A Maniac in a Fartmobile: Reflections on Arnold, January Movies, and Metallica

Look, I know, it’s January. Reviewing a movie released in January is like trying to write a restaurant review about a package of Skittles. January is the Spanx under which movie studios hide their most embarrassing, flabby attempts at profit. You might as well have to sign a terms and conditions agreement on the way in, promising not to expect much or think about the film beyond something to occasionally grunt at while you hork down a paint bucket of cola. But fine, I like dumb things. Pass me the tack hammer and hit me with your finest catchphrase.

Lionsgate did their best to build buzz around The Last Stand like it was a real movie, hiring culty Korean director Kim Jee-woon (The Good, the Bad, the Weird) and sending Arnold Schwarzenegger on a goodwill tour that included a Reddit AMA and tank rides for Los Angeles film writers at a junket-carnival. But nothing Lionsgate can do will paper over the giant flashing light that says “PAYCHECK! PAYCHECK! PAYCHECK!” once the movie begins. The Last Stand plays like a commercial for a videogame meets a commercial for a car meets a trailer for “Arnold Schwarzenegger: Movie Star.” It’s both too dumb and not dumb enough.

[Read the rest at the Portland Mercury]

In my award-winning Fall Movie Guide (2012 Botswana Village Journal’s Best English Blog Film Preview of September), I mentioned that I’ve got this funny, awful feeling in my gut that Patton Oswalt’s latest comedy, Nature Calls, might be a letdown. Yesterday, though, the red band trailer hit Yahoo! and now I can confidently say that this film looks… like it has a lot of curse words and yelling.

Also starring Johnny Knoxville, the late Patrice O’Neal and Rob Riggle, Nature Calls has been billed as Meatballs meats the Boy Scouts, as Oswalt plays a Scout leader clinging to his troop’s last few members, while his cooler brother (Knoxville) keeps stealing kids away with his video games and ice cream. Ultimately, it looks like a much louder version of that Saved by the Bell episode when Mr. Belding’s brother showed up and convinced Zack and the gang to bail on their senior trip in favor of white water rafting.

But, again, louder. So much louder.

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Today we have the trailer for The Last Stand, Korean director Kim Jee-woon’s US directorial debut starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, co-starring Johnny Knoxville, FilmDrunk BFF Jaimie Alexander, and Karl Hungus (Peter Stormare). The best part? I was able to obtain Arnold Schwarzenegger’s exclusive future DVD commentary.

Da screen. It’s green. Vhy is da screen green? Oh, it’s stahting. Okay, now heah you see da poleez men, dey ah blocking da road. Da Poleezman ah blocking da road because da criminal is coming, and da poleezmen, dey don’t want da criminal to get out becuss den dey will get avay. Okay, so now ve see da criminals, and da are carrying da guns, becuss dey want to break trough da barricade dat da poleez haff made. Dey don’t want da poleez men to catch dem, and dey ah breenging gunz becuss dey want to shoot da poleezmen and make dem moof out uf da way so zat dey can break trough it ant get away from dem. Oh, dey ah also vearing masks so dat da poleez men cannot see deir face. …Okay now dey ah shooting. Ouch! …I like da way dey broke trough dem there.

Okay, now heah I am een da dinah, becauz I am retiyahd, and I am telling da man ‘should be a qufiet zeekend,’ because I am retiyahd and dat’s vhat I am expecting da veekend to be like. And heah is me answering da phone. ‘Deah is a situasin,’ he is saying. …And heah I am drifing. I am drifing da… da.. vhat is it called? Da coahvette! Yes. I am drifing da coahvette ant it is spinning… And heah I am, I am gifing my badge to da man. I gif my badge to da man becuss I am about to do somesing crazy. …”Old,” ha ha, dat is funny. An da people ah looking at me like “Who eez dis guy?”

And heah I jump off da beelding. I am jumping off da beelding but I use da bad guy for da cooshin. Ow! And heah I am shooting… Pretty much da whole rest of dis I am shooting.

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After a seven-year hiatus (not counting his Expendables cameo) that saw him govern a state, and fill all his maids full of jizz (ALL ZA TIME I AM CUMMING!), Arnold Schwarzenegger is back doing movies. This morning he tweeted this picture from the set of Kim Jee-Woon‘s The Last Stand. From left, that’s Luis Guzmán (one of my favorite character actors of all time), Johnny Knoxville, the Austrian Oak himself, and FilmDrunk Fan Club President Jaimie Alexander (lookin’ good, miss lady!). I like to imagine Luis Guzmán keeps pronouncing her name “High-may.”

Schwarzenegger stars as Sheriff Owens, a man who has resigned himself to a life of fighting what little crime takes place in sleepy border town Sommerton Junction after leaving his LAPD post following a bungled operation that left him wracked with failure and defeat after his partner was crippled. After a spectacular escape from an FBI prisoner convoy, the most notorious, wanted drug kingpin in the hemisphere is hurtling toward the border at 200 mph in a specially outfitted car with a hostage and a fierce army of gang members. He is headed, it turns out, straight for Summerton Junction, where the whole of the U.S. law enforcement will have their last opportunity to make a stand and intercept him before he slips across the border forever. At first reluctant to become involved, and then counted out because of the perceived ineptitude of his small town force, Owens ultimately accepts responsibility for one of the most daring face offs in cinema history. [ComingSoon]

Resigned former cop… escaped drug kingpin… Wait, is the hostage Arnold’s niece, daughter, or wife? I think the stakes would be higher if it was someone with whom he used to eat ice cream and feed deer in the forest. Communicated in flashback, of course. And also, if Jason Statham could be the drug kingpin, and the “specially outfitted car” a flash sazz wagon, this would combine literally everything that I like.

Patton Oswalt and Johnny Knoxville are set to play feuding brothers (“squabbling sibs”, as Deadline puts it) in an untitled comedy executive produced by David Gordon Green. It’s virtually guaranteed to be really funny because Johnny Knoxville is tall and skinny and Patton Oswalt is short and chubby — classic comedy recipe! I’m guessing Patton plays the rich, pompous womanizer and Knoxville the shy-but-goodhearted, D&D-loving shut-in, but I’ve been wrong before.

The untitled comedy will be directed by Todd Rohal and financed by Marc Turtletaub and Peter Saraf’s Big Beach Films. Knoxville and Oswalt will play battling brothers who attempt to honor their ailing father by taking a troop of boys on a camping trip. It all goes awry. Rob Riggle, Maura Tierney and Patrice O’Neal also star. Rohal, who originally wrote the script under the title Scout Master, most recently directed The Catechism Cataclysm. Production on the new comedy starts this week. [Deadline]

I’d rather watch a five-hour collection of Patton Oswalt’s Five-Second Films, but I suppose this’ll do. And I have faith that Johnny Knoxville can break the once-co-starred-opposite-Jessica-Simpson curse. Here’s a brief list of some of her other co-stars:

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