Ten Statements About....THE MASK (1994)



There are very few films where I find snot jokes acceptable.
This is one of them.

 "It's Party Time! P-A-R-T...why? Because I gotta!."

1) You know why I can watch this Jim Carrey film where he goes all gonzo when I can't stand watching him in so many others? Because Carrey underplays Stanley Ipkiss--his Stanley is very grounded and very realistic, and that makes it clear that his Mask persona is an abberation. It's an anomaly, which makes the grotesqueness of that persona's behavior understandable as opposed to some of the outright psychotic characters that Carrey plays in later films.

2) It's really impressive how director Chuck Russell established what kind of world this film exists in within minutes of its start time. Through the use of a recognizable matte, the art deco style of the titles and even the music cues, Russell makes it clear that Edge City is a weird fusion of modern and pre-WWII style, something he keeps consistent throughout the story.

Here's the best special effect of this film..

3) Look, I like Cameron Diaz as she is now, even if she is a stick insect....but MAN, has any woman ever just grabbed hold of the screen with both hands and took control of it like she does in this movie? Everything that made her what she is today is all there, plus she's got major curves and obviously knows how to use them in those production numbers. Plus....

4) ...one of the keys to this movie is how much fun everyone is having making it. I could watch the dance number solely for the looks of pure joy on Diaz' and Carrey's face alone. This is a conedy that is made all the more fun because it looks like it was such a blast to make!

5) That being said...I really felt sad watching Richard Jeni's performance in this film, knowing that all his timing and comic sensibility that he shows in this film gave what could've been a thankless role a life of its own...and he talent away by committing suicide.

6) One of the truly ingenious things about this script is that, for all the weirdness and the gags and the special effects, it's Stanley as Stanley who saves the day and gets the girl. The Mask is not the hero, but a device--literally--that allows him to recognize in himself the qualities he needs to be the man he wants to be.

7) Give Peter Reigert credit--if I didn't know he was an foreign national, I wouldn't have known from his portrayal as Lt. Kellaway. Granted, it's an urban cop informed by 40's cop movies....but given that Edge City has one foot in the whole WWII style, it works.

8) You know...Diaz is volcanic and all, but there's a lot to be said about Amy Yasbeck as Peggy Brandt who has her own kind of sexiness to her. I almost regret that she disappears whole from the film the second she hands Stanley over to Dorian (I understand that a deleted scene shows the Mask'd Dorian throwing her into the printing press and killing her), as I would've liked to see her character continue to the end.

"I've heard of the phrase 'gimme some tongue' but...ewwww...."

9) And speaking of Dorian...I admit, I rather liked Peter Greene's Dorian as the main bad guy. Yes, the character skews a lot closer to the modern day criminal sensibilities than the rest of the film but maybe that's the point--namely that Dorian represents the encroachment of time on a timeless city, which is why his Mask'd persona is much more ruthless, dark and bloodthirsty than Ipkiss'.

10) And what discussion of this film would be complete without citing Max, the Jack Russell Terrier who plays Milo, Stanley's pet. This is one amazing dog, judging from the things they manage to get him to do without apparent aid of special effects...Hell, the one time it looks like they had to fake one of his stunts (jumping up to Stanley while our hero is incarcerated) looks all the more fake due to their attempts to cover the artifice up.

Overall...a film that still holds up due to some great performances and an attention to internal and external consistency, it works as a comedy, an adventure...and even as a semi-musical. Plus Cameron Diaz showing us exactly why she becomes Cameron Diaz.

Ten Statements About....BAD TEACHER (2011)

One of the women in this picture is going to make out with
a guy in this scene.  Oddly enough, it's not the blonde.

"Sign my yearbook."

"Hold my ball sack."

1) I'll admit it--any film that starts off with the Nick Lowe/Dave Edmunds super group Rockpile doing 'Teacher, Teacher' over stock footage of, you know, teachers, gets some points right off the bat.

2) I really hope that one of these days, someone will recognize how extremely talented and charismatic Jason Segal is. He's not just charismatic, he's movie-star charismatic, the kind of guy I'd watch over Seth Rogan any day. His character has all the best lines, and his very presence makes a scene better.

3) Unlike with many films I've seen lately, this movie actually gets better once it hits the halfway mark...but since we've spent the first half of the movie wandering around aimlessly watching Cameron Diaz act hung over, smoke pot and obsess over fake boobs, the audience may already have lost interest.

4) Oddly enough, I sort of appreciate that this film has something of a message about positive body image--although (and this is going to be a recurring statement with regard to this film) the final decision Diaz' Elizabeth comes to about her body could've been developed more gradually and not just seem to come out of left field because she realizes the guy she should be with likes her for who she is.

One of these actors has outstanding chemistry with Cameron
Diaz.  Oddly enough, it's not the guy she lives with...

5) Similarly, I appreciate that the script by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg deals head on with Elizabeth's inability to be a good teacher...so the ending I feared with her deciding she liked being a teacher and excelling is replaced instead with one where she takes on a more appropriate position at the school. That other ending makes a hell of a lot more sense when it comes to her character arc.

6) Justin Timberlake's Scott proves to be a very, very strange character--which wouldn't be so bad if we got more of a sense of how bizarre he really is earlier than the third act. There are things he does during that act's field trip (a scene in particular comes off as contrived, as it comes after a moment where Segal's Russell exposes Scott's peculiar social tick to Elizabeth), and after the film's nemesis gets her comeuppance which only make sense because The Script Wants It To Happen.

7) And speaking of Scott...this is a film that actually works less when it indulges in gross-out humor. I'm sorry, but dwelling on Justin Timberlake's semen-stained jeans isn't funny; it's just...weird and off-putting.

8) While the ultimate resolution of Elizabeth's story arc is 100% the right one (and the script is very courageous for refusing to give her a 'change of heart' moment while also giving us a reason to realize where her true talents lie), I think they needed to spend a little more time showing us her true talent. Yes, the interactions she has with Matthew J. Evans' Garrett shows us she does have something to bring to the table--but maybe if the script showed her inteacting with another student in a similar way, even for a second, her story arc would be stronger.

Leave your best Whitesnake joke in the comments section...

9) Should I be ashamed that I kept thinking Phyllis Smith, who plays Elizabeth's sidekick Lynn, was actually Molly Shannon (who does have a small role as Garrett's mother), and kept wondering when Shannon decided to eat the other members of her Saturday Night Live cast? And should I be more ashamed because Smith is one of a number of character actors (I'd also cite Joseph Michael , Eric Stonestreet and David Paymer) who really are at the top of their game and excel in their roles?

10) There are moments--especially during the field trip sequence--where I wondered of the scriptwriters hadn't watched Billy Madison one too many times. I mean, guys...if you're going to rip off an Adam Sandler film, why not Happy Gilmore, which still ranks as Sandler's best.

Overall...a decent comedy that, quite frankly, is damaged by its very, very slow start...a start so slow that it unbalances the rest of the film and makes its last half hour or so a mad rush to the finish line. Still, good performances manage to make this maaaaaybe Netflix worthy.

Back to the Atlas, who still seem to show an inability to run its show without a hitch--this was the third time that the entirety of the Firstlook was without video (but on the plus side, that meant I didn't have to see the 'special sneak peek' of The Smurfs, so....). The trailers contained some comedies, only one of which (What's Your Number?) I might see solely because I can see the natural charm and charisma of Anna Farris and Chris Evans elevating the otherwise stinky story, and the latest in Jason Statham's attempts to blandify every hardcore action film I remember from my childhood, The Killer Elite...except there's something about the look of the film, and the unlikely presence of Robert deNiro apparently kicking ass with the best of them, might make me see it.

Ten Statements About....THE GREEN HORNET (2011)

There's a good reason Kato looks uncomfortable....

1) My predominant thought as I suffered through this movie was, "And they passed on the Kevin script (which was played out over ten issues of Dynamic's Green Hornet comic) for this?

2) ...and don't get me wrong: the problem here is not Seth Rogen's performance (which is pretty wretched, truth be told), but the script by Rogen and Evan Goldberg that asks us to treat an absolute jerk as a hero that never has anything close to a moment that redeems him.

3) Jay Chou seems to have walked into this train wreck from another film--you know, one which treats its subject seriously and has things like pace, tone and clear storytelling that this film doesn't. Hell, he even sings a rap song in his own language over the closing credits that's five time more entertaining than anything we've just endured.

"No, no, Seth...that's not your mom...it's your love interest..."

4) Nothing makes Cameron Diaz look so out of place as 'the hot chick' than putting her in the same room as two men who, quite frankly, look like fetuses next to her and have them alternate between slobbering over how hot she is and pointing out how much older she is. And the way she is shot makes her look like their mother.

5) Welcome, Christoph Waltz, to that rarified club for actors and actresses who won an Academy Award, and then followed that performance up with an embarassment...an embarassment made all the more sad by the fact that what he's doing is a variation, emotionally, of Colonel Blanda. At least they came up with a cool visual for his ultimate villianous self--although even that is blunted by Waltz prancing around shouting 'I'm ungassable!'

Christoph Waltz prepares to shoot his agent for getting him to
do this movie.

6) Even though the script tries to clue us into Rogen's transformation into a hero several times, you never see Britt Reid or The Green Hornet as anything other than a jealous, horny goof who take advantage of the person he calls his brother, sexually harasses his employee, fucks up his own plan to defeat the villains, and otherwise is a sheer and total dick.

7) When are people going to realize that pointing out the flaws in your film in dialogue ("Boy, your romantic lead is old!", "Hey, the name 'Bloodnofsky is stupid", "Hey, why do you suddenly like your dad when all this time you thought he was a dick?") only holds up those flaws and shakes them at the audience?

8) Some of director Michel Gondry's legendary quirkiness does bleed through all the by-the-numbers action/adventure filmmaking...and almost every time it serves to confuse the viewer--with the exception of the moment he uses split screen technology in a sequence where....grumblemutter...Bloodnofsky's men spread word of a bounty on the Green Hornet's head.

9) By eliminating the Legacy aspect of the Green Hornet, it makes all the drawing of Bruce Lee and photos of The Lone Ranger cyphers. Furthermore, by pushing Britt's father into the deep background save for a puzzling cameo in a dream sequence in the middle of a sushi restaurant, it destroys that moment where Britt realizes what a hero his father was.

10) Okay....if you establish very, very early on that Kato has an affinity for both classical music and vinyl records, why do you refrain from giving us 'The Flight of The Bumblebee' save for a joke sting towards the end? For that matter, why do you wait until the very last minute to give us the weird-ass green psychedelic lights that were a signature of the 60's television series.

In short...a truly awful, mismanaged film that falls frequently on what it wants to do. But given that this year will bring us other super-hero films like Thor (whose trailer preceded the film) will prolly erase its memory before long.

Another trip to the Atlas, mostly so I could finally get my copy of the New York Jets 2011 Calender...and trailers that mostly looked toward Summer's crop, including the aforementioned Thor, Priest (in which the whole 'war against vampires' trope is dusted off for the fiftieth time), Paul (a film that I'm really torn about seeing--on one hand, Nick Frost and the company from Shaun of The Dead; on the other hand, alien genetalia jokes) and the ubiquitous Suckerpunch. Perhaps the most interesting trailer, however, is a film I think is named Battela, which features a strange atonal song over increasingly disastrous footage of what looks to be an alien invasion. Don't know if I want to see this, but I am intrigued.