Pulse

I started watching this movie tonight, cilcon & coke in hand… then realized the world did not contain enough booze for me to be able to finish watching it.

I feel a Buffy marathon coming on instead…

Invincible

It’s rare these days that you get a PG sports movie that doesn’t involve a team full of hard-knocks kids. So when I found Disney’s Invincible on the satellite, I decided to give it a whirl.

I struggled a few times to feel the magic, trying to get past the casting mostly. Mark Wahlberg is fine, but the long hair was awful. When I complained about it out loud someone told me “it’s appropriate for the time period” but I argued that no one else in the movie has the floppy goofball cut he has. I’m thinking they gave him that hairdo because he couldn’t grow a decent set of sideburns or a swanky mustache like the other boys in the film. Either that or the director said to himself “wouldn’t it be cool if your hair bounced while you ran? That’d be such a cool shot…” For all I know its the signature shot used in all his best porno work.

They also cast JD’s baby-momma from Scrubs as the love interest. No matter how many times the actress (Elizabeth Banks) quotes in-depth football stats, I keep thinking of her lip-locked with Zach Braff. I wonder which is the better kisser: Marky Mark or Dr. Cox’s bitch.

The real kicker is Greg Kinear as Dick Vermeil. There’s a stretch. I keep thinking of his awkward performance in the Matador, thanks to a friend of mine who made that connection early on in the movie. The way his character was written in this movie though, he feels like a throw away character. You could have stuck any half-decent actor who could read in a Dick Vermeil wig and it would have been fine. We don’t really care about the barely touched upon struggle of a college coach with his first NFL coaching gig. They sort of pay lip-service to that whole struggle, with his ultra-supportive wife stepping in to infuse him with character when the real tough decisions need to be made.

I had mixed emotions as I watched the story unfold. It alternated almost scene for scene between dreary depressing economic commentary (with factories shutting down, people going on strike, people being out of work, friends lashing out at each other because they have no hope and no future) and exciting football scenes. Everybody hates Vincent (and the Funky Bunch!) as soon as he starts to succeed, but he keeps trudging forward waiting to be cut and expecting the worst.

We spend so much time down in the muck and the drudge of the struggle that when he tastes success for the last few scenes, we can’t quite celebrate. Sure we cheer him to the end zone and he gets there, but it feels like too little too late.

I also can’t resist pointing out that when Vince’s big mental change comes along—you know, the one that makes him go from “can’t do” to “can do”—it comes from playing football in the rain with his friends and not from any coaching from Dick Vermeil. I’m not sure if this commentary was intended, but Coach Vermeil was so marginalized in this story that I have trouble believing it was an accident.

No, I’m pretty sure whoever wrote this is was a Chief’s fan.

This gets 3 beers. I drank 1 during the movie and needed 2 more afterwards to cope with the depression.

Apocalypto

Tonight I found myself watching Apocalypto. Before you judge too harshly, let me say that it wasn’t intentional; I was surfing the movie channels and got sucked in. I had already autotuned the satellite to switch to The Prophecy, but I canceled that when the mayan-on-mayan killing action started. Plus one of the guys looked like El Skeletor from Nacho Libre. This made me giggle whenever he was on screen and I just couldn’t see abandoning that.

I have a few complaints about the movie so far. I mean, dead languages are dead languages for a reason, right? But here I sit, locked into 3 hours of reading. This really impacts my online shopping. I keep having to choose between open-toed sandals and keeping up with the plot.

Also, I have an issue with the way it paints ants. It shows them as useful creatures that can be used to hold cuts together by getting them to bite you and then pinching their heads off. This can’t be true–ants have no use except to annoy us at picnics and ruin camping trips. I want to see the research, Mr. Gibson that shows this was a common enough practice that a mother would know to use it to help her toddler son.

It also depicted this massive mayan/incan/whatever culture being shocked, surprised, and scared by a “sudden” eclipse. Aren’t these the same people who built their temples in alignment with heavenly bodies? Who made their calendars so accurate that we marvel at them today? But I’m supposed to believe that an eclipse wouldn’t be expected or predicted by their brilliant-yet-brutal holy men? So stunned were they by the sudden darkness that they ceased sacrificing because their people were cowering and screaming in fear below the bloody temple stairs.

I think they painted El Skeletor blue and killed him. Or maybe he survived, I sort of lost track when I got up to pour another glass of wine. Plus I took my glasses off, and I couldn’t read what was happening from the kitchen.

With all the running and jittery camera work going on now, this thing is starting to look like the National Geographic version of the Blair Witch Project. There’s a lot of blood though. Every few minutes someone is biting it. I’m not sure who to root for in this equation. Here are my choices:

Jaguar Paw, the guy who… didn’t trust his instincts when he knew danger was coming, ignored the dreams he had that told him to RUN, left his pregnant wife in a crevice with their toddler son they couldn’t climb out of on their own, blurted out “sorry, father” and got his dad killed by the enemy, was saved from sacrifice by the eclipse–not from any sort of brilliance or strength on this part, and who taunted the bad guys from below until they chased him off a waterfall and continued to try and kill him.

Some Elk Dude, the guy who… leads an organized pack of vicious hunters, who ravages and enslaves entire villages taking all strong men and women hostage and making a huge profit for him and his superstitious band of men. The only mistake I can see thus far is his reaction to the goading from Jaguar Paw which has him hurling himself and his men off a waterfall.

In the time it took me to type that run-down, Jaguar Paw has gone all Predator (a la Arnold Schwartznegger) on their asses and is picking them off one by one. He even used the spiked tree booby-trap thingy. Maybe that was Rambo, I can’t remember clearly with the amount of wine I’m having to consume.

Oh, and it’s started raining heavily (did you know that caves and crevices fill with water?) …and the wife’s labor has started. Jaguar Paw is, how do you say it? Ah yes… BONED.

And thank you, Mel Gibson for giving us the underwater childbirth shot. I nearly narfed my wine at that. And she did it all with her 3-year-old resting on her shoulders and crouched in 4 feet of water. I think I found my new hero.

Jaguar Paw is on the beach… it’s panning around to show us what he sees that has stunned everyone who was chasing him… I’m rooting for the giant Statue of Liberty Head. C’mon, Lady Liberty!! That would be a stunning turn of events, don’t you think?

Alas, it’s just the conquistadors, come to give them some religion and smallpox.

At least Jaguar Paw got to take his little family back into the jungle.

It gets 4 glasses. I had to keep drinking to enjoy it.