everyone does not want to be Italian. Some people want to be French, or Russian, or Thousand Island.

Snap Judgment

Iron Man (rated PG-13, directed by Jon Favreau, screenplay by Mark Fergus & Hawk Otsby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, based on the comic book created by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber & Jack Kirby)

Man, Jon Favreau has come a long way since playing that billionaire Ultimate Fighting Champion contestant on Friends, huh? Makes you wonder if that show imparted some kind of magic pixie dust to its guest stars. Perhaps next year we'll see the gala premiere at Cannes of un film de Ugly Naked Guy. Anyway, Iron Man also features Gwyneth Paltrow, who has apparently banged out enough oddly-named children to resume her acting career -- just in time, too, because if those mortgage payments were held up any longer, her husband was going to have to resort to making cameos in Kanye West videos. (Oops, too late.) The movie's getting all kinds of crazy buzz and positive reviews, but that scene in the trailer where Iron Man outruns a couple of fighter jets has to be making the airlines nervous -- it's bad enough that they're crippled by a sinking economy and stratospheric gas prices, and now they have to worry about the inevitable market competition from dudes in red metal suits who can fly you from LAX to JFK in two hours without that annoying $25 extra baggage fee. Sure, you might laugh about it now, but when Iron Man appears on Delta's inflight entertainment, let's see which scenes they cut.



Made of Honor (rated PG-13, directed by Paul Weiland, screenplay by Adam Sztykiel and Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont, story by Adam Sztykiel)

Ahem. Producers? Studio dudes? Marketing department? C'mon over and let's have a little chat. I'll need your full attention, so leave your BlackBerries and iPhones with your assistants. (It'll be okay; they can thumb-type "NOT UNDER ANY FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCES" just as well as you can, and probably with better spelling.) Ready? Okay. We need to discuss the concept of movie titles. Because you people clearly aren't getting it. Now, I'll grant you, lame wordplay in titles is a necessary evil. Puns, double entendres, creative misspellings, all par for the course. Done well, they can be cute and even kind of clever. Legally Blonde, for example. Made of Honor, on the other hand, makes no freaking sense. It just sounds like a low-budget, direct-to-video film about a selfless Roman soldier (probably played by Kevin Sorbo) who's forced to slay a bunch of burly extras in order to rescue his kidnapped fiancee. How does changing Maid to Made signify the fact that the maid of honor is a dude? It doesn't. It's that rare nonsensical pun, formed in such desperation that it doesn't actually mean anything. Like making a movie about a traveling pharmaceutical rep and calling it Breath of a Salesman, even though it has nothing to do with halitosis or lung disease or anything of that sort. See, ordinarily a blunder like this wouldn't be that big a deal. But you've been so shrewd about everything else with this movie so far that it's really a shame. I mean, on the weekend that Iron Man opens, you present the female filmgoing populace with Patrick Dempsey in a wedding movie. That's genius on the same level as putting a little high-tech gadgets section into Anthropologie or Sephora. And you even dowded up Michelle Monaghan enough so that women, rather than being demoralized by her freakishly unachievable beauty and physique, will walk out of the theater thinking something along the lines of, "Y'know, if she and Dempsey were in a bar together and I walked in, that bitch would crying into her cosmo within five minutes while McDreamy and I made the beast with two backs in the coatroom. Can I get a hell yeah?" Seriously, to blow the title after all that is just unforgivable. That is all. You may now get back to your busy day of yelling at the maitre'd of Craft while surreptitiously surfing porn.



Redbelt (rated R, written and directed by David Mamet)

Is there anything David Mamet can't do? Of course not. Plays, books, essays, screenplays, TV, jujitsu, whatever. If he wanted to become the world's top snail racer, he could do that. And then someone would interview him about it, and he'd say something like "The secret is, you must always remember that a snail is a snail; it's not a stapler, or a deck of playing cards, or a fifth of bourbon."

Snap Judgment

Now on a semi-regular schedule! Really gives you a reason for living, doesn't it?

Baby Mama (rated PG-13, written and directed by Michael McCullers)

First of all, I ask you: Has anything good ever come from a movie poster where the less wacky character is looking sideways at the more wacky character? Hold on and let me scan the roughly 2,736 posters to which I have instantaneous memory recall access... yeah, it's looking like the answer is "No." I would also like to point out that Tina Fey, while awesome in every conceivable way (in fact, based on an ongoing informal survey of females I know, she seems to have easily wrested the "#1 Girl Crush" title from Angelina Jolie among both the "straight" and "otherwise" populations) -- anyway, I would like to point out that, yes, despite all that, she did not write this movie. If she had, do you think she would have called it Baby Mama? Of course not; she would have come up with something much more clever. Me, I would have given it the same title I'd give any movie I wanted to be successful: Die Hard 5: The Loneliest Girl at the Wedding, because just imagine the ticket sales.


Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (rated R, written and directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg)

[Editor's note: OK, seriously, what's with all the comedies this week? Making fun of comedies is generally a losing battle, as the producers of all those (Genre) Movie movies should have learned by now but clearly haven't. Nevertheless, I shall try.] So, are they still supposed to be in college four years after the first movie? I didn't see it, but I thought they were smart. Hey, did you know John Cho is 36 years old? That's kind of getting on in years to play a... college... oh, for god's sake, there's nothing funny to say. Let's move on.



Rogue (rated R, written and directed by Greg McLean)

Finally! This is the kind of movie with which Snap Judgment butters its proverbial bread (or, if Snap Judgment is vegan, Earth-Balances its proverbial sprouted grain loaf). Now, one could choose this occasion to ruminate on why there are so many man-eating crocodile movies out there. A quick IMDb search for the keyword "crocodile" turns up a solid 142, although the scientific accuracy of that could be called into question given that one of them is The Chipmunk Adventure. Never mind, though, because I'm more interested in why there aren't more man-eating crocodile (or alligator; let's give them their due) films. Seems to me that they're a pretty easy sell -- tropical locations, lots of people in skimpy clothing, tons of gory death, satisfying finale in which the giant creature buys the farm in some kind of imaginitive way. All that stuff equals guaranteed box office, right? So I'm thinking that the fact that we only get maybe one a year means that a lot of the writers are screwing up their pitches. Hypothetical example: "So, it's Spring Break in Cabo San Lucas... tons of nubile girls and six-packed guys partying like there's no tomorrow. And guess what, for a lot of them there really is no tomorrow -- because a giant prehistoric alligator storms the beach and starts devouring these dudes and coeds by the dozen. The only man who can stop this horrific beast is a highly trained ex-Navy SEAL who's been tracking the alligator for years but could never get close enough to kill it. Can he finally do it this time, before the creature gets his daughter? The answer is yes -- actually, he kills it in the first five minutes, but it drains him emotionally and he spends the remainder of the film in a small cabin in Minnesota, pondering the troubling mysteries of the world as he stares into a dying fire." Must be something like that.

Snap Judgment

No time to waste! Some of these movies really suck!


Street Kings (rated R, directed by David Ayer, screenplay by James Ellroy and Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss, story by James Ellroy)

Well, maybe not this one. The filmmakers seem to have averted disaster by throwing in a few reputable actors (plus Keanu Reeves) and coughing up enough cash for a script by James Ellroy (actually, forget cash; he probably insisted on being paid in vintage 1940s snuff films). Because, can't we all imagine a film of this very same title, featuring a much smaller budget and starring only Common and The Game, without any of those other people? Of course we can. Those movies are everywhere! Directed by a three-time Video Music Award winner, featuring an original orchestral score by Smakk Foozee, and edited by somebody's nephew who got a fancy laptop for Christmas. This film might be better than those, but its poster certainly isn't... I mean, what is that, a giant inkblot? Did they have to cut costs at the last minute and re-use marketing materials from Rorschach: The Man Behind The Test?




Prom Night (rated PG-13, directed by Nelson McCormick, written by J.S. Cardone)

I think it's fair to say that this movie is a perfect demonstration of the absolute incompetence of the studio executives involved. Seriously. Do they think flocks of teenagers will just show up at any old film that has multiple gory deaths and occasional dry humping? No, they most certainly will not. They have standards. They have criteria. They are not going to shell out $10 of their parents' hard-earned money to see some thrown-together crapfest unless it stars at least one cast member from The Hills. It really is remarkable how out of touch the people behind those studio gates can be.

Smart People (rated R, directed by Noam Murro, written by Mark Poirier)

Here's what happen when you call a movie "Smart People."

1. Dumb people won't want to see it. There goes 63% of your box office.

2. Smart people who do see it will quickly realize that it's mistitled, and that the Scrabble(TM) reference on the poster is just a ruse.

3. Thomas Haden Church will whip it out at some point during filming. (Though, apparently, that happens often with him.)

Snap Judgment: Still Not Dead

Let's get right to it, shall we? Not only do I have no introductory comments; I don't even have a witty line referring to the fact that I have no introductory comments.


Never Back Down (rated PG-13, directed by Jeff Wadlow, written by Chris Hauty)

I see... so, it's Karate Kid but with Djimon Hounsou in the Pat Morita role, with a little Fight Club thrown in. You can make fun of this one all you want, but I think it's doing a tremendous social service. No, hear me out! By taking a movie that should clearly be direct-to-video and putting it exclusively in theaters (at least for the first few months weeks days), the producers will very likely draw out huge quantities of shut-ins who can normally only see films like this at home.

Anyway, I'm told that if the movie is successful, the branding experts have already planned a variety of spin-offs in completely different genres but with similar nomenclature. To wit: A cautionary tale about Trader Joe's parking lots at rush hour (Never Back Out); an IT orientation film demonstrating the importance of critical data redundancy (Always Back Up); and a fascinating character-based piece about a man searching for the right chiropractor (Sometimes Back Hurts).



Doomsday (rated R, written/directed by Neil Marshall)

The poster tells us that "Mankind has an expiration date" but apparently, the cyberpunk genre does not. How fortunate for us! It saves a trip to 1983 in the time machine -- and with gas prices what they are these days, that's starting to be an expensive jaunt... sure, carpooling can help, but there's always one person who wants to stop off in '88 to catch a Soul II Soul concert, and then before you know it you're a decade behind schedule and the car is loaded up with Crystal Pepsi bottles and Go-bots and whatnot.


Horton Hears a Who! (rated G, directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino, screenplay by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul, based on the book by Dr. Seuss)

So, Dr. Seuss's widow Audrey Geisel gave permission to do this movie to the company responsible for both Ice Age movies. I'm sure she had her reasons (possibly as many as a couple million of them), but... y'know, come on. Blue Sky Studios are the very embodiment of what the kids these days call a try-hard. They're like, "Look at us, look at how great we can render icy landscapes and squirrel-fur and all that! And we have all these big-time actors graciously willing to accept seven-figure salaries to come in for 20 minutes to record their parts! Please, look at us? This time we got Jim Carrey and Steve Carell, just to be on the safe side." Meanwhile Pixar is off in the corner tapping its foot on the ground, mumbling "Um, yeah, could you make it kinda snappy over there on account of we're waiting for you to leave so we can break another box office record. Also, quick memo, bragging about your technology is so freakin' 1997."

What? Snap Judgment is BACK??

Well, that's a fine kettle of fish! I suppose after hearing this news, you'll be expecting me to start dumping on this week's releases. Okay, fine, I think I'm up for that.

Yeah. I can totally do this.

Um... LonelyGirl15 jokes are still totally hip, right?

Oh boy. Here goes.


College Road Trip (rated G, directed by Roger Kumble, written by Emi Mochizuki, Carrie Evans, Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio)

[Note: With this edition of Snap Judgment, I am pleased to announce the arrival of the Wikipedia ReferenceXplainer 9000, an artificially intelligent device that should pull those previously over-your-head jokes right back down to eye level.]

Okay, fess up, Disney. Whose bright idea was it to put Martin Lawrence back in a car? Did you forget so soon what happened the last time he was out on the road?

While filming A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, Lawrence had a violent outburst on the set and began taking drugs. He became increasingly erratic and was arrested after he reportedly brandished a pistol and screamed at tourists on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Hey, thanks, ReferenceXplainer 9000 (hereafter referred to as RX9K)! You're already making my job a whole lot easier. Anyway, let's get back to this ridiculous film.

Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects.

That's... uh... thanks, RX9K, but I think most people already know what film is. So, this movie co-stars Raven Symone, famous not only for her pivotal role in the Full-House-ization of The Cosby Show (c'mon, she had to be as adorably cloying as both Olsen twins put together!) but also for lending her considerable talent to the pop culture phenomenon That's So Raven, which I think we can all agree was--

Raven is the common name given to the largest species of passerine birds in the genus Corvus. Corvids are also commonly referred to as crows and other species in the same genus include jackdaws and rooks.

[Note: The Wikipedia ReferenceXplainer 9000 has been disabled until further notice.]

[Additional note: Jackdaws? Who knew?]


10,000 B.C. (rated PG-13, directed by Roland Emmerich, written by Roland Emmerich & Harold Kloser)

"The first hero"? Really? Recent NASA estimates have pegged the age of the universe at 13.73 billion years, give or take a hundred million. Are you telling me that for the first 13.729999 of those 13.73 billion years, there was not a single hero anywhere? No renegade Cro-Magnon who stood up against his Neanderthal oppressors (or vice versa) to bring freedom to his countrymen, William Wallace-style? No ass-kicking australopithecine who assembled a ragtag band of fellow missing links to steal from the stingy rich for the benefit of the lower classes? No fishy mammal who used his newfound legs to climb up onto shore and claim the dry land bounty for his people? No strong-willed protozoa who refused at any cost to surrender his share of the primordial ooze? C'mon.

The Bank Job (rated R, directed by Roger Donaldson, written by Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais)

I love a good heist movie as much as the next guy, but with the good/suck ratio of this genre running at about 1 to 8 trillion these days, I have to admit I'm skeptical. And that skepticism leads, as it inevitably does, to speculation (since the two words are kind of similar if you don't think about it too much). Such as: what if the movie really were about a bank job? You'd have your same memorable team of misfits, each member with his or her unique specialty, except instead of robbing the bank, their goal would be to provide top quality customer service at an efficiency rate that enables long-term financial growth and market competitiveness. In the first 15-20 minutes of the movie you'd see the group being recruited, one by one, until they get to the last guy whom they desperately need but refuses to join. And then instead of convincing him to come along by revealing that the bank manager was responsible for putting his brother in jail, they'd bust out a well-oiled Powerpoint presentation detailing his highly competitive salary package (including his choice of PPO/HMO plans and tax-deferred 401(k) with matching employer contributions up to a ceiling of $20,000/year). The climax would take place at 4:59 P.M. on a Friday, when everyone's ready to clock out and enjoy the weekend but an irate customer holds things up by demanding an immediate cash withdrawal that exceeds his daily limit. What does the team do? Have security escort the guy out, thus betraying their unflappable commitment to 100% consumer satisfaction? Or stay long enough to resolve the situation, putting their sought-after dinner reservations in jeopardy? Luckily, just when all hope seems lost, the Asperger's-afflicted hacker who avoids human contact at all costs manages to break out of his shell and come forward with a two-stage payment compromise that appeases the customer and gets our heroes out of the office with plenty of time to go home and shower before dinner. You'll pay for the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge!

New Year's Resolutions for Hollywood

No, I don't think any of these will stick. But wouldn't it be nice if they did? Here we go.

1. Put the writers back to work.

And that means cave, you stupid studios, cave cave cave cave cave. Surrender, like the French military at a fireworks show. Fold, like the rusty accordion you'd sell your mothers for if it had the rights to The Hobbit inside. I understand y'all have massive egos, but it seems like you don't have much trouble swallowing your pride long enough to suck Will Smith's toes as you beg him to let you write him a $30 million check, so I sort of think it wouldn't be that big a blow to your collective bravado to make a few small concessions and allow the writers to come back in and type up the full slate of blockbusters and hit shows that will save all your asses from a shareholder revolt later in the year. Good? Good. Now pick up the phone and I won't tell anyone the story I heard from the pharmacist at the Brentwood Rite Aid about the cream you've been using ever since that "acquisitions" trip to Bangkok last fall.

I put this resolution first not because I'm some crazed pro-writer propagandist (well, OK, I kind of am, but that's not the main reason) but rather because everything else is irrelevant unless and until this particular issue gets settled.



2. Release the occasional movie that isn't a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, franchise-starter, spin-off, knock-off, or... you get the point.













Sometimes I lie awake at night wondering what would happen if every single non-original movie from now on were an utter failure at the box office. If the only successful movies were interesting, unique one-time-only films that didn't end with a "To Be Continued..." and the concept poster for the next installment staring you in the face as you walked back into the lobby.

Yeah, it's a nice thought, but I know it's not realistic. And I'm aware that there are some pretty great sequels and prequels and threequels and so forth; at their best, they're the movies we get the most excited about seeing. I'll freely admit to my unrestrained glee at the fact that this year holds the promise of new James Bond, Batman, and Indiana Jones films. I just wish the well-manicured men and women in charge would take a look at the accounting books once in a while (helpful note: the non-doctored ones are on the lower shelf) and realize that it's possible to make a lot of money on individual movies and even more possible to lose a lot of money on franchises and sequels and all that.

The more the universe gets bloated with films with numbers in the title, or cross-dressing comedians who aren't Eddie Izzard, or an unusually techno-savvy Nicolas Cage, or mysterious killers who target former WB starlets, or beautiful quirky anorexic twentysomethings who can't get dates, or enormous suburban families whose dads are always falling off the roof, or teenage hackers in Ed Hardy shirts who stumble onto government secrets, or magical prophecies involving Dakota Fanning lookalikes, or adorably plucky pets who save the world, or bad-ass white guy ninjas who make Crystal Method songs magically play when they walk into a room, or million dollar Manhattan weddings where everything's going wrong, gosh darn it, or loosely interpreted historical battles with extra carnage and/or nudity helpfully thrown in, or superfast cars much more interesting than the people driving them, or black sports teams who just need a white coach to teach them to win, or any combination or permutation of any of the above -- the more all that becomes the inescapable reality of moviedom, the more people like me will prefer to stay home and watch something better via Netflix or the DVR.

Good, original movies can make money. It's happened before and it'll happen again. Please let it. Thank you.



3. Settle the goddamn high-definition format war.














2006 was not a great year for movies overall, but these two were pretty awesome. Do me a solid, Hollywood, and let me watch them both on the same kind of disc.


4. Help me destroy MTV.













Remember this logo and slogan? The last time it was remotely applicable, Michael Jackson still appeared mostly normal, Madonna was a Catholic, and Tom Cruise was just a movie star. And yet, all three of them have done a much better job of retaining their identities in the years since than MTV has. Once upon a time, MTV propelled artists to stardom while reporting on what was cool and happening in America. Now... well, I'm not sure what they do now because I can't go near the channel. I think they pay teenagers to videotape their parents having sex in Run DMC's pool, or something like that. Oh, and a girl pretending to be bisexual tries to find a date while reading from a bad script (but a script nonetheless, people) about how hard the decision is. That one I knew about. And as for the music, they leave it to MySpace to find the bands and then make them embarrass themselves with horribly uninteresting videos shot by film school freshman. (Not movie film school, mind you; I'm talking about the school you go to to learn how to make the disgusting film that forms on the top of weeks-old coffee.) Bottom line: MTV must be decimated. Quickly, and permanently. I don't even know why this is a topic for debate; if we'd done this ten years ago we could have headed off Carson Daly's rise to power.



And that's all. Now get that gym membership and diet book, Hollywood, and go to work.