by Debbie Schlussel

Nothing particularly spectacular in the new offerings at the movies, this weekend:

* “Escape Plan“: Aging action hero hacks Stallone and Schwarzenegger turn to a Muslim as their savior from the evil CIA. No thanks for the propaganda and stupid, predictable plot. Read my complete review.

THREE OBAMAS PLUS THREE BIN LADENS

* “Carrie“: As I watched this anti-Christian remake of an anti-Christian ’70s movie, based on an anti-Christian 1974 Steven King novel of the same name, I wondered when they will make a movie called, “Karima” or “Hamida’ or “Fatima” about weird, crazy, religiously extreme Muslims and their evil, homicidal daughters with magical powers. Will never happen. Only Christians and Jews are fair game for this kind of disgusting crap.

I didn’t like the original ’70s version of this, and I dislike this one even more. It’s absolutely sickening and silly. I felt like a time-bandit robbed me of nearly two hours of life I’ll never get back.

You know the story: Carrie White (Chloe Grace Moretz) is the daughter of a crazy, extremely devout Christian woman (Julianne Moore). She’s ridiculed, mocked, and bullied by her classmates, especially the popular kids. But, in this movie, the gross factor is revved up. Carrie is in the school locker room shower and gets her first period. She doesn’t know what it is and thinks she’s dying, so she starts screaming that she’s dying. She is covered in period blood and gets it all over her classmates and the gym teacher. The classmates take a video of this and put it up on YouTube to further harass, bully, and embarrass Carrie.

What kind of warped mind comes up with this stuff? Take your pick from anyone in Hollywood aiming for quick bucks. Yup, this is what passes for movies aimed at teens and 20-somethings these days.

And, if you’ve seen the original Carrie, you know the rest of the story: she develops supernatural powers and is embarrassed at the prom, where she gets her revenge. Except that in this stupid remake, Carrie is like a supernatural action hero with the ability to fly and do all sorts of other sorts of similar stuff. All the while, she is wearing a large Cross pendant, just in case you forgot she’s a Christian.

I get the idea that the whacked-out Julianne Moore character is the kind of persona that the delusional Barack Obama thinks embodies religious conservatives across America, when he dismisses them as bitter gun and Bible clingers.

Skip this bigoted, depraved, and dumb waste of digital material.

FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS

Watch the trailer . . .

* “The Fifth Estate“: This movie is about the founding of Wikileaks by Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and a partner, Daniel Berg (Daniel Brühl), and it tells the story through the point that Wikileaks discloses and posts hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department cables online.

If you read the newspapers and follow the news, there won’t be anything new for you here. The only thing I learned was that Julian Assange’s hair is an unnatural white-blonde color because he bleaches it, and that this is because his parents were in a cult in which they bleached everyone’s hair this color. The movie makes no other comment about the cult, nor does it say that the cult is the White Brotherhood, a racist group with Nazi ties, which would have been interesting.

What would have also been interesting would have been some sort of background on Assange’s life and upbringing. In addition to having a mother who slept around, had multiple husbands, and was a member of a racist, Nazi cult, Assange was the product of a sexual liaison by his mother and a man she met at an anti-Vietnam protest, for example. None of this is in the movie, and the story onscreen begins with the beginning of Wikileaks. This background would have gone a long way to explaining why Assange is so anti-American and bent on destroying the U.S. But the movie doesn’t even show you that side of Assange or that this was his goal in the Wikileaks mass leak of the cables.

Instead, the movie shows us a self-centered, selfish, ego-maniacal, narcissistic, irresponsible guy bent on releasing any and all information he gets from any source without first doing any editing of the material to save lives or avoid jeopardizing sources and foreign agents and informants. That is all true, and I’m glad the movie did not glamorize or gush over this guy. But Assange’s agenda, as he himself has explicitly said repeatedly, is to bring down America. That goal of his–that ideological drive–is never disclosed in this movie, and it’s, therefore, mostly a sham of a movie.

On top of that, I had to chuckle when a character in the movie–an editor/top reporter for the UK’s Guardian–whines that Assange is journalism without any accountability because Wikileaks refused to edit or redact any of the cables and protect people. It’s ironic, given that, today, the Guardian is engaged in its own similar journalism without any accountability in publishing all of the Edward Snowden information and documents. That jeopardizes lives, too, in the same way Assange did.

Other than that, the movie is long, slow, and dull. There is no suspense and nothing thrilling, other than a brief set of scenes in which a State Department official tries to spirit out of Libya one of her sources in the government before the Wikileaks cable dump gets him killed. And that’s the only other accurate part of the film: it shows how inept and toothless the Obama Administration was and is in response to Wikileaks’ actions. They did nothing but speak loudly against it and little else. Talk is cheap.

By the way, this movie is put out by Rupert Murdoch’s FOX (there’s a quick clip of Megyn Kelly gratuitously inserted into the movie to promote her) and should have had the tagline, “We Distort, You Decide.” They certainly distorted Julian Assange’s evil intentions here. In fact, they left them out completely.

FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS

Watch the trailer . . .

* “The Summit“: This was probably the relative best of the new movies this weekend, with emphasis on the word “relative.” There’s nothing wrong with this documentary about several international teams of climbers who seek to reach the summit of K2, which the movie says is the second tallest peak in the world. It’s just that I felt I’d seen this movie a million times before. I’ve seen TV shows and fiction movies and other documentaries about the climbing of K2 and other tall mountains. And this one is no different.

You know the drill: highly funded, best trained, most dedicated, experienced mountain climbers start the climb with the intent of reaching the summit safely and returning to see their families and hear the accolades. But, because of the cold weather, bad winds, and other conditions that are always present in these climbs, several of the climbs die–via falls to their deaths, exposure to cold weather, etc.–and several more lose their toes and/or fingers. And, then, there are a scant few–like one or two–who make it and come back unscathed, living to tell about it. Like I said, I’ve seen it all before. You’ve probably seen it all before.

The characters are the same as usual in every one of these movies, including this one: dedicated sherpas (many of whom are Muslim, FYI–though the movie doesn’t tell you that, it’s implied or understood), who we are told are “taken advantage of” by the evil Westerner mountain climbers. Some give their lives to help save the Westerners. And, then, there are the “selfish” Westerners who won’t leave their climbing to help fellow climbers in distress. The narrative in these movies is always the same.

It’s entertaining and such, but not that interesting. I could take it or leave it. And this is probably best left to a one-hour special on Dateline or 20/20.

HALF A REAGAN

Watch the trailer . . .

* “All the Boys Love Mandy Lane“: This movie was made in 2006, and the studio sat on it for seven years. Watching it, it was quite clear why: this movie is a hunk o’ junk. Schlock through and through.

Amber Heard is a beautiful high school student, Mandy Lane, about whom all the boys are crazy. They all want to sleep with her. She and some of them and some of the popular girls at school go to one of the boy’s family’s ranch for the weekend, where sex is had and most of the people are brutally murdered by Mandy Lane’s less popular friend. She’s in on it, but decides not to kill herself with her friend, at the the end.

Um, why did I waste 1.5 hours on this trash heap? Good question. Maybe so you can avoid it like the plague. Don’t see this. A pointless waste of time.

FOUR MARXES

Watch the trailer . . .