June 8, 2012, - 4:07 pm
Weekend Box Office: Prometheus, Peace Love & Misunderstanding
It’s a tough choice this weekend at the box office. You have to choose between an entertainingly creepy sci-film film or a far-left, anti-conservative piece of crap starring Hanoi Jane. Okay, I lied. Not tough at all. I did not see “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.” (Sorry.)
* “Prometheus“: I like a good science fiction, outer space flick. And I enjoyed this movie a lot, even though it had some giant holes and left a lot of questions and things unexplained. It was very creepy and weird, but I like that, especially when it’s in a good and interesting way, as in this movie. I love sci-fi, and while this is being billed as a prequel to 1979’s “Alien,” you don’t need to have seen it to see this. Actor Michael Fassbender, who plays a scheming Dr. Smith/Jonathan Harris-esque robot obsessed with “Lawrence of Arabia,” says it isn’t a prequel. He’s lying. It definitely is. I also noticed that all of the main actors in the movie are foreigners, most of them pretending to have American accents. But, on the other hand, I don’t feel sorry for American actors, mostly leftists who tend to hate America quite a bit. The story was a little slow at first, but it eventually picks of the pace with thrilling plot points, fantastic special effects, lots of suspense and action, and an interesting scene with a computerized machine doing an interesting surgery on a woman. It was very suspenseful and a fun ride, even with a minor anti-business tinge. It’s in 3-D and one of the few movies in which it actually makes a positive difference.
The story: two scientists discover that in ancient ruins of several civilizations around the world, there is always a diagram pointing to a specific planet, where the scientists conclude that the aliens who engineered the human began. A private company sends them and some others on a spaceship to the planet to explore this theory and discover the origins of mankind. They are asleep on the ship for two years, while the robot, David (Fassbender) tends to the ship. Soon, they wake up, and the woman running the show for the corporation, Charlize “I Have Orgasms For Castro’s Communist Cuba” Theron, bitchily bosses everyone around, including the scientists. They finally land on the planet, descend from the ship to a mysterious cave and discover a lot of mysterious and creepy things. To give away much more would give away the movie. But it’s textbook school science fiction with a creepy edge, action, and suspense. I did not care for Noomi Rapace, who played one of the scientists. But I did think she acted like your typical liberal-left scientist who simply behaves outside of the realm of reason. Theron didn’t need to act much since she played herself: a domineering, officious bitch who is less important than she believes.
As my friend, comedian and fellow movie critic Corey Hall, pointed out, there is an issue with the head of one of the characters and the movie doesn’t show gravitational force moving it when there is significant movement of its location. And I had an issue when they never explained why that same character apparently put something in someone else’s drink to make something happen. But I can’t really give more details without spoiling those scenes.
You’ll enjoy it, but it’s violent, bloody, and briefly sexual, so not for kids (would probably scare them, too). For older teens it’s probably fine. Also co-stars Guy Pearce.
TWO-AND-A-HALF REAGANS
Watch the trailer . . .
* “Peace, Love & Misunderstanding“: Uggh. This movie is just horrible. Seeing the trailer for this is enough to tell you it sucks. It’s just a matter of degree. Telling you that it stars Jane Fonda–who has American blood on her hands in Vietnam–should be enough. Or that is disses conservatives as uptight, cruel hypocrites. And promotes aging pot-smoking, leftist, anti-war hippies in Woodstock as the ideal. I just couldn’t take this movie. And when they showed Fonda attacking Ronald Reagan, that was the dung cherry on top of the ebola sundae.
Catherine Keener stars as a boring, uptight, frigid, misanthropic Manhattan lawyer who is a conservative Republican with two kids and a terrific New York home that would cost millions. Her husband, Kyle MacLachlan, asks her for a divorce. So she takes her two kids–a pretentious vegetarian leftist college student daughter and a goofy, nerdy, awkward wannabe-filmmaker son with a video camera–to Woodstock to stay with her estranged mother (Fonda), an aging hippie she hasn’t seen in 20 years, after she had the mother arrested for selling pot at Keener’s wedding reception. Fonda believes in free love, nudity, letting chickens roam in her house, bartering, and growing organic things (including marijuana) on her farm. Typical overaged, still oversexed sagging bra burner from the ’70s.
In Woodstock, Keener and her kids learn how to be less uptight and more hippie-esque, with the kids smoking pot with grandma, and mom sleeping with a man who also was sleeping with grandma. Yuck! Mother and daughter come back around to each other when the conservative daughter adopts to the hippie lifestyle and gives up the swanky New York apartment for the simple life as Willie Nelson’s sex slave. Okay, I made up the Willie Nelson part. But the daughter quits her job as a lawyer, dumps the fancy apartment, and instead dons the ripped jeans and hippies garb for a life in Woodstock. Message: conservatives are unhappy, need to lighten up and smoke pot, live the life of Jerry Garcia to be good, decent people. Someone clearly smoked a little too much ganja.
So predictable, so stupid. So awful.
Skip at all cost.
FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR BETTY FRIEDANS PLUS FOUR SPICOLIS PLUS FOUR HANOI JANES PLUS A BIN LADEN
Watch the trailer . . .
Tags: Catherine Keener, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Hanoi Jane, Hippies, Jane Fonda, Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Fassbender, movie, movie review, Movie Reviews, Noomi Rapace, Peace Love & Misunderstanding, Peace Love and Misunderstanding, Prometheus, Prometheus movie, Prometheus movie review, Prometheus review, Woodstock
Thank you for the reviews, Debbie. I will defintely skip the “Peace, Love, and Understanding” movie.
JeffE on June 10, 2012 at 12:16 am