Random thoughts - movies of 2008 edition.

- The House Bunny was a charming movie (with my favorite poster of the year), but it managed to make a critic's ten worst list. (What, did Kirsten Smith and Karen Lutz refuse to blow you after a screening of Legally Blonde or something? Grow up!).

- The fat dude in Sex Drive was a straight-up pimp. Seriously, what the hell?

- Also, is it just me, or was Sex Drive overstuffed with too many ridiculous jokes which came out of freakin' nowhere (once you see the addition to the donut suit toward the beginning, you will never forget it)?

- One last Sex Drive note: Ian's little brother, who seems to disappear after the first couple reels, looked just like a young Clint Howard. Watch the scene where he smiles. It's uncanny.

- A review of Burn After Reading in my alma mater’s magazine summed it up pretty well: "These characters are...funny. Unfortunately, when [the] characters are required to be something other than funny, the grotesque and exaggerated portrayals are jarring." What’s more, the deaths of the only likable characters left a bad taste in my mouth (and be advised that I’m no Coen newbie. Having seen Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, The Ladykillers and No Country for Old Men, I knew what I was getting into, but still...).

- What the fudge was up with the second half of Hancock?

- The barely-released comedy The Promotion had been getting some bad buzz online. It's not one of those movies where I think, 'How could people hate this? People are morons!' (you know, like Speed Racer). I could, sort of, understand how people would dislike this. If they've never worked a job like this, of course, people would have an adverse reaction. In spite of a poorly-edited trailer, it's an entertaining, if minor, film. There were moments - perhaps, too many - that felt uncomfortably real to me. (In one of those coincidences usually reserved for fiction, I saw it only days before seeing another film that detailed a 'Kafkaesque work nightmare': Wanted.)

- I saw Step Brothers...unfortunately. The premise was pretty good, but I just couldn’t get into it. Dale and Brennan’s antics grew increasingly irritating and the addition of the obnoxious brother and his psycho hose beast wife only made things worse. Is it too much to ask that characters in comedies be likable?

- Surprisingly, no matter where you turned, there was some collective of pinheads crying 'rip-off!' on something: WALL-E stole the design from Johnny Five! Yes Man is a rip-off of Liar Liar! Nothing Like the Holidays is just a Latino Family Stone! Seriously, did thinking for oneself collapse along with the Twin Towers?

Goggle eyes and treads were bound to surface in another robotic character. This is, I must say, a rather sad exhibition of sour grapes...or maybe, the whole 'fat people on a spaceship' segment turned people off. In any event, it was nice to see Short Circuit brought back into the public consciousness. In Liar Liar, Jim Carrey couldn’t lie because of a magic spell. In Yes Man, Jim Carrey could say no, but chose not to. The trailers for Yes Man made it look rather conflict-free, but the film, though ultimately lesser Carrey, played better than Liar Liar’s trite and schmaltzy 'family-comes-first' subtext. Having seen Nothing Like the Holidays, I can honestly say that, even at their worst, none of the characters were anywhere near as punchable as Rachel McAdams’ character in Family Stone. (I purposely omitted Made of Honor and its striking resemblance to My Best Friend’s Wedding. Seriously, it’s like they were separated at birth.)

- I saw The Dark Knight in a packed theater this summer (I know; who didn’t, right?) and found it to be well-made in most respects (So what if the post is outdated?! It makes me happy.), but also, rather dark and pretty joyless. Yet, people consider it one of the best movies of the year. I don’t know about everyone else, but I go to the movies to enjoy myself; to have a good time. My enjoyment of The Dark Knight (besides Heath Ledger, who, like Hedley Lamarr before him, is risking an almost-certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor) came from the apparently whimsical spirit of the casting director (That mob boss...it’s Spawn! Holy shit! Farmer Ted as the reporter! Batmanuel is the commissioner?! Whoa! Deebo threw away the detonator!).

In fact, for a while, it was considered the best movie ever made, according to the IMDb, and what is the IMDb but a large proliferation of film geeks? It was a pretty good movie that, as far as I’m concerned, buckled under the weight of its own hype...but those film geeks I mentioned? They’ll fight tooth and nail to uphold the film’s near-mythic status. [I get the sense, especially in visiting Ain’t It Cool News, that when the subject of The Dark Knight comes up and you’re not on your knees - eyes closed, mouth open, gag reflex disabled - ready to pay tribute, you’re some kind of Communist. It doesn’t seem right.]

The last thing geeks want to be considered, in real life or online, is uncool, so they apparently established a rule for film in 2008: to not consider The Dark Knight one of the best movies of the year is to be uncool.* Jim Emerson made a similar point. (Rule of thumb: someone who doesn’t care about being cool is much cooler than someone who tries like hell to be cool.) Time Magazine’s Richard Corliss, God bless him, opted not to place the film on his ten best list. He’s cool in my book. Even factoring in the fact that he rated Transformers higher than Speed Racer in his latest Movie and Video Guide, Leonard Maltin is kinda cool for not slobbering over the film.

* - One can just imagine the inner thoughts of some of the people who put The Dark Knight on their top ten list: Oh, man. Everyone’s putting The Dark Knight on their best of the year list. I liked the film, but not enough to put it on my top ten list. What do you mean, if I don’t put Dark Knight on my top ten list, I won’t be considered cool? I’m cool! I’m cool! I’M COOL!!!!!!!

- I'm going execution-style on my credibility with this statement, but I really don't care. This ties right into what I said about thinking for oneself, and, even for the internet, there's a shocking dearth of it. Here it is: I liked The Spirit. To be more accurate, I was entertained by it. Let me be clear: in spite of what I may post here, I'm somewhat discerning when it comes to movies. I don't blindly plunk down hard-earned cash for every Bride Wars that gets passed into theaters ($21 million opening and people are starving overseas? What...the...fuck?!). I expect to enjoy what I spend money on.

It had a shaky start with Our Hero (Gabriel Macht) conversing on a rooftop with a cat, but once The Octopus (a scene-swallowing Samuel L. Jackson) came on and raved about not wanting egg on his face, I was totally digging the film's vibe. It may be hard for others to do since the film can't decide on a tone. It seems that Frank Miller wanted to make two films, one a somewhat serious romantic drama and the other a ridiculous, glorious tribute to camp, but he couldn't pick which one he liked better and handed it to the editors, telling them, 'You figure it out. I'm going for a smoke.'

If I could make a comparison, it's this generation's Hudson Hawk, the difference being that The Spirit, in spite of its copious silliness, only occasionally realizes how silly it is, whereas every other scene in Hawk knew that and just went, 'To hell with it. We're having fun.' It's a guilty pleasure. If only the majority of film fans remembered what that expression meant.