Tom Cruise vs. The World’s Tallest Phallus

All my life I’d wanted to see Officially Not-Gay Parkour Master Tom Cruise swinging from a giant phallus, and now, thanks to Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, I have! And in glorious IMAX! The plot could’ve used a little more, well… girth, to fully satisfy this lady (*pointing to myself*), but I admit with these wide hips I can be a bit of a size queen. Which is to say, it’s not the kind of story you’re going to remember anything about three seconds after you leave the theater, but as a framework to include every kind of shot you’d see on one of those vivid HD channels that electronic stores use to pimp the latest plasma screens, it’s brilliant. Russian cities! Shiny supercars (all BMW)! Towering skyscrapers! Bollywood parties! …Smooshed together mixed-race titties! If IMAX screens had a demo reel, this would be it. And Tom Cruise is a perfect fit. His blandly competent line readings just scream “movie actor!”

We catch up to Tom Cruise in a Russian prison, where his plucky gang of spy pals, including computer expert Simon Pegg and voluptuous Paula Patton (“Agent Honeypot,” I like to call her) is busting him out. They need his help to catch a terrorist! There’s a former Russian general who’s gone rogue, escaping his pen, goring three of his handlers and stealing the nuclear launch codes. He wants to launch Russian missiles at the United States in order to start World War III, so that, uh… the Earth can, uh… have a fresh start or some shit? You know, it wasn’t super clear on that point. But basically, it’s like War Games or Crimson Tide. If you’ve ever seen that South Park where the characters say stuff like “A secret government program… or maybe it was aliens… Who cares, f*ck you!” to move the plot past the exposition we’re all going to forgive anyway, it’s a lot like that. And rightly so.

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Except for a couple great scenes near the end, Young Adult doesn’t quite work, which is excruciating to say about a film with Patton Oswalt in it. Written by Diablo Cody, directed by Jason Reitman, and starring Charlize Theron, who won an Oscar for daring to play ugly, it has all the right ingredients. Up in the Air gets better every time I watch it, there was always a solid movie in Juno once you dug through the kitschy language and rightful backlash, and it should go without saying that Patton Oswalt is the best chubby sidekick a protagonist could have. But Young Adult gets caught in an awkward middle ground, where it can’t seem to decide whether it wants to defy genre like Up in the Air or be a full-on comedic romp like Bad Santa. It’s too stereotypical to be poignant, and not enough laughs for escapism.

Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, a hard-drinking party girl (transitioning uneasily towards a party lady) who writes young adult fiction under a pseudonym when she’s not too hungover or watching reality TV (you’d be surprised at how many friends I have with this very occupation — I assume Diablo Cody probably does too). One day, in the middle of Kardashians and Diet Coke binge, Mavis (OH THE QUIRKY NAMES) gets an email from an ex, (BUDDY SLADE, SMALL-TOWN LEGEND) inviting her to a baby shower. Jealous of his stable life and seeming happiness, she gets it in her head that she’s going to leave Minneapolis (“the mini apple!”) with her pomeranian and mini Cooper in tow, and head back to Mercury, Minnesota to rescue her ex from his life of boring domesticity.

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"Prepare your anus, it is time for an Assbender."

Shame is overwrought and lacking in real story, but the Fasspenis deserves Best Actor

If you just want the abridged Shame review, here it is: Michael Fassbender is a sex addict. That’s it. That’s the whole movie. Just stop reading right here. Shame is about Michael Fassbender having dirty sex and thinking nasty sex thoughts and looking at filthy sex porn on the internet for 101 minutes, with all the initial awesomeness turning to repetitiveness that would entail. Oh, and he has a humongous penis (yes, this is a shameless teaser for the rest of this review).

Okay, so there’s a liiittle more, but the “more” is the worst part. I suspect there’s a great short film buried inside Shame (mmm, yeah, baby, let me bury my short one inside you). A 25-minute tone portrait of a sex addict, Michael Fassbender’s relentless, rhythmic rutting thumps and gnarled sex face — a loving vignette of a madman in its own way, artful in its specificity. It’d probably win awards. But it’s not enough story for a feature, and it shows in Shame‘s third act, deteriorating into artsy montage and pulling every overwrought trick in the art school handbook in a needy attempt to seem, like, sooo serious and deep, you guys. I mean, really? A suicide attempt set to classical music? What are we, 13? (Oh right, my headline. I guess we are.).  Still, for a movie that’s meant to depict the filthiness of sex, it isn’t quite filthy. It’s movie-dirty.

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Like Crazy: The painfully-honest relationship movie 500 Days of Summer wanted to be

Like Crazy pulls a dirty trick. It makes you fall in love along with two cute little college students, then tears them apart, and spends the rest of movie dangling their perfect, mutually-adoring relationship just out of reach. DAMN YOU, LIKE CRAZY! CAN’T YOU SEE THESE ATTRACTIVE CAUCASIANS WERE MEANT FOR EACH OTHER?! THEIR HAPPINESS IS ALL I’VE EVER WANTED!

It’s totally manipulative and obnoxiously effective, but somewhere in the midst of watching two lovelorn honkeys fight desperately against time and geography to recapture the magic of the honeymoon period of their relationship (are we soul mates? were we just young and stupid? is it true love or hormones? are we in love with each other or just youth?), is something absolutely true and timeless and affecting about the nature of relationships. It hurt to watch at times. It hurt to write that. Frankly, it turned me into a big ol’ girl, and that’s no small feat when you’re a burly lumberjack.

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If I were evaluating Werner Herzog’s new documentary Into the Abyss solely on the basis of entertainment value, I could tell you that it’s great. It’s not an instant classic like Grizzly Man, but it’s a fascinating story told in Herzog’s frustrating, entertaining style. (And as long as we’re ranking Herzog docs, it’s more entertaining than Encounters at the End of the World, but less Herzoggy — less voiceover, fewer misanthropic one-liners about his love of cold indifference and hatred of sunlight).

But I have a hard time not seeing it at least partially as a piece of advocacy. Herzog wanted it, as the film’s producer says, released early, so that it could become part of the death penalty debate. He’s said in interviews that it’s not meant as a “crusading doc,” and he doesn’t intend it as anti-capital punishment piece, even though he states a few times throughout the movie that he doesn’t believe in the death penalty. If I give him the benefit of the doubt on not taking a particular position, I’d say the film’s last act, at best, still betrays a certain blind spot in his storytelling. At worst, it’s the least-successful anti-death penalty film I’ve ever seen.

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