If you like giant robots punching each other, and that describes me as well as anything, then it looks like you’re going to love Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. It appears to have all the giant robot action of Transformers, with the added benefit of the story not centering around the most obnoxious family on Earth. USA Today just posted eight new stills, and AICN broke the news that the film had a special screening last night in Burbank. Hollywood is nothing if not a town built on ass kissing, and people who would skip the Super Bowl for an advanced screening are probably the type who might geek out over a movie more than others, but word seems to be positive. Though that word is mostly being collated by the studio itself, of course. At the very least, Looper director Rian Johnson liked it.

Go into Pacific Rim prepared to be transmogrified into a 12 year old. And then to pee your pants with joy. I love it so much.

— Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) February 2, 2013

Ooh, ‘transmogrified,’ well la di da, Professor Wordlington. Anyway, my big takeaway here is that there are some robot jox who fight Godzilla, and one of the robots looks like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Here’s to hoping that at some point he falls to the ground complaining of a flesh wound with a stump limb the size of the Chrysler building. My God, did I just type all of that? I get nerdier just being near this movie, like nerd osmosis.

Read the rest of this entry »

"Sup, ladies. My car just took its top down, hint hint."

In the Future, Miatas are Cool

Okay, first things first, Looper is a really hard film to review. It’s nearly impossible to discuss in any meaningful way without spoiling the whole thing. I generally ignore the chicken little, virulently anti-spoiler, review-commenting H8RZ, and some films can’t really be spoiled – The Master, say, which is ninety percent mood and visuals. But with Looper, you spend most of the film collecting little story threads from different times and places in the hopes that at the end, you’ll be able to make yourself a nice soft logic quilt, and that the figure-eight, infinity loop of the plot universe will close unto itself with all cause and effect still intact, so that the little dudes on rollerblades can skate around it super fast. (That’s us, bro, rollerblading around the figure 8 of LIFE). And in Looper, like a Christopher Nolan movie, the what or why of an action happening onscreen is usually justified retroactively, rather than set up in advance. So to question a plot point’s importance or believability necessitates revealing its outcome and thus removing an element of suspense (which, even for a critic, is sort of a dick move). But beyond all talk of what I did or didn’t like or what subplots did or didn’t come together in the end, the biggest takeaway is this: Rian Johnson is trying to blow your mind, and this is important.

What we already know from the trailer: It’s 2044. Time travel hasn’t been invented yet, but in 30 years, it will have been. It’s outlawed, but controlled by criminal organizations (WHEN TIME TRAVEL IS OUTLAWED, ONLY THE OUTLAWS ETC ETC). When they want to kill someone, they send the victim back in time to 2044 to be dispatched by specialized assassins called loopers, whose only skill seems to be the ability to aim giant, one-shot shotguns called blunderbusses at people, and then go home to play with their future motorcycles and classic Mazda Miatas. One such looper, obviously, is Joseph Gordon-Levitt in weird makeup, who one day comes face to face with his future self, who is Bruce Willis (explaining the weird makeup). Except for being able to see his face, this is how the looper arrangement is supposed to work. They sign on for 30-year contracts, in the process killing their older selves and “closing the loop.” Thus, when JGL and future JGL encounter each other, the conflict is whether future JGL (Bruce Willis) can convince present JGL to sacrifice his comfortable present for the possibility of a longer future (“no, dude, seriously, it’s mega-cool here, you’re gonna love it!”). Conversely, JGL has to convince his older self to go quietly to his early grave so that he can keep the dub-step Miata gangbang going without complicating it with a bunch of mob dudes trying to kill him. We’ve all had similar hangover dreams starring the ghost of liver-health future, I’m sure.

Read the rest of this entry »

*Don’t worry, I won’t be spoiling anything, because it’s my hope folks will see this one clean, ideally right after their family has staged an intervention.

Hi there from beautiful Toronto, Canada, home of the B-Jays. I just got out of the morning’s first screening, Looper, which is also the official opening film of The Toronto International Film Festival. I want to save the real Filmdrunk review for Vince, because I like reading his reviews much more than I like writing my own, but in the interim I thought I’d take the opportunity to get you completely fluffed on Looper (provided you weren’t already).

The film doesn’t come out until September 28, facing off against Hotel Transylvania and Won’t Back Down, but that’s no reason you can’t recruit a few friends prior. Because really, if Looper doesn’t win that terrible weekend, it will be yet another reason why we can’t have nice things. Anyway, no more fooling around, let’s bloviate on Looper, for the kids.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey, kids.  Do you like Wes Anderson and unnecessary voice over?  Then you’ll love the first seven minutes of Rian Johnson’s* The Brothers Bloom (starring Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, and Mark Ruffalo, none of whom appear in this clip).  It actually started to win me over towards the end. The guy can clearly tell a story, it’d just be nice if he eased off the oh-so-precious elements, like little kids who dress like Charlie Chaplin and talk like Our Gang.  Also: can we stop with the little-kids-falling-in-love plot device already?  If 10-year-old boys are gonna start trying to impress chicks all the time, I’m gonna knock them in the mud and put frogs down my pants just to even things out.

*Says Johnson’s wikipedia page: “Johnson is also an accomplished folk singer.” Gee, you don’t say.

[and sorry about the video, non-U.S. peeps, but there's not much I can do when the only place hosting it is Hulu. Write to them and complain, because it's frustrating for me too.]

^{If you see one movie with bowler hats this summer… make it Sherlock Holmes. But if you see two…}

…Yeah, so that’s just about the gayest headline pun I’ve ever written.  Anyway, after the jump I’ve got the trailer for The Brothers Bloom – starring Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, and Rachel Weisz – director Rian Johnson’s follow up to Brick (which I never saw but am told is good).  It basically looks like Oceans 11 meets Dirty Rotten Scoundrels as directed by Wes Anderson.  Oh my gosh, aren’t these characters quirky?  I wonder if the mark will become the con at the end!

I like how complicated criminal enterprises are in movies.  In real life, 99% of all mob plots consist solely of beating someone up and telling him he owes you money.  So I’ve heard.
Read the rest of this entry »