Colette Arrand

Category: Reviews

  • Wrestling Review: WWE Monday Night Raw (10/22/12)

    Wrestling Review: WWE Monday Night Raw (10/22/12)

    In WWE, the episode of Monday Night Raw before a pay-per-view is colloquially referred to as the “go home show,” the company’s last opportunity to embellish the storylines going into the weekend’s big matches. For me, that description has never worked for any episode of Raw besides the one before WrestleMania, which is, of course, the show, the one that events like this Sunday’s Hell in a Cell serve as a pyrokinetic PowerPoint presentation for, building up a year-long resume for the evening’s stars before the Monday after WrestleMania, where everything resets in order to build up to next year’s show. Regardless, this is the internet, and once nerds like me catch glimpse of phrases like “go home show,” every episode of Raw is evaluated not in terms of entertainment or plot, but in terms of how well it sells the upcoming pay per view.

    On that level, tonight’s episode of Monday Night Raw was a puzzling mishmash of bizarre elements, the WWE’s signature brands of comedy and mock seriousness colliding with the otherworldly realness of “Best in the World” C.M. Punk and angry, glowering giant The Big Show. As a sales pitch, Raw is perhaps shackled by the fact that Hell in a Cell offers as its main attractions three first-time encounters in an environment that calls for the end of long-standing beef, but in the business of live, active entertainment, you deal with the cards you’re dealt, and the WWE had been given fan indifference in the face of another Sheamus/Alberto Del Rio encounter, and an injury to John Cena just as his feud with C.M. Punk began hurtling towards finality. The lead-in to Hell in a Cell and the pay per view itself have felt like a shuffling of the cosmic deck. Substituting for John Cena is Ryback. The Big Show has been called in as an audible for Alberto Del Rio. A tournament led to the establishment of a tag team division so that one new tag team could battle another over the tag team championships. This Sunday promises a few return bouts—Kofi Kingston vs. The Miz, Alberto Del Rio vs. Randy Orton, Eve vs. either Kaitlyn or Layla, and perhaps Antonio Caesaro vs. Justin Gabriel—but despite how good those match-ups have proven to be (Kingston/Miz and Caesaro/Gabriel have been pleasant surprises, as has Eve’s run as queen jerk of the WWE Divas), they’re afterthoughts to the ongoing championship reigns of Sheamus, Punk, and Team Hell No.

    Stacked up against a presidential debate, Monday Night Football, and Game 7 of the NLCS, the approach taken to building these confrontations, with the exception of Punk/Ryback, played like the WWE’s oft-belittled writing staff throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks to the pre-match hype video. The prime example of this ethic is the story between Team Hell No and the Rhodes Scholars, a feud that’s been simmering since before Cody Rhodes and Damien Sandow won the tag team tournament, way back when WWE let the fans christen Daniel Bryan and Kane “Team Hell No,” as opposed to the meme-worthy “Team Friendship. On the good end of this feud, Daniel Bryan and Kane both had and lost matches due to one dynamic of their partnership or the other: Bryan’s insecurity and Kane’s goofing around in the case of the excellent Bryan/Dolph Ziggler contest, and the Rhodes Scholars vulture-like mentality during Kane’s umpteenth encounter with The Big Show. Less impressive was WWE’s spin on The Newlywed Game, which promised a game of wits between the two tag teams and, instead, served as a platform for WWE afterthought Matt Striker to wish harm upon Team Hell No before getting chucked across the stage by The Big Show. The WWE has oddly succeeded with bits of anti-comedy like this before—as proof, look up their version of The Price is Right—but The Newly Tag Game, awkward name and all, was executed like something thought up on the fly and scratched during the commercial break. Luckily Rhodes Scholars closed out the tag team tournament with a strong match against Rey Mysterio and Sin Cara, so there’s still plenty off intrigue.

    This schizophrenic approach has also permeated the issue between The Big Show and Sheamus, but to better effect. Sheamus is an interesting fellow, a big, tough, amiable champion who has grown leaps and bounds in the ring but whose reliance upon broad-stroke comedy has ranged from awkward (Irish stereotypes) to uncomfortable (Mexican and Jewish stereotypes). Against The Big Show, Sheamus has employed a simpleton’s logic: Daniel Bryan beat the big man 45 seconds into his reign as World Heavyweight Champion, Sheamus beat Daniel Bryan in 18 seconds at WrestleMania, therefore the outcome is clear. He’s joked around with Show, grappled with the futility of his Brogue Kick finishing maneuver against a man much taller than any of Sheamus’s prior opponents, and generally goofed around as The Big Show glowers, punches things, and reminds Sheamus that he’d best be serious if he stands a prayer of retaining his title. Tonight, in a clip that’ll just kill me if it sees any further airtime, Sheamus shilled his new Brawlin’ Buddy toy, which was quickly punched across the state line by The Big Show. Luckily, Show’s involvement in Sheamus’ lumberjack match against C.M. Punk did the job of building towards this Sunday’s championship bout.

    Speaking of the lumberjack match (and I’ll probably speak more about it this weekend, as the “Wrestling Worth Watching” feature returns to cover individual matches from the week in a way that’s not appropriate in a regular review), it was billed as the largest such match in history, boasting some three dozen men surrounding the ring. I didn’t count them, but that sea of humanity was there for one reason: to part like the Red Sea before an incoming Ryback. It was an impressive image, the WWE Universe vacating one side of the ring to make way for the challenger to C.M. Punk’s title, and Punk’s attempt to get away from Ryback, only to be fed back to the ring by a cadre of good guys for one of Ryback’s impressive power moves, begs the question of what will happen when the two face each other in the cell, which is exactly the question the WWE wants you to ask.

    What they don’t want you asking, hence the reshuffling of the deck, is why, exactly, John Cena gave up an opportunity to face Punk mere weeks after insisting, sling and all, that Hell In A Cell was the only way for C.M. Punk to validate his lengthy WWE Championship reign. While serving as Ryback’s cheerleader, Cena wound up being interrupted by Punk, who (in typical heel fashion) claimed it was evidence that Cena had come around to Punk’s overall superiority. Not so, said Cena. He just wasn’t medically cleared. It was incredibly confusing—Cena advocating one moment for the change Ryback represents, then claiming he only did it because he wasn’t cleared—made more confusing when Cena flexed his mighty arm, touting that he’d been cleared and was ready for a fight right-the-hell-now. Naturally, the match didn’t happen (Paul Heyman to Punk: “You don’t fight for free!”), and Cena was quickly called elsewhere, his presence for Hell In A Cell’s main event no longer required.

    That “elsewhere” happened to be the ongoing saga of A.J. Lee, the WWE Diva who went from nerd-baiting background occupier to the most popular woman in WWE not named Kelly Kelly to oddly-written authority figure through a dizzying array of personal relationships, uncalled for attacks, and strange business decisions. This week, before her home town (never a good place for a wrestler to be, C.M. Punk excluded), she unceremoniously resigned from the post of Raw General Manager amid rumor that she’d been fraternizing with the boys in the back, namely one John Cena. A.J.’s resignation was one of the more odd, strangely affecting segments in recent WWE history, a curious mix of A.J.’s real history and the bizarre turns her storyline had taken. With her thanking the fans and hugging Vince McMahon (nobody hugs Vince McMahon!), it was a moment simultaneously real and unreal, something that could either go nowhere or herald A.J.’s long-awaited reentry in the Diva’s division.

    Instead, she’s now caught up in an alleged affair with John Cena, who has made a habit of appropriating elements of other wrestler’s storylines. After WrestleMania, it was Cena who went against C.M. Punk’s sworn enemy Johnny Ace. It’s Cena who’s taken to the occasional “YES!” or “FEED ME MORE!” chant. And now it’s Cena with A.J., a woman who once carried the promise of being the WWE’s first autonomous female character who now finds herself loosely tied to the affections of another of the WWE’s titans of masculinity. Cena’s constant refrain—he and A.J. had nothing more than a “business dinner”—was as inauthentic as the thought of his being romantically entangled with any of the WWE Divas, and heaps an unnecessary amount of drama onto the role of General Manager, a position that’s best when the character occupying it is conniving and sly, or otherwise invincible. Sure, there are other elements to the story, and Cena needs something to do until his elbow is fully recovered, but none of those elements are clicking, and this isn’t it.

    Rating: Stray Observations:

    • I mentioned it in the post, but the feature “Wrestling Worth Watching” will be returning this week, sometime after the conclusion of Hell In A Cell. There’s a vast difference between the narrative structure of a television show and the merit of an individual wrestling match. Of note here, for the interested: Rhodes Scholars vs. Sin Cara and Rey Mysterio, Dolph Ziggler vs. Daniel Bryan, and the C.M. Punk vs. Sheamus lumberjack match.
    • Daniel Bryan, on Kane: “You love rainbows!”
    • Bryan’s reaction to winning The Newly Tag Game was great, a return to his bombastic celebrations as World Heavyweight Champion, but the crowd just wasn’t buying the segment.
  • Movie Review: Haywire (2012)

    Movie Review: Haywire (2012)

    essentialEfficient. That’s Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire in one word. These days, it’s nothing for a thriller to hop around the globe, to squeeze in swerves and car chases, to fashion for themselves a superhuman killing machine. Haywire does these things as well—if not better—than its contemporaries, but its pace is ruthless, breakneck. At 92-minutes, there is no fat on its bones, and no queasy-cam gimmicks, either. When Haywire stops to take a breath, it’s only to show how tightly the net around its heroine is constricted.

    Malory Kane (Gina Carano) is our superhuman, the focus of a plot that aims to take her out. As Haywire opens, shes sitting in a cafe in upstate New York, sipping tea. Before she has time to finish her cup, she’s locked in a brutal fight with Aaron (Channing Tatum), a man she worked with on a project in Barcelona. A good samaritan (Michael Angarano) hands her the keys to his car, and the two speed off for Parts Unknown, Kane narrating her story to the mostly terrified teenager. The story is simple enough. Kane’s a contractor who works for a private firm that governments hire out to glean information, recover lost assets, rescue dissidents—spy business. She’s requested to be a member of a team extracting a hostage from Barcelona. Her boss, Jeremy (Ewan McGregor), is hesitant at first, but when his employers—U.S. governmental employee Alex Coblenz (Michael Douglas) and Rodrigo (Antonio Banderas), a man with no specific origin—agree to certain contractual details, Kane is put on the case, the hostage is rescued, and all is well. Or so it seems.

    It happens that Jeremy’s business is wholly reliant upon Malory Kane and that, after the dissolution of their personal relationship, Kane is looking to get out of her business obligations with him, as well. First, he gets her to agree to an assignment that’s pretty much a “paid vacation,” a chance to persuade an agent to join Jeremy’s team while at the same time making contact with that agent’s mark under the guise of being a power couple. That agent, Paul (Michael Fassbender), has been assigned to kill the hostage Kane rescued, plant evidence on the body pointing to Kane, then kill her, making it look like an act of self-defense. Simple enough, except that Kane ends up killing him and going on the run, making her way back to the United States to clear her name, uncover the conspiracy against her, and gain a measure of revenge.

    Haywire‘s frequent action set pieces are engaging, covering all the bases. Across rooftops, on foot, and behind the wheel of a car, it’s clear that there’s nobody like Malory Kane, who, when she is brought down, succumbs only to the sheer number of people set against her. Soderbergh’s films, regardless of how kinetic they often feel, rarely move like Haywire, which has a fluidity and clarity of vision rarely afforded to a typical thriller. There’s an effortless cool to the way he films Carano chasing down her prey, jumping from roof to roof, and employing her dazzling array of mixed martial arts maneuvers.

    Speaking of Carano, this is her first feature film, though it would be surprising were this to prove her last. Carano is granted quite the set of crutches in Haywire: she’s guided by McGregor, Douglas, and Bill Paxton (as Kane’s father), prodded by Banderas, and romanced by Fassbender and the great lunkhead Tatum, who, given this film and his self-effacing turns in 21 Jump Street and Magic Mike, is perhaps smarter than anybody has yet to give him credit for. Though she sometimes looks out-of-depth when standing across from somebody the caliber of Michael Douglas—it’s worth pointing out that whatever charisma she possesses has, thus far, only been used in brief flashes during pre- and post-fight interviews and press conferences—she mostly holds her own.

    It helps that Soderbergh is a director who’s proven masterful at identifying and exploiting the strengths of his cast. The choice of Carano in this role is no less unusual than, say, his choice of Sasha Grey as an escort, and Carano’s fighting skills are put to good use here, the reality of maneuvers like the cross armbreaker and the triangle choke only further embellishing the punishment she deals out. Tatum’s character has his arm broken in Haywire‘s opening sequence. Watching Carano swiftly grab his arm and snap it back, it’s little wonder that Tatum later appears in a cast, arm hanging useless at his side. Here, it’s the little flourishes of realism that matter, that paint Carano as a budding star as opposed to a neat little stunt casting. Like her character, it’s clear that Gina Carano can do things no other actress is capable of. So long as she avoids becoming a female Expendable, her presence in the genre can only change it for the better.

    Haywire. With Gina Carano (Malory Kane), Channing Tatum (Aaron), Ewan McGregor (Jeremy), Bill Paxton (John Kane), Michael Fassbender (Paul), Michael Angarano (Scott), Antonio Banderas (Rodrigo), and Michael Douglas (Alex Coblenz). Directed by Steven Soderbergh from a screenplay by Lem Dobbs.

  • Wrestling Review: WWE Monday Night Raw (10/15/12)

    Wrestling Review: WWE Monday Night Raw (10/15/12)

    For weeks now, the narrative of WWE Monday Night Raw has been this: to cement his legacy as an all-time great champion, CM Punk would need to defeat John Cena within the confines of Hell in a Cell, WWE’s steel cage warzone that’s seen its fair share of company defining moments. On one level, this makes sense: many of the company’s top feuds, from The Undertaker’s battles with Shawn Michaels and Mankind to Triple H’s beefs with Chris Jericho and Cactus Jack, have wound up there, and Cena/Punk is certainly worthy. On another, it’s a complete mystery: Punk’s been involved in two Hell in a Cell matches and hasn’t outright lost to John Cena since before last year’s WrestleMania. The cell has mostly loomed in the background as another specter of WWE past, taunting the long-tenured WWE Champion like Bret Hart, Mick Foley, Jim Ross, and Vince McMahon have over the past few weeks. Tonight was billed as the night CM Punk chose between John Cena and Ryback  as his eventual challenger, and also as an evening during which Vince McMahon would potentially choose Punk’s opponent. In a move unsurprising to folks who follow injury reports but inconsistent in terms of overall narrative, neither Punk nor McMahon chose who would be stepping into Hell in a Cell, but John Cena, who abdicated the ring and led the audience in Ryback’s chant of “FEED ME MORE.”

    This swerve came despite Cena telling Vince McMahon that he was ready, if need be, for the challenge of the Cell. Despite weeks of him telling Punk that respect and a lasting legacy would only be his if he agreed to the match. Obviously, Cena’s elbow is still an issue, but stepping away from a fight he was previously begging for is something completely outside his character, even when he was a white rapper of questionable associations nearly a decade ago. Ryback, fortunately for the WWE, is an able substitute. Listen to the response he gets, even after failing to lift up the monstrous Tensai for his finishing maneuver a week ago. There is no hotter act in wrestling. The only thing the WWE has to fear is that Ryback’s luster is diminished by a loss, or that a championship victory is too much, too soon. It’ll hurt the narrative a little, but not enough to seriously damage Vince McMahon’s unsinkable ship.

    Ryback, love him or hate him (I’m a fan), is the best example of the WWE’s seemingly newfound ability to turn its new stars from awkward newcomers into characters worth investing time into over a short period of time. The law of diminishing returns has effectively caused the Funkasaurus to go extinct, but acts like Damien Sandow and Antonio Caesaro have done well for themselves; Kofi Kingston, The Miz, Cody Rhodes, and Sin Cara have gotten a new sense of purpose; and the much maligned Tag Team and Divas divisions have had an energy to them that has been largely absent for years.

    A lot of this, oddly, has been a side-effect of Jerry “The King” Lawler’s heart attack and subsequent hiatus from the broadcast position. That night forced play-by-play announcer Michael Cole to drop his evil ways and return to simply reporting on matches, rather than actively picking favorites. He’s been joined at the table by Jim Ross and John Bradshaw Layfield, both of whom are gifted analysts with whom Cole has tremendous chemistry. Layfield was not on Raw tonight, but Ross has a way of connecting with wrestling fans that, as an announcer myself, is both enviable and hard to describe. Cole, sitting beside him, is tremendously effective in making Ross’s points digestible to the WWE’s young demographic. If the aim of broadcasting this format is to make the wrestlers in the ring look as good as possible, few recent matches have befitted as much as the one between Kofi Kingston and The Miz, which was meant to hype a title fight between the two on WWE’s new Wednesday night show. I’ve been disinterested in Kofi Kingston for some time and have never really been a fan of The Miz, but listening to Ross talk about Kingston’s history and Cole put over The Miz’s accomplishments, it really felt like their match meant something. Considering that the issue sprung from an incident where Larry King’s wife through water in The Miz’s face, that’s saying a lot about both the commentary and the match itself.

    Similarly, the WWE has found a way to make The Big Show a compelling character again: a disgruntled carnival strongman with a right hand that’s literally lethal, facing down a grinning goofball Irishman whose most compelling argument for success is that a mutual opponent once beat Show in 45 seconds. Tonight, The Big Show demanded to face Daniel Bryan in a match so he could “erase the memory” of his 45 second title reign and handily defeated the WWE Tag Team Champion. The match achieved the dual purpose of establishing Show as a legitimate threat (something that’s proven hard in the past, despite the man’s size) and further gelling the team of Bryan and Kane, the unlikely champions who belittle each other but are growing into a semi-functional unit. The odd man out here is World Heavyweight Champion Sheamus, who would probably be one of my favorite wrestlers were he not involved in a mind-boggling amount of lame sketches that’ve resorted to bullying, racial stereotyping, and grand theft auto, none of which have utilized his natural charisma, nor the size and strength that make him so impressive.

    The result of this episode of Raw is that the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view is now much more full, though it remains unclear as to what matches will actually end up in the cage. There’s Punk and Ryback, as mentioned by Vince McMahon, and I presume Big Show and Sheamus will also end up there. Daniel Bryan and Kane may face the winners of next weeks Rey Mysterio/Sin Cara vs. Damien Sandow/Cody Rhodes encounter in Hell in a Cell, but that’d be three first-time matches taking place in a structure formerly reserved for the end of a long-standing conflict.

    In this regard, give CM Punk and manager Paul Heyman most of the credit for selling the upcoming show. Punk, as always, has really taken to the role of smarmy jerk, and if anybody deserves to go through the crucible of Hell in a Cell, it’s him. Punk has been through two such matches, as previously mentioned, but neither of them were classics. Paul Heyman, though, was a big part of one of WWE’s best such brawls, a bloodbath between his client Brock Lesnar and Hell in a Cell staple The Undertaker. He may be pivotal two weeks from now, worrying outside the cage as his man stares across the ring at a young challenger with nothing to lose, unheard of momentum, and an unbeaten record. The vitriol aimed at Punk since he attacked Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on the thousandth episode of Raw crossed into the realm of reality last week, when Punk punched a fan, retaliating to a hostile crowd trying to push him down a flight of stairs. The WWE Universe is out for his blood, meaning that there was no bad choice for Hell in a Cell. If only that choice had followed the WWE’s already established logic.

    Rating: 

    Stray Observations:

    • Raw General Manager A.J. Lee has become less and less essential to the show since she was given power and granted a last name, but they’re still portraying her as an emotionally unstable woman who doesn’t like the word “crazy.” This resulted in an odd verbal gaffe by Michael Cole, who noted that he shouldn’t “call A.J. the ‘C-word.’” That’s a basic rule of thumb for all women, Mr. Cole.
    • Vince McMahon’s reply when Ryback said “FEED ME PUNK?” “I’ll take it under consideration.”
    • Paul Heyman is perhaps the greatest slimeball manager in wrestling history. The way he tries warming up to Vince McMahon while also setting him up for a match against Punk was great. His response to Vince when McMahon said he’d only take a match against Heyman (“That’s not what I pitched! That’s not what I pitched!”) was golden.
    • I like Wade Barrett a lot, but I can never tell if he has a new theme song, or if they’ve just given him something that bland and generic. Considering how many times they changed Barrett’s music when he was a member of Nexus and The Corre, I wouldn’t be surprised if they just haven’t settled on one generic rock song or another. Entrance music is a big part of professional wrestling (for one, it lets the audience know exactly how to respond the moment a wrestler enters the arena), and Barrett’s considerable mystique would only be enhanced by something recognizable.
  • Movie Review: Seven Psychopaths (2012)

    Movie Review: Seven Psychopaths (2012)

    Seven Psychopaths is a movie about making movies. More specifically, it’s a movie about writing movies, putting it in the same ballpark as Barton Fink and Adaptation, but with a few crucial differences. Its protagonist, for example, never holds himself up as some great artist, and once he gets into his story, he approaches his characters with zeal, if not a true sense of where those stories are going. Where Barton Fink and Adaptation (and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, which was technically about a playwright) are darkly comic, psychologically-intense mirrors of the men who wrote them, Seven Psychopaths leaves darkness out of the equation. There’s scores of violence here, buckets of blood and more than a few charred corpses, but never a sense that it’s weighing too heavily on the writer’s mind. He puts pen to paper, unconscious of the fact that he’s part of his story’s tapestry.

    To begin, Irish screenwriter Marty (Colin Farrell, standing in for director Martin McDonagh) is struggling to get through the first draft of his new movie, Seven Psychopaths. His agent is calling him, his girlfriend is barely tolerating him, but he’s got a movie about seven psychopath and not one good psychopath to write about. His friend Billy (Sam Rockwell), an aspiring actor, points out an article in the newspaper about a serial killer known as The Jack of Diamonds, who kills ranking members of organized crime syndicates. He also tells Marty about a Quaker (Harry Dean Stanton) who haunts the man who killed his daughter until, having suffered a complete mental breakdown, the killer commits suicide. He does this guaranteeing his own damnation, but figures he’ll never see the Quaker again. He’s wrong though, as the last thing he sees is the Quaker slitting his own throat. Two psychopaths down.

    Despite Billy taking out an ad in the paper for psychopaths looking to tell their stories (a contrivance that leads to the always welcome Tom Waits telling the grisly tale of his and a lost love’s quest to go on a cross-country killing spree) and his wish to see the best damn movie called Seven Psychopaths possible, Seven Psychopaths isn’t about Marty’s quest to write a movie, but about friendship and bonding. After establishing Billy and his partner Hans (Christopher Walken) as a pair of dognappers who’ve abducted the prized Shih Tzu of an emotionally unstable mob boss (Woody Harrelson), the three head out to the desert to camp out, eat peyote, and finish Marty’s movie. Billy has designs on finishing the movie with a grand, climactic, somehow cathartic shootout involving the real and fictional psychopaths they’ve crossed paths with, but both Marty and Hans are pacifists who eschew violence and who want Seven Psychopaths to stand for something more.

    As entertaining as the conversation between these three on the nature of violence (in life and in film) is, none of Seven Psychopaths‘ higher ambitions hold up to even cursory scrutiny. Marty speaks of Buddism at one point, but in this very western way that feels ill-considered and improperly applied. There’s a point to his discourse, and the way he, Billy, and Hans speak leading up to the dramatic final shootout is one of McDonagh’s many meta-textual winks and nods, but at no point does it feel like the cleverness of Seven Psychopaths is being put to any true purpose. With nowhere to go, the meta-textuality of Seven Psychopaths tends to distract, rather than enhance.

    But Seven Psychopaths doesn’t need a smart hook to succeed. It does so largely on the merits of its characters—most of whom play like outsized urban legends—and the actors occupying them. There’s a kind of sweetness to Billy’s quest to cure his friend of writer’s sickness, to his encouraging Marty to lay off the booze and put pen to paper, an endless charm to Sam Rockwell’s manic energy. Marty’s frustrations and breakthroughs in writing Seven Psychopaths are perhaps the most realistic of any movie outside Adaptation. There’s something about the way he dreads hearing whatever story Waits’s character has to tell, followed by the flash of recognition once it becomes clear that he’s hearing a really, really good story.

    The film belongs to Walken, who this year has put aside soulless comedies using him as a man with a funny voice to once again become an actor who has within him the very soul of strangeness. His brand of peculiarity is one that is rapidly disappearing from movies, replaced by increasingly plasticine imitations. Hans is no great stretch for Walken, but it has been awhile since a character of such conviction has stumbled into a bloodbath like Seven Psychopaths. When he talks about a non-violent resolution to Marty’s problem of the Vietnamese warrior who has come to America to kill the men responsible for the slaughter of his village, there’s weight to his proposal. After all, he’s sat across from the man who killed his wife. He didn’t have the urge to pull a gun.

    Rating: Seven Psychopaths. Directed by Martin McDonagh. With Colin Farrell (Marty), Sam Rockwell (Billy), Christopher Walken (Hans), Woody Harrelson (Charlie), Michael Pitt (Larry), Michael Stuhlbarg (Tommy), Abbie Cornish (Kaya), Harry Dean Stanton (Man In Hat), Olga Kurylenko (Angela), Gabourey Sidibe (Sharice), and Tom Waits (Zachariah). Released October 12, 2012, by CBS Films.

  • Movie Review: Iron Sky (2012)

    Movie Review: Iron Sky (2012)

    Iron Sky, like many modern exploitation films, sets itself up for failure by promising something much, much greater than it is capable of delivering. The idea that buoys it should have been enough, but director Timo Vuorensola has ambitions beyond mere entertainment. Ambition, too, will kill a modern b-movie faster than bad acting, poor scripting, or lame special effects, all of which are acceptable, even welcome, given the circumstances.  Classic exploitation movies, despite what the genre’s name suggests, didn’t go looking for context. Is there anything more vague than a hero’s struggle against “The Man?” Hardly. Whatever focus grindhouse movies had on social issues, more often than not context and purpose were things applied to the genre well after the its disappearance. The best modern tributes understand that politics and current headlines are elements serving to further sensationalize the bullets, broads, and booze, to further exploit a potential audience. The worst seek to lecture its audience through the use of broad comedy. It has ambitions. Ambitions get in the way.

    The ambition of Iron Sky is to scandalize American politics, notably the Republican Party, most notably Sarah Palin. In the future, the United States is cash-strapped and wholly-reliant upon foreign energy. To distract from this (and potentially bring home some odd space-fuel, ala Avatar), our presidential Palin surrogate (Stephanie Paul), whose Oval Office features an elliptical machine and the spoils of her kills, launches a manned moon-mission. All goes swimmingly. The lander has landed, the gigantic banner of the President unfurled, the astronauts roving the lunar surface. Then, one of them is shot. The other one is captured. The culprit? Nazis. Moon Nazis. Moon Nazis living in a swastika-shaped moon base, the descendants of a group of terrestrial Nazis who launched their own moon mission when it became clear that the Third Reich was to fall. For decades, they’ve lived on the moon, developing space-based attack strategies and educating their children on the glories of Hitler with a state-approved, 10-minute cut of  The Great Dictator. Clearly, a Fourth Reich is imminent.

    For all that promise, Iron Sky falls apart quickly, wandering from the path leading to its eventual lunar blitzkrieg in order to chart the rise of ambitious Moon Nazi Klaus Adler (Götz Otto), who lands in the United States and sets about conquering it by becoming a campaign aide of the President, whose advertising takes on a certain red-white-and-black hue. Adler’s girl, “Earth expert” Renate (Julia Dietze) sneaks abord the ship, which also carries the moon mission’s black astronaut (Christopher Kirby), who has been bleached white by a Nazi scientist (Udo Kier). Why any of this happens is unclear. There’s supposed to be something funny about the Nazi’s dying a black man white, I suspect, but its one of many jokes about the first black man on the moon that falls treacherously flat.

    The centerpiece here is the multi-national space battle launched to repel the Nazi invaders (from outer space), but even Iron Sky‘s impressive special effects can’t distract from the inane plot and cast of caricatures working to undermine. The battle gives rise to one of Iron Sky‘s biggest curiosities, which diminishes whatever pleasures sub-par space opera holds, when the president’s campaign manager (Peta Sergeant), the woman responsible for Adler’s terrestrial success, is installed as the captain of the United States of America’s massive starship. If the point was to criticize Palin or Washington croneyism or, well, anything, having the campaign manager do quite well for someone who, a day earlier, was almost murdered by a gaggle of Moon Nazis probably wasn’t the best way to get Iron Sky‘s point across.

    But really, what greater purpose should Iron Sky have been promoting? Here’s a goofily premised movie trying unsuccessfully to lampoon a political target whose last day in the sun came years ago. Zombie Strippers did the same thing in 2008, taking a buzzworthy exploitation set-up and miring it in needless political commentary, politics (and existentialism) not being a thing within the grasp of a movie about strippers who become zombies. Maybe it seems pedantic to complain about a movie not being the sort of movie I would have made, but it seems like every year there’s a new movie promising a return to the grindhouse, promising a premise, a cast, or an idea that could and should live up to expectation, but does not. In 2008, it was Zombie Strippers. 2010 had Bitch Slap. Last year had Hobo with a Shotgun. This year, it’s Bad Ass and Iron Sky. And I thought digital filmmaking was supposed to liberating. Maybe it wasn’t the struggle against The Man that dignified a genre, but the struggle to produce.

    Rating: Iron Sky. Directed by Timo Vuorensola. With Götz Otto (Klaus Adler), Julia Dietze (Renate Richter), Christopher Kirby (James Washington), Peta Sergeant (Vivian Wagner), Stephanie Paul (The President of the United States of America), and Udo Kier (Wolfgang Kortzfleisch). Released July 25, 2012, by Entertainment One.

  • Wrestling Review: CM Punk: Best in the World (2012)

    Wrestling Review: CM Punk: Best in the World (2012)

    If you’re even remotely familiar with World Wrestling Entertainment, just one look at CM Punk on a Monday Night Raw telecast will tell you everything that makes his narrative so compelling: in an industry built upon and carried by Herculean physiques, CM Punk doesn’t fit the mould. If you are familiar with WWE, familiar enough, perhaps, to’ve seen one of their many retrospective documentaries, then the difference between Punk and men like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and John Cena are even more clear cut.

    The documentaries chronicling the rise of your typical ten-time world champion all make the same point: becoming a legend in professional wrestling from the outset of one’s career is as unlikely for Ric Flair as anybody else. But many of the narratives pushed by the WWE are remarkably similar, involving men of uncommon drive and ambition who were standout college athletes, second- or third-generation performers, or who had the luck and good fortune to see the workaday, bingo hall grind of territory day wrestling pay off in the most unimaginable, improbable way. They all say something along the lines of “I wasn’t supposed to make it,” but, for whatever polish a man like John Cena lacked upon his debut in the big time, it’s hard to not look at his story—and most stories like it—with a sense of inevitability. Some men were born to be superstars.

    A particular subset of wrestling fans will tell you that CM Punk was destined to be a superstar, and to some extent, that’s true. Wrestling has shrunk and grown, grown and shrunk, and otherwise mutated since Vincent Kennedy McMahon ended the territory system by taking the World Wrestling Federation national on the back of Hulk Hogan, but the cyclical nature of wrestling almost dictated that the territories would come back. They have in the form of independent wrestling, and if CM Punk had never been signed by the WWE, he’d almost indisputably be the biggest wrestler in the world not employed by McMahon’s corporate juggernaut (a slot currently occupied by Punk’s best friend, Colt Cabana), the best independent wrestler in the world. But the WWE is given to signing buzzed-about talent, and in 2005, few men had as much buzz as CM Punk. His story would be unusual enough were it to end there, the land of giants inviting a small, scrappy punk into its fold, and had anybody with the power to hire wrestlers to contracts known what they were getting into with Punk, it’s likely that his story wouldn’t have made it that far. But Punk’s an odd character, a man driven to make it despite his apparent flaws, a man confident enough in his abilities to recognize those flaws as a potential strength. Punk doesn’t fit the WWE’s mould, and he’s just fine with that.

    Best in the World plays a lot like a typical WWE DVD release, with a documentary feature on the superstar in question and a collection of his best matches spanning two discs. The difference here, however, is that Punk did not come up through the modern WWE Superstar’s usual channel (the various promotions WWE has used to develop its future talent), nor are any of his classic independent matches part of the WWE’s mammoth video library. In direct contrast to the company’s “Don’t Try This” PSAs, Punk began his career in a friend’s backyard, a kid with a shameless DIY aesthetic that led him to become one of Chicago’s most successful independent wrestling promoters before seeking proper wrestling training. The nature of Punk’s career and the WWE’s obsession with charting the rise of its most bankable stars necessitates the video libraries of entities like IWA: Mid-South and Ring of Honor—promotions most members of the WWE Universe would be forgiven for not knowing—and interviews with indie wrestling luminaries Ace Steel, Colt Cabana, Bryan Danielson, and Chris Hero, not to mention WWE personel, midcard fixtures, Punk’s friends and surrogate family, and punk musician Lars Fredrickson. That Punk’s early story is supplemented with footage of his contests against Cabana, Hero, and Samoa Joe is an unexpected bonus, something that has the potential to open a WWE fan’s world to a different kind of wrestling in a way that never existed before now.

    It’s a unique line-up of talking heads, all of whom do an exceptional job of telling the story of WWE’s least-likely company figurehead. The “wrestler who wasn’t supposed to make it” storyline is personified by Punk to the point that it should forever be retired. Here’s a guy who is too small and too different to make it (his Pepsi and G.I. Joe tattoos are regularly left off his action figures and video game likenesses), but a man who is nevertheless too vocal, too passionate to submit to a role less than the one he currently occupies. Though Vince McMahon does not appear on this DVD (the Chairman is likely being saved for a a sequel somewhere doen the line), he is very much the authority Punk rages against, even if it’s clear that Punk’s eventual breakthrough in 2011 was good for his company’s bottom line. The WWE version of the Summer of Punk—the 2011 saga that saw Punk give unbelievable speeches about the state of the WWE, threaten to beat John Cena for his WWE Championship on Punk’s final night with the company, then leave with the title—was largely borne from Punk’s frustration with his position on the card and the overall direction of the WWE, a theme that’s being revisited even now as Punk angles his way towards yet another confrontation with Cena over the title the two have come to define.

    If Punk has beaten the odds placed before him—and WWE creative and corporate figures like Michael Hayes (of 1970s and 80s Freebirds glory) and Triple H will be the first to tell you that he has—it’s due to his willingness to barge into McMahon’s office and ask (or demand) for something better. It’s not surprising to learn that the Straight Edge Society—Punk’s messiah-like play on cults and his own straight edge lifestyle—was his idea, but it’s practically unheard of for a wrestler to drop 14 weeks of television on the boss’ desk, even rarer for that plan to be carried even partially to fruition. Best in the World shows Punk at his best in the ring, but its greatest pleasure is in detailing the way CM Punk thinks about the business. To that end, Best in the World doesn’t mythologize its subject, as most WWE documentaries attempt to. This is a quieter, more intimate portrait of a wrestler, something along the lines of WWE’s recent Steve Austin documentary and its earlier efforts focusing on Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero. It doesn’t offer much for those who aren’t wrestling fans, but for those who are, it’s an impressive look at one of the medium’s smartest, most gifted performers, a surprisingly strong argument in favor of viewing professional wrestling as art.

    Rating:

    CM Punk: Best in the World. Directed by Kevin Dunn. A documentary featuring CM Punk, Colt Cabana, Chris Hero, Daniel Bryan, John Cena, Triple H, Michael Hayes, Paul Heyman, and others. Released October 9, 2012, by WWE Films. Extras include documentary footage and matches across Punk’s career.