The big question going into Wanderlust was, is it a David Wain/Ken Marino movie with all the people from The State, or is it more of a Jennifer Aniston rom-com? After having seen it, my conclusion is that it’s not really either. It’s more like if you got some of the funniest people in the world together and had them try to please a studio exec. To put it even more simply, it’s a funny movie filled with funny people doing funny bits in service of a fairly generic story that’s hard to care about.

Most Likable Man in Show Business Paul Rudd and Most Why-Does-Everyone-Seem-to-Hate-Her Woman in Show Business Jennfer Aniston play New York couple George and Linda. They’ve just bought a studio apartment (a “microloft,” the realtor calls it) that they’re not sure they can afford. Then George loses his job and HBO passes on Linda’s documentary about penguins with testicular cancer, and they definitely can’t afford it. With nowhere to go, they pack all their possessions into a Honda and set out for Atlanta, where George’s brother played by Ken Marino has promised him a job at his port-a-potty business. They take a wrong turn near Albequerque, end up at a wacky hippie commune where Jo Lo Truglio runs around with his big, rubbery fake dick hanging out, and away we go.

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THAT AIN'T A TOILET, MATTHIAS! Jeez, these Belgians have no manners.

When you sin against beef, you sin against yourself

This could be the most convoluted, least-illuminating movie description I’ve ever written, but the best way I can describe Bullhead is that it’s a movie that a more understated, less style-preoccupied Guy Ritchie would’ve made, if he was trying to rip off Scorsese instead of Tarantino. Also, it’s sort of like Black Swan, if the Black Swan had been a Belgian gangster. Totally makes sense, right? Now you understand completely, I should probably just stop right here.

It’s okay. That it’s so hard to classify is a big part of the charm.

There’s nothing like an eccentric film that carries on without any apology for its eccentricity. Hollywood’s mainstream studio pictures are so obsessed with starting from a place of familiarity that you get to see the same bullshit a thousand times over, solely out of the fear that someone in the audience might be confused (the horror!). They forget that strangeness itself is compelling, and that you’ll usually find familiarity in a story so long as it compels you to look for it (a point Drew Magary makes beautifully here). Bullhead is certainly the first film I’ve ever seen to tackle the European hormone mafia, guys who go around strong-arming farmers and illegally ‘roiding up cattle while counting their ill-begotten beef money. It’s also probably the first to have as its subtheme the tension between the Dutch-speaking Flemings and the French-speaking Walloons. Belgium, who knew it was such a powder keg, huh? I always just assumed it was a low place for Nazis to stomp through, a forgettable place, filled with waffles, dykes, and Jean Claude Van Damme.

Rightly-acclaimed actor Matthias Schoenaerts plays the lead, Jacky Vanmarsenille, a puffed-up Flemish beef gangster, as ‘roided up as the cattle he trades and whose past has left him a bit, shall we say, stunted. (I hate it when asshole writers play coy like this, but I don’t want to spoil the most memorable scene, which is unforgettable). Jacky is violent and prone to racial and homophobic slurs, but even through Schoenaerts’ crooked prosthetic nose, lazy eye, and the 66 pounds of muscle he put on for the role (which is not only impressive but makes you wonder if he was a mime before this – that dude on your right is him before he became the guy in the banner image), he practically sweats insecurity and childhood slights. Jacky’s caught up in a deal to supply beef hormones (also the name of my indie band, etc.) to some West Flanders weirdos, who may have just made his life a whole lot more complicated by killing a beef investigator (also your mom’s nickname in high school, etc.). With the head now on from the police, also involved are some shady Walloon car thieves, a gay informant, a deranged, wanking-obsessed simpleton, and the big-breasted perfume-store clerk whom Jacky’s been pining after since childhood. If it sounds like Snatch or Lock Stock, it kind of is, but without all the mood music and slow motion and showy camera work (and to be fair, perhaps a bit less fun).

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That's telekinesis, Kyle.

Can a cheap gimmick ruin a great story?

I bet when Josh Trank and Max Landis brought their pitch for Chronicle to a studio exec, they got about four words into before the exec held up his hands and said, “Wait, did you say ‘found-footage superhero movie?’ STOP RIGHT THERE! Here, take my entire wallet! Hell, you can come over and bang my mistress. Here’s my keys, there’s cocaine on the night stand.”

For trend-savvy businessmen who think in skin-deep marketing labels looking to recreate whatever was popular eight months ago, “found-footage superhero movie” is a word-powered Viagra boner, perfect for stabbing the nubile 18-year-olds they like to cast in everything. With Chronicle, it’s also a case of the hook, the most flashy thing about it, being the only obnoxious part of something otherwise pretty great. Found-footage is to Chronicle what that clear, one-button mouse was to Mac computers 10 years ago. Gimmick aside, it’s a high school movie that isn’t about the misunderstood loser courageously throwing off the shackles of his inexplicably cruel jock overlords. It’s a superhero movie in which the people who develop superpowers don’t have the morals of a 50s Boy Scout leader. I’d been hoping someone would make those for years, and now one movie does both? …What’s that you say? I have to watch it through the conceit of a high schooler’s camcorder? Boy, I could kick that Blair Witch right in the cunt.

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My Dinner with A-Holes

For younger people, people younger than 45, say, I suspect all I’d have to say about Roman Polanski’s new film Carnage is that it takes place entirely within two rooms of an apartment building and the hall, and they’d stay away in droves. You kids with your short attention spans and your facetime and your f*ckable iPads, that’s an immature and close-minded reason not to see a movie. But in this case, luckily, there are also plenty of others.

Based on the play God of Carnage, by French playwright Yasmina Reza, Carnage follows two sets of parents, played by John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster, and Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet, who meet to discuss a fight between their sons in a civilized manner. But as the day wears on, they become increasingly childish themselves! That’s… well, that’s pretty much it, really (feel free to make your own joke here about the guy creating an idealized vision of youthful innocence being Roman f*cking Polanski). It’s the kind of film that a certain sect of the older generation considers “classic drama,” that they’re going to try to sell to the rest of us, because people just don’t appreciate real stories without robots punchin’ each other anymore, gall durn it! Fair enough, but 12 Angry Men this ain’t. It’s important to make a distinction between a “scathing critique of contemporary society!” and characters obnoxiously bickering about contemporary issues in an unrealistic way.

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SHOOT HIM DOWN, MIKE! THAT'S THE GERMAN WHO MOLESTED YOU! /Wire joke

Corny movies are a civil right!

If you want to see a movie that tells the inspiring true story of the Tuskeegee Airmen, go rent The Tuskeegee Airmen. If you want to see a remake of that with Anakin Skywalker dialog, CGI explosions, and a nameless bad guy with a scar on his face who says things like “Die, you foolish African!” go see Red Tails.

There isn’t that much to say about Red Tails, really. It’s the identical plot of Tuskeegee Airmen but worse on every level. But it isn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, either. The protagonist isn’t a horse, for example. It’s nice to look at, the war scenes are decent enough, and every ten minutes or so, Terrence Howard shows up to read an uplifting speech directly into the camera in the voice of Maya Angelou.

The two main characters are Lightning (David Oyelowo) and Easy (Nate Parker), the Malcolm and Martin, the Maverick and Ice Man, the Magneto and Professor X of the airborne civil rights movement. Easy drinks too much (though we never see it actually affect him) and Lightning is a hothead, the most talented pilot in the squadron, but goes off half-cocked every time someone calls him chicken. Wait, no, I’m thinking of Marty Mcfly. By “chicken” I meant the N-word. Lightning gets the love interest in the film, an Italian girl he meets when, no joke, she blows him a kiss as he’s flying over her house. He can spot beauty from thousands of feet up, so he goes to her house and takes her on a whirlwind courtship that takes place exclusively on “Italian countryside” b-roll from Olive Garden commercials. He asks for her hand in marriage while men in mustaches play the accordion and grey-haired grandmama’s in half-shawls wring their hands and everyone’s cool with it because Italians are notoriously open-minded about interracial dating.

But enough about-a the story. MAMMA MIA, SHE’S GOT-A SOME A-SPICY DIALOG!

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