March 22, 2013, - 6:36 pm
Wknd Box Office: Olympus Has Fallen, Spring Breakers, Admission
I liked just one of the new movies at theaters today.
* “Olympus Has Fallen“: This is Die Hard 2.0, starring Gerard Butler in the Bruce Willis role of saving America from terrorists. And I enjoyed it. Yes, it’s a little formulaic and the ending is predictable. But, so what? It’s thrilling, exciting, and action-packed. It’s also timely, since the movie deals with North Korean terrorists. And a bonus: Ashley Judd dies in the first five minutes. Ya can’t beat that. (Although her political career might die even sooner than that.) The only thing missing, since this movie involves North Korean terrorists, is a cameo by Dennis Rodman. While it’s a tad disturbing to see terrorist planes crashing in to the Washington Monument and the White House, it wouldn’t happen in real life, especially after 9/11, so it’s only a movie. If planes like this invaded DC airspace, our F-16s (or other jet fighters) would immediately be scrambled to take the interloping planes out.
Aaron Eckhart is the President of the United States. He’s got the most politically correct cabinet and administration in history. The Secret Service Director is a Black chick, the Vice President is Hispanic, the Secretary of Defense is a woman, and the Speaker of the House is Morgan Freeman. I was surprised that–horror of horrors!–the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was actually an old, White male. Butler is the First Son’s favorite Secret Service agent, but Butler is banished from the President’s personal protection detail (PPD–a term not used in the movie, but that’s what it’s called) because Butler reminds the President of the death of the First Lady (Judd) in a winter snowstorm car accident. Butler is desperate to get back in action, and he gets his chance the day South Korean leaders come to the White House to meet the President, and it turns out that their security and diplomatic entourage is infiltrated with North Korean terrorists.
Suddenly, the terrorists’ planes start invading DC airspace and are attacking the Washington Monument, the White House, and thousands of people on Washington’s streets. Crowds of purported tourists at the White House gates are actually terrorists, as well. The President is taken hostage, along with most of his cabinet. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense are both threatened with death, until the President breaks down and tells them to give their nuclear launch codes (“Cerberus codes”) to the terrorists. It was interesting to see the female Secretary of Defense wimpering, whining, and crying and the President immediately giving in to terrorists because he can’t handle a woman in distress. Yup, America, I give you women in combat. Same difference.
Since almost the entire Secret Service Presidential Detail is wiped out by the terrorists, Gerard Butler is the hero of the movie, secretly infiltrating the now badly-burned and blown up White House, which is filled with dead bodies. The rest of the movie is filled with wimpy, wimpering American officials–including the President–giving in to the North Korean terrorists’ demands, while Butler tries to rescue everyone and save the day.
If this was really the way America responded to a terrorist attack on the White House and a hostage situation with the President, America would be gone. If a President is taken hostage and terrorists are trying to get nuclear launch codes–and other top officials trying to save the day are aware of it in this movie–a bomb should be dropped on the terrorists and their Presidential hostage (with the next person in line taking the oath of office–the latter part only kinda, sorta happens here), so that we don’t give in to terrorists and they don’t win the day, as they almost do here. The President in this movie is a wimpy little bitch.
But, like I said, it’s thrilling, action-packed, and a fun, escapist time at the movies. Be forewarned, however, that the movie is extremely violent. It’s filled with dead bodies and people being shot in the head, beaten, and/or tortured. NOT for kids (at least, not when I was a kid).
ONE-AND-A-HALF REAGANS
Watch the trailer . . .
* “Spring Breakers“: Since the beginning of this complete piece of trash parading as a movie, I wanted to see its four female lead characters (and the actresses who played them) get murdered in horribly violent ways. That would have been the only justice. Sadly, that didn’t happen. And all of them live another day to make more of this malodorous dung.
I already wrote and posted my review of this movie before even having seen it, when I wrote about how this threesome-sex, killing-porn, drug-laden, violent movie was marketed to 12-year-olds in Seventeen Magazine. And I was completely accurate in what I wrote, except that the sickness of this movie is far worse than I’d earlier diagnosed. The movie starts with two college girls in class drawing pictures. One draws a heart that says, “I Love Penis.” The other draws a penis that says, “Spring Break, Bitch!” on it, and then she simulates giving the picture oral sex. It only goes further downhill from there.
This long, slow, boring piece of s**t is extremely repetitive, incredibly stupid, and a time-bandit that robbed two hours of my life I’ll never get back. It’s directed by Harmony Korine, a pretentious, disgusting son of PBS-employed hippies. Who else names their son, “Harmony,” and raises him to (never) grow up and make disturbing absolute garbage on celluloid, which is then marketed to impressionable tween girls?
Four college girls (Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine a/k/a the ugly one, who is clearly only in the movie because she is married to the scumbag director) who are dumb as doorknobs are desperate to go on Spring Break to St. Petersburg, Florida. Since they don’t have enough money, they steal their professor’s car, rob and threaten to kill diners and employees at a restaurant, and then torch the car. When they get to St. Petersburg, they engage in hedonistic drinking and drug use and get arrested. They are bailed out by a corn-rowed, grill-endowed White rapper/drug dealer named, “Alien” (James Franco). One of them, a religious Christian (Gomez), goes home because she doesn’t like or trust Alien. The others go to his tacky mansion on the water and do drugs with him and engage in violent crime and armed robbery on his behalf. Two of the girls have a threesome with Alien and then go with him to kill his Black enemy/competitor.
The end. Great for your 12-year-old . . . if you’re a moron.
Of one thing I am sure: every single person involved with this movie is a complete scumbag unworthy of human life.
FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS PLUS FOUR BIN LADENS
Watch the trailer . . .
* “Admission“: I found this mawkish, lefty-grungy-feely movie incredibly annoying, pretentious, and irritating. It was also supposed to be a comedy, but it just wasn’t funny. It was long, slow, and boring. A rich, liberal White guy (Paul Rudd) adopting a Black kid from Africa . . . yawn. Madonna, Charlize Theron, Palestina Jolie, and Sandra Bullock already own this fashion accessory. A bunch of liberal Princeton college admissions officers who put liberal activities and behavior as well as race and ethnicity ahead of actual academic achievement in choosing whom to admit to the Ivy Leagues . . . also not news. A liberal school for high school and middle school students where nothing much is taught other than how to build alternative irrigation in Africa and how to be “better citizens of the world” by helping a cow give birth? Well, that is just beyond annoying. And did I mention that the guy who adopted the Black kid is the one running this crazy, silly, BS school?
If none of this sounds irritating enough to watch on-screen, add in lesbian Lily Tomlin as a crazy, ugly feminist (yup, she’s playin’ herself) with a Betty Friedan tattoo and a poster of a fish on a bicycle, an homage to Gloria Steinem’s rejection of men (she famously said women need men as much as a fish needs a bicycle). Tomlin is the single mother of the vastly over-rated Tina Fey, who is an admissions officer at Princeton, eager to get a promotion to Dean of Admissions. She is also recently dumped by her boyfriend and is told that a kid at a liberal, unstructured “developmental” school called “Quest” (see above description) is the son she gave birth to in college and gave up for adoption. The facts seem to match up and jibe with the likelihood that he is her son. The kid has atrocious grades, but we’re told he is an “auto-didact” who teaches himself to learn. (I don’t need to be auto-irritated. I sat through this movie, which performed that task quite well.) Fey goes out on a limb to get the kid admitted into Princeton and predictably develops a relationship with the man who heads the school (Rudd).
The movie also co-stars the loathsome Wallace Shawn, a self-hating, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel “Jew” In Name Only. No thanks. But even without him, I could not stand this movie. The kids in it were pretentiously and obnoxiously to the far-left. But it didn’t appear that the movie was mocking them. Rather, it was lauding these future Hillary Clinton voters who rail against corporate America and other stale, old, refried crap of the left. Ick. I couldn’t tell, either if the movie was mocking feminism, or again, trying to endear us to this baloney.
Doesn’t matter. Either way, don’t waste your time or money on this insipid gruel. An absolute waste of time.
“Admission” literally isn’t worth the price of admission. They should be paying you to sit through this.
THREE MARXES
Watch the trailer . . .
Tags: Aaron Eckhart, Admission, Admission movie, Admission movie review, Admission review, Ashley Benson, Ashley Judd, Gerard Butler, Harmony Korine, James Franco, Lily Tomlin, Morgan Freeman, movie, movie review, Movie Reviews, North Korea, North Korean Terrorists, Olympus Has Fallen, Olympus Has Fallen movie, Olympus Has Fallen movie review, Olympus Has Fallen review, Paul Rudd, Princeton, Rachel Korine, Secret Service, Selena Gomez, Spring Breakers, Spring Breakers movie, Spring Breakers movie review, Spring Breakers review, Tina Fey, U.S. Secret Service, Vanessa Hudgens, Wallace Shawn, Wallace Shawn Israel
I’m surprised the only Christian character in “Spring Breakers” actually did the right thing at the end. In Hollywood movies, Christian values and faith is usually held up to ridicule. While I agree with your verdict, Debbie – I think the movie unintentionally has a redeeming message of sorts in that it shows us the emptiness and futility of our post-modern post-Christian life. There is no happiness and true fulfillment to be found in the things of this world. The filmmaker is not even original in ripping off the first couple of chapters of the Catholic thinker and saint Augustine’s life in his famous “Confessions.” We all sin and that’s part of human nature. We are more than the sum of ourselves and we can reach the divine within us. “Spring Breakers” reminds us in a way the interior life and closeness to Heaven is a lot harder to attain than a trip to St. Petersburg, Florida, which ironically enough happens to be named after St. Peter, who in Christian tradition, inaugurated the Catholic papacy and laid the foundations of our Western civilization. Its not our vices that need to be recounted; its the virtues and the weapons of the spirit needed to maintain our decent nature that are sadly, in danger of being forgotten in our time.
NormanF on March 22, 2013 at 11:17 pm