Reason No. 919 Why I Love The Onion

What would life be like without The Onion? Oh, wait, I know the answer to that. It would be just as absurd as it is now, only not intentionally so.

When you’re done enjoying the above clip, I highly recommend this print piece from a month back. It has nothing whatsoever to do with movies – I mean, other than the fact that the author guest-starred in my favorite Bill Murray movie – but it makes me laugh.

As for the latest Iron Man trailer – the real trailer – it’s a groaner for me. Part of the problem is that I’m not a comic book fanboy, so Iron Man is just yet another dude in a funny outfit saving the world. (And Robert Downey Jr. as an ass-kicker? Really?)

The part that annoys me though comes at the end of the preview, when the crimson C-3PO fires a rocket at a tank and then does the turn-around-and-walk-away-because-I’m-too-cool-to-watch-or-flinch-at-the-explosion bit. Is it just me, or has that become totally lame? I’d go so far as to say that move has jumped the shark, but nothing is as lame as arguing about when or if things have jumped the shark. So let’s just stick to debating lameness, okay?

(Oh, and here’s the original trailer – the one examined by The Onion – in case you care.)

Queue It Up: Deliver Us From Evil

A few weeks ago, Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig called Washington, D.C.’s new Nationals Ballpark a “cathedral.” Tomorrow he’ll be right. As you no doubt know, the pope is in town here in the nation’s capital, with Mass at the ballpark to come tomorrow, leading to lots of inner-Beltway buzz and even more concern from local residents about how the man-in-white’s visit will affect auto and Metro commutes for the next few days.

But Pope Benedict XVI started making headlines before he reached American soil. Yesterday, from his Alitalia jet, the pope said he was “deeply ashamed” of the clergy sex-abuse scandals that have rocked the U.S. Catholic Church in recent years. “We will do what is possible that this cannot happen in the future,” he said, sounding like a guy who got Wi-Fi at the Vatican only last week and just learned of the atrocities that corrupt Church officials took pains to keep underground for decades.

Nice try, your pontiffness.

As someone who grew up going to Mass every Sunday and who attended a Catholic high school, I know firsthand that the Catholic Church isn’t entirely monstrous. But these sex-abuse scandals weren’t limited to a few black sheep. They were also the result of fraudulence at the shepherd-level, and there’s a big difference. Which brings us to today’s rental recommendation.

If all the news coverage of the past decade hasn’t convinced you that the Catholic Church knowingly ignored problem priests while attempting to avoid responsibility in these sex-abuse cases until it ran out of other options, I urge you to watch the documentary Deliver Us From Evil, which was one of my top-15 films of 2006.

At its most basic level, the documentary is a story of one flawed priest. But thanks in large part to some shocking deposition footage in which Church officials eagerly hide behind their lawyers – something tells me that’s not what Jesus would do – it’s also an unsettling glimpse under the hood of a broken organizational machine.

My original 2006 review follows:


Deliver Us From Evil
I believe it was comedian Damon Wayans who observed, “I like the idea of people, but people always ruin it for me.” For the past 15 years that’s the way I’ve felt about organized religion. It’s a wonderful idea, with the potential to bring out the best in humanity, but the price of unity is that such goodness can be tainted by a few Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells. And it can be completely undone by the likes of Oliver O’Grady and Roger Mahoney.

The latter two men are at the center of Amy Berg’s spellbinding documentary Deliver Us From Evil. O’Grady is a non-practicing former Roman Catholic priest living in Ireland, and Mahoney is the active Archbishop of Los Angeles. Twenty-five years ago, both men were in Stockton, Calif., where O’Grady did more preying than praying, abusing the trust of his position to sexually assault several children, while Mahoney, the local bishop in charge, overlooked his flock instead of overseeing it.

Berg doesn’t use these men to undermine Catholicism specifically or religion as a whole, but what she does do is explore their sins with more honesty and depth than the Catholic Church seems intent to employ. Relying on superb journalistic instincts, Berg uses an inside-out approach that in a mere 111 minutes goes from depicting O’Grady as a single, despicable falling star to demonstrating his place in a Catholic solar system filled with pedophilic meteors (shocking statistic: over the past decade, hundreds of abuse-against-minors charges have been issued against priests in California alone).

Berg accomplishes all of this without relying on sensationalism or grandstanding (minus perhaps the Vatican trip, which smells of Michael Moore). Her film is heartbreaking, revolting and sometimes – like when the oh-so-pleasant O’Grady reflects on his decades of abuse with a twinkle in his eye – just plain creepy. Yet all the while it’s respectful. And when O’Grady’s victims (including hoodwinked parents) detail their abuse, they do so willingly, bravely and, one hopes, cathartically – their trust in the filmmaker unmistakable.

That O’Grady served a paltry seven years for his abhorrent crimes, and that Mahoney has managed to avoid conviction, demonstrates how difficult it is to crack the Catholic ranks. Watching police interrogations in which Mahoney and other men of the cloth hide behind lawyers, it’s evident that many high-ranking Catholic officials may never be legally condemned. But it’s worth believing in heaven and hell just to imagine the sentence St. Peter will hand down when these wretches reach the Pearly gates.

Still, future damnation isn’t a substitute for action in the present. Thus, Berg’s film is a public service, forcing us to face the truth not only about O’Grady and Mahoney but religion as a whole. Watching the movie, I thought of Michael Caine’s memorable lines in The Prestige: “You’re looking for the secret,” he says, “but you won’t find it – because you want to be fooled.” Deliver Us From Evil reminds us that illusions can be dangerous.

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Addendum:
In July 2007, Cardinal Roger Mahony issued an apology after 508 victims (508!) reached a deal worth a reported $660 million. "I have come to understand far more deeply than I ever could the impact of this terrible sin and crime that has affected their lives ... I apologize to anyone who has been offended, who has been abused ... It should not have happened and should not ever happen again."

[“Queue It Up” is a series of sporadic recommendations of often overlooked movies for your Netflix queue.]

Queue It Up: The Naked Prey

One of my favorite film experiences of 2006 was Apocalypto, not always for the film itself but for the conversation it inspired. Critics loved it. Critics hated it. Often at the same time. Mel Gibson’s adrenaline-packed film was thematically inconsistent, historically inaccurate and lustfully bloody – and it came not too long after Gibson’s latest and lowest public embarrassment: his drunken anti-Semitic ranting. In sum, Apocalypto offered much to discuss. And yet the film’s biggest cinematic influence, Cornel Wilde’s The Naked Prey, was rarely mentioned beyond passing attribution – along with The Most Dangerous Game – as an ancestor on the man-hunting-man family tree. Few critics drew any deep comparisons and most didn’t seem to realize there were comparisons to be drawn. Gibson’s film, it turned out, had modeled itself after an Oscar-nominated movie that was as good as forgotten.

Why that surprised me, I’m not sure. I was lucky to know of The Naked Prey myself. I had seen the 1966 movie exactly once, as a middle schooler on a week-long visit to my uncle Ric’s in Cape Cod. We spent days doing things as a family and then at night Ric and I would hunker down to take in flicks from his VHS collection. We watched some then-recent releases ranging from The Abyss to Tremors, and we watched a lot of John Wayne (my uncle’s favorite), but we also picked through titles I would have otherwise struggled to discover: Zulu and Zulu Dawn, A Crack In The World and The Naked Prey. The latter movie fascinated me enough that my uncle created a board game modeled after its adventure in which players rolled dice to try to get from one end of the board to the other without landing on spaces that would result in a spear to the back or a snakebite to the leg or other fatal disasters. Looking back, that week (as well as others with Ric) was a huge part of my development as a movie fan, and yet I have to be careful when I mention it because people get the wrong idea if I say that as a preteen “I played The Naked Prey game with my uncle.”

But why wouldn’t they? When the average person hears The Naked Prey, they don’t hear the italics because they don’t know the movie exists. To this day, I’ve never had The Naked Prey recommended to me, nor have I ever suggested it for someone and found they’d already seen it. Other than in reviews of Apocalypto I’ve never seen The Naked Prey mentioned in print and I’ve never stumbled across it on TV. And yet TV might be responsible for the picture’s modicum of remaining recognition. Earlier this year, The Naked Prey was released on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection, and in its accompanying booklet Michael Atkinson theorizes that “probably more viewers saw the film while roving the local channels on cold Saturday afternoons during the seventies than ever saw it in a theater.” Earlier in the piece Atkinson is equally realistic about the film’s everyday anonymity: “Insofar as the movie is remembered at all, it remains the best known of Wilde’s lost filmography,” he says. Which must be the cinematic history equivalent of: “We’re lost but we’re making good time.”

I bought the Criterion release a few months ago for my birthday using, fittingly enough, a gift card from Uncle Ric. But I’d been waiting for the right rainy day to rediscover it, and I happily found that day a little over a week ago. Seeing the movie for the first time in almost 20 years I was amazed at how much of it I remembered: the Zulu tribe’s execution of one white hunter via cobra strike; the arrow fired into the distance to mark the head start provided for Wilde’s stripped-and-running character (called “Man” in the credits) before the Zulu hunters give chase; the cobra bite to the leg suffered by one of the “pursuers” that results in another tribesman attempting to suck the venom from the wound. Still, while the screenplay’s simple design – nominated for an Academy Award – cannot be forgotten, other elements of the film were like new to me.

The most thrilling (re)discovery was Wilde’s implementation of African wildlife footage. Even before “Man” goes on the run, we experience an elephant hunting expedition in which bulls stampede toward the camera before being felled by rifle shots. My first reaction was to laugh at the preposterousness of it … until I remembered that films didn’t use CGI in 1966 and that the only way to make a stampeding elephant collapse to the ground and stay there was probably to actually kill it. I have no idea if Wilde arranged a hunting expedition expressly for his film or merely tagged along with one, but there’s no doubt that such images wouldn’t fly today. Other images, however, seem right out of a National Geographic special: a lion dragging away a kill, a toad eating a smaller toad, a lizard deftly maneuvering from one branch to another. There’s even an extended clash between a baboon and a cheetah that’s no less thrilling than anything I saw on last year’s Planet Earth documentary series.

The wildlife footage isn’t there just for show. It all goes along with Wilde’s meditation on man as beast and the savagery exhibited by humankind. But it is generally striking on its own. Watching I thought, “This is Malick before Malick.” And maybe it really is. Badlands came out in 1973, to be followed by Days Of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998) and The New World (2005), and Terrence Malick’s metaphoric use of nature in those films is so similar to what’s displayed here that it’s difficult to believe he wasn’t inspired by Wilde. Was one reclusive auteur shaped by an overlooked and forgotten one? Somehow that would be fitting, though unless Malick begins to ramble about film like Martin Scorsese we’ll be able to do no more than speculate. My guess though is that Apocalypto’s release didn’t mark the first time that The Naked Prey’s influence went almost unnoticed. And with the Criterion release I’m hoping that a long lost movie will deservedly be found again by an audience.

[This “Queue It Up” post marks the first in what will be a series of sporadic recommendations for your Netflix queue.]

Still Rolling (& Rocking): Shine A Light

The Rolling Stones-Martin Scorsese rockumentary Shine A Light provides what for me were two jaw-dropping surprises. The first is that the Rolling Stones still bring it. These rockers who formed a legendary band in the 1960s and now are performing in their 60s are as good as ever, at least to my untrained ears and eyes. They are showcased here playing at Manhattan’s Beacon Theatre in the fall of 2006 as captured by what Scorsese called “the best cameramen in the world” and as edited by David Tedeschi, who worked with Scorsese on the Bob Dylan documentary No Way Home. Yet there seems to be little benefit to Scorsese’s expertise or the contributions of four Oscar-winning cinematographers (Robert The Aviator Richardson, John Braveheart Toll, Andrew Lord Of The Rings Lesnie and Robert There Will Be Blood Elswit) as well as three cinematographers waiting for their Oscar just due (Stuart The Piano Dryburgh, Emmanuel The New World Lubezki and Ellen Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind Kuras). And that’s the second surprise: Scorsese & Co. are freeloaders here.

At least that’s my view. The way I see it, you can conclude that the Rolling Stones’ musical act is as decrepit as Keith Richards’ face and thus is resurrected to Adonis-like perfection by movie magic, or you can decide, as I did, that the Stones just plain rock and that all Scorsese brought to the party were some really big cameras that made the concert’s footage fit for IMAX. I mean, really: other than injecting himself into the opening and closing of the film, what is Scorsese doing here? Bear in mind, I’m not questioning his pedigree. The guy edited Woodstock for crying out loud. But here Scorsese and his team of all-star cinematographers are a flamethrower being used to light a match. The Stones would have burned plenty fine on their own, thank you.

And they do. Though playing a slate dominated by know-‘em-by-heart hits from the 60s and 70s, the Rolling Stones aren’t remotely a shadow of glory past. They tear up the Beacon like a band ready to make it today. Sure, Richards looks like a dizzy gypsy, the skin of his face resembling wide-wale corduroy. Sure, drummer Charlie Watts looks a lot like Bob Simon, the silver-haired reporter on 60 Minutes. Sure, Ronnie Wood looks like he’s trying to cling to his youth by wearing a haircut from the 1980s. Sure, Mick Jagger looks a bit ridiculous shaking his ass at women young enough to be his granddaughters. So what? It takes all of one song to get over one’s skepticism that these guys are washed up. By two songs you’ll be fully convinced they legitimately rock. And by three songs you’ll realize that Mick Jagger is in much better shape than you are and that the Stones aren’t just one of the greatest music acts ever but one of the greatest acts on the planet right now.

But the Stones do that on their own. They don’t need Scorsese’s help. And sometimes the director is a hindrance. For starters, he’s Jagger-obsessed. Solo artists spend less time under the spotlight than Mick does here; there were moments watching Shine A Light when I thought my only hope of seeing Richards or Wood was to have Jagger walk by them. Meanwhile, Scorsese – generous in his screen time for a pair of unknown backup singers (one of them busty, no surprise) – often forgets to check in on Watts. I’d need to see the film again to be sure, but in my memory entire songs go by without a decent glimpse of the drummer, even though he’s an established figure of the band. Regardless of whatever else is going on, when Mick moves, Marty is there. And Mick moves a hell of a lot. His recognizable yet indescribable strut – something like that of an electrocuted rooster – is no less absurd than it was in the Stones’ heyday, but then it’s no more absurd either. It’s just Mick.

And, to be sure, Jagger’s passionate performing demands attention. His energy dominates the room – and that’s indeed what the Beacon feels like when hosting the Stones: a modest room. The following expressions are clichéd, but at times it’s as if the Stones really might raise the roof or blow the doors off the 2,600-seat theater. The lucky few to catch the show (Bill Clinton on his 60th birthday, pretty young blonds and, hey, is that Bruce Willis standing in front of the stage wearing a yellow cap?), witnessed the arena-packing Stones in about as intimate a venue as one could imagine. But while Scorsese and his team do well to capture the festive mood, the theater’s limited square footage might be to the film’s detriment. How else to explain why the vast majority of shots – varied by angle, though they are – capture the action from a mid-range depth that forgets the performers have legs, or even navels?

Only Jagger gets a regular full-body checkup. Richards, perplexingly, is often caught from behind, as if the chords for “Shattered” are still a tightly kept secret. If not for the guest appearances of Jack White, Buddy Guy and Christina Aguilera, plus Jagger’s occasional wardrobe changes, Shine A Light’s tableau would have grown stale in a hurry. In some ways it does anyway. And Scorsese’s use of archival interview footage – enjoyable though it is – is so fleeting that it’s inconsequential at best and a frustrating tease at worst. Shine A Light isn’t a documentary, it’s a concert caught on film, which is to say that it’s closer to a coffee table book than a biography. And that’s fine. But we didn’t need Scorsese, 16 cameras and about as many award-winning cameramen to be thrilled by the spectacle.

With strobe-lit cuts and a forced dramatic episode about the unpredictability of the show’s playlist (as if there hadn’t been rehearsals, as if there weren’t enough cameras on hand to cover just about anything), Scorsese is a director trying to justify his position at the helm of a ship that sails itself. That said, Shine A Light includes one filmmaking decision that’s absolutely brilliant: When the camera leaves Mick to find another performer, the sound level of the element in the foreground is often lifted ever so slightly so that we can appreciate its contribution to the aural mosaic. That means we get to experience Watts on the drums, or the guys in the horns section, or the busty backup singer’s pipes or even the electronic "click" of a digital camera held aloft by a fan. Impressively, the quality of the song being played is never compromised by these modest enhancements of the often overlooked. And so for that – and for a goose-bumps worthy close-up of Buddy Guy gazing into the distance – the filmmakers deserve kudos. What they don’t deserve is equal billing. Shine A Light is a Stones movie, period. Anyone who suggests otherwise needs to lay off the champagne and reefer.

Charlton Heston: 1923-2008

The obituary in the L.A. Times states that Charlton Heston’s “big break” was a 1949 role in a CBS production of Julius Caesar. That hardly comes as a surprise. Heston’s booming, emphatic acting style was perfect for stage work, even if it was stage work on TV. Throughout his entire career, in roles noble, outrageous and somewhere in between, Heston always played to the back row. He was meant for the Theatre of Dionysus but was born too late. Yesterday, Heston died at 84.

Over his career, he parted the Red Sea, he acted opposite some damn, dirty apes and he figured out what Soylent Green was made out of. But Heston’s greatest role, for which he won an Oscar (his only such nomination), came in the titular part of 1959’s Ben-Hur. As the obits note, Heston wasn’t the first choice for the role (Burt Lancaster, who certainly would have been up for the task, turned it down, as did Paul Newman and Rock Hudson). But it was Heston’s dedication to his craft that made Judah Ben-Hur so memorable and that made Ben-Hur the grand film it remains today.

Where the movie itself ranks is up for debate. For what it’s worth, Ben-Hur placed 72nd in the American Film Institute’s inaugural “100 Years…100 Movies” rankings in 1998 and fell to 100th for the 10th Anniversary re-ranking. Regardless of the results of such quasi-scientific analysis, it’s a tremendous film certainly, though at 212 minutes it has plenty of time for imperfection.

What is flawless, however, is the legendary chariot race sequence, which I believe still stands as the most remarkable achievement in cinema history. The statistics alone are impressive: an 18-acre set, thousands of extras, plus horses and stunt men and urban legends, oh my! One shudders to imagine how the same sequence would be achieved today in the digital effects era. The set would be CGI, as would be the crowd, the horses, the chariots and sometimes even the actors. Not to mention that you can bet your bottom dollar that screenwriters would find a way to work in some play-by-play commentary. Yet I challenge you to watch Ben-Hur and tell me how digital effects could enhance the existing product.

Tremendously edited, using a wide array of camera angles, the chariot race captures the enormity of its arena without losing the intimacy of Judah’s duel with Messala (Stephen Boyd). And here is where Heston’s work ethic comes in, because while stuntman Joe Canutt stood in for the actor for several portions of the race (including the famous flip over the front of the chariot), that’s Heston doing most of the riding. Heston’s athleticism in the chariot enabled Andrew Marton (credited with directing the sequence, though the film’s director was William Wyler) to get close enough to Judah to capture Heston’s expressions while still picking up the genuine racing action unfolding around him in the picture’s super-wide 2.76:1 aspect ratio.

At 6-foot-2, Heston’s physical stature made Judah Ben-Hur the heroic presence the epic demanded. Though Heston wasn’t the most unaffected of actors, his power of spirit was alluring. The Cooler pays tribute to the cinema legend with shots from the chariot race.

Big Bombs, Small Explosions (and a Loudmouth): Stop-Loss

Though never pretentious, Stop-Loss is a film that spends all its time banging on a drum of the Very Important. In 113 minutes it examines the emotional wounds of war; the physical toll of battle; the impact of wartime on a soldier’s family; the potentially detrimental long-term effects of a soldier’s complete submergence into a military identity; and, of course, the Army’s controversial “stop-loss” policy that allows for soldiers at the end of their volunteer service commitment to have their tours extended without consent. Alas, all those issues so worthy of our interest don’t make Stop-Loss an interesting movie. This second directorial effort of Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) may give us things to think about as we leave the theater, but the film itself isn’t one of them.

The movie tells the tale of Brandon King, an Army sergeant who comes home from Iraq long enough to get medals pinned on his chest and a parade thrown in his honor before being told that though he may be through with the Army, the Army ain’t through with him. Played by a typically underwhelming Ryan Phillippe, Brandon spends the rest of the movie on the run, debating whether to serve for the Army, to fight the Army in court or to flee everything he has ever known. There are other soldiers involved too: Channing Tatum’s Steve, a barrel-necked trauma victim who forgets he’s not in Iraq anymore, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tommy, an equally traumatized soldier who is constantly aware that he isn’t in Iraq anymore and drinks to numb the discomfort he feels back home.

They are Texans, or so the screenplay says, but the actors never convince us as much. Regardless of their actual birthplaces, Phillippe, Tatum and Gordon-Levitt come off as Orange County natives playing dress-up, their Texas twangs filling their mouths as uncomfortably as a kid’s first retainer, their clinched-jaw intensity matching that of an underwear model rather than that of a grunt just back from the frontlines. Phillippe, as always, puts forth sincere effort, but he gets relatively nowhere, like someone walking up the down escalator. You can tell that Phillippe wants to be thoughtful and heartfelt and soulful, and therefore I wanted him to be those things, too. Yet he never quite gets there. In scenes at a country bar and at a backwoods ranch where Brandon pals around with his buddies, Phillippe’s roughhousing, boys-will-be-boys machismo is as forced as the moment in every presidential campaign when the Democratic candidate dons blaze orange and grabs a shotgun to go hunt something.

Thankfully the movie offers us Abbie Cornish as Michelle, lifelong friend of Brandon and longtime fiancée to Chris. You can tell Michelle is a Texas girl by the way she can quickly and confidently pull an ammunition clip out of a handgun and empty the already-loaded bullet. I bet she can change a tire, too, though the screenplay never asks her to do so. In fact the movie doesn’t ask much of her at all, except to be there as someone Brandon can talk to. What a shame, because of all the roadside attractions Stop-Loss drives by in its journey down the War-is-Hell Highway, the one worth pulling off and exploring features Michelle and Brandon’s parents (the impressive though underutilized Linda Emond and Ciaran Hinds) as family members torn between their own needs and their utmost desire for the safety of their loved ones.

With its almost Gumpian meandering through the issues, Stop-Loss commits the error of trying to be about so much that it winds up being about nothing at all. Its stance against the stop-loss policy can be viewed as vehemently anti-military or anti-Bush, yet Peirce (whose brother was stop-lossed) never goes too far out on that limb without also grasping onto the pro-troops branch for support. The soldiers in Stop-Loss are all too human in everyday life, but their commitment to country is unwavering almost to a fault. Brandon stands in contrast, yet the picture makes it clear that his anger over being stop-lossed comes down to matters of principle – good old fashioned right and wrong – not his views on the war. In the case of one supporting character, severely wounded in the film’s opening and later found in a rehabilitation center, Peirce and co-writer Mark Richard manage to simultaneously speak out against government policy and gush with patriotism as the blind multi-amputee speaks of wanting to return to the battlefield, where his death would result in green cards for his Mexican parents.

Scenes like that one are capable of offending both stay-the-coursers and get-out-nowers with their blatantly manipulative atmosphere. But what’s surprising about Stop-Loss is the degree to which it fails to provoke. As someone who thought invading Iraq was a misguided idea in the first place (though I never could have imagined just how poorly things would go) and who feels that the Bush Administration has most significantly failed the very troops it accuses its opponents of dishonoring with any form of dissent, I would seem to be right in the movie’s wheelhouse. But Stop-Loss never moved me. Not once. Imbedded observer was as close as I got.

But that’s me. Meanwhile, someone else in the theater felt so close to the film that he apparently thought he was in it. We’ll call him G.I. Joe, and though he wasn’t wearing fatigues he was clearly military. Sitting with his girlfriend, surrounded by about a dozen others at an early-evening showing in our nation’s capital, he seemed intent to not only demonstrate his Army membership but to offer his full-throated endorsement of its culture (official and unofficial). In an early battle scene when a soldier breaks off from the group and gets shot as a result, G.I. Joe criticized the tactics. When soldiers sit around singing Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” G.I. Joe sang along. When rap music plays like the Iraq War’s official soundtrack, G.I. Joe bobbed his head. When soldiers on leave drink to the point of sloppy excess, he tipped back his head and laughed almost proudly, like an exuberant frat boy.

And he cried “Hooah!” A lot. G.I. Joe yelled “Hooah!” in response to the first “Hooah!” uttered on screen. Then he hooahed about anything that he could: The idea that the way to solve the Iraq War is to drop a bomb on the entire country? “Hooah!” The black ski mask that Brandon says he’s going to keep for himself rather than return to the Army? “Hooah!” The statement “Fuck the president!”? “Hooah!” The idea of a stop-lossed soldier refusing to serve by fleeing to Mexico? “Hooah!” The idea that no soldier could actually disrespect his country by fleeing to Mexico? “Hooah!” About the only thing he didn’t hooah was the scene in which Steve breaks into tears, which caused G.I. Joe to spin his sunglasses uncomfortably in his right hand until the touchy-feely moment passed.

Early in the movie I was ready to (sternly though politely) yell down the row to quiet G.I. Joe’s commentary, but at some point his reactions to the film became more interesting than my own. That said, I don’t pretend to know what his commentating signified, nor would I make the mistake of thinking that one conflicted soldier’s actions speak for his peers. Did G.I. Joe serve in Iraq? Has he been stateside this entire time? I have no idea. But it’s clear that he wanted everyone in the theater to know he was an Army man, and his date seemed entirely unfazed by his demonstrations, as if they were commonplace. Did G.I. Joe identify with this film? Is it possible that Stop-Loss seems to be skin deep because the topic is still so familiar that even perceptive observations come off as pedestrian? Maybe.

Produced by MTV Films, Stop-Loss indeed feels more Varsity Blues than Born On The Fourth Of July, but perhaps I’m not giving it enough credit. Or perhaps I’m giving it too much. As people filed out of the theater, G.I. Joe walked past me and I considered asking him his story. But as I contemplated how to begin the conversation he muttered something under his breath and shook his head in frustration. It was a gesture that fit both the film’s themes and its execution of them, and so I left it at that. And then I left the theater wishing that Stop-Loss had given me something to shake my head about, beyond the inconsiderate behavior of one guy in the audience.

Sucky By Any Name (Especially So By This One)

Got myself back to the theater tonight by squeezing in a showing of Stop-Loss, which I’ll review later in the week. I was planning on arriving at the theater just before the opening credits. Instead, I got there in time for the full slate of previews. Damn promptness! If I could manage to be a little more nonchalant I would have saved myself the agony of watching the trailer for an upcoming film starring your favorite Oscar winner and mine: Nicolas Cage.

I needn’t say it here, but the movie failed to entice me. Fucking brutal were words that came to mind, and that was just the experience of enduring the trailer. Cage, wearing a long hairstyle that only accentuates the massiveness of his forehead, apparently plays a gunman for hire who gets pissed off over a shady business deal and goes on a rampage in some Asian country or another. Truth is, I did my best to keep from paying attention. Cage’s goofy hairstyle sure helped.

Still, I was attentive enough to catch the title of the film at trailer’s end: Bangkok Dangerous. Seriously! I’ve done a little Googling and it seems that this is an American knockoff of a 2001 Thai film, so I’m guessing the title is a literal translation. Too bad, because it sounds like a bad porn name, more specifically like an action hero played by Dirk Diggler. Or, maybe more accurately, it’s the character Will Ferrell would play if allowed to take his Ron Burgundy/Ricky Bobby/Jackie Moon act to the world of adult film: “Hello, I’m Bangkok Dangerous.”

But here’s the thing: it turns out that the movie’s title and the casting of Cage in yet another a leading role are not the most curious decisions related to this project. No, what’s downright preposterous is this: the 2001 film upon which the movie is based might not be very good. Over at Metacritic the original Bangkok Dangerous pulled a score of 45 (out of 100). That would put it behind movies like Beowulf (59) and Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (48). But, hey, the new film has Nicolas Cage in an unforgivable hairdo! How could it fail?

So I offer this post as a public service announcement, but also to ask: What are some of your favorite awful movie titles? The invention of those computerized ticket kiosks has created a less embarrassing alternative, but has there ever been a movie you skipped at the theater simply because you were too proud to say its title out loud at the ticket booth?