Jonah Hex

OPENING: 06/18/2010

STUDIO: Warner Bros.

RUN TIME: 80 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Revenge gets ugly.

Opening Statement
Oh, man. Here I was, fairly certain that The A-Team was the low point of the summer movie season, and along comes Jonah Hex to blast my theory to hell.

Facts of the Case
Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin, No Country for Old Men) is a former confederate soldier turned bounty hunter. His never-ending supply of high-tech weaponry and his abilities to communicate with the dead give him a considerable advantage over the competition; anyone who challenges Hex isn’t likely to be alive very long. These days, Hex has revenge on his mind. His family was murdered by the evil Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich, In the Line of Fire) years ago, and Hex has determined to go on a warpath of violence until Turnbull is dead. His mission is not only of personal importance, though. It seems that Turnbull has gotten his hands on a “nation-killing” device of sorts, and unless Hex can find him quickly, endless American lives are going to be lost.

The Evidence
That’s the basic narrative framework for Jonah Hex, an 82-minute disaster so bad that it just about has to be seen to be believed. How could things have gone this badly? I expect there’s an interesting story to be told about the trials and tribulations of putting this film together, as Jonah Hex appears to be the victim of terrible decision-making and brutal post-production tampering. There were reports of re-shoots, violence was cut out to get the rating down to PG-13, director changes, loads of script revisions, soundtrack issues and much more. Good films have occasionally been forged from troubled productions (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford comes to mind), but this is not one of those rare instances. Every problem is painfully evident on the screen, as the film serves less as a motion picture than as a reminder of just what can happen when a lot of second-guessing takes place.

The character of Jonah Hex was created for DC Comics in the 1970s as a reaction to the popularity of the sort of anti-hero western that made Clint Eastwood a star. Hex was essentially an Eastwood imitation; a quiet, gritty, mean fellow who had a tiny sliver of tenderness hiding beneath that rugged exterior. In recent years, the character has been thriving in an exceptionally involving and well-crafted comic book series written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, which delivers effectively bitter little western tales on a regular basis. Adapting any of their stories would have been a better choice than the one the filmmakers made, which was to add a bunch of new elements to the character and place him in a cinematic world that essentially attempts to fuse together elements of Wild Wild West, the James Bond franchise, Pushing Daisies and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

That may sound nifty on paper, but it leads to a disjointed experience that suffers from endless dramatic tonal shifts. One moment the film is an old-fashioned western, the next it’s an outlandish science fiction film. One moment the film is a gruff revenge thriller, the next it’s a jokey slice of camp. You get the idea. Why bother even adopting the Jonah Hex name-brand (he’s certainly not one of the more popular comic book characters) if you’re not even going to make a half-hearted attempt at staying true to what that character is all about? This would have been a forgivable sin if the film had offered something interesting on its own terms, but every “original” idea the filmmakers bring to the table belly flops. Some suggested upon seeing the trailer that Jonah Hex looked like another Wild Wild West. Regrettably, Jonah Hex makes Wild Wild West look like Casablanca.

The thing that makes Jonah Hex particularly frustrating is that it feels like once upon a time, there might have been a halfway-decent film sitting there in the editing room, just waiting to be pieced together. The whole thing has that suspicious “edited for television” feel, with climactic moments snipped out of action scenes and what appear to be the barely-recognizable remains of numerous subplots. For instance, the talented Michael Shannon is giving prominent billing, yet he’s only onscreen for about five seconds (and I only spotted him because I was looking for him). He’s onhand at an illegal fight between a big tough guy and a man who seems to have the ability to attack his opponents with snake venom. We don’t ever learn anything else about the snake guy, either. Stuff like that can be found everywhere. The soundtrack is an unholy mess, with heavy metal selections by Mastadon existing uncomfortably alongside various bits and pieces penned by Marco Beltrami and John Powell.

Truth be told, Josh Brolin is actually pretty good in the title role, convincingly grimacing his way through his scenes and delivering terse one-liners in an entertaining fashion. This is a character who deserves to headline his own movie, to be sure. It’s just that the film that surrounds Brolin is so aggressively bad; it just about kills any sense of goodwill his strong work brings to the proceedings. This is partially due to the fact that the action scenes have a tendency to drown him out (there are moments when you can barely hear what Brolin is saying because the music is cranked up so loud). Megan Fox isn’t onscreen much in her role as a prostitute with a soft spot for Hex, and she doesn’t do much of interest in the role. The supporting cast is quite impressive, and the movie astonishingly finds a way to waste everybody: Will Arnett, Aidan Quinn, Michael Fassbender, Lance Reddick, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Wes Bentley… not to mention the curiously absent Mr. Shannon.

Closing Statement
The film is so incompetent and misguided that one almost starts to pity it after a while in the same way that one might pity a wounded animal. It’s obvious that a lot of people were trying to make a movie that was cool and interesting once upon a time. Alas, after all the post-production drama, what’s left on the screen is nothing short of an atrocity.

The Verdict
1/10

Jennifer’s Body

OPENING: 09/18/2009

STUDIO: Fox

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
She’s evil… and not just high school evil.

Opening Statement
A genre mix-up from the 1980s, Jennifer’s Body is fun by way of homage, evoking pleasant memories of Carrie and quirky John Hughes teen drama films. Problem is, I never met anyone who actually wanted to see Sam from The Breakfast Club turn into a flesh-eating demon and murder her high school. It is the kind of idea that sounds marvelous on paper, discussed animated over a few beers, but feels ill-conceived and confusing the next day while hung over.

Facts of the Case
For awkward teen Needy (Amanda Seyfried) high school life is a complicated affair. Her best friend from childhood, Jennifer (Megan Fox) is the prettiest cheerleader in the school who terrorizes the boys and gets all the attention. It gets more complicated when Jennifer drags her out to a local bar to see a band from the big city, and vanishes into the back of their van with handsome singer Nikolai (Adam Brody). When Jennifer returns, she is covered in blood and howling in a decisively demonic fashion. Needy watches in horror as Jennifer acts normal on the surface, but begins picking off the male population one at a time. Needy tries to convince the school that Jennifer is evil (not just high school evil) but no one believes her. But when Jennifer sets her eyes on Needy’s boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons), all bets are off. Best friends forever doesn’t extend to demonic activities, and Needy is about to redefine their relationship.

The Evidence
In Jennifer’s Body, a teenage girl turns into a flesh eating demon and goes preying on dumb, hormonal teenage boys, eating their entrails and tearing them from limb to limb. If ever there was a metaphor for the collective high school experience, this is it. One wonders why no one has thought to make a serious go at combining the awkward teen comedy genre into the glorious excesses of the horror film circa 1980s. They pair well together. Sommeliers everywhere would be proud. Oh sure, horror films are usually about high school students, and teenage hormones are definitely a factor, but these plot elements are mere delivery devices to set up the next homicidal slaying, not to actually develop a character base. In classic horror, once the girl takes off her shirt, her role in the film has ended, usually by machete. Not so in Jennifer’s Body where the women hold all the cards, have all the power, do all the butt-kicking and end up murdering the boys.

And leave it to Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody to turn the brain-dead horror film into a teenage comedy worthy of introspection and pop culture irony. Imagine Juno, but instead of a teenage knocked-up girl, she was a demon that murdered and ate you. All the snappy dialogue, the witty repartee, the sassy pulp culture references remain intact, and you either love her style or hate it. No loosely scripted horror film, this; Jennifer’s Body is a fully-functioning film full of character development, romantic entanglement and cathartic drama. The most satisfying moments are the same in which Juno found its success: the tender yet awkward courting and mating of teenage lovers, the embarrassingly awkward fashions, the well-meaning but totally lame parents. In many ways, Jennifer’s Body runs on the same fuel that drove the career of John Hughes for the better part of a decade. It just makes pit stops regularly to murder people in orgiastic fashion.

When you consider the previous work of director Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Æon Flux) her attraction to this screenplay is immediately evident: she likes to make strong films about strong women kicking butt. One can definitely view Jennifer’s Body through empowered eyes; the film glows with the gleeful power of the women in control of her own horror film destiny, with two “BFF”s battling tooth and nail over their boys, rather than being consistently on the run. In this film, men are weak and childlike, hormonal and sex-obsessed, easily lead astray and muted like cattle, happy to wait like slobbering fools for Megan Fox to take off her top and eat their spine. They are brainless jocks and whiny emo boys. The girls, on the other hand, rock. It is a refreshing twist, and nice to see a bit of gender reversal in the horror film genre. Well, horror-ish. Jennifer’s Body isn’t really a gore-fest of terror; it’s too hip and cool and sassy to actually terrify its audiences. People looking for genuine thrills should check their expectation levels at the door, as most of the violence hovers at a PG-13 level. The film scores its points in the irony department only.

Megan Fox is perfect in the role as the slutty teen-turned-demon, maybe a little too perfect. Having seen her in real life at the screening, I can attest that she is the living embodiment of a sex demon, one of those alarmingly attractive people able to make people dizzy and fall down. Having her play the role of a sex demon on film is sheer excess, like cutting off the arm of a patient to treat a hangnail. Sticking her in short skirts, low-cut shirts and big shiny red lips is like overkill to the atomic bomb degree. As for her acting, one never actually sees her do much of that in the film. Much more surprising and impressive is the performance of Amanda Seyfried, the main character in the film, although you wouldn’t know it from all the advertising laden with the scantily-clad Fox. Seyfried is cute and charming, dorky and endearing, beautiful and awkward, essentially the perfect casting for a teenage girl. She brings life to the role far beyond the expectation of any horror film, and makes it easy for audiences to sympathize with all her problems, social and demonic alike.

As a tongue-in-cheek girl answer to the horror genre, Jennifer’s Body entertains with some decent laughs, but the film struggles with its own burden of being hip and clever and edgy at all times. Having borrowed heavily from at least three movie genres, the film feels like a deck with too many playing cards in it, a random shuffling of too many approaches to the same film. Is this a comedy? A teen drama? A horror film? An exercise in verbiage from Diablo Cody? There are some genuine harmonious moments where the stars align and everything just feels perfect—the ridiculous emo band parody with Adam Brody as a struggling musician-turned-Satanist, the burning down of the local bar and the surreal small-town reaction (“very”, as they say in Heathers), but there are many more moments that just feel like square pegs in round holes. Cody’s script is a love-it-or-hate-it affair, and you either adore her clever wordplay and sassy one-liners, or you loathe them within an inch of your life. To be fair, Jennifer’s Body will give audiences numerous opportunities to experience both sides of that particular coin.

Closing Statement
A mash-up of iconic horror and teenage romance films set to march at a clipping pace by the rapid-fire pop culture verbosity of screenwriter Diablo Cody’s screenplay, Jennifer’s Body is cinematic recycling at its most calculated. It feels like a concerted effort to be “the next cool film”, the new Heathers, the new Carrie, the new sensational pop culture film, and covers its bets like penny chips at a roulette table.

When taken individually, all the elements are well-executed—the horror is squeamishly fun, the teenage romance is heartfelt and believable, and Cody’s dialogue is as witty and clever as one expects. These disparate elements in of themselves are enjoyable, but the film tries excessively hard to equally represent all three genres simultaneously. Try going to the theater and having the screen spit into threes, with three separate movies playing side-by-side, constantly overlapping and self-referencing. It gets messy, and keeping the concentration up can be challenging.

The Verdict
Cute, but way too schizophrenic . But that’s high school girls for you.

7/10

Ahoy, film festival readers! We represented last night at the premiere of Jennifer’s Body and managed to take some very poor photographs we felt like sharing with you all. Please do forgive the photogenic quality here–you couldn’t get within sixty feet of Megan Fox last night without being permanently blinded by a barrage of flashes. It was like a wall of white. My poor camera simply couldn’t cope.

But hey, photos are photos! More photos after the break to feast upon.

Director Karyn Kusama, producer Jason Reitman

Producer Jason Reitman, writer Diablo Cody

Actors Johnny Simmons and Adam Brody

Actors Adam Brody and Amanda Seyfried

Actors Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox

Actors Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox

And yes, in person? Very pretty. Especially Jason. < rawr >

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

OPENING: 10/03/2008

STUDIO: MGM

TRAILER: Trailer

ACCOMPLICES: Official Site

The Charge
Brace yourselves, America.

Opening Statement
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is based on the life of Toby Jones, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine who did indeed lose a lot of friends and alienate a lot of people. For all of Jones’ faults, at least he was honest enough about himself to write a very unflattering autobiography of sorts. The film is a little kinder to Jones than the book was, largely because the role of Jones is played by Simon Pegg, an actor who is rather difficult to dislike completely. This creates a lead character that is more appealing than he might have been, but perhaps that reward is earned at the expense of the film as a whole.

Facts of the Case
Here, Pegg’s character goes by the name of “Sydney Jones,” and he goes to work for a magazine that is essentially Vanity Fair in all but name. The magazine is run by a fellow played by Jeff Bridges, who is one of the few actors who can seem both irritated and relaxed at the same time. Bridges hires Jones on something of a whim, admiring the fearlessly rude work Jones has been doing on a much smaller magazine. Unfortunately, Jones may be more trouble than anyone bargained for. He behaves badly, doesn’t play well with others, and hires a transvestite stripper to pay a visit to the office on “bring your daughter to work day”.

Jones yearns to write the kind of ruthless material he built his unsavory reputation on, but he keeps running into brick walls while working for this high-profile company. Either he isn’t allowed to trash someone for fear of upsetting a powerful publicist (Gillian Anderson) or his articles aren’t printed because the editor is unhappy with his sloppy writing. He’s also being treated quite badly by his direct superior (Danny Huston), who doesn’t seem to want Sydney to make any progress. Sydney finds himself in a couple of romantic difficulties, too. He pines after his co-worker (Kirsten Dunst) who just so happens to be dating Huston, and he lusts after a movie star (Megan Fox) who will remain unattainable unless he writes a flattering puff piece about her. Oh, what is a fearless journalist/unpleasant person to do?

The Evidence
The film succeeds early on, thanks to some genuinely witty dialogue and some very enjoyable performances. Pegg is genuinely entertaining in his self-absorbed role, and he is surrounded by a strong supporting cast. Danny Huston has never seemed more like his father than in this film (which should tell you everything you need to know about his character and his performance), and Jeff Bridges has a way of making even the most inconsequential scene memorable. Kirsten Dunst is much better than usual, and Megan Fox shows a sense of comedic talent that she was not permitted to display in Transformers. Unfortunately, the fun stops all too quickly. I was quite disheartened to discover that the formulaic plot elements taking Jones on his obligatory dramatic arc of redemption had taken over by the halfway point. After the first forty-five minutes or so, the film becomes quite predictable and only occasionally enjoyable. We aren’t given quite enough entertainment to make the banal padding worthwhile. At least the recent Ghost Town spent a solid 70% of its running time making us laugh before it turned to familiar mush.

To make matters worse, some of the comedic scenes here are obnoxiously broad and unfunny. One of these scenes involves a pig. Another one involves a puppy. Yet another involves a bag of cocaine. Each of these scenes feels like they belong in another movie, perhaps an R-rated version of College Road Trip. In many ways, the film reminded me of The Devil Wears Prada, another modestly entertaining film that spent too much of it’s running time either tossing out poorly-conceived gags or unconvincing sermons.

Closing Statement
Perhaps I’m making How to Lose Friends & Alienate People sound a bit worse than it actually is. The weak elements here only seem so disappointing because the film actually demonstrates that it could have been something smart and satisfying. If you watch the film you will find some small pleasures and some big laughs here and there, but not quite enough to make you feel like your hard-earned ten bucks has been well-spent.

The Verdict

6/10