Rock of Ages (2012)

Directed by: Adam Shankman (I saw Bringing Down the House once)

Written by: Chris D’Arienzo, Allan Loeb and inexplicably Justin Theroux, based off of D’Arienzo’s musical of the same name

Starring: Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Paul Giamatti, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bryan Cranston, Malin Åkerman and Tom Cruise, with a number of cameo appearances as well.

What it’s about: a small town girl moves to Los Angeles to become a famous singer or some shit

B-Movie Alternate Title: ugh I can’t even sum up the creative juices to come up with one for this horrid piece of garbage.

Movie Mash Up: Empire Records + Footloose + Chicago + Detroit Rock City churned in a “Glee” blender

What I liked: Absolutely nothing.  Literally five minutes into it I Tweeted that it was already horrible.

What I disliked: EVERYTHING.  It is a terrible movie, not just because it’s a musical (I am not prejudiced against musicals) but because it is one of the worst-written, cheesily-acted movies that has come out in a long time.  I was embarrassed for actors like Giamatti and Bryan Cranston being in this film.  I have no idea what the target demographic for this film was, because everyone that enjoyed Cruise’s extended cameo performance in Tropic Thunder were not going to be interested in seeing him as an aging rock god.  It might have been extremely faithful to the source material but I don’t give a damn because sometimes musicals are impossible to adapt to the screen without seeming terrible.  Like Phantom of the Opera in 2004, it was a painful exercise in futility.  Movies like this make me wish I could get black-out drunk and forget I ever saw it.  Horrible.

Would I recommend it to anyone?: Did you read what I just wrote?  No one deserves the pain of sitting through this.  Terrible, atrocious movie with crap performances and lines that would embarrass a 5-year-old to have to deliver.

Rating: 0 / 5

The Departed (2006)

Here’s something I wrote in the Long Ago about The Departed, and after re-watching it, it is still how I feel.

With five Oscar nominations heading into tomorrow night’s Academy Awards ceremony, The Departed certainly has developed the reputation of an excellent movie. I was somewhat leery about watching it, worried that it would be another in a long line of Best Picture nominees that were clearly well-made, well-acted movies but were only borderline entertaining. Add in that it was a Martin Scorsese-directed film and I was even more worried that I wouldn’t like it since I’m not the biggest fan of Scorsese’s most popular movies. Thankfully all that worrying was for naught as Scorsese has finally made a movie that is an entertaining – albeit derivative – movie.

Actually, saying that’s derivative is pretty redundant as The Departed is a remake of Infernal Affairs, a Japanese movie released in 2002. Unlike the recent Americanization of Japanese movies (The Ring, The Grudge) it has nothing to do with creepy off-putting children scaring the bejezus out of you. Departed just has Jack Nicholson doing his best Tony Montana-descent into madness performance, with a stellar supporting cast grounding the movie in the wonderful cinematic environment of Boston.

It’s the tale of two cops, with Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) infilitrating the Boston police force on behalf of crime boss Frank Costello (Nicholson) and the other, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) going the other way and immersing himself into Costello’s gang. The story takes place over a few years, but thankfully it doesn’t feel like your typical epic Scorsese movie, time is actually heavily compressed in this movie. Sullivan’s on the inside helping Costello keep a half-step ahead of the Boston cops, while Costigan sacrifices his identity for the Special Investigations department, headed up by the fatherly Olvier Queenan (Martin Sheen) and the foul-mouthed Dignam (Mark Wahlberg).

It’s an intriguing story made all the better by the excellent performances of the entire cast. I’ve never been a Mark Wahlberg fan, but I’d definitely be casting my vote for him to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar this year and those are words that it kills me to type. The most enjoyable performance for me personally was Alec Baldwin, probably his best small part performance since Glengarry Glen Ross. I still have no idea how Matt Damon wasn’t nominated for his role, other than maybe DiCaprio’s performance split the vote but DiCaprio was nominated for his part in Blood Diamond so it beats the hell out of me.

The only two problems I had with the movie are spoilerish in nature, but definitely made the movie feel cartoony with one of the major characters semi-goofy – but heart-wrenching – death as well as the last shot of the movie. Those two sections definitely lend credence to Scorsese personally referring to The Departed as his “B-movie”, but it’s still one of the worthier Best Picture-nominated movies in recent years. It’s entertaining, delivers an engaging story with electric performances and it’s one of those movies that you could see yourself re-watching over and over again.

4.5 / 5

The Last Play at Shea (2010)

For some reason, even though I cannot stand watching baseball, baseball-themed movies are always high quality and interesting to me.  It’s the absolute opposite of hockey, as I love the sport and love watching games, but 99% of hockey movies just don’t get it or boil it down to the lowest common denominator of goonism.  The Last Play at Shea attracted my attention because I thought at first it was going to be a baseball doc, and I like documentaries greatly so I was intrigued (I don’t think I like baseball and docs enough to watch Ken Burns’ Baseball though).  Turns out, it’s about the last concert ever performed at the legendary Shea Stadium.

The performer of that concert was Billy Joel, and the movie plays out almost as two docs, with events in the lives of Shea Stadium (I know it is not a living thing) and Joel being shown simultaneously er, well, one after the other.  It’s not a split-screen thing.  Interspersed with that is wonderful historical footage narrated by Alec Baldwin, with interesting factoids throughout.  It’s a pretty powerful and emotional journey, I mean the building was around for 40+ years.  Stuff happened there.

Solid doc, probably all the more enjoyable if you’re a big Billy Joel fan, as in ways it is also a live concert movie.

4 / 5

Teenage Paparazzo (2010)

I had resisted watching this movie for so long, mostly because of my preconceived notions of what / who Adrian Grenier was / is / portrayed as.  I have watched probably five minutes of “Entourage” in my entire life, and I was not impressed at all by it.  Why would I devote time to watching a TV show that basically amounted to coming across as douchbaggy as possible?  No interest in that at all.

So when I saw Teenage Paparazzo come out, saw it was directed by Grenier, no matter that the subject matter (a 13-year-old is a paparazzi) seemed somewhat interesting to me, I had no desire to immerse myself in an hour and a half of Grenier.  Much like my resistance to watching the Fast & Furious movies, this was a mistake, as Grenier actually crafted an intriguing doc on many perspectives surrounding the lives of celebrities and the people that make a living off of their images / mistakes.

Yes, the focus of the movie for the most part is on Austin Visschedyk, the titular teenage paparazzo.  Thankfully he’s interesting and goes through his own little life crisis through the movie, watching his own fame kinda explode and then regretting it.  But Grenier also initiates a few social experiments of his own, creating a decent commentary on the celebrity-news-culture that encompasses our world nowadays.  It’s not a world-changing doc for regular people, but for Austin it certainly was.

3.5 / 5