SLC Punk 2 {Punk's Dead} (2016)

Punk's Dead; SLC Punk 2 (R)

"Only posers die"

Of all the crowd funded, nostalgia-glomming and remake raping that the film scene perpetrates now, nothing takes the crappy cake quite like SLC Punk 2, aka Punk's Dead.   So, how dead is it?

If the ultimate message of SLC Punk! was the inevitability of selling out in modern society to survive, then SLC Punk 2 shows just how damaging artistically it can be to do so.  Watching this film leaves one with the impression that maybe you're better off freezing to death than living.  One half of the movie, the better half,  focuses on a carload of teenaged punks, some goth some hardcore some straight edge, crossing back over county lines into Salt Lake City for a concert while.  One, Ross, is suffering from heart break of a very stereotypical nature.  Along the way they get drunk, do drugs, fight redneck fathers and barely act their way out of their cliched paper bags.  However, let's not focus on them; at least they are young and inexperienced and serve some reason for the film to have been made (misguided though it may be).  Meanwhile the film is haunted by the ghost of Heroin Bob (Goorjian) who provides us context (hah!) exposition (haha!) and the strongest tie to the original movie (sad face).

Bob, with an ill fitting bald cap/mohawk, is now the narrator of SLC2 (Matthew Lillard reportedly refused to appear in the sequel, good call Matt).  One of the young punks, Ross, is his son who he fathered with Trish, and so Bob paces about oblivion in his combat boots offering his opinions on the state of his family and society.  This is the only part of the film that even barely resembles the original film.  Joining Bob in SLCP2 are also our old friends Sean, Eddie and John the Mod, aka, the only other actors unwisely willing to return for the sequel.  They are given a few useless lines (and reportedly paid next to nothing for doing so), and have their beloved characters dragged through the mud (John a sleazy internet porn tycoon?).  They sit in obvious, flat sets or in the back of cheap rented limos and read as much time-filling mush of dialog as the director can give them to fill in the holes between Bob and his kids.  Meanwhile, the concert they are all meeting at not only looks and sounds terrible, it was a kickstarter "bonus" to backers and is given so much screen time its almost another character.  A character every bit as terrible as the rest in the movie, both in conception and portrayal (betrayal)?  Compare, for instance, the Sean character's amusing anecdotes from both movies:  SLC1: the acid flashback, the homelessness, Sean is a funny yet tragic tale of youth gone awry.  In SLC2 he is a lawyer (somehow) who steals a cop's bike in a scene that is painfully, systematically unfunny.  The only thing laughable in that scene is how inept it is.

Gone is the intelligence, the wit, the energy, the newness, the raw camera work, the snappy conversations, the pastiche of film, even the underground music!  In it's place are bad wigs on top of unpracticed performers stiffly reading a bad script in a bad movie that shovels in as much concert footage as it can to pad it's run time.  If SLC Punk! hadn't been such an artistic success, would Punk2 be as Dead as it is here, visually decomposing the good will from the first to fleece the good memories and bank accounts of the original's devotees?

If Punk is dead you'll have to ask returning writer/director James Merendino.  Who killed it James?

2 No Stevo, No Shooter, No Service out of 10 (AWFUL)

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Jupiter Ascending (PG-13)

"Stupider is as Jupiter does"

The poor daughter of an immigrant house cleaner is sucked into a sci-fi vortex of space ships and soap operas in the Wachowski sibling's newest effort, Jupiter Ascending.

Mila Kunis is Jupiter, the female protagonist so gullible and worthless even her villain points out the overwhelming evidence of her own idiotic naivete to her face.  Apparently she is the accidental gene double of the former Queen of the galaxy (humans have spread farther and ascended higher than us lowly Earthlings know), and the reigning Royalty is out to silence Jupiter before she lays claim to her Throne by birth right (and their Soylent Green-ish business model).  A confusing mish-mash of Science Fiction tropes is awaiting her ladyship, the damsel in distress.  Foremost is her Prince in shining armor, or in this case Channing Tatum with elf ears and glowing inline gravity space skates.  The ridiculousness of that sentence was apparently lost on no-one but the filmmakers.  The Wachowski siblings may be attempting to flaunt their new found feminine sides but Jupiter Ascending is nothing but a badly disguised romance novel with lasers and space princesses, the kind of fanfic usually reserved for the laziest alleys of the internet.

The CG is pretty but ineffective, the actors they squeezed into it just wave their arms around and grit their teeth and hope they look like they are piloting a star fighter.  The production design is glossy but derivative and sadly you can't help but laugh every time Tatum's rocket shoes try to look cool, and meanwhile the jumpy exposition attempts to tie the story to real life UFOs on Earth and is slipshod and wildly uneven, Men in Black did a better job at covering plot holes through memory loss than does JA, and it was an action comedy!.  Well thought out isn't Jupiter's strong suit, and neither is it's plot or heroine.  Apparently audiences were supposed to feel for a poor, Russian migrant girl who inherits the planet and then gets to dress pretty for 2 hours while making the stupidest of decisions like a cinematic 1950s airhead.  Eddie Redmayne (as one of the evil Abraxas siblings out to stop Jupiter) has now gone the gamut of Oscar winner one year to squealing over-acting scenery chewer the next, and being in this bomb may cut down on his appeal.  Meanwhile Mila shows even less acting chops than normal, Channing is a mopey and uncharismatic bore who just goes PEW PEW while glowering.  Even a Sean Bean cameo adds nothing to the proceedings, nothing! and there needs to be a whole lot more.

In short, Jupiter Ascending is a trip down, way down, descending to the level of a Harry Potter/Hungergames/Young Adult Book cash grab wanna be with no purpose or source material to support its many weaknesses and eccentricities.  The movie Cloud Atlas could have been without an excellent writer in other words.

2 Must Love Dogs out of 10 (AWFUL)

47 Ronin (2013)

47 Ronin (PG-13)

"Uhhhh"

Tiresome Japanese mythological epic is surprisingly respectful while insultingly tedious, casting Keanu Reeves as a low-caste urchin named Kai who is out for avenge his master's death with his fellow samurai betters.  Reeves is only present to provide star power to the cast (the character is not even apart of the legend!), but the rest of the cast is actually Japanese in heritage, a step-up from some Hollywood type Asian "historical" movies.  But then the over-use of fantastical elements, Anime style characterization, and clunky CGI sink any good graces the filmmaker's intentions endowed, leading to one of the biggest box office bombs in history.  Joyless, with slick action but a overall pace to snore by, 47 Ronin was even shunned by audiences in Japan where the original legend is considered a National treasure.  Both continents can agree that the film is mostly a Western mistake.

5 Keanu isn't the worst part of this movie GASP out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)

The 13th Warrior (1999)

The 13th Warrior (R)

"PEU-Wulf"

A grim retelling of Beowulf by the director of Die Hard, what could go wrong?  Welllll...

Based on Micheal.Crichton's book "Eaters of the Dead," the tale of a Musilm stranger in Nordic lands that are besieged by a horrific race of monsters has some meat to it.  John McTeirnan does an admirable job with the acting but due to negative audience test screenings the film was taken away and a new ending shot by Crichton himself and blandly retitled and released a year later.  The result is a movie without a clear sense of direction made from a book that did.  Is it a "realistic" take on Beowulf or is it a Hollywood blockbuster star maker?  Considering the size of the box office loss (especially considering all those expensive re-shoots and edits and an entire new composer and score to try and twist the interest for a more Americanized taste), it set back the careers of all involved.  There are some cult fans screaming for the original director's cut to arise from Disney's vaults, but the reality is that the action is muddled, the message is unclear, and despite some good scenes and ideas you just can't fight those monstrous suits pulling the strings behind the scenes.

3 Vikings who apparently use Clorox on their Whites out of 10 (BAD)

Crimewave (1985)

Crimewave (PG-13)

A ridiculously disappointing farce from Director Sam Raimi (Evil Dead) and his writing buddies the Coen Brothers (Blood Simple).  Fraught with financial problems, Raimi's second feature was edited without his approval leading to a film where you don't know where to lay the blame.  There are moments of delight, but the rest is a sloppy, cartoonish mess with bizarre noir-sensibilities (think Three Stooges meet Miller's Crossing).  Raimi's peanut butter to the Coen's chocolate frankly tastes like garbage, whereas a script made solely by the Coens could have been something watchable, or a totally wacky Raimi affair without the subtle quirkiness embedded in the script may have succeeded as the slapstick romp (at least for Raimi, others probably still wouldn't have liked it much).  Instead, and after heavy studio interference, we get a madcap rampage of two strangely over-dubbed murderous exterminators who happen into the path of a luckless milquetoast and his newly found "independent woman"  love interest, one of whom gets mistakenly sent to death row in an unwise wrap around segment.  The action is relentless, the comedy lackluster and childish, the set pieces interesting, and Bruce Campbell hams up his bit part as only he can.  The only true reason to see the film is the brilliant acting by the two villains, played by the late-great Paul Smith (Dune) and Brion James (Bladerunner).  Even with their odd Looney Tunes voices and constant howling fat men closeups, they bring a black energy to the proceedings that rises above the putrid frustration of the production.

3 Oldsmobile Delta 88s out of 10 (BAD)